Blog Etiquette
After posting a response to critics of his Walmart/healthcare post without linking to a single critical entry, Matthew Yglesias decides to highlight this essay from Apartment 11D, lamenting the decline of blogospheric courtesy. WTF?
Author: Will
Lament for a Dying Medium
It’s ‘Celebrate Old Media Day’ here at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen, and following Freddie on Gladwell on Free, I thought I’d chime in with my own appreciation for the news industry. Like Freddie,...
Talking Carbon Tariffs
Here’s Paul Krugman, defending the proposed Waxman-Markey carbon tariffs: What’s happening here, I think, is that people are relying on what Paul Samuelson called an economic “shibboleth” — they’re relying on some slogan rather...
“My quarter pounder tasted like hegemony”
I admit I giggled at this Michael Goldfarb post celebrating the McDonaldization of France. One problem – European McDonalds are manifestly cleaner and better at making food that their American counterparts. How do we...
Google’s Responsibility
Andrew Sullivan flags a noble-sounding quote from Google CEO Eric Schmidt: “The internet is the strongest force for individual self-expression ever invented. Governments around the world, even democratically elected, have difficulty with [the flow...
Daft Draft Analysis
The fact that teams frequently overvalue a player’s potential while devaluing actual production has been amply documented elsewhere, but I’m consistently baffled by sportswriters who exhibit the same tendency. Here, for example, is SI’s...
Queer Theory
PostRight is a neat group blog, but this latest entry has me baffled. The basic thesis seems to be that Jamie Kirchick is obsessed with Israel because he criticized the creepy anti-war group ANSWER...
Defending Soccer
Alex Massie does a capable job of smacking down this nonsensical critique of soccer. I’d only add that the structure of European football is one of the most inegalitarian in sport (see here and...
In search of realism
Given the recent uproar over this article defending the Iranian election results,* I think it’s important to distinguish between those of us who see a realistic, restrained foreign policy as the best way to...
Eating Crow
It seems only a few days ago that Mark and I were taking shots at the U.S. national team’s playmaking ability (or lack thereof). But following a 2-0 beatdown of a Spanish national squad...
Transformers: Black People in Disguise!
See here and here for the fully story on Transformers’ hilariously racist double-caricature.
Stop Prison Rape
The Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Eli Lehrer tackles prison rape here. I’d also recommend Ezra Klein’s excellent op-ed from several months ago.
Symmetrical Idiocy
I was going to take Michael Goldfarb to task for suggesting that Iran policy ought to be dictated by some anonymous student demonstrator, but then The Guardian published an entire op-ed inspired by little...
Poverty and Human Rights
Will Wilkinson has a fascinating post on whether some basic level of material well-being should be considered a human right. My gut response is that while we have some moral obligation to alleviate poverty,...
