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Still skeptical? Well, here are three libertarian arguments in support of a Basic Income Guarantee. I begin with a relatively weak proposal that even most hard-core libertarians should be even to accept. I then move to stronger proposals that involve some deviation from the plumb-line view. But only justifiable deviations, of course.

one such visualization shows the dreaded age distribution phenomenon that's projected to occur over the coming decades as Baby Boomers become the oldest generation. When charted with the oldest folks up top and the youngest people at the bottom, societies tend to have age distributions shaped like pyramids, like so:

Really, go check out the whole report.

There was a profoundly radical idea embedded in this line of thought. Wars between nations or dynastic powers had been a constant condition in Europe, and the rest of the world had been no less violent. Every century had had systemic wars in which the entire international system (increasingly dominated by Europe since the 16th century) had participated. In the 20th century, there were the two World Wars, in the 19th century the Napoleonic Wars, in the 18th century the Seven Years' War, and in the 17th century the Thirty Years' War.

from Poland to Azerbaijan, I heard two questions: Are the Russians on the move? And what can these countries do to protect themselves?

Moscow is anxious too, and some Russians I spoke to expressed this quite openly. From the Russian point of view, the Europeans and Americans did the one thing they knew Moscow could not live with: They installed a pro-Western government in Kiev.

I’d learned about the importance of being rich from my dad. He was a modern-day Willy Loman, a salesman with huge dreams that never seemed to materialize. “Imagine what life will be like,” he’d say, “when I make a million dollars.” While he dreamed of selling a screenplay, in reality he sold kitchen cabinets. And not that well. We sometimes lived paycheck to paycheck off my mom’s nurse-practitioner salary.

In desperation, I called a counselor whom I had reluctantly seen a few times before and asked for help.She helped me see that I was using alcohol and drugs to blunt the powerlessness I felt as a kid and suggested I give them up. That began some of the hardest months of my life. Without the alcohol and drugs in my system, I felt like my chest had been cracked open, exposing my heart to air. The counselor said that my abuse of drugs and alcohol was a symptom of an underlying problem — a “spiritual malady,” she called it.

For the first time in my life, I didn’t have to check my balance before I withdrew money. But a week later, a trader who was only four years my senior got hired away by C.S.F.B. for $900,000. After my initial envious shock — his haul was 22 times the size of my bonus — I grew excited at how much money was available.

Many of the people who pursue a gluten-free diet out of choice believe themselves to be gluten-sensitive, a far less serious condition in which limited symptoms of celiac's manifest without any damage to the small intestine.

According to the National Foundation for Celiac Awareness, as many as 18 million Americans may have non-celiac gluten sensitivity (NCGS). Since the condition has only been recently described and is poorly understood, it's currently diagnosed via a process of exclusion. If a patient's test for celiac disease comes back negative, but symptoms improve on a gluten-free diet, then he or she is diagnosed with NCGS.

Instead of receiving a proper diagnosis, however, many people are self-diagnosing as gluten-sensitive and eating gluten-free by choice. Noticing this trend, Jessica Biesiekierski, a gastroenterologist at Monash University and a leading researcher into the effects of gluten, sought adults who believed they had NCGS to participate in a survey and a clinical trial.

the idea that the union of England and Scotland, which has existed for more than 300 years, could be dissolved has enormous implications in its own right, and significant implications for Europe and even for global stability.

In many ways, this union was a pivot of world history. To realize it might be dissolved is startling and reveals important things about the direction of the world.

Scotland and England are historical enemies. Their sense of competing nationhoods stretches back centuries, and their occupation of the same island has caused them to fight many wars. Historically they have distrusted each other, and each has given the other good reason for the distrust.

The first thing that leaps to mind is the manner in which World War II began for the three great powers: the United States, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom.

There was little doubt among American leaders that war with Japan was coming. The general public had forebodings, but not with the clarity of its leaders.

Boarding operations — known in naval parlance as “visit, board, search and seizure” (VBSS) — can be challenging even in the most permissive of circumstances. Actually closing the distance to the ship and getting on deck is an extremely vulnerable period of transition.

The problem is not that the activists were armed with firearms (though there have been some Israeli claims about weapons and hostile gunfire), but that a VBSS team is not large, and the first individuals to fast-rope down are at a profound tactical disadvantage if numerically overwhelmed. They rely on surprise, aggression and swift, overwhelming force to subdue the crew and passengers.

There is every indication from video footage and from reported casualties on both sides that the commandos had difficulty establishing control over the ships. Given the basic tactical situation that the Israelis were aware of before initiating the assault, as well as Israel’s long experience with pro-Palestinian activists and Palestinians themselves, it is difficult to imagine that the Israelis did not foresee this playing out as it did. There are reports of riot control agents such as tear gas being employed, which would have been intended to help manage the situation, though how extensively they were used and how effectively they were employed is unknown at this time.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited some interesting spots over the July 4 weekend. Her itinerary included Poland and Ukraine, both intriguing choices in light of the recent Obama-Medvedev talks in Washington. But she also traveled to a region that has not been on the American radar screen much in the last two years — namely, the Caucasus — visiting Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia.

The Caucasus is the point where Russia, Iran and Turkey meet. For most of the 19th century, the three powers dueled for dominance of the region. This dispute froze during the Soviet period but is certainly in motion again. With none of these primary powers directly controlling the region, there are secondary competitions involving Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, both among these secondary powers and between the secondary powers and the major powers. And given that the region involves the Russians, Iranians and Turks, it is inevitable that the global power would have an interest as well — hence, Hillary Clinton’s visit.

Socially conscious games -- as well as educational ones that raise social issues -- have increasingly been making headlines.

