Legend says a humble French scribe named Nicolas Flamel discovered the philosopher's stone—the alchemical secret to physical transmutation. To immortality itself. After turning a half-pound of mercury into gold, fear consumed Flamel: what man could resist the temptations of unlimited wealth and immortality? In a show of Christian humility, Flamel hid his manuscripts
Scott Adams, the creator of the popular cartoon "Dilbert," transformed himself into a persona non grata in 2016 by exposing how Donald Trump manipulated the media by using sophisticated persuasion techniques. History proved Adams was correct and Trump won the election. As it turns out, Trump was not the bumbling blowhard of CNN's
Steve Hanke recently set out to prove "why President Trump's trade message and protectionist policies are rubbish" in a Forbes article. Instead, the Johns Hopkins University economist exposed himself as a word-mincing, logic-twisting sophist—just like every other intellectual mercenary associated with the faux-libertarian propaganda mill that is the Cato Institute. Hanke's argument: trade
On January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded. All seven astronauts were killed. Eyewitness Frank Mottek described the scene: Just then we both stood up and looked up at the shuttle making its way farther and farther into the sky. Suddenly, I was struck by a pattern I had never seen before.
China's economy is now the largest on earth. Its industrial output is triple that of the United States. Its population, quadruple. To make matters worse, Chinese computing power is on par with ours and their scientific output is gaining fast. This is no accident. Like Britain, China transitioned from an agrarian to an
General Motors last week announced it would close five manufacturing plants, four in America and one in Canada. President Trump responded to GM by threatening to cut the automaker's subsidies unless it protected American jobs: Very disappointed with General Motors and their CEO, Mary Barra, for closing plants in Ohio, Michigan and Maryland.
Published in 1818, Horace Smith's "Ozymandias" imagines a London long-since abandoned—the English civilization is gone. Collapsed. The city is a new Rome. A half-forgotten memory like Babylon. Troy.…We wonder—and some Hunter may expressWonder like ours, when thro' the wildernessWhere London stood, holding the Wolf in chase,He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guessWhat
Afraid his son would steal his throne, Dionysius I, Tyrant of Syracuse, locked the boy away in a tower. Never leaving his prison, the boy learned about the world from his teachers and books. War, rhetoric, politics—he mastered them all. The boy was Leonidas without soldiers, Pericles without words, Themistocles without followers. Everything
In the 19th century, savvy American saloon-owners offered free lunches to attract noontime patrons. Inevitably, the diners would get thirsty and buy expensive drinks—thus was born the expression, "there's no such thing as a free lunch." Despite its humble origins, the phrase captures a deep and omnipresent truth: everything has a price, an
U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told CNBC last week that President Trump's tariffs wouldn't hurt American consumers, noting that because the price increase would be "spread over thousands and thousands of products, nobody's going to actually notice it at the end of the day." Needless to say, poor Ross was summarily tarred-and-feathered by
