Mr. Owl Ate My Metal Worm

  • The UMaine student newspaper reports that their athletic program sucks up a cool $7 million per year. I've never seen the equivalent number for the University Near Here, but how much different could it be? (Via University Diarist.)

  • Some have taken to calling it Krauthammer's Law:
    Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.
    Will Wilkinson illuminates another data point in verification of Krauthammer's Law: the spat between Matt Yglesias and David Boaz about "Earth Hour". In which, as expected, Yglesias deems Boaz evil and … yeah, Yglesias is stupid.

  • Note that, while some call that epigram above Krauthammer's Law, what Krauthammer calls "Krauthammer's Law" is: Everyone is Jewish until proven otherwise. Explanation:
    For all its tongue-in-cheek irony, Krauthammer's Law works because when I say "everyone," I don't mean everyone you know personally. Depending on the history and ethnicity of your neighborhood and social circles, there may be no one you know who is Jewish. But if "everyone" means anyone that you've heard of in public life, the law works for two reasons. Ever since the Jews were allowed out of the ghetto and into European society at the dawning of the Enlightenment, they have peopled the arts and sciences, politics, and history in astonishing disproportion to their numbers.

    There are 13 million Jews in the world, one-fifth of 1 percent of the world's population. Yet 20 percent of Nobel Prize winners are Jewish, a staggering hundredfold surplus of renown and genius. This is similarly true for a myriad of other "everyones" -- the household names in music, literature, mathematics, physics, finance, industry, design, comedy, film and, as the doors opened, even politics.

    Pun Salad is irrevocably goyish, but wishes its past, present, and future Jewish friends a Happy Passover. Arnold Kling provides a short Passover sermon with a libertarian bent:
    As we approach Passover in 2010, many people are unemployed. But in a free society, government does not create jobs.

    Pharoah created jobs for us. Moses led us away from those jobs. Even though those jobs helped to complete public infrastructure. Even though they were green jobs, where we used our muscles and our backs instead of fossil fuels.

    Read the whole thing. It's short.

  • What do you suppose aibohphobia is the fear of? Hint: if you made it past this post's headline, you don't have it.

    Fortunately, as Stan Kelly-Bootle points out, it's curable.