Okay, that is totally unfair not only to Seth Stevenson, who, so it appears, is not even gay at all, but also to gays, who are, most of the time, no worse than the rest of us, but when Seth loudly proclaims, over at Slate, “Why do we love Lady Mary, the Dowager Countess, and…
Author: Alan Vanneman
2011—Freedom rising abroad, declining at home
2011! What a terrible year! In the U.S., at least. I can’t judge the long-term results of the “Arab Spring”—but then neither can anyone else. An end to autocracy, or another version of 1848, with hope first breaking out everywhere and then disappearing just as fast? Who knows? But if the forecast for the Muslim…
Ten aircraft carriers? Ten? We’re hanging by our fingernails with eleven!
Over at the New York Times, Elisabeth Bumiller and Thom Shanker team up to deliver a story on possible cuts in defense spending that, one must say, is not entirely misleading. While picturing Defense Secretary Leo Panetta as straining every nerve and sinew to achieve the near-impossible—cutting our grossly swollen defense budget by 10 percent…
Nobel Prize Winner Meets Capitalism, Gracelessly Succumbs
I’ve been reading Sam L. Savage’s sometimes too breezy but often quite informative The Flaw of Averages, largely a paean to distributions, which are in fact quite interesting. Among other things, he tells the story of the famous Black-Scholes equation, which tells you how to minimize the risk in your stock portfolio over time. Myron…
HAPPY NEW YEAR—So Not the New Yorker Once More!
For New Yorker-approved humor, go here. “I know it’s not much consolation, but in a lot of ways, I’m more of a prisoner than you are.” “I think you know why you’re here. Nobody’s going to miss a couple of dumb teenagers from Hoboken? That was not smart, Larry. That was definitely not smart.” “It’s…
The dangers of writing a headline while drunk: “Mitt Romney is wild like a stallion”
So you won’t have to read the article (by Roger Simon for Politico), Mitt did not beat an Iowa citizen’s face into mummy with his flint-like hooves. Too bad!
Skipping Friday, pretty much
It’s Saturday in Samoa. The country, which pretended it was east* of the International Date Line to appease pushy Americans finds that its economy is now more Asian than American, and decided to skip Friday entirely this year to get in sync with the people who make the Pacific happen these days. The NYT has…
Ron Paul: I’m not a bigot, I just pretended to be one to manipulate the masses and cash in on their stupidity
No, that’s not Ron talking, but, from all accounts, if he bothered to tell the truth about the Ron Paul Freedom Report, that’s what he’d say. I refer you to knowledgeable libertarian blogging heads like Shikha Dalmia, Steve Horwitz, and David Wiegel. Dalmia summarizes Horwitz as follows: “Horwitz recounts chapter and verse demonstrating that comments…
Harvard Hush-Up: A little veritas goes a long way
Over at the Nation, Charles Gross has a fascinating article on disgraced Harvard professor Marc Hauser, who was found guilty of “eight counts of scientific misconduct” by a “secret investigating committee” at Harvard and who resigned from Harvard earlier this year. Gross is a a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Princeton University and does…
Dude, he’s always been your grandmother!
Recent blog entry by Tim Noah: When Did David Brooks Turn Into My Grandmother?