Author Archive | Kenneth Anderson

Christopher Caldwell does not quote Milton Friedman’s famous observation in this New York Times opinion piece, but it underlies it.  Caldwell is a senior editor of the Weekly Standard and columnist for the Financial Times – as well as being the author of the most important book on Europe that I’ve read in years, Reflections […]

A publisher of erotic e-titles for Kindle has sent me the following book blurb for a new offering on Kindle, Emily’s Debt.  It’s addressed to self with a bcc list, so it appears to be a marketing blurb possibly addressed to bloggers who have written about student loan debt: In the very near future, where […]

US ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron Munter, who has been arguing within the administration for integrating US counterterrorism operations more closely with Pakistan’s military forces, might want to consider the following two stories.  The Washington Post: Pakistani Intelligence Announces Its Full Cooperation With U.S. Forces During Upcoming Top Secret June 12 Drone Strike On Al-Qaeda At […]

Desperate times call for desperate creative fantasizing … isn’t one of the problems of our higher education bubble the poorly aligned incentives for the universities providing the eduction?  They provide a service for a couple of years as an expert agent to poorly informed principals, charging them for the service upfront, whereas the outcomes are […]

As I’ve mentioned in passing a couple of times, my daughter will be starting up at Rice University this year.  People have emailed helpful bits of advice, and mentioned that they have kids at Rice, so I thought, it being a Sunday morning, I’d just ask straight out what advice you might have for a […]

The Wall Street Journal’s ace national security reporting team – Adam Entous, Siobhan Gorman, Julian Barnes, several others – reported in a very interesting story today that divisions have emerged at the senior levels of the Obama administration over the strategic utility of drone strikes in Pakistan. The issue is between the unquestioned effectiveness of […]

Not all of the Conspirators have the (eu)genes to have been computer science prodigies in our teen years.  But I have long wanted to learn something about (really, truly) elementary programming, but somehow never gotten around to it.  I read this article at the Atlantic on something called Project Euler and wondered if it might […]

Among the scores of books I’ve accumulated on the financial crisis, one always seemed to be missing: a book length account of the role of Fannie and Freddie in bringing about the financial crisis, following their rise and fall.  Many books had important sections devoted to the GSEs (e.g., Roger Lowenstein’s The End of Wall […]

The New York Times apparently thought better of the statement by Jill Abramson, announcing her appointment as the new executive editor, that in “my house growing up, The Times substituted for religion.  If The Times said it, it was the absolute truth.”  I would link to the NYT article, but the quote has been deleted […]

Cyrano de Bergerac was the last play on the Folger Theatre’s roster for the season, following excellent productions of (I take it, the rarely performed) Henry VIII and A Comedy of Errors.  Cyrano went oddly awry, however, and I’ve been trying to pinpoint why exactly.  This is a play I’ve known and loved pretty much […]

In the Weekly Standard this week, I have a short article talking about the need for law – or at least its public articulation – to catch up to the gradual integration of CIA and military special ops.  The title is Law and Order: Targeted Killing is Legitimate and Defensible, but that is not really […]

Eileen Norcross of George Mason’s Mercatus Center has a useful new paper giving a review of the literature on public employee unionism.  It broadly takes a public choice approach, although the literature review of history, theory, and empirical studies is considerably broader than that.  It’s clear, comprehensive, and would make a good reading assignment at […]

The Wall Street Journal reporting on un-classifed portions of a report anticipated for release next month (I can’t find a Google News account, welcome link in the comments).  I concentrate on robots, not cyber, so I leave it to others to comment, but I do recall that this report and its conclusions have been discussed a […]

I have just finished packing up my lovely apartment here on the UVA campus and am about to turn off the internet router, get in the car and move myself and many books and papers back to DC.  Once unpacked in DC, I’ll be able to blog more this summer.  But I did not want […]

While I am thinking about issues around the OBL raid, let me commend to readers yesterday’s Wall Street Journal reporting on the lead-up to the raid, set in the larger context of the integration of military and CIA in such operations.  I think it is important reading for those of us not privy to inside […]