We first wrote about the idea of seasteading (building new countries offshore on oil platforms) in 2009. At the time, I had this to offer… No doubt it’s an interesting notion, but is this practical? Living on the sea? Just think of how much risk that could entail. Of course you’d do the research to [...]

You can find more at David Donar’s site Political Graffiti.

They won. From Bloomberg: Hosni Mubarak stepped down as president of Egypt and handed power to the military, bowing to the demands of protesters who have occupied central Cairo for the past 18 days demanding an end to his 30-year rule. “Mubarak has decided to relinquish the office of the presidency,” said Vice President Omar [...]

Find more from Donar at Political Graffiti.

Human error? Computer error? Greece? Spain? China? WHAT IN THE HELL IS GOING ON?!?!?! Wall Street Journal tries to sort out the mess… A bad day in the financial markets was made worse by an apparent trading glitch, leaving traders and investors nervous and scratching their heads over how a mistake could send the Dow [...]

First, take a look at the video… Listen, I hate to beat up on Pat, especially since he’s not sounding too good these days, but this is more for those folks like Christy (his co-host in the video) than anybody else. Because this kind of nonsense needs to go away once Robertson’s generation passes. Otherwise, [...]

The Wash Post’s Ezra Klein interviewed the CEO of Kaiser Permanente and found massive differences when looking at health care costs in the US and other countries. Yes, it’s not even close. Gee, I wonder why we’re going bankrupt… And those are just 3 graphs! Want to see the other 19? Click here to download [...]

I’ve been genuinely intrigued at how much fiction and reality have been intersecting recently. See, there’s this film called MOON and it follows the story of a guy working on the far side of the moon who figures out that there’s a lot more to his mission than collecting the natural resource Helium-3. It’s a [...]

I thought it was a joke when I first heard about it, but “Seasteading” is a serious idea, it’s being backed by Milton Friedman’s grandson and they’ve apparently already raised more than a half a million dollars to realize their dream of building communities…on the sea! Here’s more from Reason: Patri Friedman was doing all [...]

There’s been a lot of talk about this little virus the past couple days, so I figured it might be helpful to connect everybody with some more stories that could help you sort the wheat from the chaff. And away we go… Officials in Mexico are scrambling to find the source of the infection, and [...]

A Smithfield Foods farm could be linked to the outbreak. Grist has more… Is Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork packer and hog producer, linked to the outbreak? Smithfield operates massive hog-raising operations Perote, Mexico, in the state of Vera Cruz, where the outbreak originated. The operations, grouped under a Smithfield subsidiary called Granjas Carroll, [...]

“Venezuela is a country whose defense budget is probably 1/600th of the United States’. They own Citgo. It’s unlikely that as a consequence of me shaking hands or having a polite conversation with Mr. Chavez that we are endangering the strategic interests of the United States. I don’t think anybody can find any evidence that [...]

Quite a nice surprise on this holiday weekend. From ABC: A senior US official tells me that President Barack Obama approved a recommendation by Defense Secretary Bob Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen to dispatch special forces to the US scene on Friday. These special forces were authorized to take action “in [...]

Great little piece about the ridiculousness of Fox News, Olbermann, et al… Fair warning, there’s a little bit of cursing in this. We win! *shudder* (h/t: Sully)

One silver lining to the economic crisis? We’re exporting more and importing less. From The Census Bureau: February exports of $126.8 billion and imports of $152.7 billion resulted in a goods and services deficit of $26.0 billion, down from $36.2 billion in January, revised. February exports were $2.0 billion more than January exports of $124.7 [...]

And after the AIG mess, I say we give it to him. How we allowed one company to take down the entire system still feels unreal to me. How on earth could we allow that to go down? Crazy, crazy, crazy. But it did happen and we are suffering massive fallout as a result, so [...]

You knew the time would come when the dollar would fall out of favor, but did you think it would happen this fast? Actually, it’s not just the dollar that we’re talking about here. What China is proposing is leveling the playing field and including all world currencies in the reserve basket, which now only [...]

What would happen if the dollar wasn’t the world’s reserve currency? Well, we may just find out if an U.N. panel has its way. From Reuters: Currency specialist Avinash Persaud, a member of the panel of experts, told a Reuters Funds Summit in Luxembourg that the proposal was to create something like the old Ecu, [...]

Perhaps one of the reasons why the administration didn’t think they could challenge the bonuses in the first place? From the Guardian… The company said it was legally obliged to pay traders $165m (£118m) in “guaranteed” bonuses, despite the near collapse of the insurer last September and its subsequent $173bn bailout by US taxpayers. Staff [...]

Our trade deficit is out of control, and in this video Warren Buffett explains why that’s so dangerous. I remember a discussion I had recently on this blog where I said that consumer spending drove this economy. Somebody disagreed and said our economy is based on making things. Well, that’s obviously not true if our [...]