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photos by Lara Shipley

Communist Monopoly

June 12th, 2007 · 2 Comments

Hah!

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Tags: Random Cool Link

BitTorrent Whack-a-Mole

June 12th, 2007 · Comments Off on BitTorrent Whack-a-Mole

A federal court has ordered the popular site TorrentSpy to begin logging user activity, which the Motion Picture Association of America would dearly like to inspect. The article linked above bills this as a victory for the movie industry, but that’s doubtful in the broad sense. If it’s public knowledge that MPAA lawyers are watching […]

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Tags: Tech and Tech Policy

About That Whole “Double Guantanamo” Thing…

June 12th, 2007 · 1 Comment

John Hood notes that the conservative civil libertarian group American Freedom Agenda is going after GOP contenders who won’t pledge to uphold habeas corpus and judicial oversight of domestic surveillance, with Mitt Romney first in their sights. I’d love to see this pick up steam. If it doesn’t, a more sober generation of Republicans may […]

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Tags: Horse Race Politics

Patent Impending

June 12th, 2007 · 11 Comments

I’ve been remiss in failing to link to Tim Lee’s excellent New York Times op-ed on software patents, but at least my sloth means I can simultaneously links his sharp response to some early criticism. The latter post makes a perceptive Hayekian point which, alas, suggests it should be difficult to get a sound empirical […]

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Tags: Tech and Tech Policy

Equal Opportunity Internet

June 12th, 2007 · Comments Off on Equal Opportunity Internet

CEI’s Eli Lehrer weighs in on the lawsuit against eHarmony, the just-for-straights dating site which claims its elaborate matchmaking algorithm just wasn’t designed with gay couples in mind. He writes: It strikes me that there’s an even broader point: A great many of the costs of discrimination exist because it takes place in the physical […]

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Tags: Sexual Politics

Thundercats, Hooooooooax!

June 12th, 2007 · 1 Comment

Sadly, the images alongside this Esquire article about a live-action Thundercats movie were too clearly Photoshopped for the gag to really sell for more than an instant, but they do seem to have pegged my generation: For a split second, I was pretty excited.

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Tags: Art & Culture

Mysteries of Revealed Preference

June 12th, 2007 · 9 Comments

For reasons not entirely clear even to me, I was looking over Rolling Stone‘s list of “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time”, which gives a little précis of each record and also reports its total sales. I don’t think I need to fear revocation of my libertarian decoder ring if I make the trite […]

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Tags: Art & Culture

Richard Rorty, Actually Deceased in External Reality

June 11th, 2007 · Comments Off on Richard Rorty, Actually Deceased in External Reality

I only just noticed that Richard Rorty died late last week. I can’t say I was hugely in sympathy with his general program, but Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity is highly accessible and well worth reading.

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Tags: General Philosophy

Quote of the Day

June 8th, 2007 · Comments Off on Quote of the Day

Dave Weigel spots a… telling line in Michael Medved’s prose aneurysm in response to a new California policy of allowing conjugal visits between gay inmates an their partners: Gay conjugal visits should cause the public to look past platitudes about love to focus on the raw actuality of male-male eroticism. Close the newspaper and just […]

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Tags: Sexual Politics

What, You Think Yer (Hic) Better’n Me or Sumfin?

June 8th, 2007 · Comments Off on What, You Think Yer (Hic) Better’n Me or Sumfin?

Will Wilkinson links an interesting new study of how Germans of various political orientations differently value money and status. Jonah Goldberg, in passing, offers this: Germans, it seems to me care more about status than Americans do. I don’t know whether this is true or not, but it does seem a little odd to see […]

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Tags: Sociology