Politics
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Coney Island integration
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1 min read
I live ten blocks from Madison Square Garden, site of the RNC. Starting a few days ago roads were blocked off, police are on every street corner, and helicopters hover overhead; it feels like martial rule. So on Sunday we escaped to Coney Island. The beach wasn’t quite as crowded as in this 1940 photograph,…
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Croquet for Bush
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1 min read
The big NYC protests at the Republican National Convention have come and gone, but the best was away from the madding crowd, held by the satiric Billionaires for Bush: Billionaire Croquet Party 10am, Central Park, SE area of the Great Lawn 500,000 anti-Bush protesters will be barred from Central Park so that we can play…
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Tucker Carlson
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1 min read
Tucker Carlson is a conservative/liberterian I’m actually able to listen to and enjoy. He’s got interesting, intelligent guests and manages to focus on conversation without boring the audience. He’s also the rare young man who looks good in a bow tie.
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Running on Empty
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2 min read
Peter G. Peterson was recently on Charlie Rose discussing his new book, Running On Empty : How The Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It (here’s an excerpt). Here’s two paragraphs that sum up his argument: The theological war between Republicans and Democrats is bankrupting our future.…
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The cost of war
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3 min read
From now until November I’ll probably be blogging more on American politics, both to refine my views and because this here is my little soapbox. You’ve been warned. The Bush campaign’s assertion that “The world is a better place without Saddam” is absolutely true. Saddam is an evil man. But this statement looks only at…
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Oprah for president
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1 min read
Michael nominates Oprah for president. Hey, if Arnold can do it, Oprah certainly can.
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Risk and Uncertainty
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1 min read
‘The economist Frank Knight drew a distinction between risk and uncertainty. Risk, he argued, is something you can calculate – the probability of someone losing at roulette. Uncertainty, though, arises when the odds of success or failure are incalculable – the probability of someone deciding to play roulette in the first place, and being pickpocketed…
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Havel on Iraq
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2 min read
The recent New Yorker interview with Václav Havel is interesting for many reasons. Of timely interest is his comment on the Czech support for aggression towards Iraq: “I think it’s not by chance that the idea of confronting evil may have found more support in [eastern European] countries that have had a recent experience with…
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Venn Diagram
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0 min read
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Library Internet Porn Law Struck Down
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1 min read
A federal judicial panel on Friday overturned a U.S. law that sought to protect children from Internet pornography by withholding government subsidies from public libraries that fail to install filtering software on personal computers. – Yahoo news This is the third time this kind of law was struck down. Would it be unthinkable for Congress…