When Commodore Matthew Perry opened Japan to the west, he took American and British missionaries along. In addition to translating, they also helped with education.

This video just gave us the best news we've heard out of the Middle East in a long, long time -- Iraqis are beginning to laugh at their leaders.

Crackpots are thick on the ground and we can't fund them all. How do we decide which upcoming genius/crackpot to fund? Einstein didn't have any peers; he would never have passed "peer review."

GM found that when you ask for government help, you'd better be careful - you might get what you wish for, and our guys have a track record of losing negotiations.

It's possible that nobody will ever be able to build anything of significance again.

Government ought to be able to help the economy - assuming that politicians want the economy to grow and assuming that the government is able to do what the politicians promise.

We don't disparage the motives of politicians, they have the same motives we do. We don't distrust the motives of bureaucrats, we trust them all too well.

Why can't we Americans buy cheap cars? The cheapest car in the US costs about $20,000, about 8 times the cost of Tata's offering.

The recent, less-than-informed coverage of the death of Benazir Bhutto reminds us of Neville Chamberlain's infamous comment about Czechsolovakia as " a faraway country about which we know nothing."

Reuters reports trouble at the North Pole.