Random stuff I find interesting and you may not.
Why would a city, short of tax money in a crisis, pay an enormous sum to disable a public space from being used by the citizens who paid for it? Because the city can do nothing about the virus. In a crisis, we often worry about the wrong things. You’ve probably heard: The municipal government … Read more
The coronavirus is being politicized. We hear it all the time. A recent headline at The Atlantic reads: “The Social-Distancing Culture War Has Begun.” On the New York Times opinion page, a contributor laments: “The reopen America protests are the logical conclusion of a twisted liberty movement.” And Vox suspects that GOP megadonors backed recent … Read more
Local news, what’s left of it, has been great. Hard, sad stories, uplifting tales, appeals to community, Blitz spirit. I work on a local paper and couldn’t be prouder of what we’ve done. On the other hand, though: The big national news media, a purveyor of blather and bile in the best of times, have … Read more
Last week, I pointed out a recent report that blamed much of the spread of COVID-19 in New York City on the subway system. Recently, I’ve collected a series of memos suggesting that New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is specifically culpable in this spread. During the 2012 influenza epidemic, the MTA issued a policy … Read more
Edna Ferber, author of Giant, had a great ear for one of the subtlest American dialects: High Texan Bulls***, the mother tongue of almost every politician to make it from the Lone Star State to the national stage, from Lyndon Johnson to Ross Perot to George W. Bush to Rick Perry. “It was part of … Read more
You discover that one American institution is already undermining the country’s future: the universities. They have everything you need: a goldmine of intellectual property created by professors with poor op-sec and who are happy to share it for some rubles or yuan deposited directly to their bank accounts; cybersecurity practices that would make a 90s … Read more
Sit‐down restaurants and bars have been shut down. Public officials are discouraging or even forbidding people from doing “unnecessary travel,” even if it is to visit a second home where they might be able to socially distance themselves better than in their first, more urban home. All sorts of other rules are being passed, all … Read more
While Washington is printing money that is increasingly going to the wealthier companies with more accountants and more lawyers, and while the politicians are busy crafting the next stage of their economic relief plan, the offer of reward, the threat of punishment, and the insurance companies should play a major role. There are a lot … Read more
Higher education today resembles a massive Ponzi scheme. Colleges desperately recruit ever more marginal students who stand little chance of graduating. Before their inevitable withdrawal, those students’ tuition dollars fuel the growth of the bureaucracy, which creates the need to get an even larger pool of likely dropouts through the door to fund the latest … Read more
Reviewing public policy and the coronavirus, I’ve mostly focused on the manifest failures of Washington bureaucracies. But let’s not overlook the politicized incompetence of the World Health Organization, a U.N.-connected bureaucracy that ostensibly exists to prevent global pandemics. Much of that criticism, as illustrated by this National Review column by Senator Marco Rubio, has focused … Read more
What’s really driving dollar-store bans? Could it be a simple lack of empathy? . . . Should city governments dictate where you can shop for food? If your neighbors see a need for a store, and happily patronize it, should outsiders shut down that option? These are the battle lines of the emerging movement against … Read more
Not content with stifling dissent at overwhelmingly leftist law schools, the progressive legal establishment is now threatening to trample conservative judges’ freedom of association. Their proposal should be shot down, and its remains should be buried. The proposal comes from the Committee on Codes of Conduct of the Judicial Conference of the United States. It … Read more
In the years after World War II, flush with cash and optimism, American planners “skipped the messy iterations” of gradual urban and suburban growth, Charles L. Marohn Jr. explains. Instead, they subsidized ambitious new developments and saddled them with codes aimed at keeping them static. After all, once you’ve figured out the perfect design, why … Read more
As Trump reshapes the federal judiciary with staunch conservatives and controversial picks, some Harvard Law School students appear to be thinking twice about applying for clerk jobs with them, and passing up what are generally considered plum positions. … Harvard Law Students Avoid Applying For Clerkships With Trump-Appointed Judges Not sure this is a bad … Read more
Abridged Chuck Marohn’s TED talk on infrastructure In 1997, my Samoyed dog, Sebaka, and I spent a long overnight up in the city of Longville, Minnesota, pulling manhole covers in an attempt to determine where all the sewage was coming from. The city’s wastewater treatment facility was nearing capacity, something that should not … Read more
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp shared his story about the worst tech book review he found on Amazon in 2019. Stephen Few is a respected author and speaker whose books on data visualization and analysis are well-received. But when it comes to Amazon reviews, you simply can’t make everyone happy, a particularly good example of which … Read more
Draconian punishments for minor acts and politicized prosecutors have brought faith in the justice system crashing down. . . . Today, over 90 percent of American defendants waive that right in favor of a prosecutor’s proposed plea bargain, because, as Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz notes in his new book Guilt by Association, they are … Read more
I love Emma Thompson’s acting. I wish somebody would tell her about Skype. The great English actress is a climate-change activist, “activist” here meaning “a celebrity who cares about popular causes in public.” When she recently was accused of hypocrisy for jumping on a jet to attend a climate-change rally — international air travel is … Read more
“You have to go to college” was an article of faith when we were growing up in poor families. Now we wonder if our ticket out of poverty still has the same value. Far too many of this generation are leaving college with substantial debt and few meaningful job opportunities. Put a little differently, what … Read more
A recent study published in Nature Chemistry finds that 39 percent of respondents in eight European countries say they “agree” with the statement that “I would like to live in a world where chemical substances don’t exist.” Another 39 percent say the “slightly agree” or “slightly disagree” with this statement. Similarly, 40% say “they do … Read more
If and when fascism comes to America, it will not arrive with jackboots, stiff arms, and military uniforms. The attempt to suppress political opposition in anti-constitutional fashion, to regiment the economy by denying constitutionally protected freedoms, and the efforts to change the Constitution to reflect political utility, will come under the auspices of “equality,” “fairness,” … Read more
In truth, the Golden State is becoming a semi-feudal kingdom, with the nation’s widest gap between middle and upper incomes—72 percent, compared with the U.S. average of 57 percent—and its highest poverty rate. Roughly half of America’s homeless live in Los Angeles or San Francisco, which now has the highest property crime rate among major … Read more
Today, we face a culture that has fallen under the spell of the “cult of self,” but this malady is not unique to our era. In the early 16th century, Martin Luther proposed a remedy for this psychological ailment. If Luther were Batman, then fellow reformer Philip Melanchthon would be his Robin. However, unlike the … Read more
Law enforcement officials have arrested a Virginia lawyer involved in litigation over the health risks of Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer product, with prosecutors accusing him of trying to extort an unnamed company into a $200 million consulting fee with his legal firm. Timothy Litzenburg, 37, was charged with interstate intentions to extort, the U.S. Department … Read more
The effort to control counterfeit goods is a lot like the effort to control the use of firearms in violent crime: Government is willing to try almost anything short of doing its job. . . . It’s a funny old world: Federal agents will birth bovines if you try to bring a Diet Coke through … Read more