Ezra links to philosopher Slavoj Zizek’s critical review of the excellent movie The Lives of Others, drawing special attention to this passage: Like so many other films depicting the harshness of Communist regimes, The Lives of Others misses their true horror. How so? First, what sets the film’s plot in motion is the corrupt minister […]

[Read more →]

Via Radley. I thought he acquitted himself pretty well (in part because Stewart was clearly a friendly interviewer) but I did think there was room for improvement in his reply to the old saw about libertarians having to “trust corporations” even as they’re highly skeptical of government. Paul defrayed this with a joke about not […]

[Read more →]

Kevin Drum links Spencer Ackerman’s recent Washington Monthly feature, arguing against the use of “support the troops by bringing them home” rhetoric: Haunted by Vietnam, Democrats are determined to express support for the troops. This is admirable. The truth of the matter, however, is this: many troops in Iraq, perhaps even most of them, want […]

[Read more →]

Jesse Walker and Laure both flag a New York Times story reporting (apropos of last week’s post) on how amateur porn is doing to the porn industry what folks have long predicted (whether inaccurately or prematurely remains to be seen) blogs would do to punditry: Displacing the professional product with vast amounts of amateur substitutes […]

[Read more →]

In A Study in Scarlet, Arthur Conan Doyle has John Watson describe one of his earliest conversations with Sherlock Holmes: His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might […]

[Read more →]

A public service announcement: Meme is an extremely useful word/concept, and its mainstreaming is all to the good. However, if you’re not specifically calling attention to how some idea, belief, or behavior spreads in the population as an abstract replicator, or discussing the selection processes to which they’re subject, there’s an excellent chance you just […]

[Read more →]

Andrew Sullivan finds more disturbingly apt analogues.

[Read more →]

Tyler Cowen muses: [R]aising children is the main thing that goes on in a marriage, yet few of us choose life partners on that basis. The film [Knocked Up] suggests that a random allocation might be better than selecting a partner on the grounds of smarts, common interests, attractiveness, how good he or she makes […]

[Read more →]

HT: Boing Boing.

[Read more →]

The music industry’s international trade group, IFPI, has just released a list of ten “inconvenient truths” about file sharing, and as Ars Technica’s analysis notes, it’s just kind of amateurish and embarrassing. It reads like a whiny Usenet flame, and alternates between the true-but-uninteresting and the massively unpersuasive. As with Paris Hilton at the MTV […]

[Read more →]