Unqualified Offerings

By Thoreau
I miss the Clinton administration.
Boris Yeltsin got so drunk during a 1995 visit to Washington that Secret Service agents found him a few hundred feet from the White House clad only in his underwear and trying to hail a cab — because, he explained, he wanted a pizza.
Somehow I doubt that [...]

By Thoreau
Being worried about my own job security, I totally understand why people will go to desperate lengths to try to find a job.  And I certainly have disdain for those who would stop them from finding jobs.  Frankly, there’s nothing in this world more repugnant than trying to stand in the way of a [...]

By Thoreau
The quarter is about to start.  I have calmed down from my plans for dramatic insubordination over the furlough issue (although I still reserve the right to raise holy hell if they make this any more complicated than it already is).  Current plans:
1)  I arranged my furlough days to cancel one of the experiments [...]

It’s not my intention to make a habit of defending the Washington Redskins as an enterprise, but it is my intention to ride my football hobbyhorses like a very hag until they collapse in a puddle of sweat and urine. Thus we turn our attention to Tom Boswell’s Monday column.
Boswell mostly says things that are [...]

By Mona
My maternal aunt is one of my favorite people, even tho we disagree on almost everything political and religious; she’s just, on a personal level, extremely sweet and kind. She is a Glenn Beck devotee, and horrified that I despise her guru and do not put stock in his jeremiads. So, we’ve been trading [...]

I’ve got a few responses to Megan’s piece rebuking Ezra Klein and me on healthcare costs and innovation, but the aspect I want to touch first is that of course I understand how the libertarian analytical framework distinguishes public from private expenditures; I just reject any absolute version of the framework now. To be more [...]

By Thoreau
The Onion reports that climate change is exposing numerous mad scientist lairs, secret military installations, and other objects once hidden under the Arctic ice cap.  Particularly disturbing:
For the time being, most researchers have shifted their attention away from the ice caps and toward finding a way to contain the giant reptile monster Bizarricus, who [...]

By Thoreau
My other favorite Senator is Russ Feingold, and via Julian Sanchez I see that the good cheesehead* has introduced legislation to roll back certain egregious provisions of the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments.  I am quite confident that Congressional Republicans will see this as their best chance to curtail Hussein Obama’s atrocious liberty-destroying [...]

By Thoreau
This evening my wife told me the story of a dog she had as a kid.  Turns  out, she had a libertarian dog!
1)  Although there was no fence, he never, ever strayed outside the property line.
2)  When somebody from the CIA came by to ask questions about their neighbor (the neighbor worked for the [...]

By Thoreau
A researcher at my alma mater detected brain activity in a dead salmon.  Insert undergrad joke here.*
The point was that this activity was some sort of artifact in the data, and it was presented as evidence for the need to develop better statistical methods to deal with it.  (Don’t ask me, I don’t know [...]