Free Republic

"We are sidestepping all of the scientific challenges that have held fusion energy back for more than half a century," says the director of an Australian company that claims its hydrogen-boron fusion technology is already working a billion times better than expected.

In the wake of the current wave of bank failures, one of the startups I currently work with — a Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) customer — recently applied to open an account with a major money center bank. The bank came back with a long list of objections and ultimately declined to open even a basic banking account. Reasons given were: the startup was not 100% U.S. owned, had a foreign-born CEO, and had a senior manager residing outside the U.S. The startup was denied even though it is very well capitalized with a CEO residing in the U.S., has...

When David Petraeus visited the Harvard Kennedy School in 2009, one of the meetings he requested was with author Doris Kearns Goodwin. Petraeus, who holds a PhD in International Relations from Princeton, is a fan of Team of Rivals and wanted time to speak to the famed historian about her work. Apparently, the great general (and current CIA Director) is something of a bibliophile. He's increasingly an outlier. Even as global literacy rates are high (84%), people are reading less and less deeply. The National Endowment for the Arts (PDF) has found that "[r]eading has declined among every group of...