Sub Specie Æternitatis

For reasons set forth in an earlier post , the author recently had reason to read Thomas Hager’s The Demon Under the Microscope: From Battl...

Last month, a commenter at this blog’s blogfather, Advo Advo, if you read this, please drop me a line so that I can thank you directly. , r...

One of the author’s favorite jokes was used Probably . to illustrate the issue of incentive incompatibility in one of the popular economic...

When the author was a boy, he wrote a universal theorem prover. Given enough time and memory, it would prove every theorem in large parts ...

A recent post described the common, but little known, Article II courts and how they offend the most basic principles of due process of law...

The author apologizes for the two-week silence on these pages; other matters took priority. One shall endeavor to avoid such long droughts ...

The ObamaCare risk corridors provide subsidies to insurance companies that make losses on the marketplaces while collecting revenues from t...

This is George Washington’s axe, the curator said with pride, gesturing toward a worn and rugged thing, locked inside of a glass case, hel...

BREAKING NEWS. ORIGINAL TO BLOG. MUST CREDIT. The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have fired their long-term spokesman Krzy...

Yesterday the State of Maine passed an initiative that purports to reform the campaign finance system for state elections and enhance publ...

A Smithsonian Magazine article offers a periodic table of elements with each element marked by the country of first discovery. This occas...

Note: Please see the opening note there . It applies here too. A large number of papers, journals, websites, and even television channel...

Some random googling brought to one’s attention a controversy from 2011 involving same-sex marriage , one’s favorite blogger , the most inc...

Today coincides with both dates. As a tribute, let’s post both Shakespeare’s speech and something more reasoned by Macaulay.

Two trends at modern American universities are the disinvitation or disruption of non- (or merely insufficiently) Progressive speakers and ...

Sometimes people—even competent, intelligent people with responsible positions—just don’t know things one really would expect them to know....

The Supreme Court decision in Mapp v. Ohio (1961) extended the Exclusionary Rule which bars the admission of evidence obtained in violatio...

This blog stands accused of dwelling on tawdry subject matters in order to draw the clicks of the prurient masses. Perhaps so, even if, a...

Since the 1930s U.S. wholesale markets for natural gas and electricty, today totaling over $400 billion annually, are subject to comprehens...

While one is rather pleased with the quality of the readers of these pages, one feels—perhaps incorrectly—that the quantity is not quite as ...

The server logs of this site show a number of frequent visitors from around the world. But while some comment, others just read. One look...

Past posts have decried professional cartels , like those of the legal and medical professions, and obliquely praised economists for not ha...

The Judicial Branch of the United States government is established in Article 3 of the Constitution. But most non-lawyers would be quite s...

In a few weeks, Ohio will vote on not one, but two, constitutional amendments on marijuana legalization . The first, sponsored by a group ...

Update October 18, 2015: Concluding paragraph added. One of Hitler’s inspirations was Karl Lueger, the Christian Socialist mayor of Vienn...

Hemings was Jefferson’s slave and as such could not decline his advances. In countless cases, slave owners used this power to force themse...

A few days ago, something remarkable occurred when the author performed a Google search on a technical subject. Suddenly the search result...

A conundrum which once much puzzled the author is the following: Certain nationalities are, in the author’s experience, an absolutely marve...

Note: This post expands on the concluding paragraphs of another recent post. Please see there for context. When the author was young—in...

A number of interesting pseudonymous commenters have sufficiently piqued the author’s curiosity that he performed a few googles and in sever...

Recently a semi-prominent Haskeller , some of whose work the author has in the past enjoyed, has unfurled his personal flag . It consists ...

And now for something completely different : A medical doctor discovers the procedure to calculate the area under a given curve. In 1994...

Note: Please see the opening note there . It applies here too. One frequently hears the argument that there can be no markets in health ...

Note: Please see the opening note there . It applies here too. The provision of health care requires the services of doctors, pharmacist...

Note: This and one or more follow-up posts contain nothing that the smart and well-informed regular reader After all, these readers had ...

Update August 13, 2016: Some details in the below account are in need of correction. Please see this post. Update: Added the interesti...

It is a commonly heard impression that most appliances just aren’t as good as they used to be. Even high-end washers don’t wash, showers d...

This seems very interesting. Perhaps the idea of the next year , if the author can ever grasp it. Also, another example that the human b...

Prof. McGinnis McGinnis is probably the best law professor blogger not permanently ensconced at the Volokh Conspiracy . He is always eithe...

A striking, and perhaps increasingly common, feature of Progressive political rhetoric is how Progressive ideas only ever exist in two stag...

It is commonly observed, and commonly criticized, practice of businesses when deciding where to locate a major new facility to demand subs...

The title of this post is the license plate the author is sorely tempted to acquire for the Tesla Model S he has been driving for the last ...

Today the two leading candidates for the presidency are a pair of friends . One is the nation’s top crony-capitalist , a wizard manipulat...

While the author is temporarily preoccupied with a suddenly urgent matter Quite fascinating and perhaps subject of a future post. he recomm...

H was a non-Communist German Jew born in Eastern Europe in the early part of the twentieth century. As such, he had the honor that two of...

Comments on the blog were shifted from Blogger to the more capable Disqus some months ago . After an apparently brief and unintentional r...

Being free; being rich; being secure from external enemies—these are all very good things. The great good news of twentieth century histor...

As a continuation of the recent series of posts on violence, family, brains, and eating, See Genius and Insanity , A Genuine Mystery , A P...

A recent post posited a genuine mystery: Why would evolution design a brain with capacities as useless as, for example, performing higher ...

The author traces his ancestry mostly to the Swedish town of Uppsala, near Stockholm. Uppsala is famous mainly for two things: its univers...

The title is one of the favorite and oft-repeated sayings of Prof. Scott Sumner of The Money Illusion and EconLog . Yet, it bears repeati...

Update October 3, 2015: See A Partial Explanation for a Genuine Mystery . Perhaps the greatest mystery in the world is based on the foll...

In 1992, the FDA under David Kessler, to great fanfare and cheer from feminist activists, banned silicone breast implants in response to na...

Over at National Review, something of intramural squabble To Replace Boehner, Why Not Newt for Speaker? , Speaker Gingrich? Not Really Co...

One of the most remarkable episodes in the history of cryptography began in the 1970s when researchers at IBM developed what was eventually...

One of the promises made to students as they enter law school is that one day during their sojourn there, they will have an epiphany and gr...

The existence of an effective, binding, civil justice system has two implications for you. The first of these is that, should somebody leg...

The titular proposition, not endorsed by any politician or commentator the author is aware of, The closest parallel are some remarks unsurp...

Exchanges may be mutually beneficial and yet never occur because of the Prisoner’s Dilemma. If one party can costlessly renege on its prom...