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Eric Scheske

Pirate Day

Yo Ho, A Pirate's Life For Me One of the best podcasts comes from George Mason University's economics department: EconTalk. It's perfectly pitched at my level of economics learning, not too basic, not too advanced. I get excited every time a new podcast comes

Mini-Book Reviews

Some new, some old. Some in progress, some finished. Some repeats, some originals. It's a Random World I bought this book after hearing Taleb interviewed on EconTalk [http://www.econtalk.org/]. The host (Russ Roberts) asked Taleb about the economic meltdown (rough quote), "So, you were right

Religion and More Religion

Neo-Emerson Revival? Very interesting review essay at The New Statesman about religion and modernity [http://www.newstatesman.com/books/2009/05/religion-american-modern-world]. The premise: Religion and modernity co-exist just fine. Voltaire and the Enlightenment and its progeny have always been wrong about modernity and religion:

Memorial Day Eudemon

Stay Out of the Museum Night in the Museum 2 finished first in the box office: "Ben Stiller beat Christian Bale in the North American weekend box office duel between their respective "Night at the Museum" and "Terminator" sequels, according to studio estimates issued on

Something for Sunday Morning

"The Christian should be an alleluia from head to toe." St. Augustine I'll try to keep that in mind. Unfortunately, I fail, repeatedly. Perhaps even more unfortunately, the alleluia people bug me. Not the people with quiet joy, but the in-your-face joyful, the people

BYCU: Beer and Related Areas

Give Him the Nobel Is your bartender pulling back a second early on the tap, leaving you a centimeter or two shy of the top? It's costing you buzz. The new Beer Gauge tells you how much [http://thebeergauge.com/]. "[T]he majority of the volume in

Russians, Muslims, and the Bagpiper

Seven Abandoned Wonders of the USSR You ever think to yourself: "This is gonna land me in Hell"? I do, way too frequently. I have an acerbic turn of mind. I think I'm subduing it, but then it rears its head mightily. I'd like

From the Notebooks

The Funny Guy What's the definition of a funny guy? Most obviously: A guy who makes others laugh. But that definition doesn't answer many questions. What about the clumsy guy who stumbles a lot and unintentionally makes others laugh? What about the guy who unintentionally says

Bird Watching and Other Scatology

Giving Me the Bird I've had an horrendous spring. I won't go into the details, but a barrage of non-work commitments has frayed my nerves to the bone (is that metaphor possible?). I was looking forward to a nice long Memorial Day weekend, with nothing

Dead Cars, Amish, Marx, and More

Studebaker and Other Corpses In the wake of pending plans to discontinue Pontiac and Saturn, the Mental Floss Blog takes a look at ten discontinued models [http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/25613#more-25613]. Nice prose, nice assortment of pictures. Excerpt: > Started as the George N. Pierce Company