Remember when your laundry and dishwasher detergents actually worked?  Phosphates weren't doing good things for the rivers and bays that...

My homeless guy gave up and hopped a bus back to San Antonio, but not before leaving his little dog at the shelter.  It's a no-kill shel...

Actually, I can think of several reasons why plants might be opposed to vegetarianism.

It turns out that Islamic Law jurisprudence on the use of human shields begins with an extremely specific example . Once upon a time, Muham...

Martin Bashir is upset about the recent bloom in anti-IRS sentiment.  He thinks "IRS" is the new euphemism for the n-word (whacka...

On his retirement, Donald Kagan explains the purpose of education as several generations of our ancestors have taken it. It turns out ther...

That's according to Matthew Ygglesias , anyway.  Of course, to get there, you have to redefine "redistribution" to mean "...

When is limiting the amount of purchases of food and other staples in order to stop contraband trading different in some way from rationing ...

Glenn Reynolds has it exactly right.  The zero-tolerance approach even to tiny gun-like objects that no one could possibly mistake for a re...

I have some good friends who are Turks, and they are quite invested in this uprising .  The hope is not necessarily to bring down the govern...

What Oklahoma discovered in the fine print of Obamacare, but is having to sue to enforce : The ACA contains an assortment of carrots and s...

And two recent Jay Leno cracks:  "I know how President Obama can shut down Guantanamo Bay.  All he has to do is turn it into a gove...

I return from the Slickrock Wilderness and the Tail of the Dragon , where I spent the last few days. Slickrock Wilderness is among my ...

I think I've mentioned before how unhinged I get when confronted with a homeless animal: the orphan's panic, which also manifests i...

More from Rocket Science (it's a good week).  Suppose you've put a lot of time and effort into a research project, and you've ch...

More from Rocket Science : When you carefully tuck your high-value portable property under the passenger seat (just kidding, smash-and-gra...

What happens when novices, trainees, and experts are asked to draw the same thing?  The novices mimic textbook illustrations, the trainees ...

Bookworm Room has up an interesting post about global warming, CO 2 , and CFCs.    Qing-Bin Lu , a professor of physics, astronomy, biology...

The pages I'm formatting at Project Gutenberg this morning come from a particularly delightful and useful book called "Shifts and E...

Argentina is discovering what every other country that's tried to fix prices has already discovered:  whoever's in charge eventuall...