Author Archives: Jonathan

Warren Buffet’s Taxes

Posted on August 19, 2011 by Jonathan

After Warren Buffet suggested that rich people like him should pay more taxes, conservatives predictably encouraged him to voluntarily give more money to the government if he so desperately desires to do so. (E.g., from Michelle Bachmann: “If he’s worried … Continue reading →

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Government Inefficiency and Disrespect towards Citizens

Posted on August 18, 2011 by Jonathan

Here is the story of a Politico reporter who, taking Obama’s advice, tried to inquire with the USDA about rules and regulations related to noise pollution for farmers in Illinois. The reporter got passed around via phone and email from … Continue reading →

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Dice Puzzle

Posted on August 18, 2011 by Jonathan

Steve Landsburg has posted a puzzle about dice. I haven’t thought about it much and I don’t know whether I can solve it but it looks pretty good: A standard pair of six-sided dice induce a probability distribution on the … Continue reading →

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Vibe-based Reporting

Posted on August 15, 2011 by Jonathan

One point of contention in a debate about religion between Sam Harris, a prominent atheist, and Chris Hedges, the former New York Times Middle East Bureau Chief, was the issue of how common among Muslims worldwide is the support for … Continue reading →

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Bug Eating

Posted on August 13, 2011 by Jonathan

From a New Yorker article on the movement to promote eating of bugs by people: Matthew Krisiloff, who just finished his freshman year at the University of Chicago, recently started a company called Entom foods, which is working on deshelling … Continue reading →

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Coin Flipping Puzzle

Posted on August 9, 2011 by Jonathan

Suppose your friend offers you the opportunity to play this game for free: Your friend will flip a biased coin 1000 times, which has a 60% chance of coming up heads each time, and a 40% chance of coming up tails. Every … Continue reading →

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Financial Advice which is Totally Bogus but Often Given

Posted on August 8, 2011 by Jonathan

We’ve all heard one form or other of the following bit of financial advice: “You should only invest in the stock market if you are going to leave your money in it for a long time.” It sounds sensible, but … Continue reading →

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I hate how everything is a % of GDP

Posted on August 5, 2011 by Jonathan

Here James Fallows shows a chart (reproduced at right) that indicates how taxes as a % of GDP are very low in the U.S. as compared to other developed nations. Then he suggests that in order to solve the deficit … Continue reading →

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Political Parties as Interest Groups

Posted on August 4, 2011 by Jonathan

In their book The Declaration of Independents, Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch describe the Democratic and Republican parties as behaving like they are representing “interest groups.” One way to think of this is that the Democratic and Republican squabble with … Continue reading →

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Will Wilkinson on Norwegian Prisons

Posted on August 1, 2011 by Jonathan

After describing Norway’s luxurious prisons and short prison sentences, Will Wilkinson suggests that we should consider making our justice system more like Norway’s in order to bring down our murder rate: Norway has one of the world’s lowest murder rates. … Continue reading →

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