The Melbourne Herald Sun reports, “Fast food could be subject to a new tax of up to 50 per cent under a plan to fight Australia’s worsening obesity epidemic. The proposed fat tax would, hopefully, steer consumers away from calorie and sugar-laden foods and force them to choose cheaper, healthier options.”

Read more on Fast Food Down Under…

Following last month’s Supreme Court decision in No. 04-277, National Cable & Telecommunications Assn. v. Brand X Internet Services, which denied the use of established cable lines to high-speed ISP competitors, there might be a new addition to the broadband internet market.

Read more on Tele-competition…

In a recent commentary criticizing the fast food tax, I wrote,

the fast food industry is really too easy a target for the government. Besieged by the media and public opinion (consider the popularity of the film Super Size Me), quickservice restaurants have gotten the reputation for being extremely unhealthy.

Read more on The Fitness of Fast Food…

As the jobless levels across the nation continues to decline, Michigan continues to lag behind. The nationwide unemployment rate decreased to 5.0% in June, to the lowest levels since September, 2001 according to reports. Meanwhile, Michigan remains at the bottom of the list with the worst unemployment levels, upwards of 7%.

Read more on Unemployment Trends…

On the heels of the defeat of proprosed protections for intellectual property at the hands of the European Parliament, according to the AP the European Commission is addressing an aspect of the same debate: online music and copyright.

Read more on European Commission Tries Again…

The Thinking Toolbox: Thirty-Five Lessons That Will Build Your Reasoning Skills, by Nathaniel Bluedorn and Hans Bluedorn, illustrated by Richard LaPierre, ISBN 0974531510, 234 pp. Christian Logic, 2005.

Nathaniel and Hans Bluedorn are brothers who live in Indiana (more about them at www.christianlogic.com) and The Thinking Toolbox is a follow-up to their first book, The Fallacy Detective. These books are primarily intended for use as homeschooling textbooks, and the Bluedorns’ interest in this area stems largely from their education at home growing up.

In an interview, Nathaniel gets at the intention behind the book: to make logic accessible and enjoyable for students. “Logic books are notorious for being very difficult, very austere,” he says. Instead, logic should be “a very enjoyable thing that everybody can do.” Hans affirms that the first step is to get kids to “think at all, and then the next step is to get them to think correctly.”

The book is a course of 35 lessons, with illustrations, applications, and exercises forming distinct little units. Colorful illustrations abound in the book, courtesy of Richard LaPierre. The book starts with the most basic building blocks of critical thinking, inculcating rules like “Just because somebody tells you something, that doesn’t mean it is true,” and moving on to examine things like the different kinds of discourse, and recognizing the difference between facts, opinions, and inferences.
Read more on Book Review: The Thinking Toolbox…

I’m not sure whether this reflects the fractiousness of the European “Union,” or European unity in opposition to protection for intellectual property (or both), but yesterday the European Parliament “overwhelmingly rejected a proposed law Wednesday to create a single way of patenting software across the European Union.”

Read more on EU Rejects Patent Law…

ARMAVIRUMQUE passes along an excerpt from an article posted yesterday by The New Republic, “The Killing Machine,” by Alvaro Vargas Llosa. The article is about Che Guevara, and the famous photograph that “thirty-eight years after his death, is still the logo of revolutionary (or is it capitalist?) chic.”

Read more on Cash Che…

A new analysis of birth records by the Center for Immigration Studies shows that in 2002 almost one in four births in the United States was to an immigrant mother (legal and illegal), the highest level in American history. In addition, nearly ten percent of all births in the country were to illegal-alien mothers. It is currently U.S. government policy to award American citizenship to all persons born on U.S. soil, even the children of tourists and illegal aliens. In 2002, 23 percent of all births in the United States were to immigrant mothers (legal or illegal), compared to 15 percent in 1990, 9 percent in 1980 and 6 percent in 1970. The states with the most dramatic increase in births to immigrants in the last decade are Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, Nebraska, Arkansas, Arizona, Tennessee, Minnesota, Colorado, Delaware, Virginia, and Maryland.

Read more on Births To Immigrant Mothers At Record Highs…

A fascinating interview with Kenyan economist James Shikwati in the July 4 edition of Der Spiegel:

SPIEGEL: Mr. Shikwati, the G8 summit at Gleneagles is about to beef up the development aid for Africa…

Read more on ‘For God’s Sake, Please Just Stop!’…