So last night, Gene and another coworker and I realized that the most fitting way to commemorate the day was with a parable of the conflict between science and blind adherence to tradition, between an inclusive, cosmopolitan worldview and one that separates people sharply into distinct groups, between the quest for the protection of human […]

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Some things are too big to chatter about, and also too big to chatter about anything else. No postings Wednesday. Go talk to a friend or something.

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Sullivan links a Tony Blair speech in which Dubya’s biggest fan points out that if, on September 10th, someone had proposed pre-emptive action against al-Qaeda, many of us would have reacted more or less as sceptics on invading Iraq have. We would have said: well, is there enough evidence to justify thinking this is a […]

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So, alas, Radley beat me to most of what I had to say about this silly blogburst on the purported sexism of blog linking inaugurated by Dawn Olsen. The charge makes very little sense. If there’s a place where gender can be put aside more easily than in the übertextual Blogosphere, I can’t think of […]

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So I’m going to be hanging about at work late for the inaugural forum in our Young Americans and Social Security series. Come to hear the gospel of personal accounts, and taunt me as I fiddle with the sound levels. And if you’re a gorgeous philosophy Ph.D., feel free to stick around and get a […]

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So this is the only thing I’m going to write about the Big Anniversary, and it’s not even really about it. Or rather, it is about the anniversary, it’s not primarily about 9/11. I can’t stand any of it. Probably many of the op-eds and reflective NPR essays and tributes and mediations and the whole […]

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Apres-work on Friday, I headed over to the west lawn of the Capitol for a protest against the noxious RAVE Act (that’s “Reducing Americans’ Vulnerability to Ecstacy” — how very droll). There were a handful of anti-RAVE signs here and there, but for the most part it seemed like a big ol’ dance party. And, […]

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I’ve just reformatted my old Laissez Faire Books columns (well, most of them — a few left to do) and linked them from the Essays page. Also, after a few months working at a public policy tank started making me question my long term career plans (viz., joining the professoriat), picking up Kripke’s Wittgenstein on […]

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So rifling through the MP3s on my laptop, I discovered that the “You and Me” song from the Romeo & Juliet soundtrack is one of those songs I can no longer listen to without triggering an emotional malestrom — a distinction it shares, rather absurdly, with “Barbie Girl.” (No, not because of any impossibly proportioned […]

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Kentuckian Donald Stites is trying to stop Sanitation District #1 from seizing his land via eminent domain for a sewage treatment plant. The catch: he’s got to post a $3m bond — what the District claims a delay will cost them — in order to get an appeals court hearing. If he loses the case, […]

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