It seems that many pundits believe that at any given time, at least one half of the world’s population should be in moderate fear of US bombing campaigns. Besides North Korea and the entire Middle East, China has of late been the object of growing hostility.

The tough talk passed a qualitative boundary over Thanksgiving weekend when analysts on the Fox network shows said that China’s policies are a threat not merely to the US economy, but indeed to our national security.

Johan Ridenfeldt has kindly sent me some early Swedish encyclopedia entries on Gustave de Molinari (founder of free-market anarchism), along with his translations. I’ve posted them on the Molinari site.

I love the description of Molinari as “the law of supply and demand made into man”!

The government has graciously decided to allow people to carry nail clippers and thread scissors on airplanes. Whoo hoo!

So says “The Uneasy Case for Higher Gasoline Taxes“ by Ian Parry in the Milken Review. The idea is that taxes on gasoline as such only leads people to buy smaller cars with better gas mileage, whereas what we really need is far less driving as such.

The Christmas truce, which occurred primarily between the British and German soldiers along the Western front in December 1914, is an event the official histories of the “Great War” leave out, and the Orwellian historians hide from the public. Stanley Weintraub has broken through this barrier of silence and written a moving account of this significant event by compiling letters sent home from the front, as well as diaries of the soldiers involved. His book is entitled Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce.

who support patent law: I don’t feel sorry for you: patent law is about to shut down the Blackberry service and ruin a great company. But I do feel sorry for RIM, the owners of Blackberry.

Q: Your newsletter, LIBERTARIAN FORUM, was co-edited by Karl Hess. He has since departed. What ideological differences led to this Split?

A: I made a very tangential attack on the Black Panthers. He got very upset about this. He thought, one, it was a terrible thing to attack the Panthers, and two, since his name was on the masthead, the Panthers might think he was a part of the party which was attacking them. He felt at that time that it was very important to work with the Panthers.

One reason I like writing techy articles—and genuine geeks should freely scoff at my comparative ignorance of these issues—is that people send in great links to stuff I didn’t know about.

So just now someone sent me to what looks like a great and free antivirus solution for home use (aside from AVG, which is great too): AVAST.