Cure-alls and Remedies
I was just reading this interesting takedown of the shortlists for the 2009 Hugo awards. Apparently, most of the books on the list aren’t very good. I only know two of the nominees for best novel, and one of them, Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book , was actually read to my wife and I by…
1. Tyler Cowen’s Ethnic Dining Guide is my new favorite DC thing. Ah, hell: just read the guy’s blog . 2. William Galston has a blog?!? Apparently he’s not too happy with the health care plan. 3. What about urban infill housing? EYA thinks that Hyattsville, MD can be the next U Street. 4. Is…
So far, McArdle is definitely earning the praise heaped in her direction. She has a post today on health care innovation where she captures the market-based argument against single-payer health care without ever mentioning it. Citing two other bloggers, Glenn Reynolds (actually an op-ed at the Washington Examiner… blog, rag; tom-ay-to, tom-ah-to) and Andrew Biggs…
1. I’ve been back from Costa Rica for more than two weeks now, but even my celebratory blog post has taken back seat to a paper and symposium on David Estlund’s epistemic proceduralism I’m writing and editing with Steve . 2. The Parfit reading group is still on, but if I’m going to be writing…
I haven’t heard from Leigh, so I’m posting this mostly as a placeholder. Feel free to jump in with comments, questions, or discussion on chapters 2 and 3 of Reasons and Persons . My own comments: chapter 2 raises a number of fairly conventional rational choice problems. I first became acquainted with these in thinking…
This is my commentary on the first chapter of Derek Parfit’s Reasons and Persons, part of the online reading group I proposed here . If you haven’t gotten the book yet, you can follow along here for at least the first chapter: I think Google will only let you read fifty pages at a time…
After my recent brush with cultural commentary , I’ve been thinking about the business of art and media criticism. Sometimes I wonder whether a philosopher ought to be in the business of diagnosing the Zeitgeist. Nonetheless, I keep finding myself drawing general conclusions from cultural trends, predicting an uncertain future or analyzing something as grandiose and…
Derek Parfit is widely regarded as the most interesting ethicist working today. Many have performed their work more provocatively, some may be more original, and I suspect that a few (Sen and Nussbaum, especially) have made more progress in the field, but Parfit definitely has captured our attention with his quest for “Theory X,” that ethical…
The Quiet Coup : In my view, the U.S. faces two plausible scenarios. The first involves complicated bank-by-bank deals and a continual drumbeat of (repeated) bailouts, like the ones we saw in February with Citigroup and AIG. The administration will try to muddle through, and confusion will reign. Boris Fyodorov, the late finance minister of…