Summer 2013 • Vol. 8, No. 2

In memory of assistant editor of TOS Blog Joshua Lipana, who recently died after a heroic nine-month battle with cancer.

Explains why central banking should be terminated and how it can be, focusing primarily on the U.S. Federal Reserve System.

Shows why, even after Ayn Rand created a complete morality based exclusively on observation and logic, many people persist in believing that moral principles cannot be derived from the facts of reality.

Ifat Glassman discusses her artwork, her atelier education, and her plans for the future. The interview is accompanied by images of several of her artworks.

In 2009, in my home state of Colorado, a friend faced an estimated expense of $30,000 for necessary dental surgery, an amount far in excess of what he could afford. After doing some research, he opted to have the work done in Costa Rica, where he ended up paying $6,000…

Conservatives are against new taxes—unless they are for them. The unprincipled conservative approach is most recently illustrated by a February 14 release from the American Conservative Union (ACU) urging Congress to sanction Internet sales taxes. In the release, ACU president Al Cardenas says the federal government should allow states to…

These are shocking statistics: Among Americans ages 18–29, people tend to have a negative view of capitalism and a positive view of socialism. As Pew reported in 2011, people in this age group saw capitalism negatively by a margin of 47 to 46 percent, and they saw socialism positively by…

Free market economists and conservative activists point out that minimum wage laws harm the very people they are supposedly intended to help: unskilled workers. A recent article from the conservative Heritage Foundation, for example, makes this point. The economics is straightforward: Employers are not willing to pay people more than…

Nuclear fusion has long been the holy grail as a source for energy. Consider that one kilogram of natural gas will light a hundred-watt light bulb for six days, but one kilogram of nuclear fuel will light it for 140 years. Unfortunately, there is some truth to the old joke…

As a slew of intrusive gun bills wind their way through the Colorado legislature, some of the discussion about those bills raises fundamental questions about the proper function of government. Last week, a woman who was the victim of a rape testified against a bill banning the concealed carry of…

In his recent New York Times article "On Questioning the Jewish State," University of Massachusetts philosophy professor Joseph Levine attempts to make the case that we should question whether Israel has a right to exist. Levine’s main argument is that only certain kinds of groups of people have the right…

Need to diagnose an intestinal worm infection? Yeah, there’s an app for that. In fact, it’s the built-in camera app in the iPhone 4S! Dr. Isaac Bogoch, a physician specializing in infectious diseases at Toronto General Hospital, and his associates have managed to transform the iPhone 4S into a basic…

In his article “No to Keystone, Yes to Crazy,” New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman damns the Keystone oil pipeline but says he’s willing to accept its existence in exchange for “systemic responses to climate change.” How might environmentalists facilitate such a deal? Friedman encourages the likes of “Bill McKibben…

Lately, many Republicans have become sympathetic to the idea of giving legal status to illegal immigrants. But not Ann Coulter. She labels all such plans “amnesty” and harangues Republicans who support it. Amnesty, in this context, means relieving current undocumented aliens of the legal penalties associated with breaking immigration laws,…

When a professor at Florida Atlantic University asked students to stomp on the name of “Jesus” written on a piece of paper, a Mormon student objected. Although the university first threatened to sanction the student, in the face of widespread criticism the university relented and apologized for the exercise. (For…

[caption id="attachment_6408" align="alignright" width="300"] Image: Gage Skidmore[/caption] This week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two key cases regarding same-sex marriage: challenges to California’s Proposition 8 and to the federal Defense of Marriage Act. Republicans and conservatives have long expressed concern that legalizing same sex marriage will threaten their…

In October 2012, an Italian court convicted six scientists and one government official on the charge of manslaughter, sentencing them each to six years in prison. The alleged crime: their failure to predict a 2009 earthquake resulting in the deaths of 309 people. As of last month, all seven defendants…

This MSNBC video featuring Melissa Harris-Perry (see below) will shock anyone with even a shred of respect for America’s founding principle of individual rights. Here is what Harris-Perry, a professor of political science at Tulane, has to say about children: We have never invested as much in public education as…

First, television host and university professor Melissa Harris-Perry said that “kids belong to whole communities.” As I pointed out, “a child belongs neither to his parents nor to ‘whole communities,’ but to himself. When someone belongs to someone else or to a group of other people, that person is a…

The use of standardized testing in government schools—as mandated by George W. Bush’s 2001 No Child Left Behind Act and supported by the Obama administration—has triggered “an expanding revolt against high-stakes standardized tests and the use of students’ scores to evaluate teachers, schools, districts and states,” writes Valerie Strauss for…

On March 26, construction crews started work on the Dakota Prairie Refinery, the first new oil refinery in the contiguous United States since 1977 and the first in North Dakota since 1956. The new refinery will process 20,000 of the 770,000 barrels of crude that oil producers pump out of…

In an online article that swept the Web, Isabella Dutton, a fifty-seven-year-old mother of two grown children, admits publicly that she regrets having children. She never wanted a child, yet had two because she felt it would be “unfair of me to deny [my husband] the chance to be a…

Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev once said, complaining about American culture, “There are no values anymore.” What his actions demonstrate is that there are no values through Islam, the religion to which he turned for guidance and meaning. According to the FBI, “in early 2011, a foreign government” informed the…

On May 5, President Obama delivered the commencement speech at Ohio State University. Invoking the Founders, he implored graduates to embrace the “quintessentially American value[s] of optimism; altruism; empathy; tolerance; a sense of community; a sense of service”—and to reject a “society that celebrates individual ambition above all else.” It…

Ari Armstrong reviews Lincoln, written by Tony Kushner.

Ari Armstrong reviews Django Unchained, written and directed by Quentin Tarantino.

Ari Armstrong reviews The Intouchables, written by Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano.

Ari Armstrong reviews The Sessions, directed by Ben Lewin.

Ari Armstrong reviews The DIM Hypothesis, by Leonard Peikoff

Robert Begley reviews Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World, by Andrew Breitbart.

Jared M. Rhoads reviews Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis, by John C. Goodman.

Daniel Wahl reviews Island, by Thomas Perry.

Daniel Wahl reviews The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible, by A. J. Jacobs.

Ari Armstrong reviews The Truth about Gun Control, by David B. Kopel.

Ari Armstrong reviews After the Welfare State, edited by Tom G. Palmer.

Nell Kroeger writes a brief letter in praise of Richard Salsman's article, "The End of Central Banking, Part I.