Don Watkins Nothing is more terrifying than being out of control. If you’ve ever hallucinated, or hydroplaned in your car, or been the victim of a violent crime — there’s an overwhelming sense that your fate is no longer in your hands. Whether or not you live or die feels…

Comedian Mitch Hedberg has this great joke about red wine: I like red wine; this girl said “doesn’t red wine give you a headache?” “Ya, eventually, but the first and middle part are amazing” That’s kind of how I feel about yo-yo dieting. Yeah, in the end you wind…

Don Watkins To whatever extent you value political liberty, you face a certain tension: you have to defend exercises of freedom that you think are wrong, distasteful, even immoral. …

Progress and innovation require ingenuity and learning; both have been missing from the nuclear industry. — by Robert Hendershott and Don Watkins Nuclear power is experiencing something of a renaissance: Commonwealth Fusion recently raised $1.8b. But safer, smaller, more versatile fission technologies are getting increasing pushback despite being far closer to real-world application than fusion. Opponents of new fission technologies claim that despite nuclear fission having…

By Don Watkins and Yaron Brook Twitter’s ban on Donald Trump has been met with charges of “censorship.” But the real threat to free speech isn’t Twitter: it’s the people calling for government control of Twitter. Censorship means the forcible prohibition of speech — something only government can do. Freedom…

By Don Watkins Thanksgiving is supposed to be a day when we show gratitude for our values. But what I’ve been reflecting on is how to value. In Human Action, the great economist Ludwig von Mises writes that, “Now, we must realize that valuing means to prefer a to b.” …

By Don Watkins Learn to Read If you want to communicate ideas effectively, try this: Read the writers with whom you agree from the perspective of the readers you want to persuade. We are, as a rule, way too easy and forgiving of writers who support (or who seem to support) our own…

In a recent Facebook comment, Craig Biddle accuses me of spreading “dangerous misinformation” in my note on Carl Barney’s statement. I’ve been accused of much worse in my time, but Craig’s comments are worth examining for the wider lessons we can draw about the meaning of the principle that knowledge…

Carl Barney has posted a lengthy essay on how Craig Biddle has been treated unjustly by “some at ARI” — in particular, ARI’s leading intellectual, Onkar Ghate. And I see a number of Objectivists confused about what to make of it. …