Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Walter Block
“Everyone is now concerned about the unemployment rate, it would appear. The scribes are busily scribbling as to the possible causes of this economic debilitation. Their list is long, creative, and clever. One explanation is that the quit rate has plummeted. People are sticking around in jobs they would have left in rosier markets. Well, yes, if this replacement source of new job openings is decreasing, that could well account for fewer new employment slots opening up. But this is a two-way street. Presumably, people are not downing tools for fear that new appointments will not be open to them, at least not on better terms, overall, than they now enjoy. So, it is likely that the unemployment rate is at least partially a cause of this phenomenon, not only a result. Further, this is a sign of economic health, rather than disarray.” (04/17/26)
“About 1,000 animal welfare activists who tried to gain entry on Saturday to a beagle breeding and research facility in Wisconsin were turned back by police who fired rubber bullets and pepper spray into the crowd and arrested the group’s leader. It was the second attempt in as many months by protesters to take beagles from the Ridglan Farms facility in Blue Mounds, a small town about 25 miles (about 40 kilometres) southwest of Wisconsin’s capital, Madison. Dane County Sheriff Kalvin Barrett said in a video statement that 300 to 400 protesters were ‘violently trying to break into the property’ and assault officers. … The sheriff’s department said a ‘significant’ number of people were arrested out of about 1,000 protesters at the site but did not give an exact total as they were still being processed as of the afternoon.” (04/19/26)
“There are moments in public health when the path forward is unusually clear, when the evidence aligns with behavior, when risks are well understood, and when policy has a genuine opportunity to reduce harm at scale. This should be one of those moments. Non-combustible nicotine products — vapes, heated tobacco, and especially nicotine pouches — are widely understood to be far less harmful than smoking, a point I and many others have covered repeatedly, and one that no longer sits at the frontier of scientific debate. … One might expect regulators to respond accordingly, adjusting policy to reflect both the risk gradient and the changed behavioral landscape, but that has not happened. Instead, the system has stalled, quietly but decisively, with approvals for new products slowing to a near standstill.” (04/17/26)
“The Ivory Tower was an image, medieval like the university itself, of an institution made of a valuable material and grounded in society but towering above it. In this view, any university in America depends on America for its survival but does its best to rise above its politics. Politics is argument, for example about welfare policies. As an Ivory Tower, the university tries to define the bigger, more abstract question of what is welfare. Policies are about society; abstract definitions come from the Ivory Tower. In abandoning the Ivory Tower Harvard was denying its independence.” 904/19/26)
“U.K. police said Sunday they are investigating whether a string of arson attacks on Jewish sites in London are the work of Iranian proxies, as the country’s chief rabbi said British Jews are facing a campaign of violence and intimidation. The Metropolitan Police force says counterterror officers are probing fires at synagogues and other sites linked to the Jewish community, as well as an attack on a Persian-language media company. No one has been injured in the blazes, the latest of which caused minor damage to a north London synagogue on Saturday night.” (04/19/26)
Source: Law & Liberty
by Claudia Franziska Brühwiler
“New technology is changing how human beings learn. But preserving both humanity and democracy means we have to cling to traditional ways of knowing.” (04/17/26)
“A Chinese-built humanoid robot beat the human half-marathon world record in Beijing on Sunday, marking a breakthrough moment in a high-stakes global race for technological dominance. A robot developed by Chinese smartphone maker Honor completed the 21-kilometer (13-mile) race in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, beating the human record of about 57 minutes set by Uganda’s Jacob Kiplimo last month. The performance marked a dramatic improvement from last year’s inaugural event, when the top robot finished in more than 2 hours and 40 minutes. Dozens of humanoid robots competed alongside about 12,000 human runners, navigating a parallel course to avoid collisions.” (04/19/26)
