The Adventures of Shylock Holmes

Men are both the principal suppliers and the principal demanders of public nudity. Sadly, what is supplied is not what is demanded.

In their hit 'It's Like That'. If there have been better ambassadors for conservatism in the hip hop world, I'm yet to find ...

The English language is extraordinarily flexible in terms of how it adapts over time. Pick up a copy of some Chaucer if you don't bel...

Ikea is an awesome store. The real genius of the place is that they make everybody feel like they’re a cross between a master craftsman and...

A few years ago (I couldn't tell you exactly when or why) I started to get the tiniest bit anxious when airplanes would land. Only in a ...

Thusly: Any food described as being 'a delicacy' is in fact stomach-turningly revolting.

It is a categorical mistake to think that actions should be judged by their intentions alone rather than their consequences, at least when t...

The desire to resist the truth of opportunity cost is embedded deep in the human breast. This trait is not without its significant benefits,...

Following on from the previous post on hyperbolic discounting, the other example where people seem to show much too much short term impatien...

In economics, discounting refers to the way that you reduce the value of future costs and benefits. In the simplest example, $1 today is wor...

1. Upon arriving in New Zealand, it took less than 5 minutes to be addressed as 'bro'. Although in a Kiwi accent, to a US person it ...

Think there's nothing wrong at all, and it's just a routine service? $500 minimum (for an oil change), more likely a grand. Any know...

Dear readers, I shall be wagging my normal duties, both workwise and blog-wise, for the next month. The occasion is a trip back to the mot...

Let me just quote you the title of this post : "Medical researcher discovers integration, gets 75 citations" And people wonder ...

Australia's defamation laws are truly awful. If someone says something bad about you, rather than say manning up and responding in kind,...

Smug politician posing for publicity photo Let me begin by saying that when people donate their own hard earned dollars to charity,  I appl...

I'm sure this : FAIRFAX Media CEO Brian McCarthy has been forced out of the top job after failing to sell his strategic plan at a recen...

It turns out I may have underestimated US/Israeli intelligence. Somebody at least has their eye on the ball: http://www.debka.com/article...

'Stay the Night', by James Blunt. The embarrassment belongs entirely to me of course, not Mr Blunt - he'll be laughing all the w...

If you want to evaluate someone's driving ability, my guess is that it's far more informative to look at the number of near misses t...

Everyone gets boring pets, and I never figured out why. Why would you get a dog when you could get a marmoset instead? Honestly, what c...

Have you noticed how few people think in any meaningful sense about how large different health risks are? People will know that 'smoking...

Pure comedy gold, from Brazil: A Brazilian Clown, Francisco Oliveira Silva, has been cleared to enter Congress as the federal deputy for S...

So if you read Hacker News, you've probably seen this a bunch of times. But if you haven't it's highly instructive to consider...

Make no mistake about it - your own country a century ago would be virtually unrecognisable to you. But not for the technological reasons pe...

A great  comparison in photos of Hiroshima and Detroit, 64 years after the atomic bomb. One of the two cities in question was destroyed b...

It's sometimes quite difficult in practice to distinguish between whether someone has giant cojones or just a giant martyr complex, espe...

Come, dear reader, and gaze into the abyss of what happens to human nature when man can find no purpose to worship higher than himself. Li...

I was in Maryland over the weekend with some family friends. It was hunting season, which my friend and I found out when we went for a walk ...

Google Beatbox .

Tyler Cowen links to this fascinating paper by Edward O'Boyle on the Great Irish famine, in which maybe a million or more people died....

Thus I remember hearing about monkeys, but can't find a source for... If you give a monkey a button that dispenses food when pressed, h...

“[T]he only way to enjoy the great Republic would be to burn one’s standards and warm one’s self at the blaze.” - Pandora True or not, it’s...

I’m not. I’m passable by male standards, and definitely better than some people (The Greek, for instance, who reputedly had to ask his girlf...

I was talking about this story with JS earlier this evening. I was at a Chicago Bulls game a few years ago. The Bulls weren't very good ...

As evidenced by the Recording Industry Association of America: 1. File Lawsuits against everyone. 2. Engage in media bluster in an attem...

It's almost axiomatic that one's own snobberies and differences in taste are crucial marks of aesthetic refinement, whereas everyone...

Vegas also illustrates wonderfully how little of economic growth is driven by actual resources any more, and instead comes from the network ...

See if this pattern sounds familiar: 1. North Korea commits outrageous provocation towards South Korea 2. South Korea warns them very st...

The Weak Law of Casinos is my way of estimating how much the odds of winning a particular game are tilted towards the house. And it is thu...