Author Archive | Tyler Cowen

Do you like both philosophy and movies? This web site lists the top philosophical movies of all time. The list is well thought out, though excessively American (where is Bergman’s Persona, for instance?). Even better, Jason Brennan groups movies by philosophical theme. His categories include skepticism/external deception, determinism, time travel, personal identity, philosophy of religion, […]

Ever considered naming a newborn baby Beetle or Sardine? How about Cancer or Dung, or even Who? Those were a few of the 578 additional Japanese characters the Justice Ministry said Friday it might allow parents to use in names for children. Like mothers and fathers in other countries, Japanese parents agonize over the naming […]

This topic is far outside the area of my blogging expertise, but I couldn’t help but notice this article in The Washington Post: In an early test of its imminent sovereignty, Iraq’s new government has been resisting a U.S. demand that thousands of foreign contractors here be granted immunity from Iraqi law, in the same […]

How do you elicit accurate character information from people who are completely on guard? “Some interviewers have been known to call job seekers at home and pose as telemarketers to gauge how those candidates react. Are they rude? Do they yell? Or are they polite but insistent that they don’t want to purchase anything? How […]

For many months (or is it years?) I have been reading Eugene and others singing the praises of Neal Stephenson here at VC. I had read parts of Snow Crash a few years ago but wasn’t impressed. Finally I picked up Cryptonomicon and read it through. I loved it and was overwhelmed. Stephenson has an […]

Do you want something done? I call upon air genius Gary Leff, who answers Jacob’s question from earlier today. Gary’s post also offers an ingenious example of the subtle economics of collusive behavior.

Here are some good links to how economic models are calling the forthcoming Presidential election. Not surprisingly, the recovering economy is seen as favoring Bush. Do we have any reason to think these models will be less accurate this time around? I can think of at least one scenario. Perhaps a healthy economy persuades many […]

Reader Michael Greenspan passes along this item that David Frum at National Review Online wrote a few months ago. I’m not a conflicts of law scholar (that’s the field that deals with these issues); I’m also not Andrew Sullivan, to whom the questions are addressed (and who dealt with them briefly here). But I know […]

Clayton Cramer responds well to the National Review Online article that argues: Why are we shocked by these images from Abu Ghraib, but when the victims are women (or gay men) the images are called pornography or “adult entertainment”? Why can we easily see the violations of human beings in one set of images, but […]

Prisoner abuse and the Guantanamo / Padilla / Hamdi cases: A couple of readers e-mailed to suggest that the prisoner abuse scandal might influence the Court’s judgment in the Guantanamo detainees case and the military detention cases (Padilla and Hamdi), because it might make the Court feel that the Executive Branch can’t be trusted. I […]

Andrew Chamberlain writes: “Todd J. Zywicki of GMU’s School of Law (on leave) announces the launch of a new journal, the Journal of Law, Economics, and Policy. From the email release: “We are pleased to announce that George Mason University School of Law is launching a new law journal, the Journal of Law, Economics, and […]

assuming my correspondent’s account is correct: As I mentioned earlier, I’m quite troubled by the administration’s statement that: [T]he handbook that we will provide to Lecturers when we hire them to teach a course . . . will make our policy on this issue clear. We will not tolerate an instructor’s use of racist, sexist […]

This is the incident that has led the law school administration to promise a new speech code for lecturers. Paul Nunez, a law student, provides a first-hand account: A friend of mine . . . told me that you were looking for someone with a first-hand account of the supposed utterance of a “racist” comment […]

Jacob is only 21!

Apropos my question about this a few days ago, reader Jesse Lansner writes: There’s a pretty good explanation on the historical boundaries between Europe, Asia and Africa [here]. The original distinction came from the Greeks, who gave names to the regions base on their direction from Greece (Europe to the north, Asia to the East […]