Christmas is the time of year that brings out my least liberal, most elitist instincts, because it’s one of very few times each year I end up forcing myself into a mall to try to find gifts for miscellaneous relatives in the minimum possible time. (I couldn’t quite stomach it this year—I left after a […]

[Read more →]

Word is, the Olsen twins will be enrolling at my alma mater, where I hope and expect that their peers will subject them to the daily torture that they have so richly earned.

[Read more →]

No, no, I’m not referring to Kant’s dictum that all rational beings are obligated to have anal sex, but to this post by Brian Weatherson at Crooked Timber. He’s toying with a version of consequentialism that he believes evades some familiar intuitive objections to utilitarianism: Itâ??s a form of consequentialism, so in general it says […]

[Read more →]

When I find myself wondering whether some new buzz-drenched band is worth checking out, my first stop is usually Pitchfork Media, which has posted its list of the best 50 albums of 2003. There are some unaccountable omissions—the new Death Cab album Transatlanticism, which takes a few listens to grow on you but is quite […]

[Read more →]

Last night at Cato Prom (aka the annual Cato Xmas party / cruise) a friend informed me that a few lines from my recent piece on campaign finance reform got picked up in USA Today. I do hope people realize I was kidding: I got one e-mail shortly after the original article went online excoriating […]

[Read more →]

I get an e-mail to Reason’s letters address at least once per week from an unemployed IT professional outraged by outshoring. The most recent contained the following: Americans are being penalized because their standard of living requires them to earn at least 60,000 a year against the 6,000 a year an indian makes and less […]

[Read more →]

“I have recently been made aware of a market practice known as ‘short selling’ and am amazed that it is legal.” —Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson (Via Overlawyered.)

[Read more →]

I often think that if people had to face up to what BCRA really says, and what speech it bans, there would be more outrage about it. That in mind, I think someone ought to take out take out an ad in late October in which someone says the following: We believe in unfettered political […]

[Read more →]

Will has a humorous and brutal takedown of an embarassingly bad Jenny Roback Morse piece on the “natural, organic” purposes of sexuality. Unlike many conservatives, Morse actually refers to evolutionary psychology while invoking “nature.” Like most, however, she doesn’t seem to have a clue about the science itself. Oh, and I’ll add to Will’s list […]

[Read more →]

I’ve gone through and linked my Reason pieces over on the Essays page.

[Read more →]