Jack

My blog is mostly about monetary policy matters. However, if I one day would stop writing about monetary policy I think there are two other topics I would focus on. The one is on the need to end the global war on drugs and the second is immigration reform.

My view on immigration is pretty clear. Free trade is good – whether we talk about goods, capital or labour. It is that simple really.

Given my pro-immigration views I was very happy to read a new blog post by University of Chicago professor John Cochrane on the issue of “The optimal number of immigrants”. Cochrane rightly concludes that there, however, is not such a thing as the optimal number of immigration. This is Cochrane:

What is the optimal number of imported tomatoes? Soviet central planners tried to figure things out this way. Americans shouldn’t. We should decide on the optimal terms on which tomatoes can be imported, and then let the market decide the number. Similarly, we should debate what the optimal terms for immigration are – How will we let people immigrate? What kind of people? – so that the vast majority of such immigrants are a net benefit to the US. Then, let as many come as want to. On the right terms, the number will self-regulate.

Econ 101: Figure out the price, set the rules of the game; don’t decide the quantity, or determine the outcome. When a society sets target quantities, or sets quotas, as the U.S. does now with immigration, the result is generally a calamitous waste. With an immigrant quota, an entrepreneur who could come to the U.S. and start a billion dollar business faces the same restriction as everyone else. The potential Albert Einstein or Sergey Brin has no way to signal just how much his contribution to our society would be.

Cochrane in his post comes up with a number of interesting suggestions for immigration reform. He for example has an interesting suggestion for how to avoid that immigrants misuse social services. Here is Cochrane’s suggestion:

Immigrants would pay a bond at the border, say $5,000. If they run out of money, are convicted of a crime, don’t have health insurance, or whatever, the bond pays for their ticket home. Alternatively, the government could establish an asset and income test: immigrants must show $10,000 in assets and either a job within 6 months or visible business or asset income. 

But the best part of Cochrane’s post is on the impact of immigration on natives’ salaries:

You might fear that immigrants compete for jobs, and drive down American wages. Again, this is not demonstrably a serious problem. If labor does not move in, capital – factories and farms — moves out and wages go down anyway. Immigrants come to work in wide-open industries with lots of jobs, not those where there are few jobs and many workers. Thus, restrictions on immigration do little, in the long run of an open economy such as the US, to “protect” wages. To the extent wage-boosting immigration restrictions can work, the higher wages translate into higher prices to American consumers. The country as a whole – especially low-income consumers who tend to shop at Wal-Mart and benefit the most from low-priced goods – is not better off. 

And this is exactly why economists since the days of Adam Smith and David Ricardo have advocated free trade. And again – that goes for goods, capital and labour.

—

If you are interested in the economics of immigration then I suggest you take a look at the Open Borders website. My favorite immigration economist is George Borjas - despite the fact that he has been advocating restricting immigration in the US. Read Borjas’ brilliant book Heaven’s Door together with Julian Simon’s The Economic Consequences of Immigration into the United States. Then you will be well-equipt  to understand the main issues in immigration economics.

Are conservatives willing to settle for “second best” solutions for global warming?

