Self Aggrandizement Alert: Newton and the Counterfeiter’s UK Paperback is out, Critics Don’t Quail in Horror

Just got my box of paperbacks from Faber, and I have to say, I love the cover — best of the four versions to date: The book has been well received, especially in the British press — the Sunday Times was pleased enough with it to name it on its best-books-of-the-year list, as did the [...]

How Hard Are Fractions, Really: Elizabeth Warren Scares Her/Megan McArdle Is Always Wrong Chronicles, Cont’d.

Update: some edits to make the post read like someone without a grudge against English syntax wrote this post. Nothing substantive — a couple of cuts, a couple of verbs supplied to verbless “sentences.” I guess I just can’t quit that Ms. McArdle. I vowed to give myself a break from looking at the work [...]

My Contribution to Closing the Enthusiasm Gap this Fall + Some Link Love

You’ve all heard, no doubt, that the big advantage the GOP + its tinfoil auxiliaries have this fall is the reported greater enthusiasm for such goals as repealing the non-existent-but-zombie-death-panels than that felt on the Democratic side for, among much else, preventing the return to power of those that got us into our current fix. [...]

A Little Mud Slinging (Zoology Section) Whilst Working on the Next Burst of Outrage.

The soundtrack from my youth: Much that was obscure about my personality defects is now explained, no doubt. See y’all tomorrow.

On the lessons Joseph Goebbels taught us: The Right Wing, The Big Lie, and the American Spectator’s latest on the Sherrod Case…

(In passing:   many thanks to all who came by this blog over the last couple of days.  Come on back, y’ hear) Jeremy Lord has received a lot of attention for his post at the American Spectator in which he attempts to set the record straight about Shirley Sherrod and her family’s history with [...]

Video wonderfulness of the Day: Jane Austen…Blood, Guts, No Corsets Edition

Via the often imitated, never equalled Jen Luc Piquant (nom de blog of this Author), this reinterpretation of my most re-read novelist: See.  I still love you.

Why Friends Don’t Let Friends Cite The Atlantic’s “Business and Economics Editor”: Further to the Megan McArdle is Always Wrong chronicles.

Update: Greetings to everyone coming here via TBogg, Susan of Texas, Eschaton and Brad DeLong — and my thanks to those good folks for the links.  A special thanks, of course, to Ms. McArdle herself, who tweeted this very post, apparently authored by “some idiot.” She has forgotten, I think, that here in Boston, that’s [...]

Megan McArdle is Even More Always Wrong Than Usual: Arithmetic is Hard/Mostly Outsourced edition

By now most everyone who cares (a swiftly dwindling number, I hope) has heard of Megan McArdle’s spectacular meltdown when confronted by arithmetical and analytical errors of the most damning sort. By far the best account of this comes in a spectacular fisking of McArdle by her own commenters, as organized by the invaluable (and [...]

Tasty Blog Bits/What Good Young Journalists Can Do In The Right Kind of MSM

I’ve long been a fan of the High Country News, not least because they’ve given good work to some of the wonderful students at the best science writing program in the country (I’m supposed to say that, which doesn’t make it untrue). But these lines from a post reminded me of what makes HCN such [...]

Sitting Republican Senators Who Voted to “Raise” Taxes for Next Year

I started this post yesterday, put it aside to listen to some very loud, very find jazz last night, and got up this morning to find that Paul Krugman got there first (as usual). But just to amplify the point: As you listen to Republican officeholders and their co-conspirators  complain that allowing the middle-to-rich-redistributive Bush [...]