The Adventures of Shylock Holmes

A recurring theme of this blog is that government policies should be honest about what they cost, and who's paying. Few things irritate ...

Every now and again, I find myself reading somebody else's writings, and I'm filled with the urge to yell out to everyone 'Stop ...

It's rare for civic authorities to have a sense of humour, but check out the classic welcome signs  they've had over the years. Come...

I always find the Peace Corps to be an interesting idea. Started by JFK , the idea was that young Americans could go overseas and voluntee...

Via Hacker News comes this amazing article from The Atlantic in 1989, written by Paul Fussell. It describes what World War II was like from...

When magazines I never subscribed to send me letters telling me that my subscription is running out, with the words 'LAST LETTER' on...

The story of Brett Kimberlin is a very scary one about how the American legal system can be used as a weapon to silence criticism. You can r...

I think at this stage in history, there’s not really much question that foreign aid has been a colossal failure. Shovelling money and goods ...

-The awesome story of the development of Apple's Graphing Calculator. -A solid gold strategy for losing weight . The song in question...

Penn Jillette unloads on the Obama administration  about the fact that he continues to support drug policies that lock people up for doing e...

Suppose I were to present you with the following proposition: "Next Sunday morning, I'm going to take a dump on your front lawn. ...

P.G. Wodehouse with a great description (in the wonderful old British style) of the golfing overconfidence of the mediocre: It seemed to h...

The Columbia Law Review is set to publish an article alleging that Texas executed an innocent man  in 1989, Carlos DeLuna. He was convicted ...

Don Ritchie died today . Who is Don Ritchie, you may well ask? A good question. In Sydney, there is a beautiful stretch of cliffs near...

With small semantic differences. From a conversation earlier today. DG: Man, you like taking long showers. Shylock: Sure do. Why be in a h...

An Oregon environmentalist decides to save the planet with reusable shopping bags instead of disposable plastic bags. They instead end up ...

XKCD on why every major sucks . My favourite line: 'By dubbing Econ 'dismal science' adherents exaggerate The "dismal...

I am a bad liar. I don't like lying, and as a result, I don't do it very much. This creates a virtuous circle - because I don't ...

...we are all dead, as Mr Keynes put it. But in the long long run, the Earth is dead too. For a thoroughly fascinating description of ho...

If one were forced to nominate a candidate for the "great libertarian song" (not 'greatest among a field of mediocrities'...

We previously encountered this country's illustrious drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, here , making ridiculous claims that the drug war has e...

Well, the CEO anyway. Via Hacker News comes a letter from Third Point LLC claiming that newly appointed Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson may have,...

Most people have very little idea what makes one business more valuable than another. This state of affairs tends to persist, because mos...

From Mencius Moldbug's ' Letter to Open-Minded Progressives ' Thus we see why progressivism is more fashionable than conservat...

At some point, the incremental loss of liberty in Britain becomes such a constant depressing dripping that it's hard to maintain the in...

The BBC has a classic case of 'English Majors Trying To Write About Finance', with this clanger of a headline: Black-Scholes: The m...

Radical .

From the latest Bon Appetit issue , a thoroughly under-utilised strategy: "In the summer of 1970, my mom, Helen, went to visit a frien...