Gaming the Market
Treating Wall Street and the financial industry like professional sports brings a new perspective to the motivation of traders and financers In the midst of our financial crisis it was inevitable that...
View ArticleRegulation Schmegulation
With the market meltdown of the past year those of us who are long-time supporters of the freedom of markets have by now heard the refrain: “What do you say now?” or “So much for your mighty market...
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Evolutionary Economics
ORDER the book from skeptic.com On Thursday June 4, I attended the Cato Institute half-day conference in Century City, California, which started out with a lecture by U.C. Santa Barbara evolutionary...
View ArticleMixing Science and Politics (and Economics)
So many of you have taken the time to respond to my blogs thoughtfully that I feel I should comment in kind. In looking through the many comments, however, I see that most of what I would say has...
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The Revolution Will Be Tweeted
At the Atheist Alliance International conference this past weekend in Burbank, California, the Skeptics Society had a booth in the vendor’s section of book sellers and the like, the latter of which...
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Capitalism—A Propaganda Story
Michael Moore is the Leni Riefenstahl of our time. Or, perhaps he would be better characterized as a Bizzaro World Leni Riefenstahl, because while she propped up with propaganda the political powers...
View ArticleOne one-thousand … two one-thousand … 3.8 trillion one-thousand
President Barack Obama has unveiled his new budget for fiscal year 2011 at $3.8 trillion dollars. Staggeringly huge. Brobdingnagianly big. Almost inconceivable. Just how much is a trillion dollars?...
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My Dinner with Bill (Gates that is)
left to right: Jared Cohen, Dave Morin, John Cusack, Dean Kamen, Bill Gates, Arianna Huffington, Michael Shermer. (All photos in this post were taken by John Brockman.) No, it wasn’t exactly My Dinner...
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The Rules of Capitalism, Part 3
Liberty and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. This is the third essay in a series on the relationship between rules, freedom, and prosperity. Read part 1 on Skepticblog.org and part 2 over at...
View ArticleEgypt, Watson & the Future of Civilization
What does the democratic uprising in Egypt and other Arab nations have to do with IBM’s Jeopardy champion Watson in determining the fate of civilization? Think bottom up, not top down; think...
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