Author: Eric Scheie

I’m glad Dave Price put up a post to commemorate the defeat of Communism, and I’m glad Glenn Reynolds remembered it too Matt Welch asks an excellent question: The defeat of communism 20 years ago was the most liberating moment in history. So why don’t we talk about it more? And here’s an excerpt from…

An article that Glenn Reynolds linked about the up-and-coming search engine Bing reminded me that something is rotten in the state of Google — especially where it comes to searches related to abortion. If you’re familiar with Google (and who isn’t?) you know that most of the time when you enter a search word, you…

One of the reasons I am against Global Warming theory is because it’s not just a theoretical argument or a scientific position. The theory that man-made CO2 causes warming is so inextricably intertwined with the notion that the power of government must be utilized against CO2 that it can literally said to be built in.…

Cornered by an interviewer, Jerry Garcia tries to explain.

In an amazing development I learned about at Greg Mankiw’s blog, a first year graduate student in Economics has won the Nobel Prize! In Economics! LONDON — The surprise choice of first-year graduate student Quintus Pfuffnick for the Nobel Prize in Economics drew praise from much of the world Friday even as many pointed out…

Maybe I’m too sensitive to images, but for some time, I’ve been wondering something about the Obama logo. And I have to ask. Do we have a president who wants to be a soft drink? Or do we have a soft drink that wants to be president? Or does it matter? I realize it’s all…

While I’ve read reports like these before, it’s a bit of a shock to see them finding their way into the BBC. But find its way this one did, with a headline sexy enough to make any sceptic drool: What happened to global warming? This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so…

Speaking of considerations related to crime and punishment, I sometimes wonder whether (in some minds, at least) abortion is becoming a sort of moral reductionist trump card that can be used to trivialize concerns about nearly anything else. It’s a version of the slippery slope argument, and I first heard it a few years ago…

After playing around with the idea a bit, I thought this was funny enough for the blog: Coco is hoping I don’t print it out and paste it on the gate.

Crime and punishment seems to be under a great deal of discussion lately, and it’s one of those issues that always seems to be lurking in the background, even when the issue is not directly about crime and punishment. Roman Polanski, for example is not an ordinary sex scandal, but is a debate about crime…

I was going to comment on Barack Obama winning the now-thoroughly discredited Nobel Peace Prize, but I see M. Simon has beaten me to it, and said this: Expect a war. A big war. Soon. Yes, as I said just last week, “If you want war, prepare for peace.” The Brits are already having fun…

A dishwasher fill valve consists of a simple plastic body, to which are attached a solenoid and an inlet coupling, and a few plastic interior parts. Mine conked out recently, and here is what it looks like, in its disassembled state: Yes, I did clean it up and reassemble it, but the solenoid remained dead.…

I love Facebook. It’s the perfect medium for tracking down long-lost friends, getting in touch, and then reminiscing. Which is great. (Even though I wouldn’t say anything there that I wouldn’t say here in my blog) But as they luxuriate in the warmth and camaraderie of a technology that seems calculated to invite dredging up…

In what I think is a very ominous development, this administration is moving away from a longstanding tradition of defending the principle of free speech, and is instead supporting a UN resolution with “a number of disturbing elements.” It emphasizes that “the exercise of the right to freedom of expression carries with it special duties…

My apologies for titling this post with a 1960s slogan, but the stuff I have been reading about makes me so angry that I thought a little vintage rhetoric was justified. Anyway, Glenn Reynolds is not kidding when he speaks of “THE CRIMINALIZATION OF EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING”: With the proliferation of criminal law, everyone is…

Speaking of a lack of virginity, the last thing I am interested in is David Letterman’s sex life. (No really. Do I have to explain why?) Just thought I’d point that out in case I’m accused of deliberately avoiding it. This is not to say that I’m in any way supportive of sexual harassment; even…

What do vinyl records, slow food, mechanical watches, cloth diapers (and the more primitivistic diaperless movement), as well as what I think is the latest example (linked by Glenn Reynolds yesterday) — running barefoot — have in common? The old way was better? Bring back lost innocence? Things that evoke a return to simpler, more…

One reason is that signs like this amuse me. Via Robert Bidinotto, who blogs here. UPDATE: Here are more signs that also amused me: But I might as well be honest and point out that while the above might look like conventional Tea Partiers, they are actually angry gay rights protestors in Beverly Hills, California.…

While I have nothing against morality per se, sometimes an overabundance of morality can get in the way of analysis, and this is especially true in economic analysis. So, while I’d like to say that I think that the biggest problem with capitalism is socialism, these concepts are so dripping with morality that it’s tough…

Sometimes I get so sick of the Internet that I want to kill it. As a perfect example of my frustration, I have been plagued by Firefox slowdowns which have grown steadily worse since I was forced to largely stop using Internet Explorer. This started with sluggishness whenever I tried to type URLs in the…