Congratulate Radley Balko on his new gig as a policy analyst studying nanny state initiatives for the Cato Institute. Keep an eye out for his mug to appear here

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Gene notes a heartening sight from Friday evening’s pub-crawl. A bartender at Velvet Lounge who was visibly pregnant had posted a sign above the bar which read: “I am pregnant. Please don’t smoke near the bar.” People seemed generally accomodating, staying on the other side of the room if they were smoking. This woman, who […]

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I figured it might be worth cross-posting some comments I made on this thread, where one poster argues that it’s dishonest or irrelevant to bring up anecdotal claims of plummeting business at specific bars due to smoking bans, because aggregate analyses in California and New York show no net economic impact. First, I can think […]

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Matt makes the case that utilitarians have to count other regarding preferences, such as the squeamishness of some heteros about open discussion of homosexuality, in assessing public policy. In a stripped down sense, this claim is clearly right: these kinds of preferences can’t be per se left out of a utilitarian calculus at the highest […]

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I’m slated to be on DC’s news channel 8 this afternoon at 4pm debating the proposed DC smoking ban. Update: Well, that was fun; I don’t think I made too tremendous an ass of myself. If anyone caught it, notes are always appeciated.

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So, my inclination is to regard the attempt by folks like Richard Dawkins and Dan Dennett to get atheists rebranded as “brights” as kind of silly. Nevertheless, I cracked a smile at Dennett’s response to Dinesh D’Souza’s equally ridiculous Wall Street Journal op-ed on the phenomenon. Folks on the right have a gift for making […]

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Tyler Cowen links to research showing that love is neurologically similar to obsessive compulsive disorder. I can’t imagine this being terribly surprising to anyone who’s actually been in love…

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I don’t usually cross-post my own Hit and Run stuff, but this item seems preposterous enough to mention twice…

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So Instapundit‘s linking to this “communitarian defense of patriotism,” which I’m not sure is even intended seriously, since the argument turns on one highly questionable undefended premise and a really glaring fallacy of decomposition. Let’s break it down. Step one: individuals in a democratic society bear responsibility for the actions (or failures to act) of […]

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I’m cited in the Washington Times. When do I get my Vast Right Wing Conspiracy decoder ring?

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