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WaPo Admits: Russian Twitter Trolls Didn’t Influence 2016 Election 1
- International, Politics
- January 18, 2023
Those of us who voted for Trump the first time around were surprised to learn after the fact that it was not us, but instead Russian trolls, who catapulted the real estate magnate into the White House. We were told that Russian trolls “hacked” the election—and that Trump was complicit. This was, of course, a
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God’ll Cut You Down: Johnny Cash, Cato, and Triumphant Good 2
- Politics, Culture
- January 18, 2023
In Johnny Cash’s version of the gospel song “God’s Gonna Cut You Down,” the opening chorus goes this way: “You can run on for a long time Run on for a long time Run on for a long time Sooner or later, God’ll cut you down Sooner or later, God’ll cut you down” Not a
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Has Capitalism Created a Wasteful Excess of Managers?1
- Politics, Economics
- January 18, 2023
Have you noticed there seem to be a lot of managers nowadays? It’s not just you. Professors at the Harvard Business Review estimate there is one manager for every 4.7 employees and claim this excessive amount of paper-pushers leads to a total loss of $3 trillion dollars per year in the US. This amount of waste
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The Economics of ‘Mending Wall’3
- Politics, Economics
- January 17, 2023
Mending Wall, the endearing 1914 poem by Robert Frost, offers important lessons about economics and cooperation. While the poem contains lessons about balancing tolerance and acceptance, modernity and tradition, and perhaps the efficacy of national borders, it remains open to interpretation. The surface-level message, repeated twice in the poem, is that “good fences make good neighbors,” which
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Five-Dollar Eggs and the Gift of Productivity 2
- Culture, Economics
- January 16, 2023
A dozen eggs now cost five dollars at my local grocery store. I would complain, but given that some people are reporting nine dollar eggs, it seems like a better idea to just shut up, be grateful, and ration the eggs I do have. An even better move would be to consider how smart my neighbor John*
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Why We Should Study Philosophy 1
- Philosophy
- January 16, 2023
When I tell people I’m in school for philosophy, they usually respond with one of two extremes: admiration or ambivalence. Either they give me an impressed look, a shake of the head, and an awed comment like “I could never do that”; or they give me a pair of raised eyebrows, a polite nod, and
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