Clarke at Boileryard thinks it’s odd that conservatives normally disdain arguments about how social conditions create bad or criminal behavior as absolving bad actors of responsibility, but themselves make those sorts of arguments about various awful regimes in the Middle East. There’s actually a more general tension there: Conservatives tend to be very sensitive to […]

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My friend Andrew Chamberlain offers up the following as a useful definition of (economic) injustice courtesy of economist Paul Heyne: It seems to me that our reflections on economic justice would be far more satisfactory if we recognized the connection between justice and the keeping of promises. I have increasingly come to think of justice […]

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Anyone else find it incongruous that the online ads for the dating service True.com invariably feature: Text referencing how they’ll help you find true love, and Visuals of D-cup cleavage? Are they guaranteeing that they’ll find your soul-mate and that she’ll be stacked?

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Benefiting and hurting others are ways of exercising one’s power upon others; that is all one desires in such cases. One hurts those whom one wants to feel one’s power, for pain is a much more efficient means to that end than pleasure; pain always raises the question about its origin while pleasure is inclined […]

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A fun game to play while working from a cafe with WiFi: Check out the shared music playlists in iTunes, then try to figure out on the basis of the collections which playlists belong to which of your laptop comrades. Also, two free business ideas for those cafes: Hook your speakers to an Airport base […]

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In honor of Cinco de Mayo, not one but two bloggeriffic happy hours have been announced: At the traditional Blogorama location, Rendezvous Lounge at 18th Street and Kalorama, there’s shindig in honor of Mike Intermittent’s passing through, courtesty of Jim “Unqualified Offerings” Henley. And, mere blocks away at Chief Ike’s, there’s a (likely somewhat more […]

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Something I neglected to properly slag on in the column linked below: I referenced in that piece an Economic Policy Institute brief purporting to show how dependent we all are on Social Security by showing what a large percentage of the income of benificiaries it constituted. But, of course, you start getting Social Security when […]

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Will’s post gets at it more clearly than mine below, so you can skip the scroll-down and just click through.

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It’s not terribly often that popular music lyrics hit me with a word I wasn’t familiar with, but that’s Mike Doughty for you. First track off his new album contains this verse: Aimless days, uncool ways of decathecting Painless phase, blacked out thoughts you be rejecting Yep, I had to look up decathecting, which apparently […]

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The Decemberists—whose show this Friday I’m ultra-psyched for—are on All Things Considered this afternoon; check it out. In a related vein: I note that both they and the Dresden Dolls have a certain self-conscious Brecht/Weill feel to their music. One more and I’ve got the requisite journalist’s three for a full-blown trend. Nominees?

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