Utopia, you are standing in it!

Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) has pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor after he was caught on videotape pulling a fire alarm in the middle of a key vote to avoid a government shutdown.  The misdemeanor was the charge that I discussed when this first arose. However, the release of the videotape raises another issue: whether […]

Bowman Video Contradicts His Account to Congress, the Court, and the Public

John Patrick Somers (1800-1862), or ‘Pat Somers’ as he was generally known, is a strong contender for the most violent MP to have ever sat in the House of Commons. In this week’s blog our senior research fellow, Dr Martin Spychal, discusses one of the most extraordinary characters that we’ve uncovered during our research for […]

The most violent MP ever elected to the House of Commons? John Patrick Somers (1800-1862)

The new House, with a new Speaker, has finally done something: passing its first resolution. It’s a resolution supporting Israel in its war against Hamas. A bit from the NY Times: The House voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to pass a resolution declaring solidarity with Israel, pledging to give its government whatever security assistance it needs […]

House resolution favoring Israel passes with ten holdouts, nine of them Democrats (and six Dems voted “present”). Guess the Democrats!

Of all places, Vanity Fair has a short but interesting discussion of the New York Times headline fracas! You may remember that when there was an explosion in a Gaza hospital on October 17, the NYT reported what Hamas told it: first that there was an Israeli airstrike and then, when that became less credible, […]

Vanity Fair reveals secret discussion at the NYT about using Hamas sources for headlines: “hedging” versus “attributing”

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt: Despite the continuing war in the Middle East, most markets have been relatively calm. Stock exchanges have not plunged, while volatility appears manageable, indeed ordinary. If you were looking at just the markets (except for Israel’s), you might not even know there is a […]

What are markets telling us about the Middle Eastern war?

I don’t think I’ve analyzed this paper on my site, but, since it came out recently, it’s become well known among rational biologists for being tendentious, ideologically based, and largely incoherent, something you might intuit from its title. You can read it by clicking on the screenshot below: The paper’s object is to dismantle the […]

Jesse Singal takes apart a bad paper on sex

From The Emperor’s Desk: On the anniversary of the accession of King George III upon the British throne, instead of doing a full biography of the king, I have decided to just concentrate on the titles that George inherited throughout his lifetime. George III (George William Frederick; June 4, 1738 – January 29, 1820) George […]

October 25, 1760: The Accession of King George III of Great Britain and Ireland.

About a week ago, the Washington Post published, starting on its front page, a long article arguing that race is a purely social construct without reality or utility, and thus should be eliminated. The author Sydney Trent, is a science journalist who covers social issues, and that may explain why the article was replete with […]

My letter to the Washington Post on race

The New York Times and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) have long denounced disinformation on social media and called for censorship of those spreading false information. They and various other media outlets now find themselves accused of immediately spreading false images and accounts of the recent explosion at the hospital in Gaza. The NYT picture […]

Are Rep. Tlaib, the New York Times, and Other Media Guilty of Disinformation on the Hospital “Strike”?

Below is my column in the New York Post on the Associated Press guideline for reporters to avoid calling Hamas a terrorist organization. Voice of America and other media outlets have made the same decision. This is not about supporting the Palestinian cause. It is about correctly describing a group that commits terrorist attacks as…

Yes, Hamas is Legally, Morally, and Factually a Terrorist Organization

The Peace of Westphalia is the collective name for two peace treaties signed on October 24, 1648 in the Westphalian cities of Osnabrück and Münster. They ended the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) and brought peace to the Holy Roman Empire, closing a calamitous period of European history. Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III, the kingdoms of […]

October 24, 1648: The Peace of Westphalia

This recent post by Steve Williamson explains, far better than I did, why no more conventional stimulus is needed in the US.  It’s an argument that carries over fairly neatly to the UK.  And the sort of analysis that confronts head on calls for the authorities to pump up demand by the likes of Paul […]

Steve Williamson, the recession, and New Keynesian economics