Monthly Archive: April 2010
The Establishment, Still Doing Its Thing
While the difference between Comedy Central’s treatment of Muhammad and every other religious figure is certainly striking, it’s worth noting that Ross Douthat’s recent column on the subject makes a wildly false claim that...
Free Speech and Killing Kittens
Here’s a provocative post from Stanley Fish: To anyone who has been following First Amendment jurisprudence in the past 40 or 50 years, the recent Supreme Court decision (United States v. Stevens, April 20)...
Pot Culture Watch
I ride the DC Metro to work. Sometimes people sit next to me who smell like pot. I don’t care if they do, and there’s no way in hell I’m going to report them…...
Volcker and Trans-national Regulation
All those mind-boggling financial products that nobody understood were no help to the U.S. economy, and led it to the sorry state from which it is now attempting to recover. So says Paul Volcker,...
Millman’s taxonomy.
If you like to chat about political philosophy in the abstract, you may want to head over to the American Scene, where Noah Millman’s trying to develop a taxonomy to get at some of...
The Great State of Jefferson
Strange Maps posts a picture of what was nearly our 49th state, carved out of the California hinterlands and Oregon’s southern counties. For more on Jefferson’s abbreviated history, check out John Schwenkler’s great article...
Bryan Caplan: An Adopted Child is Second-Best
The last thing I want is to give more free publicity to a book that frankly doesn’t look all that promising. But when you condescend to me, and when you bring my daughter into...
Euripides, “The Bacchae”
It’s a bit of a cliche to suggest that, if you want to understand the 60s, the play to see isn’t Hair; it’s the Bacchae. A depiction of orgiastic release that tips over, as...
A Couple of Thoughts on the Ratings Agencies…
While I wait to catch the train out of NYC for the weekend, I thought I’d get my post count up by putting an answer to a question in my previous post into a...
Pop Quiz
Faced with rapidly increasing public debt and an World Trade Organization decision that its market-distorting, third world poverty-reinforcing cotton subsidy program is illegal, and awarding Brazil the right to impose up to $800 million a year in...
“The Hierarchy of Contempt”
After watching his excellent Bloggingheads dialogue, I stumbled across the website of Canadian science fiction author Peter Watts, which also happens to include free digital copies of his novels (so far, I’ve only gotten...
South Park and censorship
I don’t have a lot to say about Comedy Central’s decision to apparently censor the 201st episode of South Park in its entirety. It is a cowardly, stupid and unnecessary move – one of...
More Pedestrianization in Midtown
Janette Sadik-Khan and her posse continue to reclaim Manhattan streets for the people who actually use them. Three cheers!
Clueless…
Not that I am surprised to see editorial garbage floating around over at Investor’s Business Daily (I read it so you don’t have to), but Rep. John Boehner’s attempt to put Republicans on the...
Folkways and knowledge
I was a little disappointed to see that the conversation on my ‘folkways’ post went the direction it did. I was hoping some strong advocates of science would recognize where science has erred, and...
Berlusconi!
Anyone frustrated by our government can at least take comfort in the fact that Silvio Berlusconi isn’t running the show:
The neighborhood
For would-be architects: The Washington Post ran an article on my parents’ lovely modernist neighborhood.
In Which Bryan Caplan Doesn’t Understand Evolution, Either
I’m sorry, Bryan. You’ve done some great work in the past, but this just hasn’t been your week: I confess that I take anti-cloning arguments personally. Not only do they insult the identical twin...
