In the Financial Times today, Martin Dickson’s amusing admonition to bankers and their regulators. If you happened to be the kind of parent who read your kid Hillaire Belloc’s Cautionary Tales for Children, this will all seem like familiar terrain. Here is a bit from the opening: There was a time when naughty boys Would […]
Author Archive | Kenneth Anderson
World Map of Remoteness
This map has been making the rounds (h/t Bill Easterly at Aid Watch and Tyler Cowen).
The Alternative Theologies of Santa Claus
(Waiting for relatives to arrive on Christmas Day, I have decided to take up the deep theological questions raised by this … Claus, this Santa Claus.) Last night at the children’s Mass at our Catholic parish in Washington DC, observe the arrival of the fellow up top in the photo, dressed in a red suit, […]
A Merry Christmas
I would like to take the opportunity to wish our readers and all our community a Merry Christmas, and a happy New Year. But at least we all will be together, if the Fates allow, From now on we’ll have to muddle through somehow. So have yourself a merry little Christmas now. This, from the […]
Naked Self Promotion about Targeted Killing
Further to Orin’s terrific questions and discussion re targeted killing, I’m deep into xmas stuff, so I will simply point readers who might be interested in the direction of a book chapter of mine on targeted killing and US counterterrorism policy and law, available in nearly final form on SSRN, here. It talks about the […]
Winter Solstice Brings Out the Inner Aztec to Defeat Winter Blues
Here’s a fun little article from the Boston Globe on the winter solstice and the shortest day of the year: It is actually the day when the angle of the sun is as its minimum,” said Dani LeBlanc, a producer and educator at the Charles Hayden Planetarium at the Museum of Science. “Since the equinox, […]
Space Law and the UN, Retro Edition
The UN Secretary General … circa 2050, Earth, talking with Kip who, along with Peewee, has just saved the Earth from invading aliens who were using the Moon as a forward base: “Russell, I heard on your tape that you plan to study engineering – with a view to space.” “Yes, sir. I mean, ‘Yes, […]
Stuart Taylor on Fresh Rot at Duke
The estimable legal journalist Stuart Taylor, doing the job (along with blogger and historian KC Johnson) that few people are willing to take on, in or out of academia – monitoring the madness. This link won’t stay up permanently, but Stuart’s take on Duke’s latest effort not to learn from Duke’s mistakes is well worth […]
The Tanning Salon Excise Tax
In case you didn’t get a chance to read the Manager’s Amendment to the Senate bill yourself, all the way to the end, the way that your senators surely will, here’s one item of possible interest: (b) EXCISE TAX ON INDOOR TANNING SERVICES.— Subtitle D of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended by this […]
Prospect Magazine’s Top 25 Brains of the Financial Crisis
The UK’s Prospect magazine – a genial, well-edited left-liberal take, by American standards, on politics – offers its list of the 25 leading public intellectuals offering commentary and sage advice in the financial crisis (in some cases action, too – Ben Bernanke is included). The list is full of worthy commentators, and I wouldn’t disinvite […]
Copenhagen as UN Politics, Not Climate Change Substance
By Kenneth Anderson on December 19, 2009 2:42 pm in Climate Change, Collective Action Problems, International Law, Legal Scholarship
(Updated below … Give me global oligopoly or give me climate death!) I Post-Copenhagen. At bottom, the question is legitimacy. The global New Class met in Copenhagen, convinced, as ever, that it had legitimacy to act as it proposed to act, with the UN as its vehicle, because legitimacy was conferred by “expertise.” The UN […]
Shorting Climate Change?
Okay, I’ll bite on Fen’s comment in my previous post on opinion polls and climate change. Suppose that you wanted, at the retail investor level, the cheapest and most efficient ways to go short on climate change policies, carbon regimes, whatever you think is relevant. (In general, I’m a believer in sort-of efficient markets, despite […]
Washington Post-ABC Poll re Obama and Climate Change
This Washington Post article sums up pretty well, I think, the results of the ABC-WP opinion poll looking at American views of climate change, science and scientists involved in climatology, Copenhagen, President Obama’s role and that of the administration, and the idea of spending US tax money on the climate change fund. The President’s approval […]
The Climate Change Fund as the New Millennium Development Goals?
By Kenneth Anderson on December 16, 2009 10:13 pm in Climate Change, Collective Action Problems, International Law
Ever since the Copenhagen conference got going, and rapidly turned into an argument over wealth transfer from the rich world to the poor world, it has seemed to me that the exercise is best understood not as an argument about climate change, but instead about internaitonal economic development policy. That is, the basic problem with […]
The Guantanamo to Illinois Move, at the NYT Room for Debate Blog
By Kenneth Anderson on December 16, 2009 8:54 am in Counter-Terrorism Policy, International Human Rights Law, War on Terror
The NYT Room for Debate blog has a short set of posts from a nicely balanced group on the question of moving detainees from Guantanamo to Illinois. The Obama administration announced on Tuesday its decision to transfer terrorism suspects held at Guantánamo Bay to an empty state prison in Illinois. The move would help fulfill President […]