Monthly Archives: December 2007

Spencer’s book is famous to law students from Holmes’s line in his Lochner dissent: “The Fourteenth Amendment does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer’s Social Statics.” As it turns out, though, Holmes liked the book a lot. Thanks, Wikipedia!

I don’t know whether Thom Friedman can tell when his column-gimmicks descend into high camp, like this nonetheless persuasive one about Iran.

Define: sesquipedestrian. See also: sesquisexual (sesqui curious?); sesquipedophile. (Background: sesquipedalian.)

Real story in this NYT article about online social networking: lots of scholars who’ve made their careers arguing that personal association is distinctly “oral” (as opposed to written) can look at the success of online, text-based social networking and see … Continue reading →

Because you can’t practice at crime by trial and error — error puts you in jail. Q: All ethics aside, do you think you could make more money obtaining sensitive information about high net worth individuals and using blackmail/extortion to … Continue reading →

Are breakthrough developments in math often the work of outsiders (i.e., people without appointments, not (necessarily) people without training)? (Hundreds of cranks who flood math departments with bogus proofs think so.) If so, does this tell us anything about math … Continue reading →

Stanley Fish’s NYT blog has a post called “Monkey Business” about a defendant seeking a religious exemption to endangered species law so she can import and eat monkeys. The post is a decent primer on the Free Exercise consequences of … Continue reading →