Linkworthy

1. Megan McArdle’s review of Bruno made me wonder what she could possibly mean by: “I haven’t laughed so weakly at a movie in years.”

   Does she mean she has laughed harder at all other movies she’s seen in recent years, than at Bruno? What about a depressing weepfest like Million Dollar Baby? Still laughed harder? Or does (as seems more likely) she just mean, of all the movies she laughed at, she laughed the most weakly at Bruno? That would be a weird (if interesting) criticism, because in a way, that’s a hard feat for a movie to accomplish. It’s easy for a movie to have no laughs at all, of course. Or, a cheesy dumb movie could have a moderate amount of pretty big laughs fairly easily, I would think. But how does a movie make you laugh, but more weakly than anything else you’ve ever laughed at? A tricky needle to thread. How weak can a laugh actually be and still be a laugh, anyway?

2. Matthew Yglesias makes an argument in favor of soda taxes that relies heavily on this deep, advanced governmental concept:
   

   Think about the case for taxing income, via the income tax and FICA. Why do it? Well, to get the money.

   Yes, government needs to ‘get’ your money. That’s an overriding function of government, to ‘get’ stuff from you. You probably just don’t realize that because you didn’t go to Harvard like Matthew Yglesias.

   The really great thing about his argument is that it can be used, unchanged, to support the following proposal I’m hereby putting forth:

   1. First, let’s make a list of all the things that Matthew Yglesias buys/spends with his money significantly more than the general population does. We’ll make it as particular as possible. If he lives on the 1100 block on his street, and pays rent there, we’ll include “paying rent on 1100 blocks of streets”. If he ever eats Roquefort cheese, we’ll include that. If he likes to buy Rilo Kiley albums, we’ll include that.
   2. Then let’s pass a special 90% excise tax on the purchase of all of those things (but only for people who spend money on, say, 75% of the list’s items).
   3. By Matthew Yglesias’s own argument, this will ‘get’ money from him (which is the most important thing, from the government’s point of view) and will not hurt society as a whole very much (because it’s so focused on Matthew Yglesias’s likes/needs/wants that the tax won’t hit very many other people very strongly).
   4. Therefore, by Matthew Yglesias’s argument, it’s a good idea and should be implemented.

   I’m assuming in the preceding that Matthew Yglesias truly and consistently believes in his own argument(s), of course.

3. Danny Lemieux at Bookworm’s Room on future shocks and global warming.
   

   The sad thing is that we are about to find out that these pseudo-scientific hysterias have profound real-life, real-world costs. They are being very cleverly manipulated by demagogues that enrich themselves by cleverly manipulating a future shock population with just enough kernels of truth to satisfy their wildest fears and conspiracy fantasies, the facts be d***ed.

4. It’s so sad to me that I greet the news of a potential live-action Star Wars production (for TV, presumably) with dread rather than excitement. You know, I’d have never believed 10 years ago that it was possible for George Lucas to have squandered so much goodwill.
5. Wish I’d said that: Foreign-aid veteran Jacqueline Novogratz quoted at Marginal Revolution: “Philanthropy can appeal to people who want to be loved more than they want to make a difference.”
6. BONUS: How Terminator came to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger.