From a conversation earlier today: Me: Yeah, I think she won that debate by TKO. Friend: Right, like in Mike Tyson’s Punch Out. [beat] Or… boxing.

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One of the things that initially drew me to Mike Doughty‘s music, way back when he was fronting Soul Coughing, was the way he used alliteration (or stabreim for the Wagnerians out there), internal rhymes, and unusual rhythms to make not just the voice, but also the language serve as an instrument. The line off […]

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Ex-roomie Greg Newburn passes me the talking-stick on the question: “What 5 books are you vaguely embarassed to admit you haven’t read?” over at the new group blog Liberteaser. Off the top of my head: Law’s Empire by Ronald Dworkin: This one’s not so embarassing in itself, except that in the circles I move in, […]

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My interview with economist Paul Seabright on evolution, institutions, and market society.

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Chris Mooney and I had a brief e-mail debate a little while back about the topic of the piece he’s got up at The American Prospect today. He writes: Kansas’s previously proposed science standards had appropriately defined science as “the human activity of seeking natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us.” […]

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Slate’s belated obit for comedian Mitch Hedberg has a few clips of him in action. Wikipedia’s page also has a good roundup of some of his bizarre koans.

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I’ve been reading Hot Property: The Stealing of Ideas in an Age of Globalization by former Perot running-mate Pat Choate, who I recently saw speak at the New America Foundation. Desultory skimming and what I gleaned from the talk suggest that it’ll be less hysterical than I’d initally suspected—he seems keenly aware that domestic copyright […]

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Just in case anyone cares, I find I’m unsually happy with the stuff that’s recently been playing over and over on the ol’ iPod: The Long Winters: The Worst You Can Do Is Harm and When I Pretend to Fall Rilo Kiley: The Execution of All Things Metric: Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?

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I saw Margaret Cho doing stand-up at the Warner Theater last night before making my way to an aptly-named “Scantily Clad” party. She was generally pretty funny, but there was one aspect of the act I found sort of befuddling. At numerous points, she’d just throw out some policy position—”The death penalty is wrong”; “Why […]

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It’s a measure of the tenor of the times that I spotted two pieces today considering why the most rigid and illiberal forms of religious observance seem to be gaining ground: One, by Judith Shulevitz at Slate, offers a sort of rational choice explanation in terms of barriers to entry as a way of ensuring […]

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