I can’t tell you how often Abby (7 going on 14) has gone into our library/office to find a book to read (or how often Oz, 4, or Ann, 2, carries them around, pretending to read). We’re still accumulating our collection, but she’s never come away without a book or three. Usually, I’ve got to […]
Mark Twain on the statistics of indiscriminate mass shootings in 2015
December 4, 2015 by
As the debate over how public policy should respond to mass shootings whips into a heated fury of facts, figures, statistics and memes, I can’t help but remember Mark Twain’s insight on the media: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.” The last few days have seen a proliferation of examples […]
Review: “A Free-Market Monetary System” and “A Pretense of Knowledge” by Friedrich A. Hayak
February 7, 2012 by
I recently read the short brochure “A Free-Market Monetary System,” a compilation of Friedrich A. Hayak’s 1974 Nobel Prize speech “A Pretense of Knowledge” and a short essay on proposing a free-market monetary system (hence, the name, see?). Both are short, and neither waste any time proposing radical changes to what was then, and indeed what is still, the status quo in monetary and economic policy.
Both the essay and the speech are worth reading.
In “A Free Market Monetary System,” [cont…]
Tea Party bait in the NYT: “You are white, Republican, and racist. Oh, and theocratic, too.”
August 18, 2011 by
I’ll admit it: just the fact that the story is coming from the New York Times gives me pause. But there it is: “Crashing the Tea Party,” by David E. Campbell and Robert D. Putnam, a couple of professors who think they have profiled Tea Party members based on some wide ranging research. The results are provocative and, […]
Is your University short of cash? Just increase law school tuition.
August 1, 2011 by
Let’s say you’re the dean of a law school on the East Coast with just four years as dean under your belt. As your accomplishments, you can list the following: Increasing the school’s US News Ranking from 170 to 117 Higher bar passage than when hired A new building almost completed Securing a donor willing […]
When truth is stranger than fiction: a revenge plot foiled
July 27, 2011 by
Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction. Or at least would make good fiction. Straight from the pages of the New York Times comes this story about rape, revenge, conspiracy, mistaken identity, and an innocent wrongly accused. It’s definitely good enough for an episode of Castle, if not for one of Dick Wolfe’s many iterations […]
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