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Academic Insights for the Thinking World
Some bloggers have declared today to be “Blog Quake Day” and are calling for online donations to agencies assisting the relief effort in Pakistan. Oxfam declared today that “rich countries” are “failing to respond generously to the UN South Asian Earthquake appeal.” In related news, Anatol Lieven, author of America Right or Wrong, wrote a […]
“…one of their clearest duties is to keep a wary eye on the gentlemen who operate this great nation, and only too often slip into the assumption that they own it.” — H.L. Mencken
That New Yorker article on the use of phony words to protect a dictionary’s copyright got some belated play on the seminal weblog Boing-Boing today. The article focuses on the search for the phony word in the New Oxford American Dictionary, 2nd Edition (NOAD). Erin McKean, the editor-in-chief of NOAD, whimsically likens a lexicographer’s copyright […]
Joseph Stiglitz: As the income distribution becomes increasingly skewed, with an increasing share of the wealth and income in the hands of those at the top, the median falls further and further below the mean. That is why, even as per capita GDP has been increasing in the United States, U.S. median household income has actually been falling.
The Financial Times has published a great excerpt of the forthcoming book from Tim Harford, The Undercover Economist. Here is a representative graph from the excerpt and the book that Steven Levitt called “required reading”: Supermarkets will often produce an own-brand “value” range, displaying crude designs that don’t vary whether the product is lemonade or […]
President Bush’s nomination of Harriet E. Miers to the Supreme Court has politicians and pundits questioning her qualifications for the job. But in the hyper-partisan world of Supreme Court nominations, do qualifications really matter? The answer—which may surprise those who claim the appointment process is a “mess,” “badly broken,” and “unpredictable”—is absolutely.
David S. Reynolds, author of Walt Whitman in the Lives and Legacies series, responded to J.M. Coetzee in the “Letters” section of the New York Review of Books this week: J.M. Coetzee concludes his review of my new book Walt Whitman [NYR, September 22] with what is evidently meant as a criticism. He writes, “Reynolds’s […]
Philip Pullman took a breather from the ‘Narnia-gate’ media frenzy yesterday to respond to the other big literature-goes-to-Hollywood story of last week: Paradise Lost will be coming to a theatre near you in 2007! “There have been rumours about a film of Paradise Lost for a long time,” Pullman says. “There was even talk of […]
In Friday’s ‘Dear Economist’ column for the Financial Times, Tim Harford bravely answered this puzzler from one of his loyal readers: Is the value of a British person’s life greater than the value of an Iraqi person’s life? And, speaking of bravery, check out Harford’s reaction to this terrible situation – from the ‘what would […]
– by Jill Quadagno Hank at Insureblog has written a thought-provoking review of my book, One Nation, Uninsured. I appreciate his willingness to take on this task and welcome the opportunity to engage in a debate about how we finance health care in this country. First, let’s consider Hank’s claim that I consider our current […]
Fred Kaplan over at Slate.com gave Nobel laureate Thomas Schelling quite a dust-up earlier this week, criticizing Schelling for the “crucial role he played in formulating the strategies of “controlled escalation” and “punitive bombing” that plunged our country into the war in Vietnam.” Tim Harford, who sang Schelling’s praises earlier this week, has responded today […]
I wonder what Milton would say to the news today that Paradise Lost is going to Hollywood. For those of you who want to experience the original before the movie comes out, Philip Pullman wrote the introduction to our most recent edition. We posted a short excerpt from Pullman’s introduction HERE. LINK to article (via […]
The left must fight imperialism in the name of patriotism. Barring a revolutionary and highly unlikely transformation of American mass culture, any political party that wishes to win majority support will have to demonstrate its commitment to the defence of the country. The Bush administration has used the accusation of weakness in security policy to undermine its opponents, and then used this advantage to pursue reckless strategies that have themselves drastically weakened the US. The left needs to heed Bacevich and draw up a tough, realistic and convincing alternative. It will also have to demonstrate its identification with the respectable aspects of military culture. The Bush administration and the US establishment in general may have grossly mismanaged the threats facing us, but the threats are real, and some at least may well need at some stage to be addressed by military force. And any effective military force also requires the backing of a distinctive military ethic embracing loyalty, discipline and a capacity for both sacrifice and ruthlessness.
Tim Harford, author of the forthcoming book Undercover Economist, wrote a glowing appreciation of Thomas Schelling today. Schelling is, of course, the 2005 Nobel laureate in Economics (shared with Robert Aumann) awarded for his work to enhance “our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis.” Harford writes: No one person can claim credit, but […]
The good people over at InsureBlog.com have finished their review of One Nation, Uninsured by Jill Quadagno. It is, on the whole, a reasonable treatment of Prof. Quadagno’s work from the opposite side of the debate. A debate that, in the end, boils down to one fundamental question, which InsureBlog formulates this way: Where is […]
David M. Kennedy was quoted extensively in a Salon.com article on the casualties and related military costs of the Iraq War. This follows on Kennedy’s Op-Ed in the NYTimes on July 26 where he said that a return to “a universal duty to service — perhaps in the form of a lottery, or of compulsory […]