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Is Loyalty a Virtue?

From First Thoughts

Perhaps I was raised in an overly-Confucian manner, but Conor Friedersdorf’s latest sets my head a-buzzing with questions and my stomach a-churning with unease. Of course, insofar as an administration must work as a team toward common ends, its employees should be loyal so long as they are . . . . Continue Reading »

Only word on Tom Friedman

From First Thoughts

So it appears that the Mustache of Understanding has gotten in a bit of hot water over his latest op-ed . Having grown up in Hong Kong (pre and post-handover) and knowing plenty of people who fled Friedman’s “reasonably enlightened group of people” quite recently, I’m not . . . . Continue Reading »

Questions for Ephemerislers

From First Thoughts

In a few weeks, I’m heading to Ephemerisle — the Seasteading Institute’s first annual anarcho-capitalist convocation on the high seas. Call it a fact-finding expedition. A few words of explanation: While I’m probably the most libertarian of the PoMoConners, I’m not . . . . Continue Reading »

Newton and Bacon

From First Thoughts

My rabid pro-Leibniz partisanship notwithstanding, I have to give kudos to Thomas Levenson for his article on the faith of Isaac Newton over at Killing the Buddha. The article closes with a somber reminder: Hence the pathos, the danger that I think Newton himself glimpsed. There is a serious . . . . Continue Reading »

Sex and Control

From First Thoughts

Matt Zeitlin should be less surprised by the final sentence of his post (link not suitable for children): I’m not familiar enough with the safe-sex corpus to really comment on it authoritatively, but in my own experience (health classes and so forth), the near-obsessive focus on the . . . . Continue Reading »

Bioethics and Question-Begging

From First Thoughts

Well it seems like Ivan can relax , Michael Peroski has just solved all of our problems : Proceeding from ideology-driven inquiry entails starting from an answer: “Research on human embryonic stem cell should be forbidden because embryos are equivalent to human lives” and working . . . . Continue Reading »

Book Recommendations for Obama

From First Thoughts

Over at the main blog, Joe Carter asks : In all seriousness, though, what books would you recommend the President read during his vacation? Assuming you had to stick to the same  3:1:1 ratio (3 novels, 1 biography, 1 policy-oriented nonfiction) what books would you slip into his travel bag? . . . . Continue Reading »

Creeping Technocracy-Watch

From First Thoughts

Secondhand Smoke has the scoop . Watching bioethicists consense is like watching water condense: dull, impersonal, and you know how it’s gonna end. Still, I’m sure there are many who would prefer it to all that nasty , dirty , tumultuous political stuff! . . . . Continue Reading »

The Best and the Brightest

From First Thoughts

Bryan Caplan expresses his surprise at Geoffrey Miller: I’m impressed that after proclaiming himself “a secular humanist, an antiwar internationalist, an animal-rights environmentalist, a pro-gay feminist, a libertarian on most social, sexual, and cultural issues, and a registered . . . . Continue Reading »

Climate Change and Technocracy

From First Thoughts

Cards on the table, since those who dare even to broach this subject are inevitably subjected to name-calling. The ” collapsing consensus ” notwithstanding, I’m among those who believe that the earth is getting warmer, that human beings probably have something to do with it, and . . . . Continue Reading »