Unqualified Offerings

By Thoreau
Is this anonymous commenter at FSP:
Whenever a student comes up to me to talk about graduate school, I take him/her aside and give a talk explaining that he/she has a lot of better things to do with his life. Over the years, I have learned to take a salesman like approach [...]

By Thoreau
Joe Biden is pleased to report that Spinal Tap has lost not one but two drummers, and this is surely a harbinger of imminent victory.  Now, granted, the Old Boss said the same thing on a routine basis, but it’s different this time because, um…something.
In other news, David St. Hubbins, Derek Smalls, and Nigel [...]

Following up on this morning’s post about Bryan Caplan’s expedition to the Heinlein Continuum:
1. In comments, Matt opines that I’m “rapidly becoming the David Horowitz of ex-libertarians.” I thought that was Michael Lind. But otherwise, Matt is right. I mean, David Horowitz renounced his youthful left-wing radicalism, wrote a memoir of his revolutionary days and [...]

Bryan Caplan: Hell is other people.
Other People: Hell is Bryan Caplan.

By Thoreau
I don’t have time to explore all my thoughts on this study of SAT scores and college achievement, but I’ll just observe the following:
1)  I am not a social scientist, and this has not gone through peer review, so there may be deep methodological flaws that I’m unaware of.  It is written by education [...]

By Thoreau
For obvious reasons, Muslim groups in the US feel a very urgent need to do what they can to prevent troubled youths from joining terrorist groups.  There’s the obvious humanitarian desire to prevent terrorism, and the self-interested (and understandable!) desire to be seen as part of the solution rather than part of the problem [...]

By Thoreau
I just finished chapter 2, which ends with his “Checkers” speech and a recounting of pundits recoiling from his common man schtick.  The Sacramento Bee said that this alleged common man is actually the front man for rich interests.  Pundit Mort Sahl said that if this sort of appeal actually works then Nixon should [...]

By Thoreau
I finally got around to watching the “LHC rap” video about the Large Hadron* Collider.  Yeah, I’m like a year behind on this, but I could sense the awfulness and so it took a long, long time to finally go and check it out.  Well, I have now viewed it, and I have learned [...]

by Mona
The White House is battling Glenn Greenwald and his critique of likely SCOTUS nominee, Elena Kagan. It appears she may be a virtual Sam Alito on matters civil libertarian and Executive power. The whole world is a battlefield, doncha know. Martial law forever!

By Thoreau
Nobel Peace Prize Winner Barack Obama is looking to codify formal rules (which will be in a secret document, so we’ll have to take their word that the rules are fixed rather than changed at convenience) for holding people without trial in places like Bagram.  See, it is possible to prosecute drug lords captured [...]