The wage gap between college-educated workers and those with just a high school diploma has been growing — and accelerating. But the education gap is also doing something unexpected: clustering workers with more education in cities with similar people. "This effectively means that college graduates in America aren't simply gaining access to higher wages. They're gaining access to high-cost cities like New York or San Francisco that offer so much more than good jobs: more restaurants, better schools, less crime, even cleaner air." Most people are aware of the gentrification strife occurring in San Francisco, but it's one among many cities experiencing this. "[Research] also found that as cities increased their share of college graduates between 1980 and 2000, they also increased their bars, restaurants, dry cleaners, museums and art galleries per capita. And they experienced larger decreases in pollution and property crime, suggesting that cities that attract college grads benefit from both the kind of amenities that consumers pay for and those that are more intangible." The research shows a clear trend of the desirable cities becoming even more desirable, to the point where it's almost a necessity for city planners to lure college graduates or face decline.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes Oxford University engineering professor Dr Thomas Povey just invented a new cooking pot that heats food 40% faster. The pot is made from cast aluminum, and it features fins that direct flames across the bottom and up the sides, capturing energy that would otherwise be wasted. The pot is set to hit the market next month in the UK. "Povey specializes in the design of high-efficiency cooling systems for next-generation jet engines. He is also an avid mountaineer and says that this invention was spurred by the long time it takes for water to reach a boil at high altitudes. He and a group of his students worked three years experimenting with different designs before they came up with one being marketed."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes A group of researchers from University of California, Berkeley, have analyzed five popular web-based password managers and have discovered vulnerabilities that could allow attackers to learn a user's credentials for arbitrary websites. The five password managers they analyzed are LastPass, RoboForm, My1Login, PasswordBox and NeedMyPassword. "Of the five vendors whose products were tested, only the last one (NeedMyPassword) didn't respond when they contacted them and responsibly shared their findings. The other four have fixed the vulnerabilities within days after disclosure. 'Since our analysis was manual, it is possible that other vulnerabilities lie undiscovered,' they pointed out. They also announced that they will be working on a tool that automatizes the process of identifying vulnerabilities, as well as on developing a 'principled, secure-by-construction password manager.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ready for some weird science? Some of the same olfactory sensing equipment that give your nose its sense of smell can be found in your skin cells. In other words, your skin has a sense of smell. And researchers have just figured out that your skin loves the scent of sandalwood—in fact, the aroma revs up your skin's natural healing abilities.

Read more...

Current tests for Alzheimer's include expensive tests using brain PET or MRI imaging. But two studies have shown that a simple eye test can detect Alzheimer's accurately at very early stages—just by looking at subjects' retinas.

Read more...

A month ago, my eleven-year-old sons still didn't know how to tie their shoes.  I volunteered to teach them.  As a professional educator, I was tempted to teach shoe-tying the same way I teach econ: With a scintillating lecture.  Since I really wanted my sons to learn how to tie their shoes, however, I did no such thing.  Instead, I followed these six steps.

Step 1: Make the task easier.  They were struggling to tie their shoes on their feet.  So I had them place their shoes on the table and learn to tie them there.  I also ordered easy-to-grip flat shoelaces to replace the round laces that came with the shoes.

Step 2: Break shoe-tying into a dozen sequential actions: cross the laces, pull the laces tight, form left and right rabbit ears, etc.

Step 3: Show them how to do the first action.  Then place my hands over their hands while they do the first action.  Then have them do it on their own, correcting any deviations from best practice.  Repeat.  Repeat.  Repeat.

Step 4: Practice only ten minutes per day regardless of success to avoid frustration.

Step 5: Once they reach near-mastery on the first action, tack on the second action and go back to Step 3.  Keep tacking on actions until they master the whole sequence.

Step 6: Now, practice the same sequence with shoes on the feet.  Repeat to mastery.

I almost - but not quite - went full behaviorist.  95% of the lesson was hands-on.  Instead of lecturing, I recited shoe-tying catechisms: "Make the rabbit ears.  Hand one-third up the lace.  Make the rabbit ears.  One-third.  Not half.  Make the rabbit ears.  Both ears."  I never challenged my sons to ponder the deep nature of shoe-tying; I only wanted to impart the practical skill.  When they made mistakes, I asked them to recite the catechism, correcting any deviations as they happened.

My lessons were fully effective.  Before long, my sons were experts - and so they will remain for their whole lives.  Which led to an awkward realization: My technique for teaching shoe-tying is much more effective than my technique for teaching economics.  In my experience, only 5-10% of my students master the material by the final exam.  And even my best students tend to quickly forget most of what they learned. 

