economy

Red Flags or Green Lights?

When you hear the term “red flag law” today, you think of rules or regulations that allow governments to seize guns from people who pose a danger to others. But back in the late 1800s, its meaning was very different. The first red flag law in…

I, Smartphone – The Stream

Make mine a cup of praseodymium with a terbium or two on the side, please. Make it snappy! Beautiful blue cobalt, a ferromagnetic metal with atomic number 27, is inside your smartphone, too. Presently, almost all of it comes from the African…

The Velvet Glove and the Iron Fist

In the month of October in election years, we’ve come to expect political vitriol. When government gets as big as ours, and figures so prominently in our lives, it’s natural that people who might otherwise ignore it feel compelled to take an…