But are kids and their parents paying attention? Apparently, they are. A 2008 Pew Internet & American Life Project study of 1,102 U.S. teens ages 12 to 17 found that 97 percent of them play some kind of digital game, with 44 percent saying they play games that teach them about "a problem in society." The games about the U.S. government have generated a significant following. Fifty-seven percent of students who played Do I Have a Right? -- one of the first free Web games iCivics released last yearin the classroom went on to play it, unprompted, at home. In addition, 550,000 unique players have played the three judicial branch games featured on Ourcourts.org more than 700,000 times, per iCivics.

These numbers have not gone unnoticed by philanthropic experts, especially with charitable giving taking a dip since the recession. But they don't want to reach adults only; they feel it's an opportunity to attract a younger audience, too.

I'll also make my usual plea to stop using examples from World War II to justify (or criticize) current policy. The Second World War was arguably the nadir of human ethical conduct. The unimaginably horrific war crimes committed by the Allies only get a pass because of how they contrast with the even-more-incomprehensibly-terrible conduct of the Axis. When "the good guys" are the ones burning civilians to death thousands at a time, committing mass rape and ethnically cleansing whole swathes of conquered territory, maybe it's best to just bracket the whole episode as an unhelpful ethical guidepost.

Discussions of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, when they don't devolve into shouting and threats of violence, have a tendency to get caught in a problem of infinite regress, where two disagreeing parties really disagree on some of the fundamental questions involved (is/was the creation of Israel legitimate, is there such a thing as a Palestinian people, who has a truly defensible claim to territory x, y or z, etc), and then extrapolate from those positions heated arguments over particular policies and tactics.

These are not "targeted" sanctions that mostly affect Hamas. They deliberately reduce an entire civilian population to subsistence-level existence. Given this, I find any argument that the policy distinguishes between civilians and combatants, or that the suffering inflicted upon civilians is proportional to the military objectives achieved, to be pretty absurd.

The major difference between Tetris and other games is the simplicity of its construction and complexity of play. Most importantly, it is a game that does not have a goal or end. There is no castle to storm or high score to achieve – the only way to end your game is to lose.

There are many aspects to Confucian thought, but ritual (whether complex or mundane) stands out as a core belief that enables one to transform laborious tasks into care-free instincts. Ritual to a Confucian would include both ceremonial functions and, more importantly, personal routines comprising everyday life.

Humans are incredibly cooperative, but why do people cooperate and how is cooperation maintained? A new research study by UCLA anthropology professor Robert Boyd and his colleagues from the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico suggests cooperation in large groups is maintained by punishment.

Group members cooperate because they do not want to hurt their friends by not participating in group efforts, and also because they may want help in the future.

in a larger group, like a tribe, those mechanisms for maintaining cooperation are lost. All group members experience the benefits of the large group, even those members who stop cooperating and become "free-riders."

much of what is being discussed dates back to two studies done in 2006-07 by the U.S. Geological Survey in conjunction with the U.S. Agency for International Development and Afghan geologists.

The Chinese experience shows that what little progress is being made in terms of foreign investment in Afghan mining projects is already slowed by problems relating to poor infrastructure, awkward logistics, security threats, and corrupt or opaque negotiations.

STRATFOR has been focusing and continues to focus on how these reports came about just in the past week. There is clearly a media blitz now under way, and it is important to understand why. Over the next few years there will be little meaningful impact on the ground in Afghanistan in terms of investing in and developing the country’s minerals. The key question at this point is how Washington will play this mineral-wealth story to serve its interests in the region, especially as the United States struggles to break a stalemate in southwestern Afghanistan and force the Taliban to the negotiating table. But local mistrust of U.S. intentions may counter any potential benefit of playing up Afghanistan’s economic potential.

The Daily Show is many things: progressive darling, alleged news source for America's youth, righteous media critique. And it's also a boys' club where women's contributions are often ignored and dismissed.

Over the last 90 days, Iraqi and U.S. forces have eliminated more than 80 percent of the Islamic State of Iraq’s (ISI’s) top leadership, including its Egyptian chief of military operations and its Iraqi figurehead, according to the top U.S. commander in Iraq. These personnel losses are compounded by the fact that the al Qaeda-inspired jihadist group has been struggling financially and is reportedly having problems getting foreign fighters into the country. These setbacks will invariably complicate the ISI’s efforts to continue its campaign. While it is unlikely that the ISI’s propensity for violent attacks will wane, the group’s diminished leadership, operational capacity and logistics infrastructure make the militant organization’s future seem bleak.

That's because China's economic growth has followed what's sometimes called "the Japanese model."  In Japan and other Asian countries, this model has proved extraordinarily successful in the short term in generating eye-popping rates of growth -- but it always eventually runs into the same fatal constraints: massive overinvestment and misallocated capital. And then a period of painful economic adjustment. In short: Beijing, beware.

The Japanese model channels wealth away from the household sector to subsidize growth by restraining wages, undervaluing the currency, and, most powerfully, forcing down the cost of capital.

too much of the economy depends on hidden subsidies to survive. 

How you responded to being shipped off (often at an appallingly tender age) to a cluster of cedar cabins beside a mountain lake; to being taught Native American crafts, chants, and songs of dubious authenticity; and to being subjected to various painful hazing rituals—many of them involving underwear—reveals an awful lot about your fundamental character. If, as the Duke of Wellington claimed, the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, then the psychotherapy bills of our own great nation were run up on the tetherball courts of Camp Weecheewachee (or whatever the hell your summer camp was called).

People (like myself) who didn't enjoy camp tend to have a problem engaging in organized activities of all kinds.

Let's begin with the people who didn't like camp.