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Home Again, Home Again
I spent most of July in the UK, with limited Internet access (exacerbated by my Verizon iPhone’s inability to communicate with the European cellular services), and (I’ve only just realized this now)...
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Friday Humor
Three logicians walk into a bar. The bartender says: “Would any of you guys like a drink?” The first logician says: “I don’t know.” The second logician says: “I don’t know.” The third logician says:...
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Worst Puzzle Ever
From Air Canada’s inflight magazine: And since I’m sure someone will ask, here is, apparently, the only solution they could think of: (This puzzle brought to you by the same thoughtful folks who bring...
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There and Back Again
In a research paper with seemingly tragic consequences for science fiction fans, researchers in Hong Kong have confirmed that individual photons can’t move faster than light. (Hopes had been raised a...
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Turn Off Their Lights
The EPA announced yesterday that new regulations mandating fuel efficiency standards for heavy trucks will cost vehicle buyers $8 billion, but that will be paid for in fuel savings over a year or two....
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Tunnel Vision
The most fun you can have on the Internet is to find a beautiful, succinct argument with a conclusion so unexpected it seems like magic. For today’s fun, I am indebted to Michael Lugo, at God Plays...
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Last Night’s Debate
Putting aside all issues of who I did or did not agree with, and putting aside all issues of who I would or would not like to see in the White House, and ranking them solely on the criterion of...
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Ages of Innocence
Reading Edith Wharton’s Age of Innocence, it strikes me that this must have been the Mad Men of 1920. That was the publication date, but the story is set 50 years earlier, in a world poised on the edge...
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Jesus Christ!
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, writing in the Atlantic, has figured out that Jesus Christ wants you to be a Democrat. There are, you see, 2500 passages in the New Testament that call on us to care about...
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Looking Forward to Looking Backward
Each generation wishes it could go back fifty years and shake some sense into those people who were so bound by unnecessary customs, and so blind to the options they could have chosen and the changes...
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Thursday Puzzle
I love this problem, which I found on the Internet many years ago. I suppose you could find a solution by Googling, but that’s of course no fair. A standard pair of six-sided dice induce a probability...
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Friday Solution
Re yesterday’s puzzle, you’ll find answers in the comments. (We are blessed with some very smart commenters here at The Big Questions!!) Commenter Roger Schlafly pointed this Wikipedia article where I...
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Economics 102
One of Paul Krugman’s favorite tactics is to assert that all he’s doing is channeling the time-honored lessons of Economics 101 — pre-empting dissent with the implication that any dissenter must be...
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Mea Culpa
For the first time ever, I am deleting a post. The numbers in this morning’s post (now missing) were completely wrong as were, therefore, the conclusions I drew from them. For the record, all of the...
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A Consequential Study
By now you’ve probably encountered one of the various “do you push the fat man in front of the subway train to stop it from running over five innocent people trapped on the tracks?” puzzles that moral...
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Public Service Announcement
For the next several days, I’ll be in at the Liberty and Democracy Forum in Brazil, and likely out of Internet range. I’ll see you late next week. Click here to comment or read others’ comments.
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Travel Report
Thanks to Hurricane Irene, my trip to Brazil turned into a trip to Dulles Airport, from which I am now (after much scrambling) returned. I hope to make it to Brazil in the near future! Click here to...
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Terrifying Prospects
Paul Krugman wisely reminds us that: The odds are that one of these years the world’s greatest nation will find itself ruled by a party that is aggressively anti-science, indeed anti-knowledge. And, in...
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How I Spent My Summer Vacation
A few years ago, I discovered that reading on my Kindle is about 1000 times better than reading a book. This year, I discovered that reading on my iPhone is about 100 times better than reading on my...
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Panglossian Economics
In a radical departure from his previous expressions of dissillusionment, Paul Krugman has implicitly declared in his latest blog post that we are now living under the best of all policy regimes. I...
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