Meet Broderick Lloyd Laswell. Broderick has been an inmate in an Arkansas prison for eight months. Like most prisoners he is isn’t entirely content.
Now, we might imagine all manner of complaints that an inmate might have about their prison: like being there at all when they are “innocent” (nudge-nudge-wink-wink) and merely suffered at the hands […]

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United Press International reports on the case of a Tunisian family who alleges their daughter was raped by a man… on a phonecall. No, I mean, they allege it took place over a phone line.
“The 30-year-old man said he never touched the young woman. But he acknowledged he heard her scream while they were […]

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Life is like a game of Tetris: it throws down difficult conditions sometimes, it gets faster and faster until you feel you’re going to throw up from stress, and it never ends happily. …. Okay, I don’t really mean that. I was playing Tetris on my phone a few minutes ago and just […]

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There are issues over which libertarians disagree: abortion, capital punishment, roads, and children being amongst the things that can set brother against brother in a fight of biblical proportions. And sometimes it might look like libertarian ideals clash.
Libertarians believe in religious freedom. This is simply an extension of the right to freedom of thought and […]

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“Pain at the pump” has become the most overused headline of the past year as the cost of gasoline has skyrocketed to Friday’s US average of $3.59 per gallon. Our British readers may feel that this is cheap, since Friday’s average price in Britain was $8.20 per gallon, making UK gas $4.61 more expensive […]

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For libertarians freedom is central: to act in whatever way we so desire as long as we do not infringe the fundamental rights - to life and property - of other people. Choosing to act one way or another requires freedom of the will: which means, contrary to determinism, that when we choose to act […]

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A 31 percent rating at Rotten Tomatoes is not impressive. It seems the critics didn’t like it.
But I was interested in the story of the MIT Blackjack Team as told in the movie ‘21′. Although I’ve never gambled much, I’ve been intrigued by casinos and table games and odds and risk ever since […]

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There’s nothing quite like a good put-down. For a polemicist the put-down is a vital tool of the trade, and can win hearts and minds just as well as a good argument: putting both together can amount to a powerful tool of persuasion. Some might regard put-downs as nothing other than a bit of funny […]

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Another week, and three stories of interest to me this Monday.
First, I’m happy to report that Stern sidekick Artie Lange is back on the show today following a week of intense speculation about his future on the show. This comes after Artie’s on-air meltdown and resignation on April 10th about which I blogged here. […]

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There’s something about the creationism-versus-evolution debate that makes me want to poke my own eyes out just so I have something to throw at the opposing sides. A plague on both their houses!
Now, let me clarify my view that the basic theory of evolution is generally correct. I’m not a scientist, but so far as […]

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Earlier this week I was amazed to discover that I had never written about the BBC licence fee, and I immediately remedied that. To keep with the theme of plugging gaps in my blogging catalogue I also discovered I have never written a critique of anything written by Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee. So, I thought […]

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Happy Thursday. BBC blogs now require registration to leave comments, which seems to be a fix to many of the issues contributors have had in the past with posting comments on their system. If it works, it should improve things mightily for William and the host of other bloggers on the BBC sites. […]

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I’m being surrounded on all sides now by friends blogging about Ben Stein’s new film Expelled, a pro-creationist anti-evolution documentary which attempts to legitimise creationism by appealing to its status as the underdog in the science world (see Crawley’s piece here and Ronald Bailey’s Reason piece here for good examples).
The concept reeks of bullshit, of […]

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Coke from a glass bottle poured into a cup full of ice: beverage heaven. I reckon my teeth will be falling out long before time due to a serious addiction to Coca Cola. For me there’s only one beverage that compares: a well brewed coffee. At the moment I’m enjoying a strong smoky coffee called […]

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…and it’s all due to global warming.

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Happy Tuesday, punters. Since upgrading our software we’ve been having a few problems with the RSS feed on the site; I know many of you subscribe to the articles using RSS and we apologise for the issues. So far, there are no timescales for a fix, but I’ll post again when it’s back […]

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I was amazed to discover from my blog back-catalogue that I have never written about the television licence fee, quite an oddity given how much it pisses me off. For those of you who live outside Great Britain you may well be amazed to discover that we must pay a fee of £140 each year […]

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I know, I know. It happened in Dubai:
“A father-of-three who was found with a microscopic speck of cannabis stuck to the bottom of one of his shoes has been sentenced to four years in a Dubai prison.”
“A search by customs officials uncovered a speck of cannabis weighing just 0.003g - so small it would […]

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With today’s high gas prices, might it be possible to rent a hybrid vehicle like the Toyota Prius from a company like Avis for less than it would cost to drive your SUV? I might try it out; a permanent Prius rental.

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Little pleases me more than a discussion with a modern-day evangelical conservative who has been told all their life by their conservative parents, teachers or mentors that America was ‘founded on God’ and who hold Thomas Jefferson as the embodiment of their values.
The fact is, as mentioned in this post about deism, that Thomas Jefferson’s […]

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