Super Mario Bros. is one of the most successful video game franchises of all time. For people of a certain age, Mario and Luigi are better known than old-school cartoon characters like Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny. But the interesting thing about Mario is that he didn’t just jump out of a pipe one day. …
There are many things in this world that are older than you might think. For example, the Pope’s title of “Pontiff” predates Christianity by almost a millennium. The mouse driven computer with a mouse, hypertext links and videoconferencing dates back to 1968. But while some things are older than you think, other things are newer, …
Have you noticed that no one uses Roman Numerals anymore? If you watch a movie from the mid-20th century, at the end of the credits, you’ll see something like “© MCMLXIII”. (This was especially notable when movies had short end credits.) But nowadays, if you fast forward through fifteen minutes of closing credits, you’ll find …
When it comes to money, the more you print, the less it’s worth. This is a basic law of economics, and it doesn’t just apply to the money supply. If there are only three widgets in the world, each one is worth a lot. If there are thousands, the value of each widget drops. The …
You often hear politicians complaining about Big Government, even though they work for the government. Our fear of government in the United States borders on pathological. After all, there’s nothing wrong with government per se. Just like any other big institution, it is prone to Byzantine bureaucracy and corruption. But in this country, many people …
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