I'm tempted to lament the Iron Laws of Pedagogy.  But my shoe-tying experience tells me that's a cop-out.  I know how to make my students learn more.  If filling my students with life-long knowledge were my top priority, I'd replace my thoughtful lectures with catechisms.  I'd make the students chant aloud with me.  I'd break every lesson into baby steps, and drive the students to master them one by one.  How?  I'd randomly and mercilessly put students on the spot, pressing them to apply the lesson aloud - and correct the slightest misstep.  We'd meet seven days a week for half an hour, endlessly recapping what we've learned.  Sure, I'd cover far less ground.  Yet after a semester, my students would know the basics for a lifetime.

Why don't I do this?  While I could say, "The best way to teach shoe-tying is radically different from the best way to teach economics," that's an excuse.  The truth: I don't teach econ the same way I teaching shoe-tying because I'd hate it, and my students would hate me. 

I don't wish to be a mere drill sergeant who turns raw recruits into competent economists.  I want to be an artist who turns economics into a magical journey.  I want to challenge my best students, not teach to the lowest common denominator.  And my students, for their part, want to sit back and relax.  They don't want me to randomly shine the classroom spotlight on them, ask questions, demand answers, and make them feel stupid over and over until they know what they're talking about.  One midterm, one final: That's enough stress for a semester.

Now that you've heard my pedagogical confession, you might expect me to turn over a new leaf.  I probably won't.  I love old-fashioned teaching too much to walk away.  And what's the point of adopting more effective teaching techniques if students refuse to take my classes?
 
(25 COMMENTS)

Kant just went up a full notch in my eyes.  From The Critique of Pure Reason, via David Gordon, via Wlodek Rabinowicz.

---

The usual touchstone, whether that which someone asserts is merely his persuasion -- or at least his subjective conviction, that is, his firm belief -- is betting. It often happens that someone propounds his views with such positive and uncompromising assurance that he seems to have entirely set aside all thought of possible error. A bet disconcerts him. Sometimes it turns out that he has a conviction which can be estimated at a value of one ducat, but not of ten. For he is very willing to venture one ducat, but when it is a question of ten he becomes aware, as he had not previously been, that it may very well be that he is in error. If, in a given case, we represent ourselves as staking the happiness of our whole life, the triumphant tone of our judgment is greatly abated; we become extremely diffident, and discover for the first time that our belief does not reach so far. Thus pragmatic belief always exists in some specific degree, which, according to differences in the interests at stake, may be large or may be small.

(1 COMMENTS)

Halfway through 2014, only one album has managed to sell over one million copies—a sign of the consistent decline of all album sales that the music industry has witnessed since the advent of digital downloads. That singular title is Disney’s Frozen soundtrack, which has sold 2.7 million copies this year. That [...]

Nielsen SoundScan and Nielsen BDS released the annual Mid-Year Music Industry Report for 2014 late last week, and the results revealed the acceleration a trend this publication has long been predicting: the demise of the digital download.

It's the political economy, stupid.

Even worse than we knew.

Thomas Piketty's book is focused on wealth inequality, but he offers opinions on a wide variety of topics. The vast majority of those opinions are left wing, and in my view most are wrong. Here's one example (p. 481):

Modern redistribution, as exemplified by the social states instructed by the wealthy countries in the 20th century, is based on a set of fundamental social rights: to education, health, and retirement. . . . No major movement or important political force seriously envisions a return to a world in which only 10 or 20 percent of national income would go to taxes and government would be pared down to its regalian functions.

In context, it's not quite clear whether he is talking about "Europe" or "wealthy countries", both of which are mentioned earlier in the paragraph. If Europe then he is arguably correct, but the clear implication is that this claim applies to all wealthy countries. One notable aspect of Piketty's analysis is that he completely ignores the so-called "4 tigers," which have been some of the most successful developed economies in recent years. Here is some data on taxes and government spending as a share of GDP:

Country ** Taxes ** Government

France *** 44.2% **** 56.1%

Hong Kong 14.2% **** 18.5%

Singapore * 13.8% **** 17.1%

Taiwan **** 8.8% **** 22.6%

South Korea 25.9% **** 30.2%

Three of those four tigers seem to have pared down to "regalian" levels (although they do still somehow manage to have universal health care.) Three of these countries are also considerably richer than France---by an odd coincidence the same three.

