Common ground

 In these divisive times, it is import to cherish moments when we agree with those on the other side of the aisle.  This is such a time.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Trial of the Century

I admire Mark Steyn.  Even if you disagree with everything he says -- and I'm sure a lot of people do -- he is a remarkable person.  A few years ago, Michael Mann, climate scientist and creator of Al Gore's famous "hockey stick" graph showing drastic warming in the last century, sued him for libel.  Steyn had called the hockey stick "fraudulent," among other things.  This is not the first time Mann has sued, although I'll be honest I'm having trouble finding other examples because these things don't get covered much in the mainstream media. Steyn's co-defendants, National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, are trying to get the case over with as soon as possible, which is a predictable reaction.  Steyn, on the other hand, views the suit as an aggressive attempt to shut down the debate, so he has no intention of settling.  In fact, he counter-sued Mann under anti-SLAPP legislation, which as I understand it seeks to defend peopl...
Read more

Cardinal Mazarin

Image
Today is Peace of Westphalia day -- the 365th anniversary of the signing of the Peace of Westphalia -- in honour of which I traditionally make a Mazarin cake .  Cardinal Mazarin was the French premier throughout the negotiations leading up to the peace.  Admittedly, I have no evidence that the cake was named after him, but how many other people named Mazarin have you ever heard of? In fact, Mazarin is the namesake of a surprising number of modern items.  There is the Mazarin cut diamond, which is a precursor to the modern brilliant cut; and the Mazarin desk, or " bureau Mazarin ," an early kneehole desk.  He was a renowned collector:   a famous Japanese chest is known as the Mazarin chest because it is believed he owned it, and there is also a " Mazarin Venus ."  He was especially avid about collecting books; the Gutenberg Bible is sometimes known as the Mazarin Bible because it was in his collection.  In fact, his personal library bec...
Read more

When is someone irrational?

Image
I like reading books about mistakes people commonly make:  logical fallacies, bad mental shortcuts, tricks that advertisers use, and so forth.  It is obvious that our minds are not perfectly logical, and I like to be aware of my illogical inclinations so I can prepare for them.  Economists, psychologists, and mathematicians are among the people who write books on this sort of thing. The economic angle gets a lot of attention these days because of the work of Daniel Kahneman, Nobel-prize winning economist who studied ways that people behave irrationally, allegedly contrary to economic principles.  I say "allegedly" because I believe that consumers are not expected to behave rationally according to an absolute standard of maximizing utility, because consumers define utility by their choices.  If I buy a cheap product that falls apart in a year rather than a somewhat more expensive product that will last for ten years, it may appear irrational to a neutral obser...
Read more