January 2008
11 posts
shbrown: Reading Gerard Manley Hopkins: "Margaret,... →
shbrown: Oh natural wonder! Oh spring! I just saw... →
“Giorgio warned me, “We have a saying in this business: ‘Privacy and...”
– US intel chief wants carte blanche to peep all ‘Net traffic
“Our habit of moralizing problems, merging them with intuitions of purity and...”
– The Moral Instinct - New York Times
“Even though the income tax distorts work incentives, any regime with an...”
– Louis Kaplow & Steven Shavell, Why the Legal System Is Less Efficient than the Income Tax in Redistributing Income, 23 J. Legal Stud. 667 (1994).
Judging...
In the television show, Futurama, there’s a great scene that shows a Macintosh computer churning on a process while displaying “Judging…” on the screen. In the future, computer programs do the judging.
Both my mother and I received stern letters from the DMV this month telling us that we were bad drivers and that we needed to be more careful. This letter was generated...
Non-Breaking News
In every airport I’m in there are CNN screens scrolling trivialities like they are urgent matters. And then they repeat them again and again, like national obsessive compulsive disorder.
Some days there just isn’t any news that’s worth reporting. They could fill up the newspaper with comics and we could all sigh with relief that at least the world was good for a day. But they...
America: The Great Mix Tape
In my 4th grade civics class the big controversy was that America was not actually a melting pot. “Think of it more like a mixed salad,” my teacher said. “Every part maintains its own individuality, but contributes to the collective dish.”
I prefer the metaphor of a mix tape. Since I get sentimental around election season, the way that some people get sentimental around...
shbrown: We should speak more about the weather,... →
shbrown: Stormy morning. I love to wake to rain. →