The Adventures of Shylock Holmes

At the risk of being entirely self-obsessed (the peanut gallery: a blogger? No!), I found myself thinking about  something I wrote the other...

-A thoroughly fascinating description of how to interact with corrupt police in third world countries from John McAfee, who's had to te...

The heuristic for identifying native Turkish speakers has gotten an out-of-sample confirmation - my tailor is indeed Turkish. You know wh...

I saw the Lincoln movie the other day. Regarding the earlier sort-of-prediction, you sure got the point, but not the counterpoint . I felt...

Out of interest, I decided to try being vegetarian for a month. (Not vegan though - that $#!^ is wack , yo.) Partly this is due to lingering...

One of my minor hobbies is trying to guess where people were born based on small details about them. A fun way of doing this is with langu...

If I had to nominate my favourite aspect of the internet, it's the ability to come across writers with uniquely interesting perspectives...

I know the libertarians like Radley Balko will tell you, and not without some justification, that there's already too much  trust in th...

I logged on to facebook today for the first time in months, and I had to scroll through several pages of updates before coming across the fi...

I ended up watching '500 Days of Summer' the other day. After checking my testes at the door, it actually wasn't that bad. For...

LA passes a law mandating the use of condoms in porn videos . Genius! As if the industry weren't unprofitable enough already, let'...

Mencius Moldbug once opined that for a westerner to not believe in democracy in the 21st century is somewhat akin to not believing in God in...

On televised poker shows, they often display the probability that each player is likely to win the hand. This leads to games being essential...

From LibertarianCitizen Ha! (via TJIC )

Psychological constraints are real constraints. People act as if they're not - because you can't see the process driving them, you s...

- Incentives? Who gives a damn about incentives ? -Partly in regards to this , Obama was asked what Donald Trump has against him . Good q...

Do friends and colleagues accuse you of being 'too masculine' or 'too heteronormative'? Thankfully, today's selection of...

Sometimes it's hard to know whether stupid-sounding statements by politicians are genuinely believed, or just thrown out there for the r...

People are apparently still surprised that when you take a country like Egypt and remove most of the forces ensuring law and order (however ...

The setup has been done many times (Bob Dylan's 'With God On Our Side' being a classic example), but the mark of a great comedia...

"Put your most important content at the top of your slides." Interesting.

...when you're mentally ill. Hacker News linked to this very interesting article in the Washington Post by Paul Gionfriddo, talking a...

From Pax Dickinson : "Mr. President, would the US be better off today if you'd been prosecuted for smoking pot as a youth, or are...

- Entirely Alive! defends giving the Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union . I tend to agree. Let's put it this way - it's a hell...

I loathe graffiti. Courts tend to view it as a petty crime, just kids letting off steam. But I find it aesthetically angering in a way tha...

Do it . I dare you .

Famed internet movie critic Jabrody  has a list of the 50 most memorable movie characters, parts 26-50 , 11-25 and 1-10 . Check it out. I...

 ( image credit ) If you're at the zoo with educated types, a frequent complaint you'll hear is about the cruelty of keeping t...

If you want further evidence that the Dredd idea about order is a reactionary one, consider this great statement of principle from famous r...

Reddit is the home to more-educated-than-average teenagers and twentysomethings. As a result, they post a bunch of interesting and funny s...

As part of your introverted correspondent's mission to understand social conventions, I find myself interested in what personal question...

If you've ever had cause to say 'I'm not like those other guys', it is certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are, in f...

The new Judge Dredd movie is actually surprisingly good. It's at 76% on Rotten Tomatoes , which is unusually high for an action movie. ...

I was in an English-themed pub on Friday night (in the US of A), watching the Australian Rules Football Grand Final. I don't know why, b...

What charities say on their reply-paid envelopes: Your stamp on this envelope adds to your gift! What charities should  say on their repl...

Barack Obama recently made a speech at the UN talking about the recent attacks on the US Embassy in Benghazi, and the anti-Islamic film tha...