Two of the 4 have average life expectancies that are higher than France, while two are slightly lower. All four have higher scores on international education rankings (which I regard as misleading.)

I am NOT trying to argue that the quality of life in the 4 tigers is higher than in France. Indeed I believe the opposite is true. These countries labor under two disadvantages; they are newly rich, and extremely densely populated (especially when accounting for mountainous terrain.) These factors reduce housing quality and lead to congestion. They would have suffered from essentially the same problems with the French economic model.

It's also worth noting that for several decades France's per capita GDP has been falling further and further behind that of the US. It's down to 67.4% of US levels, PPP, in 2013. More importantly, it's likely to fall still further in the next few years. Piketty repeatedly claims that all the major developed countries have roughly equal per capita incomes. I suppose that's true if you think that African-American incomes are roughly equal, on average, to the incomes of all Americans.

Meanwhile, as France falls further behind the US, the 4 tiger economies keep growing faster than the US. This cannot have anything to do with supply-side factors, because Piketty tells us that supply-side policies don't work. We are told that Thatcher's reforms did not help Britain grow faster, even though before 1980 Britain was growing slower than France and Germany, and then in the 25 years after 1980 it grew faster.

Of course there is much more to life that PPP GDP, and I've noticed that France has an enviable standard of living. This post isn't really about France. Rather it's about the fact that Piketty doesn't seem to even consider alternative economic models. The impression you get reading the book is not that he's thought about the Taiwanese or Korean or Singaporean models and rejected them, but rather that he's never seriously considered them. Instead the book often reads like a simplistic big government (France, Sweden) good, and small government (the US) bad caricature. There are other models that deserve serious consideration. Even regalian models.

BTW, Wikipedia gives a G/GDP ratio of 41.6% for the US vs. 41.9% in Canada. Other sources will give you different figures.

The quotation at the top mentioned "twentieth century" economic models. Perhaps the 4 tiger economies tell us something about the 21st century model.

PS. Yes, I understand that Singapore and Taiwan are nothing like the US, but neither are France and Sweden, two countries that Piketty discusses quite a bit.

PPS. I won't be able to respond to as many comments over the next 2 weeks.

(16 COMMENTS)

Art Carden has already blogged on Jason Brennan's insightful "Why not Capitalism?", a most needed response to G.A. Cohen's "Why not Socialism?"

Like Art, I enjoyed the book. It is a very good example of how political philosophy can be written in an easy and yet profound way, to the benefit of a broader range of readers.
If Cohen "sells" socialism by explaining how wonderfully a "socialist" camping trip among friends, with all sharing everything, works, Brennan resorts to a Disney show, the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, for allowing his readers a glimpse into a capitalist utopia. As anybody, I am familiar with the characters, though I don't have kids and thus I have never seen this particular show (whereas I remember watching "DuckTales", that Brennan also references, as a young boy myself - and I have very fond memories of that). In their village, Brennan explains,

Mickey Mouse owns a clubhouse that he shares with his friends. Minnie owns and runs a "Bowtique", a hair-bow factory and store. Clarabelle Cow owns and runs a Moo Mart" sundries store and a "Moo Muffin" factory. Donald Duck and Willie the Giant own farms. Professor Von Drake owns various inventions, including a time machine and a nano tech machine that can manufacture "mouskatools" on command.

