May 2005

Joanna’s list of books she’s embarrassed not to have read is the best I’ve seen yet. Possessed by the Sheikh looks pretty great.

Matt Miller seems to write the same opinion piece about luck over and over again. Maybe if he says it enough times he’ll be right.
Here’s my take on the connection between luck and redistribution.
Reihan Salam over at The American Scene has a very smart post on the Miller refrain, about which I hope to [...]

Julian sends me this meme: “What 5 books are you vaguely embarassed to admit you haven’t read?” Here goes:
(1) Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. I keep suspecting that my intuitions about markets and culture are closer to a Weberian sociologist than to those of an economist, which makes [...]

My housemates are kind souls stirred by the best within the otherwise hard human heart. Do they reach out with a hand full of nutritious grain to starving children? No. Do they seek to ease the suffering of those dispossessed by tsunamis or earthquakes? No. Do they help grant one last wish to tiny unfortunates [...]

OK. I’m officially sick of it. The very moment folks started calling themselves “members of the reality-based community,” it made me want to wretch on my Pumas. Why not be honest and call yourself a proud member of the “you’re either stupid or evil if you don’t agree with me community?” I understand the supposed [...]

Via Logan, this Brad Plumer post:
At any rate, I can’t see any real reasons why democracies wouldn’t go to war with each other. Presumably I’ve missed something. But if not, that means the question of why, historically, democracies haven’t bloodied each other up is mostly due to the fact that democracies are a recent phenomenon, [...]

Yale Law Professor Akhil Reed Amar has suggested:
Divide the state into one hundred equally populous single-member districts, as under the current system. Give each person one ballot and one vote, but within each district, after the votes are cast, don’t just add up the votes and in effect waste or ignore the votes of those [...]

I am convinced that the mind is at least moderately modular. The mind is composed of an interrelated suite of neural “programs” selected to solve problems specific to different domains of human activity. I’ve recently been intrigued by the idea that a variety of modules that operate according to different rules might provide some basis [...]

Thank you President Bush. This is beautiful.
The important thing to understand is that the attempt to turn Social Security into nothing but a program for the poor isn’t driven by concerns about the future budget burden of benefit payments. After all, if Mr. Bush was worried about the budget, he would be reconsidering his tax [...]