Pledge Part Three – Bad Objections This issue seems to have generated quite a few strong feelings. There are a few objections that seem to crop up again and again, and so instead of cluttering the comment sections of a thousand blogs, perhaps I should collect some of them here, with responses. But, nobody’s *forced* […]

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Big fun this evening at the loungerrific Chi-Cha on U Street. Various D.C. area bloggers in attendance, including portions of the BeltwayBloggers crowd, and organized by the illustrious Jen Raj. And there’s yet another happy hour tomorrow at the 18th Street Lounge, this one sponsored by the AFF. And come to think of it, Friday […]

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Un-Pledge Well praise da lawd, a federal appeals court has ruled the pledge of allegiance unconstitutional! I’m just surprised that it took this long for a court to toss this absurd little loyalty oath, which drones into children’s minds the idea that this is “one nation, under god.” That’s the kind of jurisprudence that actually […]

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Whee! I am DSL boy! Taste my joy! It almost makes me wish I hadn’t summoned the voodoo loa Zaraguin to inject leprosy and napalm into the testicles of Verizon‘s CEO. Almost. In other news, I saw Minority Report this weekend, and am glad to see Spielberg back on form. Phillip K. Dick stories tend […]

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So Verizon finally got me a phone line. But they still haven’t managed to send me the DSL package, even though the DSL line is working, and I can’t seem to get it working with the old DSL modem I had lying around. Who would’ve thought that a company could manage to display so many […]

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Fudging Fair Use So you’ve probably run across someone at some point who has the sort of fuzzy understanding of the Bill of Rights that leads ’em to complain that “their First Amendment rights have been violated” whenever the moderator of an online forum won’t let them post something, or the NY Times won’t run […]

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Tribal Freak-Out Another interesting insight from the Cosmides lecture, which I forgot to mention. We evolved in social groups of about two-hundred at the absolute maximum. If you live in an urban area, or even a fair sized town, you probably see more human beings in a day than our tribal ancestors did in their […]

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Stealth Politics Political movements of all stripes expend lots of mental energy, and even more ink, agonizing over the question: “How can we bring the public around to our side?” Among libertarians, there are groups like the Advocates for Self Government which advise us on rhetorical strategies for the conversion of our friends and neighbors, […]

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The seminar is getting away from areas I’m already sorta familiar with — public choice, voting paradoxes, development economics — and into areas where I’m more ignorant. Which is great, because the lectures become much more information-dense for me. The lecture/discussion by Leda Cosmides sparked a lot of thought still in process… but I thought […]

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Looks like there is, in fact, a computer room at the IHS Workshop. What’s more, the dorms we’re staying in appear to have ethernet jacks in the room. Which means all I need to do is find an ethernet cable (I foolishly neglected to bring mine), and I can hook my laptop up there. Sweeet. […]

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