Year: 2013
Abusing US Attorney Carmen Ortiz
I’ve been following some of the discussions about the prosecutorial conduct that may have lead to Aaron Swartz’s suicide, but I haven’t posted anything about it because it didn’t seem all that unusual, except for the suicide, which is not really all that unusual either. I didn’t initially understand why so many people are heaping… Read more
Addicted to Harlotry — Part 3: Capital Investment
In Part 1, I introduced the concept of rational addiction and argued that failure to account for it causes us to underestimate the benefits that other people receive from certain activities, which may lead us to believe that there is something unnaturally wrong about their high levels of consumption. Then in Part 2, I explored… Read more
Zero Dark Thirty – Short Review
Zero Dark Thirty is a terrific spy thriller. Almost nobody mentions that. Everybody talks about the controversial issues raised by Catherine Bigelow’s new movie about the hunt for Osama bin Laden — the use of torture, the slam at criminal defense lawyers — but if you can set aside your differences with the politics of… Read more
The Harlot’s Addiction — Part 2: Difficult Jobs
In Part 1, I introduced the concept of rational addiction and speculated that failure to account for it causes us to underestimate the benefits that other people receive from certain activities, which leads us to believe that there is something unnaturally wrong about their high levels of consumption. A recent example of this is NRA… Read more
Certificate of Greed
How screwed-up is the economics of our healthcare system? So crazy that stuff like this happens all the time: The proposal by Vista Health System to build a $131 million hospital in Lindenhurst would add more beds to an area that already has a substantial surplus, according to a report released today by the staff… Read more