Sociologist Duncan Watts (whom I interviewed a couple years back) has an article in the New York Times Magazine on the idea of “cumulative advantage” in culture markets—a kind of aesthetic version of Schelling points or stock bubbles that, says Watts, explains why it’s so hard to predict what will become the “next big thing” […]

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In a bizarre coincidence, two separate people in as many weeks have independently remarked to me that they recall feeling their first erotic stirrings when the watched the classic flick Labyrinth, starring David Bowie as the glam goblin king Jareth. (Or, as one of the aforementioned correspondents described him, a “hot, mysterious, slightly fey older […]

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Garance Franke-Ruta detects “1950s thinking” in the police decision not to immediately warn students about a killer on the loose at VA Tech. This seems uncharitable. Obviously, in hindsight, we all wish a warning had been issued and the campus closed. But most people who kill someone don’t then go on a shooting spree. And […]

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An interesting point from Ezra as an afterthought on his recent appearance at Cato: Towards the close of the event, someone in the audience argued that moving towards a national system would hugely retard medical innovation. I never understand the evidence for this claim. A huge amount of the tech advances come from public institutions […]

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Via AmSpec, a new report by the research firm Mathematica finds that, in a way, both sides in the war over abstinence education have gotten it wrong: Abstinence programs don’t leave the kids who do become sexually active more likely to have unprotected sex, but neither do they make any difference in whether and when […]

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I can understand why some feminist bloggers are digging in their heels in the aftermath of the dismissal of charges against the Duke lacrosse players. Obviously, falsely accusing people of rape is a tremendously destructive act, both for its effect on the accused and because it tends to make people more skeptical of genuine victims, […]

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Well, the primary function of this for me was to confirm that I’ve almost entirely lost the debate chops I spend four years building up at NYU, but you can check out Ezra Klein & me on a new episode of BloggingHeads TV discussing American individualism, cost-sharing in healthcare, TSA watchlists, trade & IP, and […]

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This may deserve to become a sort of recurring category: Pundits affecting surprise or bemusement at some putatively contradictory or inconsistent behavior which, given ten seconds thought, isn’t all that surprising or bemuse-worthy at all. Today’s case-in-point: John Podhoretz is just tickled that erstwhile Wonkette Ana Marie Cox, who thinks it’s fine to make frequent […]

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Sully quotes a reader’s reaction to his now-epic running debate with Sam Harris. The gist of it is that atheists are awfully uncomfortable with “mystery” and so keep stubbornly demanding good reasons for things which don’t admit to any sort of deductive proof. The limited extent to which I think there’s something to be said […]

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The Spider-Man star opines: I’ve never been a major smoker, but I think America’s view on weed is ridiculous. I mean, are you kidding me? If everyone smoked weed, the world would be a better place. Somewhat more interesting is the passing mention of the fact—old news, apparently, but news to me—that Carl Sagan was […]

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