Link Dump

Because nothing says “I’m out of fresh ideas” like a link-dump.

• Megan McArdle found a good article detailing how forcing a real filibuster is more difficult than you think.
• Bookworm on Afghanistan, Democrats, and war:
  

  I don’t think the Democrats are capable of conceiving an outcome to a war that is tantamount to “victory.” To them, all wars are failures because they are . . . wars. This means that there are no strategic goals that the Democrats can contemplate that will justify continuing to fight a war. They will therefore approach war in a half-hearted way, waiting, not to win, but to withdraw.

• What Arnold Kling said in a speech. Good summary of everything that’s wrong with conventional wisdom on the financial crisis. My own views on the subject are highly unoriginal: just read anything by Arnold Kling and you know what I think.
• Kling, again: “the media are now honoring Paulson, Bernanke, and Geithner for transferring hundreds of billions of dollars from ordinary Americans to some of the richest people on earth.” Not only the media. Most ‘progressives’ applauded this transfer as well.
• In Mala Fide on sex.
• curi disproves induction, definitively in my view.
• Dafydd ab Hugh reminds us that some other guy besides Harvey Milk was also killed by that Twinkie dude. He wasn’t gay or anything though so his murder wasn’t as interesting or tragic, and he will never, ever be portrayed by Sean Penn.
• Default User, a useful primer on Extraverts vs Introverts. With diagrams!
• Whiskey thinks Barack Obama wants to be America’s Vizier.
• Letter to FT by Per Kurowski on risk weightings and financial regulations.
• Johan Norberg asks how could overly enthusiastic homebuyers in the United States sink the global economy. Not how you think.
• Would you think it’s “interesting” to learn that Hezbollah is trying to raise awareness of Global Warming? Don’t tell Michael Totten.
• Kling yet again: “I also think that maybe the Obama Administration does not really care about the contents of the reform legislation. It’s their Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, that will allow them enough leeway to do whatever they want.”
• Seth Roberts makes a point more universally applicable:
  

  …use of the term scientific is a sign that the writer or writers don’t know what they’re talking about. Calling this or that “scientific” amounts to calling something else “unscientific” — which isn’t an argument, it’s abuse. The term scientific is often just a way to sneer at other people.