Jill at Feministe says that a “very questionable” new study which found that obesity can “spread” across social networks makes her feel as though it must be “I Hate Fat People Week.” But isn’t this just an inversion of the very same story everyone pretty much accepts as an account of why some people become […]

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I got to see the fabulous new Pixar movie Ratatouille earlier this week, and have to report that A.O. Scott’s strikingly effusive review is pretty much justified. But it also makes it even harder to credit director Brad Bird’s denials that he was influenced by the philosophy of Ayn Rand, something many reviewers inferred from […]

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Pace Slate, I find it hard to believe Esquire‘s July cover story about Angelina Jolie can be “the worst celebrity profile ever written.” I’m inclined to nominate this vigorous fellating of Keanu Reeves in Details, which the inimitable Matt Welch references in his takedown of the entire genre.

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David Boaz warns about Giuliani’s authoritarian streak, a drum Matt Welch has been banging for a while now.

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Glenn Reynolds: ALVARO VARGAS LLOSA: “Conservatism has always been pro-immigration.” Has it always been pro-illegal immigration, though? Because that’s what seems to be bothering some people. I don’t know Glenn’s own views here, so I don’t mean to pick on him, but this does remind me that I’ve always found something a shade disingenuous about […]

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As a postscript to the post below, a friend IMed to complain about something I’ve noticed as well over the past few years: As libertarian ideas become somewhat less marginal, gain a more recognizable voice in the national debate, we start to see the term “libertarian” applied to all sorts of notions on which I […]

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So, a while back, my “old” (which is to say, about 3-year-old) iPod photo’s clickwheel stopped working. As far as I could tell, the hard drive and software and logic components were all fine, and responded normally when hooked up to a computer. As an external hard drive, it worked just dandy. But with an […]

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Time to finally open a Cafepress account… Context here.

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Well, this is a little unusual: I basically agree with the gist of Liam Murphy’s response to the Dan Klein essay I discussed in a post below. Coercion is either going to be a strictly descriptive term with, at most, indirect moral significance, or a morally loaded one. But in the latter case, your application […]

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That’s how my friend Will describes books that he hasn’t actually gotten around to reading, but about which he’s consumed so much of the secondary literature that he feels as though he has. (A Theory of Justice seems to be in this category for huge numbers of people—which quickly makes sense if you both understand […]

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