Science & Technology

A few items from the benevolent news front: Afghani aviation enthusiast Sabir Shah—“a high school graduate with no pilot training nor aeronautical engineering background,” who couldn’t afford college—has built a one man “microlight” aircraft in his home. Sabir says, “I believe that if you want something, you can get it.” After…

Texas chemical maker Celanese has developed a technology to make ethanol from natural gas and coal, both plentiful in America, and is building plants in Texas and China to manufacture it. “If it works,” notes Forbes columnist Christopher Helman, it “will revolutionize the fuel industry.” Great news? Yes—but maybe only for…

Al Armendariz, a regional administrator of the EPA, described his “philosophy of enforcement” as follows: It was kind of like how the Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean. They’d go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw, and they would…

Where has all the innovation gone? Although Facebook now has nearly a billion users, and most of us now have pocket computers with instant access to a world of information, in the last few decades innovation has, in significant ways, slowed to a crawl. In a recent talk, “On Getting…

Yesterday the environmentalists “celebrated” Earth Day, a day devoted to curbing human production and consumption, which means curbing human life. Those of us who love our lives, on the other hand, celebrate using the Earth to live and prosper, for we as humans live fundamentally by using our rational minds…

In 1984, then-Colorado Governor Dick Lamm infamously said, “We've got a duty to die and get out of the way with all of our machines and artificial hearts and everything else like that and let the other society, our kids, build a reasonable life.” Though Lamm has long claimed that he…

How many executive agencies does it take to “regulate” hydraulic fracturing, the revolutionary process of harvesting natural gas (as well as oil) largely responsible for saving America’s economy? According to Barack Obama’s new executive order, it takes fourteen—plus a potentially unlimited number of “such other agencies or offices as the…

Exciting things are happening in the flying car industry (yes, there is a flying car industry). CBS reports that Terrafugia, an American company, just conducted a successful test flight of its flying car. A Dutch company successfully tested its model in the same week. These amazing developments have the potential to…

Richard Salsman in a new piece in Forbes.com makes an illuminating point about the efforts to defend ObamaCare: Defenders of ObamaCare before the Supreme Court last week argued from precedent, reminding the justices that there were already scores of mandates embedded throughout America’s semi-socialized health care system – including the…

Turning out the lights for “Earth Hour” is the perfect symbol of the ultimate goal of the environmentalist movement, which is to erase industry—and thus human life—from the face of the Earth. To genuine environmentalists (as against people who call themselves environmentalists but don’t understand what the movement is really…