9/30 At The Wall Street Journal: Bloggers and economists Russell Roberts and William Polley discuss American economic literacy and hopeful prospects for improvement. (Thanks to Joe K. for the link.) Meanwhile, Joe Duarte compares the Fair-Tax and the Flat-Tax proposals and decides in favor of …
9/29 Taking the (sickly?) pulse of contemporary higher education: Victor Davis Hanson looks at four recent, high-profile cases.
9/28 Raymond Carver has advice and inspiration on being a good writer. (Via Arts & Letters Daily.)
9/27 Fruits of the Enlightenment: Don Boudreaux on why hurricanes now kill many fewer people in the USA. And that in spite of large population increases and the destructive effects of counter-Enlightenment government policies: the welfare state, pork-barreling, and bureaucratic mismanagement.
9/26 In Lysistrata, a female character suggests a law to mandate that older women be serviced sexually by younger males. The Danes may decide to out-Aristophanes the great Aristophanes by passing a law to provide welfare benefits so that the disabled can pay prostitutes for sex.
9/24 At Washington State University: Using “dispositions theory” as a tool for enforcing ideological conformity.
9/23 Should professors who write textbooks make students buy their books? Ian Ayres feels badly about the money issue. Eugene Volokh and Aeon Skoble see no conflict of interest.
I say: Show me the money!
9/22 James Watson of Watson-and-Crick fame on Darwin’s powerful legacy. (Via Arts & Letters Daily.)
9/21 A new book by Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl: Norms of Liberty: A Perfectionist Basis For Non-perfectionist Politics. I have not read it yet, but it looks to be the cumulation of over two decades of thinking and writing about the foundations of politics. Jointly and severally, Den Uyl and Rasmussen are the authors of several earlier books, including Liberty and Nature, The Virtue of Prudence, and The Philosophic Thought of Ayn Rand.
9/20 In the context of a case in New Zealand, Peter Cresswell has some clear thoughts on environmental values and property rights. And here is Richard Stroup’s introduction to Free Market Environmentalism.
9/19 Capitalism as the best foreign policy: Columbia University’s Eric Gartzke on the strong connection between capitalism and peace. Check out especially his strongly-written three concluding paragraphs on pages 38-39.
9/17 What Dallas, Texas can teach us about how to educate MBA’s. And one professor’s advice: How to cure students with ADHD.
9/16 A new web log focusing on private sector development instead of standard government aid:
Private Sector Development Blog, under the auspices of the World Bank. (Via Johan Norberg, author of In Defense of Global Capitalism.) And Tyler Cowen notes the encouraging development of private safety networks in Africa.
9/15 The Fraser Institute’s 2005 Economic Freedom of the World Report has been released. (Via Division of Labor.)
9/14 Is poverty declining in America? Russell Roberts looks closely at some key indicators. And here is Stanley Lebergott’s fine survey of impressive improvements in wages and working conditions in the US during the 20th century.
9/13 Brooklyn College is using intimidation tactics to silence a dissenting professor. Update: Good news.
9/12 David Mayer delineates the criteria by which the chief justice of the Supreme Court should be chosen. And in “Confirmation Abuse”, Professor Mayer speaks directly to the nomination of John Roberts and the Senate’s advise and consent role.
9/11 
“I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York’s skyline. Particularly when one can’t see the details. Just the shapes. The shapes and the thought that made them. The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need? And then people tell me about pilgrimages to some dank pesthole in a jungle where they go to do homage to a crumbling temple, to a leering stone monster with a pot belly, created by some leprous savage. Is it beauty and genius they want to see? Do they seek a sense of the sublime? Let them come to New York, stand on the shore of the Hudson, look and kneel. When I see the city from my window—no, I don’t feel how small I am—but I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body.” (Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead)
9/9 Kathy Sierra has some cool brain-charging suggestions—or, as she puts it, ways to blow your own mind. And Grant McCracken has a brief, evocative essay on “Madeleine” objects and his Uncle Meyer’s crudely stitched canvas wallet.
9/8 I am not a conservative—but Bill Whittle is the kind of conservative I admire. Read his “Tribes”. (Thanks to Robert for the link.)
9/7 How much longer will you live? The Death Clock. And visit The Blog of Death, an online obituary column. Lloyd Cohen and David Undis have a fine proposal to increase the number of organ donors. Here again is LifeSharers, a network of voluntary organ donors.
9/6 Jonathan Rauch argues that the next challenge to limited-government politics will not come from leftists but from communitarian right-wingers such as Rick Santorum. (Via Dynamist.)
Tom Palmer has more on Santorum as representative of the Openly Anti-Individualist, Bigoted, Collectivist, Anti-Liberty Right.
9/3 Daniel Dennett wonders how the intellectual hoax that is “Intelligent Design” came to prominence. At the Philosophy of Biology blog: Michael Ruse, who was one of my professors at my undergraduate university, posts a letter he received on biology textbooks and the evolution-creation controversy. Johan Norberg has a great quotation from Richard Dawkins. And the cartoon is via Franz Kiekeben.
9/2 Michael Totten explains who the Islamists’ long-term strategic enemies are. Christopher Hitchens summarizes what has been achieved since 2001, in contrast to the preceding weak and vacillating decade. Confessions of a neo-neocon includes a psychological hypothesis about Western apologists for terrorism. And Wretchard takes us back to the Left responses to the Nazis and the Gulag and explores the true-believer mindset of the hard and anti-American Left.
9/1 An extended interview with philosopher John Searle.