Harm?
Anti-bullying Campaigns: Doing More Harm Than Good? by Helene Guldberg. Of course extreme cases of bullying should be tackled, but let’s not pathologise normal childhood relationships. Alternatively, the findings could indicate that the majority of children don’t share the current [...]
Rules
Check out The 32 Rules of Thanksgiving Touch Football here.
Boomerang
The New York Review of Books reviews Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World by Michael Lewis. Related: Here’s a lengthy excerpt from a previous book by Lewis, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine.
Henson
CT: The Gospel According to Jim Henson. Seems like a lot of franchises have been getting reboots in recent years. Add the Muppets to the list, with a new film releasing this week. After a number of years in the [...]
Revenue Enhancement
What Part of Deficit Reduction Does Congress Not Understand? by David Harsanyi. Our government has the time to worry about school lunch menus in Boise, Idaho, but the Senate hasn’t found the time to pass a budget in Washington, D.C., [...]
Misconceptions
Science & the Sacred: Misconceptions About Evolution. Part 1. Part 2.
Free Speech
John Stossel: America: Land of Free Speech — Sometimes. We’re proud that America is the land of free speech. That right is recognized in the First Amendment, and we usually take it seriously. It wasn’t always the case. Read more.
Waste of Money
According to AP “occupy protests cost nation’s cities at least $13M.” See here.
Winter Approaches
The Arab Winter Approaches by Bruce Thornton. See here.
Simpletons
The Simpletons by Matt Welch. David Brooks, Thomas L. Friedman, and the banal authoritarianism of do-something punditry. More at Reason.
Drum Solo
Animal plays with The Roots.
Paranoid Style
Revisiting the Kennedy Assassination: Frank Rich and the Paranoid Style by James Piereson. See here.
Silenced
Browse inside Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes Are Choking Freedom Worldwide by Paul Marshall and Nina Shea here. Listen to an interview with Nina Shea here.
Nudging
FT reviews Deceit and Self-Deception: Fooling Yourself the Better to Fool Others by Robert Trivers, I’ll Have What She’s Having: Mapping Social Behaviour by Alex Bentley, Mark Earls and Michael J O’Brien, and Brain Bugs: How the Brain’s Flaws Shape [...]
Warren
The New York Times profiles Elizabeth Warren.
Losing Touch?
When Did the GOP Lose Touch With Reality? David Frum makes his case here.
Spending
Supercommittee Tax Fight Is About Increasing Spending, not Reducing Deficits by Daniel J. Mitchell. Republicans are considering a surrender on taxes because they are afraid that a deadlock will lead to a sequester, which would mean automatic budget savings. And [...]
Good Sex
Teaching Good Sex by Laurie Abraham. Sex education in America was invented by Progressive Era reformers like Sears, Roebuck’s president, Julius Rosenwald, and Charles Eliot, the president of Harvard University. Eliot, according to Kristin Luker, author of the book “When [...]
Dead End
California’s Dead End Republicans by Steven Greenhut. Whenever I write and speak about California’s dire economic and political situation, I am met by people who demand answers. “We know the state is in a mess,” they say. “Why don’t you [...]
Spending
Jeff Jacoby: Kicking Our Spending Habit. When Bill Clinton was president, the national debt rose by an annual average of $193 billion; when the profligate George W. Bush was in the White House, the yearly debt increases averaged $612 billion. [...]