In this community, Brennan notes, "everyone does his or her part. Everyone works hard to add to the social surplus" and yet everybody "trades value for value" and "is free to pursue his or her own vision of the good life without having to ask permission from others". In short, the village appears like a capitalist society, but one in which instead of people being greedy and nasty to each other, people (or, well, mice and other animals) are friendly and cordial, too. Instead of a hive where the bees are thriving until they are made "honest", Brennan goes for a "capitalist utopia" in which all the nicest features of human cooperation appear at their high, but the mode of production is capitalist indeed: people own things, and trade one with the other. His point is that Cohen is unfair in comparing an ideal socialist society (the camping trip of friends who decide to share stuff because everyone wants everyone to have a great time) with his own caricature of "real capitalism", as if private property of the means of production and good, honest, cordial human beings couldn't go together. So, Brennan proposes an alternative utopia, and I think it was a great idea to search for it in the Disney world, which has fed the imagination of three generations of kids (and is in itself a beautiful capitalist achievement, too).

It is not my business, but it would be fun to see what the good folks at "Econstories" could make of Brennan's book and its insights into the capitalist acts among consenting ducks and mice that are performed in the Disney world.

There are many interesting insights in Brennan's book - but my favourite one lies in the last chapter. The chapter appropriately starts with a quote from Robert Nozick's "Anarchy, State and Utopia" and argues for a system based upon private property rights as the proper "framework for utopia". He makes a point which is very relevant, and yet frequently forgotten: capitalism is "pluralistic", it rejoices at diversity, it prizes experiments, it doesn't require uniformity.

Capitalism is tolerant. Want to have a worker-controlled firm? Go for it. Want to start a kibbutz or a commune in which everything is collectively owned? No problem. The Mickey Mouse Clubhouse villagers would allow Cohen to have his permanent socialist camping trip, so long as Cohen likewise lets Minnie Mouse have her Bowtique.

There is an essential asymmetry in the capitalist and the socialist visions of utopia. Capitalists allow socialism, but socialists forbid capitalism.

This is a most persuasive argument for capitalism, and Brennan makes it in a very succinct and yet well argued way. (21 COMMENTS)

Imagine Smith sees a problem in the world.  He knows how to fix the problem.  He's got the resources to implement this remedy.  He sincerely wants to do good.  If he decides to fix the problem, is there any reason to worry that he'll make the problem worse?

Yes.  Perhaps Smith, though well-intentioned, lacks follow-through.  He routinely hatches big plans, then loses interest or focus half-way through.  He is, in a phrase, a weak-willed do-gooder.

What's so worrisome about weak-willed do-gooders?  Simple: For many problem, half-hearted solutions have worse consequences than leaving well enough alone.  This is obviously true on a purely selfish level.  Investing your life savings in a business, then walking away two months later, is much worse than parking your funds in a checking account. 

The same principle often holds for philanthropy.  Suppose a poor soul needs a time-sensitive series of surgical procedures.  Paying for step one, then skipping town, could easily be fatal for the patient.  On a larger scale, imagine giving an impoverished village half the stuff it need to modernize, then suddenly walking away.  Your "assistance" might lead them to drop their only source of livelihood before they have a viable alternative.

The most horrific example of weak-willed do-gooding, though, is probably "humanitarian" military intervention.  The U.S. invades a country like Iraq, toppling its totalitarian government.  If the U.S. were to stay until a free and prosperous society takes root, the war plausibly passes a cost-benefit test.  Unconvinced?  Compare North and South Korea, then try to tell yourself the Korean War was fruitless. 

Nowadays, though, the U.S. rarely packages its liberations with steely resolve.  Instead, modern American do-gooders spend a few years setting up a new and improved government, get bored, and walk away.  The result: Not freedom and prosperity, but civil war.

What's the right lesson to draw?  Hawks gravitate to the puritanical solution: "The U.S. has to become a strong-willed do-gooder.  Overthrow the dictatorship, then stay without hesitation until the job is done."  But this is wishful thinking.  Hawks are well-aware that the modern U.S. is weak-willed.  Until they figure out how to root out this vice, saying, "We'll solve our weakness of will after we win the war" is irresponsible.  Why?  Because given the current state of the American psyche, they should expect the policies they advocate to end badly.

