From the monthly archives:

December 2004

Happy New Year’s!

December 31, 2004

No blogging today, for there is much preparing yet to be done for the Best New Year’s Eve Party Ever.

Read the full article →

Who Needs George Lakoff?

December 30, 2004

Schopenhauer knew everything there was to know about framing:
If the conversation turns upon some general conception which has no particular name, but requires some figurative or metaphorical designation, you must begin by choosing a metaphor that is favourable to your proposition. For instance, the names used to denote the two political parties in Spain, Serviles [...]

Read the full article →

Prescott on Rebuilding Social Security

December 29, 2004

It’s a shame that this Edward Prescott op-ed is behind the WSJ wall. Prescott (who won the economics Nobel this year)argues that mandatory investment accounts with limited investment options are necessary to solve the time inconsistency problem with savings.
Readers of this page will recall that I have made this proposal in a previous essay, but [...]

Read the full article →

Contractarian Functionalism – PosnerBlogging: Take Two

December 29, 2004

Let me say that I think the world of Judge Posner. I agree with him much more than I disagree with him. I do think that Posner’s pragmatism is over done, but I generally admire his anti-rationalism, which I take to be generally Hayekian in spirit. He complains constantly about the tendency of intellectuals to [...]

Read the full article →

PosnerBlogging: Take One

December 28, 2004

Posner’s first post over at Leiter’s is full ot good stuff for a philosophoblogger to philosophoblog about. Let’s do it in order. First paragraph:
Brian said I’m an atheist, but the word has two distinct meanings. The first is a person who does not have a sense that there is a God–who, in short, is not [...]

Read the full article →

David Schmidtz Lives on Left2Right!

December 28, 2004

I’m thrilled to see that David Schmidtz has started posting at left2right. As his inclusion on L2R attests, Dave is one of the best political philosophers of his generation. Additionally, he’s one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet. And he knows a lot of about birds and cacti and so forth. Our hike through [...]

Read the full article →

Self-Promotion

December 26, 2004

I have a piece today in the Philadelphia Inquirer [registration required] on the “starve the beast” theory of taxation and fiscal discipline.
The philosophical thrust:
For many libertarians and conservatives, cutting taxes is about more than efficiency; it’s about morality. We have a moral claim to the fruits of our labor. Every cent the government takes from [...]

Read the full article →

Merry Christmas! And Festivus, for the Rest of Us!

December 23, 2004

I’m jetting off to Kansas City this afternoon. My beloved grandmother has no use for high-speed internet, and it’s Christmas, so I probably won’t be saying much.
I am going to try to get my family to take part in the sacred Festivus traditions of airing grievances and tests of strength.
Eat, drink, be merry.

Read the full article →

The Rocketeer and Me

December 23, 2004

Frank McGahon, God bless’im, thinks I look like Billy Campbell, who, it bears mentioning, was one of People’s 50 Most Beautiful People of 2000. The difference is, if Jennifer Connelly had dated me, she never would have left.

Read the full article →

Sad Sacks

December 22, 2004

L to R: Me, Julian, Young Telis.
More fun pictures of others at Missy’s.

Read the full article →

Rorty Phones It In

December 22, 2004

Richard Rorty’s paper, “Philosopher-envy” in the new Daedalus issue on human nature is just trash. You’d think that someone who has given up rational argumentation would be a better rhetorician. Instead, Rorty seems like he’s just phoning it in. The sophism is almost too transparent to count as sophism. He must be tired. The paper [...]

Read the full article →

Social Security Crisis on Infinite Earths

December 21, 2004

Yglesias seems to be on a one man “there is no social security crisis” crusade. Now, it’s true that no one is going to perish in a mangled, fiery, blood-soaked heap of runaway social security next week, or even next decade. But let me say a couple things. (There will be MUCH MUCH MUCH more [...]

Read the full article →

The Illusory Aura of Ivy

December 21, 2004

Salam, Douthat, and Menashi have taken over at AndrewSullivan.com. Weirdness ensues, and it’s almost entirely Reihan’s fault (or to Reihan’s credit). Anyway, good stuff, at least that which is non-free-associative enough to comprehend.
The exchange between Reihan and Douthat about the pointlessness of affirmative action at elite schools reminded me of Marie Gryphon’s talk on [...]

