Brian Gongol
Michael Jackson dies
That was unexpected. For as strange as he came to be, he was a sublimely talented performer, and his death leaves behind three young children without a father.
The economy slowed in the first quarter, but not by an Earth-stopping amount
The US economy shrank by an annualized rate of 5.5% in the first quarter of this year. Unpleasant? Yes. Catastrophic? No. And it's certainly no cause for us to abandon the market economy, which is the best tool for making human life better that we've been able to find in thousands of years of civilization. After all, not a one of us could even build a pencil from scratch, yet we routinely use things like microwave ovens and laptop computers and autos that are even more complex than a pencil by hundreds of orders of magnitude.
Johns Hopkins researchers try to figure out why a 16-year-old girl doesn't age
China's "Great Firewall" grows again
Government authorities are accusing Google of delivering pornography to Chinese users, but it's being interpreted as a means of restricting access to international destinations on the Internet, and by extension, a way to place a hold on political freedom. Ironically, one of the ways the news of the restrictions has made it out is via angry posts from within China on Twitter. It's quite easy to believe that the restrictions are mainly intended at reinforcing political control by restricting individuals' access to outside information, but as with so many bad ideas, it's being touted as something the government must do to protect children. There may be no easier way to identify an idea that involves government trying to do something it shouldn't than the phrase "for the children." Anything done under the "for the children" banner is almost always being done for some other reason...and that other reason is usually something nefarious and unpleasant. Related: A new crop of Internet and telephone scams seems to have emerged in the midst of slower economic times.
What baseball can teach us about institutional memory
Does Des Moines have the best barbecue in the world?
The windmill as Nebraska's state icon
