Freespace

Ken Burns' Prohibition

Looking forward to it.

Banned Books Week

This week is Banned Books Week. The ALA is encouraging people to make and upload videos of themselves reading from banned books.

And now here's

a puppy with hiccoughs.

The "creating jobs" meme

I'm quoted in George Will's latest column

George Will's latest column is on the right to earn a living, and he quotes from my cover story in the current issue of Regulation magazine. He also mentions certain "plucky litigators" in Arizona....

Belief in God linked experimentally with not thinking

That appears to be the headline for this research paper:

both studies demonstrated that intuitive CRT responses predicted the degree to which individuals reported having strengthened their belief in God since childhood, but not their familial religiosity during childhood, suggesting a causal relationship between cognitive style and change in belief over time. Study 3 revealed such a causal relationship over the short term: Experimentally inducing a mindset that favors intuition over reflection increases self-reported belief in God.

Yet major spokesmen for secularism also rely on emotionalistic intuitions to support their ethical theories, as if feelings were tools of cognition.

HT:CK

Phriday photo

In rural Virginia. Apparently, very rural.

From the Commonplace Book

But it is asked, "What good will this do?" or "What good has it done?" "Have you not irritated, have you not annoyed your American friends and the American people rather than done them good?" I admit that we have irritated them. They deserve to be irritated. I am anxious to irritate the American people on this question. As it is in physics, so in morals, there are cases which demand irritation and counter-irritation. The conscience of the American public needs this irritation, and I would blister it all over from center to circumference, until it gives signs of a purer and a better life than it is now manifesting to the world.

Frederick Douglass

Optical illusion tatoos

I like the Art & Science one.

My talk at the Cato Institute Constitution Day Conference

There were a number of equipment problems, including light failures, at Cato's Constitution Day Conference on Thursday, but they've gone ahead and posted video of the presentations, including the panel on "Looking Ahead: October Term 2011," on which I spoke. You can watch it below, and watch the other videos by clicking this link.