Two Comics for Friday

If you are not subscribed to these two comics, then this will be new to you.  If you already have them on your RSS feed, well, you get to suffer their propagation.*  The ever-linkable XKCD offers the rational incentives on leaving reviews for hotels (and other places). Poor reviews may drive demand down, which should lower the price of your consumption. SMBC, often delving into philosophy, science, and economics, has offered two economics-related comics in the past two days. Yesterday's comic posits the economists value of humans versus other objects and today's comic offers a, perhaps obvious, comic on the incentives Continue reading Two Comics for Friday

Free Access to Early 20th century and 19th century articles via JSTOR

Estranged academics, individuals in the private sector, and the public at large can rejoice (a bit) as JSTOR has officially announced that it will make American articles and journals published before 1923 publicly available. Journals published prior to 1870 in other countries will also be made available. The official announcement states: I am writing to share exciting news:  today, we are making journal content on JSTOR published prior to 1923 in the United States and prior to 1870 elsewhere, freely available to the public for reading and downloading. This includes nearly 500,000 articles from more than 200 journals, representing approximately Continue reading Free Access to Early 20th century and 19th century articles via JSTOR

That’s the Spirit!

In spite of the massive flooding in Binghamton, I'm finding some time to focus on something else.   So hey, remember the debt deal?  Sure you do.  Well things are already off to a great start with that bipartisan commission.  Apparently Senator John Kyl is threatening to leave the bipartisan commission if defense spending remains on the table.  Kyl says that even Defense Secretary Panetta, and former Secretary Gates said enough was enough on defense cuts.   In fact, I'm pretty sure that's not what Panetta said.  I'm pretty sure Panetta has said that up to $350 billion more would Continue reading That’s the Spirit!

Bipartisanship and foreign policy

Kindred Winecoff has a post up regarding a post by Matt Yglesias on the level of partisanship in American politics.  I’ve some thoughts on the issue.  I should also stipulate that I’m coming at this from a strictly foreign policy-oriented perspective.  Some of this bleeds over into domestic politics, but I’m sure there’s a lot that I’m not covering by approaching the topic from this point of view.