In Praise of $520 Shoes

I find it difficult to get worked up over the fact that John McCain is a bit of a dandy and enjoys $520 shoes. McCain and his wife are wealthy and it’s difficult to imagine that them spending their money on shoes is somehow morally inferior to, oh I don’t know, leaving it in their [...]

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Political Correctness Inside the Academy

Apparently psychology is the most “politically correct” academic discipline, according to a recent study by Solon Simmons (reported on by Inside Higher Ed). Sociology, English, history, and elementary education round out the top five. Political science, as Fruits and Votes notes, comes in right at the median, in between business and criminal justice. Interestingly though, [...]

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Two Dead in Knoxville Unitarian Church Shooting

Jim David Adkisson, armed with a gun, walked into the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, TN, and killed two people, injuring seven others. Why, you may ask? Well:
According to the affidavit requesting to search Adkisson’s home, the suspect told investigators liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country. Adkisson also blamed [...]

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It’s Not in Their “Economic Interest”

Wherein I take something one blogger writes and use it as an excuse to launch into a broader discussion only vaguely related to the original point.
Eric Martin offers something of a Thomas Frank approach to the issue of working-class whites and candidates that promote abstinence-only education and oppose contraception. Commenting on the Brookings Institution’s [...]

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The Princeton Review Rankings

The new Princeton Review rankings are out and apparently my undergrad institution is full of “Birkenstock-Wearing, Tree-Hugging, Clove-Smoking Vegetarians” and “Dodgeball Targets,” a place where “Class Discussions [are] Encouraged” and “Intercollegiate Sports [are] Unpopular or Nonexistent, not to mention somewhat repetitively that “Nobody Plays Intramural Sports.” The “Gay Community [is] Accepted,” and it contains some [...]

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Top Five Guilty Pleasures on my iPod

Well this is certainly one way of getting back to blogging…
5. R. Kelly, “I’m a Flirt”

Mr. Kelly is the type of man that pees on 14 year old girls and writes lyrics like “Let me remind you that I am the king of R&B.” This song, however, is just satisfying on [...]

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The Dark Knight and [Random Academic Subject Here]

I’m not a big fan of superhero movies, but I guess I kind of want to see The Dark Knight. Apparently I need to hurry, because I really want to read about The Dark Knight and game theory and The Dark Knight and politics (also here). There’s probably a much longer list of posts like [...]

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The Prince of Darkness’s Corvette

Robert Novak apparently hit a pedestrian in his Corvette yesterday. Two thoughts: First, it happened near 18th and K. I walked down 18th and L towards 20th and L every morning last summer to my internship. How bizarre would it have been to have stumbled across this? Second, and perhaps less trivial, he was apparently [...]

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What Has Joe Lieberman Become?

The Jewish version of Jesse Jackson, according to Ta-Nehisi Coates.

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Ways in Which Matthew Yglesias is not Punk

He writes:
It’s of course flattering for an event to have it sell out quickly. But all selling out really proves is that you haven’t priced your event correctly. A venue selling tickets to something wants to maximize revenues not maximize sales and the revenue-maximizing price is rarely going to be the same as the market-clearing [...]

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