You could protest, "But weakness of will is a notoriously hard vice to eliminate."  That's precisely my point.  If your humanitarian ambitions are going to predictably founder on the rocks of human ADHD, the true humanitarian stops before he starts.  Yes, this sounds worse than "Let's do our best, and see what happens."  But advocating what is better over what sounds better is the beginning of virtue.

(18 COMMENTS)

What's got 700 pages, tons of hype, and practically no readers?

"Capital in the 21st Century," by French economist Thomas Piketty

According to Jordan Ellenberg, a math professor at the University of Wisconsin, most readers didn't get past page 26.  

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Ellenberg pinpointed the locations of the most frequently highlighted passages in various books, using Amazon's "Popular Highlights" feature, to see how far readers were getting. He calls it the Hawking Index, because "A Brief History Of Time" is generally regarded as the least-read book ever. Here's the exact process:

...Take the page numbers of a book's five top highlights, average them, and divide by the number of pages in the whole book. The higher the number, the more of the book we're guessing most people are likely to have read. 

The results for "Capital" blew all others away: readers made it through just 2.1% of the book on average, with the last highlighted section appearing on page 26.

Other results: Most people have gotten through only an eighth of "Lean In" by Sheryl Sandberg, and only a fifth through "Flash Boys" by Michael Lewis.

"Stephen Hawking is off the hook; from now on, this measure should be known as the Piketty Index," he says.

Click here to see Ellenberg's other results on WSJ.com »

Join the conversation about this story »

Last month, Wealthfront's  Adam Nash gave a speech at Twitter headquarters entitled "Personal Finance for Engineers."

Personal finance can be a "noisy" field, with a lot of investing aphorisms thrown around as fact.

And because engineers understand and prefer math, as Nash describes them, they tend to think they are being rational with their money ... even when they are not.

Given the imminent IPO, and the windfall that will accrue to several employees, this is an important lesson.

Nash's presentation is a solid intro and useful refresher into the world of personal finance, especially for the more quantitatively-inclined.

We pulled his slides, courtesy of Wealthfront.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Google's $500 million investment in Google Shopping Express — a same-day grocery delivery service — will be watched closely at Amazon, which runs a similar AmazonFresh delivery service.

And not just because the two services compete. Google has a habit of putting its search services in front of Amazon's on the web, so that customers have to go through Google to get Amazon. That gives Google a chance to slice off some of Amazon's customers for itself.

So Amazon's plan to do to lettuce what it already did to books just got a little bit more complicated now that Google Shopping Express is on the scene.

Amazon has famously transformed brick-and-mortar retail through "showrooming"— when shoppers browse the shelves of real stores and then check for cheaper prices on Amazon. It took a while for stores to realize they were competing with online sellers this way. Some analysts believe chains like Best Buy have seen revenues contract because of Amazon's showrooming effect.

But unless a shopper is searching Amazon directly, they're likely searching first on Google. And even though Amazon has highly ranked searches in Google, Google crams down those natural search results in favor of its own Amazon-like ads. Amazon pointedly refuses to buy Google's "product listing ads" (PLAs) to boost its visibility in Google, even though eBay and Zappos are huge investors in that media.

This has become a huge business for Google. It's not clear how big yet since we're just seeing the tip of the iceberg: Marin Software, one of the biggest search marketing agencies in the world, says that search marketers will switch one third of their budgets to PLAs by December 2014. Marin places $5 billion annually in search spending, while Google usually claims about 80% of all searches on the web. Using Marin's numbers and some back-of-the-envelope math, Google would be capturing $1.3 billion from PLAs, just from Marin's clients.

That business puts Google in direct competition with Amazon for those shopping dollars.

