SOMETHING THE RAT ASKED ME, or maybe I asked her, the other day: Is it ironic that nobody knows what “irony” means? Read more

INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE CLINIC ON ENTREPRENEURSHIP: Good stuff. Read more

SPEAKING OF COMICS: Alias is awesomely awesome. Took me a while to get sold on the dialogue (which is the element that everyone had recommended), but I eventually did come around–and the pictures! So nifty! So not-boring! So actually-using-comics-to-do-stuff-comics-do-best! All kinds of standout pages: the intertwining necklaces of images and speech balloons in the very first meeting between Jessica Jones and her lady client (hey, why are there no page numbers?); the interrogation-scene brick wall made of panels that gets... Read more

THE ROMANCE OF PRODUCTION: I finished The Fountainhead in the fall of 1999, on the Metro-North from NYC to New Haven. I’d been spending a weekend in New York with my father, in the middle of an exceptionally hectic and emotionally exhausting term. I pretty much slept through half the visit–I was just run ragged. And really worried, edgy, stressed, all that fun stuff. We went to the Museum of Modern Art [EDITED: No we didn’t! It was the Met... Read more

IAIN MURRAY ON MARRIAGE STUDIES. The obvious rejoinder to the study showing that marriage boosts single mothers’ income is that it looks at a self-selecting group: The guys who are willing to marry have at least one sharply different personality trait from the guys who balk. They’re probably more reliable, or more interested in family life, or something. You’re comparing apples and oranges! There are two perhaps less-obvious responses, both of which ring true in my experience: a) The guys... Read more

SUMMARY OF WHAT THE CATHOLIC CHURCH TEACHES ABOUT MARRIAGE–the overlaps and disjunctions between civil, sacramental, and valid-but-not-sacramental marriage. Read more

NOAH FELDMAN SPEAKING TOMORROW IN D.C.: I really hope I get enough work done tonight that I can legitimately go hear this. Oxblogger Patrick Belton writes: Several friends have been kind enough to point this out to me: namely, on Tuesday Noah Feldman will be speaking in Washington at the New America Foundation. Given that he’s just departed his position as the interim Iraqi government’s chief constitution-drafter, and the event is marked on the record, we can perhaps assume that... Read more

IS THIS AN RSS FEED OF MY SITE? I have exactly no clue what RSS is or whether this link will get you one. Could somebody enlighten me? Thanks…. Read more

DIARY OF A LIBERIAN AID WORKER. Via Body and Soul. Read more

PALEOMAIL: Responses to my field report from the America’s Future Foundation happy hour on “What the heck is a neocon?” which turned out much closer to “What the heck is a paleocon?” Reader comments are in bold, I’m in plain text. From Ed Ahlsen-Girard: I LOVED this post. I used to subscribe to Chronicles in the late 80s early 90s, but dropped it as it got not just weirder but hostile to my family weirder (I’m white with adopted black... Read more