Bitcoin went on a rollercoaster ride last week, spiking in value on some exchanges just north of $5,000. Then J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon told the world that the cryptocurrency is a fraud, and that he’d fire any employee of his he caught trading it. Bitcoin’s price tumbled.
Then China shut down cryptocurrency exchanges, making it far more difficult to trade bitcoin. Close observers noted the irony – China hosts the world’s largest concentration of bitcoin miners, the computers earning crypto-credits by confirming transactions on the blockchain.
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September 17, 2017
The First Amendment has for decades been interpreted to protect “inappropriate” speech, a fact well known to anyone who has sat for a bar examination in the past 40 years. So what was United States District Court Judge Kiyo Matsumoto thinking this week when he revoked bail for Martin Shkreli?
Mr. Shrekil is an easy man to despise. The young financier almost became a household name after he infamously jacked up the price of a prescription drug, Daraprim, an antiparasitic, from $13.5 per pill to $750 per pill in 2015. The justification? Good old fashion greed. Mr. Shkreli...
September 14, 2017
From Washington, D.C., comes news of the most ingenious proof ever of the existence of God. It comes in the form of an apparent suicide.
National Public Radio reported this weekend on a robot that propelled itself into a fountain, shorting its circuits and effectively ending its life. What if the fate of this robot reflects the real promise, or lack thereof, of artificial intelligence (AI)?
There may be mundane explanations for why the Knightscope K5 security robot ended up in the drink. A programming error may be responsible. Perhaps a routine...
July 24, 2017
If ever anyone knew how potent a jury’s power to alter a life’s course, it was Aaron Hernandez. He killed himself days after being acquitted of a double murder in Boston. But he had little cause to celebrate the victory. He was sentenced to life behind bars for another murder, the result of another jury’s convicting him.
I suspect the contrast was more than he could bear.
Professional athletes live on life’s high wire. They know that reputations are made and lost in an instant. Snag a game-winning pass in overtime in a...
April 19, 2017
March 22, 2017
Supreme Court confirmation hearings increasingly look like trysts between horny customers posing as suitors and a pre-paid prostitute. We ought to...
March 20, 2017
Hey, brother, can you spare a Bitcoin? We may not yet be at a point where panhandlers request cryptocurrency, but increasingly, Bitcoin...
December 9, 2016
I can’t say I am surprised by Dylann Roof’s decision to conduct his own defense. What, really, has he to lose?
Mr. Roof is...
December 7, 2016
Just why anyone would want to be a police officer in this day and age is beyond me. And why any current officer would want to lead a...
November 23, 2016
By the time you read this, you will most likely have done all the shopping and planning you need to do to celebrate Thanksgiving. Comes now the...
November 18, 2016
Here’s the good news: President-elect Donald Trump’s selection of Steve Bannon as chief strategist and senior counselor might...