Mark Kleiman proposes an alcohol tax to help close the deficit: I haven’t run the numbers carefully, but the back of my envelope tells me that tripling the Federal alcohol tax – still leaving it below Korean War levels in inflation-adjusted terms – would bring in on the order of $15 billion a year in net [...]

I remember being an impressionable child and watching Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Peering through the gaps of my mother’s arms where I was hiding, I watched the following dialogue take place:   Esmarelda, the pretty gypsy that Quasimodo is enamored with, is hiding in the church to avoid being exectued. Phoebus: I’m sorry, [...]

I’ve never been particularly fond of The Biggest Loser, a popular weight loss show on NBC that puts its contestants through grueling workouts and half-naked weekly weigh-ins.  And when I say it’s popular, I mean really popular: in January it was NBC’s top-rated show, outranking Lost and The Office, and it has spawned spin-offs across [...]

Alex Janke is a junior at the University of Michigan studying math and economics. Countries compete in a variety of ways, and military and economic power can substantially increase their political influence. The People’s Republic of China – a rising star on the geopolitical stage – owns a large percentage of all United States debt held abroad, and there’s [...]

If you haven’t already watched it, I highly recommend The Walking Dead on AMC. The show, based on a comic book series, is about a small town sheriff who finds himself living in a zombie apocalypse. From then on he sets out to find his wife and son, who he stubbornly believes are still alive. In [...]

Rachel Beeler is an English and Psychology major at the University of Michigan who plans on entering the medical field after graduation. The end of the road is near, and the long, dreaded goodbye to the wizarding world we all fell in love with has begun. The seventh and final novel of the beloved Harry Potter fantasy series [...]