Farewell to Albert Hoffman, discoverer of LSD, who has died at the incredible age of 102. His discovery changed the world in ways previously unimaginable and still largely incommunicable. One thing that we certainly can say about Hoffman and his invention is that they made the world a far stranger place, which I for one [...]
Archive for November, 2011
Congratulations to my good friend Dan D’Amico, who just defended his dissertation and now holds a PhD in economics. He will start his professorial career this fall at Loyola University in New Orleans. If Dan is reading, I’ll see you in NOLA this summer where will drink much, and you will undoubtedly chide me for [...]
So in case you hadn’t noticed, today is Earth Day. It’s not a holiday I really make a point of celebrating, but I had a couple of enviromental related points to make and this provides as good an opportunity as I’m going to get for a while. First, did anyone else catch some of that [...]
But not necessarily for protection or sport. Syracuse professor Arthur Brooks points out a number of interesting correlations with gun ownership in the Wall Street Journal: Who are all these gun owners? Are they the uneducated poor, left behind? It turns out they have the same level of formal education as nongun owners, on average. [...]
No, this post has nothing to do with Robert Mugabe, as the title might suggest, but you will see the connection momentarily. The New York Times Magazine has a lengthy article up on the potentially huge role cellphones can play in ending global poverty. I’ll confess that I haven’t read the whole article. However, what [...]
Over at the LewRockwell.com Blog, David Gordon notes an important change in the way our government treats military officers since the ’50s: General Petraeus testified before Congress in full military uniform. In doing so, he follows recent custom, but an older tradition better reflects the principle of civilian control of the military. Douglas MacArthur and [...]
From the BBC: Germany’s celebrity polar bear Knut has triggered a new controversy by fishing out 10 live carp from his moat and killing them in front of visitors. Critics say Berlin Zoo should not have put live fish inside Knut’s enclosure. But German media report that the carp were put there to eat up [...]
This walrus has significantly more–and better–moves than I do. Because of things like this TV pilot, I’m really considering a whole series posts called “The Japanese: A Continuing Source of Bewilderment”. (NB: Most definitely, not safe for work.) I think these girls may have my hometown’s hero pegged. Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey.
This Onion video about al-Qaeda calling 9/11 conspiracy theories ridiculous brings up a little explored aspect of the so-called 9/11 Truth Movement: it’s premises are incredibly Amero-centric and subtly anti-Muslim. I’ve interacted with a few of these people who believe that the federal government or some major corporations must have ordered the destruction of the [...]
