James Q. Wilson writes some good stuff on crime in the Wall Street Journal. But this worries me: Culture creates a problem for social scientists like me, however. We do not know how to study it in a way that produces hard numbers and testable theories. Culture is the realm of novelists and biographers, not…
Read more
OK. That’s not really news. But this report is kind of a big deal. So says the BBC, the “Global war on drugs has ‘failed’.” Imagine that. The panel included former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, the former presidents of Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil, the former US Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, the current Prime…
Read more
I not a fan of arbitrary grammar rules. And now I’m going to bore you with one. I don’t like rules for rules’ sake (eg: split infinitives, ending sentences in preposition, etc.) Along with being based in some bizarre Latin-lover’s 19th-century wet dream, such rules get in the way of style. Rules are supposed to…
Read more
“We are witnessing the bipartisan normalization and legitimization of a national surveillance state!” As told to us by a cartoon (“This Modern World” by Tom Tomorrow).
The Blaze(that’s Glenn Beck) and Metro(that’s subway). Metro is new material. Oh, and there’s a third punch. Let’s call it an uppercut. The Takeaway (National Public Radio) 7:45 AM (which is really the worst possible hour of the day for me to do anything. If it were any early, I’d just stay up all night…
Read more
I’ll be on CNN, Sunday, from 7:30 to 7:35pm (Eastern Time) with Drew Griffin. I get to sport the suit I got made for me in Thailand. I’ll probably even wear a tie. If you miss the broadcast, don’t worry, you’ll be able to see the same suit again the next time I’m on TV.
I like when Clarance Page calls me a “rascal”! He writes in the Chicago Tribune: When Peter Moskos’ new book landed on my desk, I wasn’t sure if it was going to be a treatise on crime and punishment or some sort of kinky sex manual. Its title: “In Defense of Flogging.” You rascal, I…
Read more
Mansfield Frazier write in The Daily Beast: At first glace, the title of Peter Moskos’ new book, In Defense of Flogging, strikes you as a barbaric hoax being perpetrated by some sort of right-wing ideologue or kook. In fact, it initially appears to be an idea so outrageous, so provocative, as to not even rate…
Read more
Explain something to me. Campaign donations aren’t supposed to buy politicians, right? Because that would be bribery. But corporations give money for “access” or some other BS like that, right? And you can’t limit the money they give to politicians, because, say the courts, corporations are people too. And corporations are usually legally bound to…
Read more
…But something always bothers me when police break down your door and kill you. Doesn’t seem necessary. update: The tactics here are terrible. Why are they standing in front of the door? I wouldn’t answer a call for a lost lolcat without standing off to the side. In fact, even today, 10 years later, I…
Read more