I’m back from the beach, and not a moment too soon to judge by the Noachian blanket that’s fallen over the eastern seaboard. Among the more sober diversions of the week away, we all got a fair amount of reading done. I made use of the first days to tackle John Barth’s Lost in the […]

[Read more →]

Ryan Singel reports that the Society for Professional Journalists is using distributed journalism to uncover the identity of the senator who’s placed a secret hold on a bill to strengthen the Freedom of Information Act.

[Read more →]

This sounds like a fun project: A blogger is encouraging people to take a photo of whatever they’re doing at precisely 2 p.m. Eastern Time this Sunday (June 2) and then email them to him, to be posted as a kind of global snapshot of that minute.

[Read more →]

Because Ezra and Ygz are inebriated enough that they think it’s a good idea to post this, a little Vertical Horizon in the style of liberal bloggers, almost-live from the Outer Banks:

[Read more →]

Naomi Wolf’s ridiculous, blissfully data-free piece on how teh pr0n is leaving guys uninterested in actual sex with real women has already come in for a well–deserved bludgeoning, but a couple more points worth making. First, the idea that guys are opting for unrealistic fantasy-women over the genuine article seems to run counter to the […]

[Read more →]

Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler’s concept of “libertarian paternalism” is generating renewed discussion on the heels of a Wall Street Journal debate between Thaler and my quondam mentor in the occult mysteries of libertarianism, NYU economist Mario Rizzo. For all that I’m a fan of linguistic precision, I think Will Wilkinson’s semantic critique of the […]

[Read more →]

I meant to link earlier this week Glenn Greenwald’s essay pointing out that while “precipitous” withdrawal from Iraq may well lead to more chaos and violence, so might staying.

[Read more →]

GamePolitics reports on a new video game law that flew through the New York State legislature faster than Sonic the Hedgehog on benzedrine. It includes a redundant provision mandating that new game consoles include parental-control technology (new consoles already do) and a dangerously vague one making it a felony to sell or rent to minors […]

[Read more →]

The Republican senator from Kansas—one of three participants in the Republican primary debates to avow disbelief in the theory of evolution—takes to the pages of The New York Times to explain his views. He starts off with some reasonable-sounding sallies, rejecting a stark contrast between pure materialism and the view that life on earth was […]

[Read more →]

An article in Scientific American introduces an interesting game theoretic puzzle, the Travelers Dilemma, and proceeds to spin some truly bizarre political conclusions from it. First, the puzzle. Since the effect of the little accompanying story, to judge by the comments at Digg, is primarily to induce people who don’t understand game theory to say […]

[Read more →]