So, looking back over the last few posts, it occurs to me that I’m doing a fair job of ensuring that I’ll return to academia at some point by burning all the journalistic/pundit bridges someone like me would have taken. NatRev? I’ve mocked those poor stupid bastards more times than I can count, and don’t […]

[Read more →]

So I decided this weekend, more or less on a whim, to stop smoking, at least for the near future. I haven’t had one since Saturday, which doesn’t sound like all that long, but bear in mind that I normally would’ve had 40 or 50 since then by now. Anyway, my reaction so far is […]

[Read more →]

Tim Lambert observes that even if we believe Kopel (and I do) when he reports having inserted the Kleck attribution, this doesn’t necessarily mean this wasn’t the source of the number, since neither did he typically attribute the 2.5 million defensive gun uses annually (almost always mentioned in the same breath as the brandishing figure) […]

[Read more →]

Ok, whatever you think of the war, this is fairly amusing.

[Read more →]

Ok, I’ve got to confess, this makes me a touch uncomfortable. Seems some ignorant yahoo has a website where he posts photos of antiwar protestors, calling them “pathetic,” “un-American,” and even “traitors.” His hope, apparently, is that some of them will get fired. That’s stupid and thuggish, but it’s not the only thing that makes […]

[Read more →]

A reader sends the following regarding my bagging on K-Lo (below): You should *never* judge someone’s intellect or writing ability by how his or her prose looks once it’s been through the meat-grinder that is the American Enterprise’s editorial process. I’m no K-Lo fan, but you may want to cut her D’Souza review some slack. […]

[Read more →]

One of the most damning bits of evidence in the Lott controversy had been that the 98% figure for defensive gun brandishings he said he found in his 1997 survey had been previously attributed, not just to “national polls” (consistent, if misleadingly so, with his intending the poll he’d conducted) but also to FSU gun […]

[Read more →]

April is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers. Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade, […]

[Read more →]

I call upon the vasty open-source powers of the blog community to assist me where Google fails… I’m editing a book at work, and one of the things I’m trying to do is replace certain references and quotations from the author’s native Sweden (the book’s in translation) with equivalents from folks who’d be more familiar […]

[Read more →]

Xavier Sala-i-Martin is one of the world’s most well regarded growth and development economists. And this is his homepage.

[Read more →]