The world’s largest prize for technological innovation was awarded this year to Professor Shuji Nakamura, currently at the University of California Santa Barbara, for his development of bright-blue, green and white LEDs and a blue laser. According to the prize website, “The world’s largest technology prize, now being awarded by Finland’s Millennium Prize Foundation for the second time, has a value of one million euros.” Prof. Nakamura’s advances “were things that other researchers in the semiconductor field had spent decades...

There’s a new e-version of The Federalist Papers produced by Edward O’Connor. The innovation with this pared to all the other various electronic iterations of the papers is the ability to link to an exact paragraph within a particular paper. O’Connor says of the impetus for the endeavor, “I haven’t been able find one that was simultaneously nice-looking and useful (useful insofar as pinpoint linkability is concerned, at least).” The URL is based on the number of the paper, followed...

Radley Balko, blogging at Cato@Liberty (he also blogs at The Agitator), writes about the creeping campaign in Washington state to crack down on internet gambling. A new law would impose “up to a five-year prison term for people who gamble online,” but since passage has also been used to “to go after people who merely write about gambling.” Citing an editorial in the Seattle Times, the law prohibits not only online betting but also transmitting “gambling information.” The legitimacy of...

Mark Cuban, billionaire and owner of the NBA franchise in Dallas, announced that he is “starting a website that focuses on uncovering corporate crime.” He continues, outlining the business model for the site: “I have every intention of trading on the information uncover[ed], and disclosing exactly what i do. The ultimate transparency.” Another of Cuban’s ventures, HDNet, the first all high-definition TV network, is “talking to Dan Rather and we hope to do a deal where he produces a show...

Things are looking grim for the rule of law in Bolivia. An article in today’s Washington Post outlines the growing conflict between the minority of Bolivians who own land and the landless majority. As Monte Reel writes in “Two Views of Justice Fuel Bolivian Land Battle,” this month the Bolivian government, under the direction of the “agrarian revolution” of president Evo Morales, “began a project to shuffle ownership rights affecting 20 percent of its land area, giving most of it...

It’s hard to believe that it’s been nearly a year since the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Kelo v. City of New London, which seriously damaged the institution of property rights. The Institute for Justice marks the occasion with a series of reports that contain bad news and good. The bad news is that Kelo does appear to have had a deleterious effect, emboldening local governments to seize private property at increasing rates. The good news is that...

Jack Black stars as the title character in this campy salute to Lucha Libre, or freestyle wrestling, a hallmark of popular Latin culture. In Nacho Libre, Black’s character begins as the lowly Ignacio, an orphan who grew up at a Catholic mission, and who has now e one of the mission brothers. Ever since his youth, Ignacio has dreamed of ing a luchador, a flamboyant and famous wrestler. Instead, Ignacio serves at the mission, caring for a new generation of...

“Be fruitful and multiply,” the Book of mands. Unfortunately, many modern nations are on the opposite track. Once worried about a phony “population bomb,” countries as diverse as Russia and South Korea are now wondering if they will shrink into irrelevance. Kevin Schmiesing looks at the cultural, religious and economic forces that produce healthy, hopeful societies. Read mentary here. ...

“I’m not in any way a violent person, but I enjoy getting out there and fighting when I can.” –Blake Cater, 22, of Burlington, NC, who videotapes backyard fights with his friends and broadcasts them on the web. More on Cater and the amateur fighting video phenomenon from today’s Washington Post, “On the Web, Punch and Click,” by Paul Farhi. Also check out a mentary of mine, “Our Slap-Happy Slide into Techno-Violence,” in which I argue, “The market must be...

In today’s OpinionJournal Clint Bolick, president and general counsel of the Alliance for School Choice, gives an overview of the state-by-state successes of school choice advocates. One of Bolick’s important observations is that the move for increased choice petition in education is increasingly ing bi-partisan. Politicians who have been attached to the education establishment are beginning to realize that school choice is one of the most hopeful options available for those who are the neediest and the poorest. Those who...

Ecumenical News International (ENI) relates the launch last month of a new initiative in Africa, designed to “to mobilise a strong African voice in development.” The effort is called African Monitor and is led by the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa, Njongonkulu Ndungane. Anyone who spends much time at all looking at the economic development situation in Africa quickly realizes the lack of independent, nongovernmental, native voices. As African Monitor states, “This African civil society voice can thus...

A three-day meeting is scheduled to begin tomorrow in Toledo, Ohio, and is set to discuss the possibility of putting wind farms on the Great Lakes. The session is sponsored by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Environmental Protection Agency among other groups, and will include conversations about “how to protect birds, bats and fish from the windmills.” According to the AP, wind farms on the Great Lakes would include “rows of windmills” that “would tower as high...