Pun Salad

(Voices of Sanity Day)

• While it's incredibly easy (but nevertheless probably necessary) to take the cheap shot at Newsweek for its slovenly reporting, Jonah G. focuses on more serious issues revealed by the dustup.

  Newsweek screwed-up a story which would have been the 73,087,733th tale of America showing very little respect for the religious sensibilities of murderous terrorists who call themselves Muslims. In response to the story, fanatical young men rioted and people died. The story turned out not to be true. Shame on Newsweek. But what if it were true? Would that mean the rioters were right to indulge their epilepsy of hatred?

  No. Thanks for asking.

• Prof Reynolds is uninterested in the judicial filibuster fight:

  If I thought that Bush were likely to nominate actual small-government strict constructionists to the Supreme Court, perhaps I'd care more, but I've seen no sign that he's likely to do that.

  Good point.

• Jane Galt reacts to the NYT article on class by dropping a small nuclear rhetorical bomb on a bloviating professor of public health.
• Also inspired by the NYT, Will Wilkinson asks some necessary questions about income mobility, winding up with

  Does the New York Times have an irrational fetish for ominous tales about relative position?

  See if you can guess the answer before reading Will. (But don't nitpick that he numbers his questions 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, and 4.)

• Continuing with comments on the NYT's class obsession, also see Ron Bailey in Reason Online. He's got a class question too:

  What does it say about class differences in "culture and taste" when the lowest price ticket for the NASCAR Pocono 500 is $99.00 while the cheapest ticket for Tosca at the Met is $26.00?

  It says the NYT is out of touch, I think. But personally, I've always thought Tosca could use a whole bunch more fast cars turning left.

• Finally, I note that Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey has blogrolled me. I'm not worthy! Join with me in wishing her good luck in her Macroeconomics course.