Read the full article →

Solstice is the Reason for the Season

December 21, 2004

Good Reason piece by Julian about the absolutely idiotic “Merry Christmas” controversy. I really dislike that one self-righteous athiest guy in the small town who calls the ACLU because there was a prayer before the public high school football game. And I really dislike the self-righteous Christian who thinks that an earnest attempt at inclusion [...]

Read the full article →

Are Libertarians Cheerier?

December 20, 2004

Just an observation. Going through my blog roll, I noticed that the libertarian blogs have a rather cheerier general tone than both the left and right blogs. I find this interesting, because surely things are going not-so-well for us in political terms. The left seems extremely dyspeptic and chicken-littely these days. The right seems gloating, [...]

Read the full article →

A Night at the Hip Hopera

December 18, 2004

If you, like me, are a fan of both Queen and hip hop, then for god’s sake listen to the Kleptone’s A Night at the Hip Hopera a truly bizarre and wonderful mashup of great Queen hits and various and sundry hip hop joints.
Here’s the sample list. Behold the fabulosity!

Read the full article →

Note to Jenna

December 16, 2004

Spaces are opening up at 934 Westminster this fall. Just in case you wanted to know. You don’t really want to live in Georgetown, do you?

Read the full article →

Wake Up!

December 16, 2004

I find that I am unreasonably obsessed with “Wake Up” from the Arcade Fire’s Funeral. It’s just so dramatic! You can hear a stream at the Merge Records site.
(Remember, I said “unreasonably,” although Pitchfork gave the album a 9.7, so maybe it’s not just me, although I think the PF review is extraordinarily over-earnest.)

Read the full article →

We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Baseball

December 16, 2004

MLB’s extortion efforts seem to be falling apart here in the district! Jim Henley is your go-to man for reliable libertarian baseball analysis. Here. Here. Here.
For Carol Schwartz fans, here this tidbit from the NYT:
“I can just picture the baseball owners high-fiving each other until they collapsed from exhaustion” after reaching their deal with [...]

Read the full article →

What is Big Government?

December 15, 2004

It’s not really obvious to me. One thing I don’t think it can be is the amount of taxing and spending.
Here is a little thought experiment to illustrate the idea that the “size” of government should not be confused with the amount of money the government takes in through taxes and spends through its [...]

Read the full article →

Mary Warnock and the Culture of Life

December 15, 2004

I agree with Warnock that not only should euthanasia be allowed, but that the stigma attached to surrendering to death be relaxed.
The amount of money spent to keep alive people for whom life has become nothing more than a searing wait for death is abominable. I cannot imagine wanting to spend tens of thousands [...]

Read the full article →

How to Survive a Hurricane

December 14, 2004

Ron Bailey points out that you’re rather less likely to be killed by weather if you’re rich, or at least in a rich country. This is reason #793 why a decent rate of economic growth is in my holy trinity of political goods, along with liberty and stability.
By the way, I plan to interview Ron [...]

Read the full article →

Hitler Was a Vegetarian, Pinochet Privatized Social Security, Satan Rides a Bicycle, and Other Irrelevancies

December 13, 2004

This little piece by Dan Restrepo should be headed straight for the “examples of egregious logical fallacies” files of introduction to critical reasoning instructors everywhere. His “argument” appears to be this. Pinochet was evil. People with some association with Pinochet created a system of personal retirement accounts in Chile. So, personal retirement accounts are evil. [...]

Read the full article →

Sticker Shock

December 13, 2004

I’ve got a short piece up on the evolution warning sticker fracas over at Reason Online. Enjoy!

Read the full article →

Failure to Have Organisms

December 10, 2004

Sometimes typos really improve a sentence. I snorted lemonade out my nose today when I read this:
Taking one example of a disorder that is “obvious from surface features,” Inhibited Female Orgasm, Wakefield applauds the authors of DSM-III-R for discriminating between those cases in which women fail to have organisms from inadequate stimulation and those involving [...]

Read the full article →