Unqualified Offerings

Broke eyeglass frames. Sad. Read War Nerd instead. Fun, in a scary way. Via Unruled.

Tim Lee responds to Matthew Yglesias’ criticisms of the Cato Calculator by building his own. In comments, he answers my own concerns about the Cato Calculator’s income assumptions.

Two interesting items over on Crooked Timber this evening. First, Henry Farrell reviews Gregg Easterbrook reviewing Jared Diamond, but what’s interesting is his general point:
It seems to me that there’s a shared attitude towards science among various right-leaning technophiles (Glenn Reynolds being a paradigmatic example). Roughly speaking, they tend to agree with science when it […]

We anti-interventionists are fond of quoting “the friends of liberty everywhere, but the guardians only of our own.” I remain convinced, moreso than ever, that this is the only principle on which a wise and just foreign policy can be based. But as “friends of liberty everywhere,” we can only be pleased that today’s Iraqi […]

“But studying the great minds in isolation is like trying to do ecology by examining mounted trophies alone” - Lively essay by Jason Kuznick, “The Law of the Artichoke: Toward a Social History for Classical Liberals.”
The historiography of mentalité in the mid 20th-century sense–and worse, the historiography of material conditions–is so colored by Marxist assumptions […]

Longtime Washington Post essayist Joel Achenbach has a new blog (11 days old) on the Post’s website. The Post, more clueful than you might imagine, provides him both permalinks and an RDF and Atom newsfeed. So far the adaptation to ever-newer media is fitful:
One unsettling development: [Post honcho Leonard] Downie came by the other night […]

Time differences being what they are, Iraqis in Iraq should start voting soon. (Voting by exiles has been happening all day.) Godspeed to them.

Thomas L Knapp has a worthy appreciation of the marines who died in yesterday’s helicopter crash. (Via James Landrith.)

I need to get to be early tonight, so let’s make it quick.
Andrew Olmsted continues the “Is this war necessary?” discussion with some consideration of the Second World War. My WWII opinions are at variance with both approved opinion and default isolationism. I understand and sympathize with the concerns of many of the pre-war isolationists […]

Quotable Matt Rossi:
I was recently discussing my love of odd quantum physics theorizing and how I like to use it in my work with someone today (while looking at essays for the new book, coming this summer from Prime Books, and yes, that was pretty shameless of me, but it does relate) when I realized […]

Doug Feith has made a “personal and family reasons” decision. Alas, he is unlikely to live out the rest of his days in bitter obscurity or rueful reclusiveness. He’ll slide back into a foundation sinecure until the wind changes, maybe amuse himself trying to torpedo the latest chance for Israeli-Palestinian peace in the meanwhile.
Always welcome […]

Doug Feith has made a “personal and family reasons” decision. Alas, he is unlikely to live out the rest of his days in bitter obscurity or rueful reclusiveness. He’ll slide back into a foundation sinecure until the wind changes, maybe amuse himself trying to torpedo the latest chance for Israeli-Palestinian peace in the meanwhile.
Always welcome […]

All eight Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted against Alberto Gonzalez. On the Blame Where Blame Is Due front, all ten Republicans voted in favor.