An unsettling thought: now that major media are crediting blogs with having taken Trent Lott’s cojones and served them up on a silver platter after mainstream news dropped the balls, so to speak, will the blogosphere use its powers for good? Because this has certainly pointed a spotlight on, e.g., Josh Marshall and Atrios — […]

[Read more →]

Reading Ray Monk’s biography of Ludwig Wittgenstein put me in mind of Tom Lerher’s quip about the “people who make you realize how little you’ve accomplished.” Lerher said it was sobering to contemplate that “when Mozart was my age… he had been dead for two years.” Well, when Wittgenstein was about my age, he was […]

[Read more →]

Mike Doughty hasn’t gotten around to posting the lyrics to his new tune online yet, but since he typically does so, I assume it’s OK for me to post this transcription. (If not, someone drop an email & I’ll take it down; no legal nastygrams required.) AMERICAN CAR by Mike Doughty My circus train pulls […]

[Read more →]

A week home in suburban New Jersey, doing nothing more spectacular than sleeping late and spending late nights talking over a drink with an old friend or two, has been supremely rejuvinating. Even at my age, really old friends — people who knew you in (say) early adolescence, as an embryonic but recognizable precursor of […]

[Read more →]

Glen recently penned (err.. keyboarded) a reply from an economist’s perspective to this post by Mark Kleiman on temptation and responsibility, and wondered if I had anything to say in philosopherese. Mark asks whether a person who tempts another party into self-destructive behavior is immunized from responsibility (Glen talks about legal responsibility; I’ll stick to […]

[Read more →]

Amy notes a prime instance of reductio creep.

[Read more →]

Opponents of war with Iraq have been arguing for some time now that, however depraved he may be, Saddam Hussein is a “rational actor,” if only in the narrow strategic sense that would make him deterrable and, by extension, make invasion unnecessary in order to contain him. I’d like to add to that the radical […]

[Read more →]

You can download a demo of Mike Doughty‘s new song American Car until January 1st. Doughty songs tend to grow on me over time, but having listened to it a couple times, I already like it. Opening line: “My circus train pulls through the night / full of lions and trapese artists / I’m done […]

[Read more →]

The Guardian reports that Malaysia is banning white folk from advertisements: But Malaysian officials this week pulled the plug on the adverts, saying they were “an insult to Asians” and could give Malaysians an inferiority complex. “Why must we use their faces in our advertisements? Aren’t our own people handsome enough?” the deputy information minister, […]

[Read more →]

Stanford’s bold decision to proceed with stem cell research is heartening, though the attempt to defuse criticism by claiming that somatic cell transfer isn’t “cloning” struck me, at least initially, as silly. Of course, it’s not reproductive cloning, but the term “therapeutic cloning” has long been the accepted one for this sort of procedure. But […]

[Read more →]