The Yale historian Timothy Snyder first came to my attention in a footnote of an article in The New York Review of Books. The footnote gave a link to a series of 23 online lectures on the history of Ukraine, which I binge-watched over a period of about five days. I also read his books […]

Guest post as written by Infidel753 and taken from his Blog of the same name. Infidel753: Viruses of the mind, Infidel753 Blog Viruses are the simplest of all living things.  Indeed, it’s questionable whether they should be considered “living” at all.  A virus does not eat, breathe, digest, or perform any other of the organic […]

TANSTAAFL. There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Lunch. Someone pays, somehow. The standard textbook example is pilots who refill their plane at a gas station that offers them a “free” steak dinner while charging five cents a gallon more than another station at the same airport. The pilot and co-pilot get $50 dinners […]

This is the Big Story: a 100+ year near-record decline in commodity prices is enabling continued record wage growth and employment  – by New Deal democrat No important economic data today, so let me elaborate on the matter of “immaculate disinflation,” i.e., the decline in inflation without a decline in growth. I’m going to argue […]

Of late, Mr. Trump’s defense lawyer, John Lauro, has been making rounds of the TV News shows. All with a purpose, of course. Turns out that Mr. Lauro wants to defend Mr. Trump not against the charges of the recent indictment accusing Mr. Trump of conspiring to subvert American democracy but against other, different things […]

According to this WaPo article, the average physician in the US earns $350K/yr. I didn’t click through to the actual data, but from the first table, I’m guessing that “average” means median, not mean. And physician income isn’t a Gaussian distribution—there’s a long right-hand tail for the specialties. Why is this? It looks to me […]

How long until the historically tight jobs market reverts to trend?  – by New Deal democrat There are some very unusual cross-currents going on in the housing sector, revealed by yesterday’s existing home sales report. But it will take some time-intensive organization to present it to you, so I’m saving it for (hopefully) Monday. In the […]

Per the Heritage Foundation (Heritage), each year, American civilians use firearms defensively between 500,000 and 3 million times. Which is saying that they have been exercising their relatively newly lawful Second Amendment Right to bear arms for the purpose of self-defense a lot. Further research might indicate that the number is well below 700,000 (might […]

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, the notional Democratic presidential candidate, made himself even more foolish than he already was recently by speculating that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was engineered to protect people of Chinese and Jewish descent. Setting aside the fact that there is zero evidence that the virus was engineered and most evidence points to an […]

In humans, the traits of high intelligence and good judgment are unlinked. There are many such examples; viz: • Kary Mullis, who won for co-inventing the technique behind PCR testing, went on to deny that HIV causes AIDS, helping to sway South African president Thabo Mbeki into rejecting antiretroviral therapy, costing hundreds of thousands of […]