Daily Archive: August 11, 2009

quote for the afternoon

“If arguing for your war of choice involves all of the following: describing it as “costly, risky and worth waging—but only barely so;” calculating “a net cost-benefit calculus perilously close to a wash;” resigning...

Buried

Since they were inadvertently buried by a rapid succession of posts, I’d just like to recommend that anyone who hasn’t yet read Freddie’s post on Cowen and Wilkinson on autism, as well as Dr....

the caricature of lament

I want to reuse this title sometime, because I think it’s really good.  I got it from this really good post by JL Wall over at Upturned Earth, responding to both myself and Nathan...

a broken system ctd.

By now we are all aware that should liberal health care reform pass through Congress we will face government-sanctioned euthanasia of the sick, elderly and mentally incompetent; we will sit in lines longer than...

For the Defense

Isaac Chotiner says a lot of what needs to be said about Malcolm Gladwell’s latest strained analogy-cum-article on To Kill a Mockingbird and the Jim Crow South. As best I can tell, Gladwell’s argument...

Tyler Cowen responds

Tyler Cowen has graciously responded to my recent post in an email. With his permission, I am printing it below. In the interest of accurately representing him, I’m going to post the full email....

Ugh, Part 2

So, it appears that the political Right is in a tizzy this morning about this Rasmussen poll.  Apparently it shows that Americans overwhelmingly oppose Obamacare, and independents oppose it by a 3-1 margin.  Or...

Dear ESPN,

Your power rankings, while cute, should never, ever be treated as big news on your website. When one team passes another in an artificial competition that neither knew they were participating in, this is...