Archive page 4 of 73
May 1, 2026
The United States national debt crossed 100 percent of GDP this week, and the coverage has been exactly what you would expect. Breathless headlines. Grim milestone warnings. Comparisons to the immediate aftermath…
Apr 29, 2026
Every conversation about artificial intelligence eventually arrives at the wrong starting point. People reach for 1956 and the Dartmouth Conference, or 1997 and Deep Blue, or 2022 and ChatGPT. These are reasonable…
Apr 23, 2026
Chase asked me recently whether stable elements actually decay. It is the kind of question that sounds simple until you pull on it, and then it keeps coming. The short answer is:…
Apr 20, 2026
Starting today, the federal government is accepting claims through its new Customs Automated Processing Environment portal for refunds on tariffs the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional two months ago. NPR's Alina Selyukh reports…
Apr 16, 2026
Gold bugs will tell you the problem with modern money is that it is not backed by anything real. Fiat currency, they say, has value only because the government declares it does.…
Dec 5, 2025
Ever since I wrote about Thomas Arundell of Wardour and followed it with a look at Matthew Howard of Virginia and Maryland, it has been impossible to avoid the story that links…
Nov 10, 2025
On November 10, 1975, the SS Edmund Fitzgerald disappeared from radar during a violent Lake Superior storm. At 7:10 p.m., the ship's captain, Ernest McSorley, radioed another vessel with what seemed like…
Oct 25, 2025
The early Chesapeake was shaped by a wide cast of settlers, from landed gentry and indentured servants to Puritan merchants and opportunists. Among the names that recur in seventeenth-century Virginia and Maryland…
Oct 20, 2025
When most people think about how churches organize themselves, they tend to imagine one of three familiar patterns. There is congregational polity, where each congregation governs itself. There is presbyterian polity, where…
Oct 16, 2025
I am pleased to say that I have recently been accepted into the Order of Americans of Armorial Ancestry (OAAA). For those unfamiliar, this is a lineage society devoted to Americans who…
Oct 8, 2025
When people talk about the Great Lakes in the late twentieth century, they often do so with an air of despair. By the 1960s, the lakes were badly polluted. Industrial waste, agricultural…