May
1
2006

URLs du Jour

2006-05-01

  • It's a cliché to point out that The Simpsons isn't as good as it used to be. Amazingly, they totally turned it around last night with a hilarious satire on the Harvard/Larry Summers controversy and sex differences in general. Principal Skinner inadvertently makes Unacceptable comments in public; as a result, he's demoted to assistant groundskeeper, and a new principal (voiced by Frances McDormand) is brought in and immediately makes Springfield Elementary girl/boy segregated. Lisa is unchallenged by "girl's math", and poses as a boy to escape to the other side. Hijinx ensue. If you missed it, try to catch a rerun.

    Bryan Caplan comments.

  • Not to be missed is Shawn Macomber's account of a recent visit by John Edwards to Portsmouth, NH. Two point five years until the presidential election, and Shawn even now is getting a little tired of the transparently dishonest rhetoric.
    "A flood of whites move out to the suburbs, send their kids to private schools," [Edwards] continued. "Or they move into the richest areas of town. This is so unhealthy. It is unhealthy for our democracy. It is unhealthy for our country."

    It's a fascinating argument from someone who bought a 100-acre plot in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, last year, which he has presumably not adapted into a refugee camp for the Other Americans. …

  • As you may have heard, John Kenneth Galbraith has passed away. I remember he and William F. Buckley Jr. were huge friends; it's a tribute, I suppose, to both of them that they could get along even though their political beliefs had approximately nothing in common.

    Jeff Taylor, however, is under no restrictions of friendship when looking at Galbraith. He considers Galbraith's "most enduring legacy" to be "the secular guilt-trip that questions every motive and denies every choice."

  • Another Jeff, Goldstein this time, explains why I might be voting Democrat for President in 2008, if the Republicans nominate a certain Arizona Senator with (as Jeff puts it) a "benevolent tyrant's soul".

    Vote for Hillary? Edwards? Kerry? Gore? Hm. Well, I could just spend Election Day cowering under my desk, I suppose. And then stay there for four years.