I’ve been reading with great interest the flurry of work produced in the last five or six years by a burgeoning group of “Social Intuitionist” scientists and philosophers who are using cutting edge findings from neuroscience and innovative fMRI experimental techniques to proble the neural bases of human moral reasoning. One of the most interesting […]

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I just watched A State of Mind, a fascinating documentary about North Korea’s Mass Games, a spectacle of synchronized gymnastics meant to instill communist spirit. Made with the complicity of the regime, it’s a bit sugarcoated, but plenty of interesting stuff slips through. (One advantage of dealing with a totalitarian system that’s sincere in its […]

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Via Wonkette comes an amusing Flickr set of publications produced by government agencies. As a bonus, many of them are actually linked from their cover pages, so you can thrill to the bike-safety adventures of Sprocket Man, get Customs’ guidance on distinguishing bolts from screws, or read the heartwarming “story of human conservation” that was […]

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The Washington Post‘s “Bench Conference” blogger Andrew Cohen is sorely vexed by an “atrocious,” “shrill” article on Kelo and eminent domain in Parade. Here’s Cohen: In some ways this hysteria isn’t surprising given the reaction last year’s big Supreme Court eminent domain ruling received from mainline journalists. The convention [sic] wisdom had it then (and […]

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I’m not sure who I’m more embarassed for after reading this TownHall column: Thomas Sowell for writing it, or PowerLine for linking and quoting such a self-evidently ludicrous argument so uncritically. At 76, Sowell can at least plead creeping senility if he’s slipping; the PoweLine boys lack that excuse, but my expectations for them are […]

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With Marty Peretz of The New Republic in the dock on a charge of producing overwrought prose, I’d normally be ready enough to serve as witness for the prosecution, but Jack Shafer’s attempted takedown in Slate charges in without probable cause, even if there is a good chance Peretz has Bill Buckley’s contraband thesaurus stashed […]

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TPM Cafe’s Election Central has an amusing story about a man named Richard Goodstein who showed up with a gaggle of Lieberman supporters to heckle Great Lefty Hope Ned Lamont when the Senate hopeful made an appearance at a local diner recently. As it turns out, he’s a registered lobbyist in D.C.—though he hung up […]

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Via Patri Friedman at Catallarchy comes a truly mind-blowing (sorry, mind “boggling”… there might be children reading) 1965 film which some wise soul has put online in full for posterity: Perversion for Profit. Narrated by “outstanding news reporter” George Putnam, P for P is an anti-smut jeremiad underwritten by the “Citizens for Decent Literature,” an […]

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My old friend Tim Lee acts as a kind of hyper-wonky Crypt Keeper for two harrowing short tales of private interests capturing state power. At his home base of the Show-Me Institute, he reports on a paradigm case of eminent domain abuse: A Saint Louis lessee who decided he’d rather be an owner has sicced […]

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Dilbert scribe Scott Adams shares his favorite conspiracy theory: My favorite conspiracy theory is the one that says the world is being run by a handful of ultra-rich capitalists, and that our elected governments are mere puppets. I sure hope it’s true. Otherwise my survival depends on hordes of clueless goobers electing competent leaders. That’s […]

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