Brian Gongol
North Korea may pose the biggest opportunity ever for a gun-buyback program
North Korea's nuclear-weapon test this week isn't happy news. The country is continuing to isolate itself from the rest of the world, and we should all be uncomfortable with the idea of a hard-core Stalinist regime toying with nuclear weaponry. It may be time to consider the world's biggest gun-buyback program. ■ American police departments conduct gun buybacks in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, because they apparently believe that the benefits of removing those guns from the streets outweighs the costs of buying them. We currently spend a non-trivial sum keeping about 25,000 American troops on the Korean peninsula. This is a cost that has lingered since the Korean War. ■ At some point, it may well be worth considering whether we could effectively "buy back" North Korea's weapons by buying-out the leadership of the Communist regime there. How much might it cost? Good question. But there is, without question, some price at which the regime would willingly leave power. A power play like that would undoubtedly be expensive and would have unintended consequences -- perhaps encouraging other regimes to pursue weapons programs in the hope of getting a similar sweetheart deal. And it would prevent the execution of the kind of justice applied to dictators like Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi. ■ But there are real, direct costs to the current state of affairs in Korea -- and the high-risk game being played by North Korea also introduces lots of unknown hazards to the peaceable nations of the world, not to mention the implicit suffering imposed upon millions of North Koreans who could be living as well as their bretheren to the south, if it weren't for the lousy Communist system.
FDA approves an artificial retina
More bionics! It's great news, and it's good that there is a market for people to make money coming up with products like these that will improve the quality of life for people living right now.
You had ONE job to do...
Tragically hilarious documentation of good jobs done badly