And now Google seems to be trying to do something similar with Amazon's grocery deliveries. Google Shopping Express will launch for free but eventually require a flat-fee membership, Re/code reports. That model is similar to Amazon Prime Fresh, which costs $299 a year and includes free shipping and a library of videos and music.

Grocery chains will no doubt be terrified that Amazon will do to supermarkets what it's already done to big-box retail: Destroy big chunks of it. In turn, Google appears to be poised to do to Amazon in groceries what it's already doing to Amazon in product search: slice off big chunks of its business.

So you can see why grocery chains might be more enthusiastic to get on board with Google than with Amazon. AmazonFresh does deliver some goods from local stores, but its core produce — fruits and veggies — come from Amazon's own warehouses. Any lettuce bought via AmazonFresh is a lettuce not being bought from Kroger or Stop & Shop.

Google Shopping Express, by contrast, sources all its groceries at stores near you. Google is not interested in getting into the warehouse and the refrigerated truck business the way Amazon is. A lettuce bought on Google Shopping Express will  ultimately be bought from Kroger or Stop & Shop or their ilk. That's why this is the most interesting sentence in Re/code's report on Google Shopping Express:

Costco’s CEO, for instance, flew out to Google’s Mountain View, California campus to meet with Google CEO Larry Page before agreeing to participate in the Google Shopping Express program.

Supermarkets might end up being very afraid of Amazon and very enthusiastic about Google.

You can see how this might line up: In one corner, AmazonFresh. In the other corner, Google Shopping Express and every local supermarket chain in the country, all of whom now have a keen interest in preventing the showrooming of groceries.

SEE ALSO: This Google Search For 'Coconut Flour' Shows Why Amazon Needed To Make A Smartphone

Join the conversation about this story »

Three Boeing 737 fuselages remain sitting in Montana's Clark Fork River after sliding down a steep embankment following a train derailment.

Photos provided by Wiley E. Waters Rafting show the portions of the passenger planes sitting in the water and at the edge, making for an interesting scene for people on the river.

A crew of 50 with eight heavy-equipment machines are now working to assess damage and hoist up the three the large parts.  

"Once we determine the extent of damage we will assess what, if any, impact there will be to production," the Boeing spokesman said.

A fourth fuselage seems to have been torn apart during the derailment and remains by the tracks.

Montana Rail Link spokeswoman Lynda Frost spokewoman said that the the train was traveling at 31 mph when it derailed.

Join the conversation about this story »

Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Read 37 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Read 44 remaining paragraphs | Comments

By Daniel O'Brien  Published: June 23rd, 2014  This might be hard to believe, but most of the shiny and loud people who live in Hollywood don't actually want to make bad movies. That probably sounds like madness, because you've already seen many, many bad movies in your life and you haven't even

Our relationship with Japan has improved considerably over the last several decades, but this chummy relationship definitely has its limits, which manifests specifically inAmerica's unwillingness to sell Japan any of our new F-22s. That's why Japan has decided to build a better warbird than the Raptor, all on its own.

Read more...

Apartment sizers are getting smaller and smaller across the board. And lest the world's city-dwellers go without appliances, GE is working on a solution: Meet the Micro Kitchen, an innocuous-looking drawer that contains every appliance you could need.

Read more...

Nope, that isn't a grainy leaked photo from a new Lord of the Rings spin-off up above; it's actually an image of a space-dust ring surrounding nearby star HR 4796A. The star is part of the Centaurus constellation, and this picture was taken by the...

By Andrew Munro  Published: June 23rd, 2014  If you go by their portrayal in movies and TV shows, you'd think that huge pharmaceutical corporations make all their money by turning children into zombies and having them steal grandma's heart medication, or whatever the plot of Resident Evil was.

By J.F. Sargent,Cisco MD  Published: June 22nd, 2014  The following was constructed from an interview conducted by Cracked.com. I trained as a doctor in Caracas, Venezuela, the third most violent city in the world, just behind Deadwood and Rage Virus London. I worked every day to stem the tide of murder