Homeschooling your dylsexic kid
By John Silveira
Issue #142 • July/August, 2013
I write and edit for a living. I'm the senior editor for Backwoods Home Magazine for which I've written numerous columns during the last 24 years. Before that...
Bartering for bad times
By John Silveira
Issue #138 • November/December, 2012
Bartering may not be a part of your life, right now, but if there's a deepening of the recession, or it becomes a depression, or we enter a...
Turn the poor into capitalists
By John Silveira
Issue #137 • September/October, 2012
I'm not a fan of the welfare system and I think it's been more of a failure than a success. It may serve as a 'safety net' for...
Should we scrap our ‘old’ Constitution?
By John Silveira
Issue #135 • May/June, 2012
In a recent New York Times article by Adam Liptak, he observed that the Constitution of the United States is not only the oldest constitution in existence, but...
Zombie Apocalypse
By John Silveira
Issue #134 • March/April, 2012
"Can you survive a zombie apocalypse?" a familiar voice asked.
I turned in my seat to see O.E. MacDougal, Dave Duffy's poker-playing friend from Southern California, walking toward me....
When “good” laws are bad
By John Silveira
Issue #134 • March/April, 2012
I recently read an opinion piece on CNN's website titled, Edison would've loved the new light bulb law. It's supposed to be about the new law to force...
Libertarian and Conservative
By John Silveira
Issue #133 • January/February, 2012
I cringe when I hear libertarians lumped with conservatives or at least today's conservatives. Liberals want you to view us as conservatives so you won't look any...
The threat of electromagnetic pulse!
By John Silveira
Issue #132 • November/December, 2011
I like "doomsday" scenarios even ridiculous ones, such as the supposed Mayan calendar prophecy for 2012 or what had been Y2K doom-and-gloom leading up to the year...
An American dollar worth two cents
By John Silveira
Issue #129 • May/June, 2011
Most Americans are unaware that today's dollar has the purchasing power that roughly four cents had back in 1913. That was the year the Federal Reserve (the Fed)...
Stashing Junk Silver for Bad Times
By John Silveira
Issue #131 • September/October, 2011
This is a pile containing $100 face value of pre-1965 "junk silver" coins, but it could represent 400 gallons of gasoline or 400 loaves of bread.
When I was...
Getting the state out of marriage
By John Silveira
Issue #127 • January/February, 2011
There's a new TV "reality" show on TLC called Sister Wives. It's about a polygamous family: Kody Brown, his 3 wives, their 13 children, and a soon-to-be (maybe...
Justice Breyer is wrong about the 2nd Amendment
By John Silveira
Issue #128 • March/April, 2011
December 12, 2010, on Fox News Sunday, Justice Stephen Breyer said the Founding Fathers never intended for guns to go unregulated. His reasoning was that James Madison, often...
The time-travel ad
By John Silveira
Issue #125 • September/October, 2010
It's become a minor Internet phenomenon. The ad reads:
It's also been read by Jay Leno on his late night TV show, on National Public Radio more than once...
Magnesium and the International Criminal Court
By John Silveira
Issue #125 • September/October, 2010
There was an interesting ad that ran in BHM for two issues, but it was pulled for lack of response. It was about magnesium, the lack of it...
How to achieve affordable health care
By John Silveira
Issue #120 • November/December, 2009
Despite all the hubbub about health care, the United States can have affordable health care tomorrow if we want it. There have been real solutions available, solutions that...
Was the first government gun confiscation attempt foiled by an unsung colonial heroine?
By John Silveira
Issue #119 • September/October, 2009
Gun control people don't seem to get just how deeply etched into the American psyche gun ownership goes and that the resistance to being disarmed by their own...
