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Over at the Gypsy Scholar blog, Prof. H. J. Hodges has some thoughts on a recent fashion faux pas perpetrated by Cameron Diaz in Peru, and comes to the conclusion that ethics trumps aesthetics. It’s a sensible position, although seldom articulated. As a bonus, the famous San Francisco ferral parrots fittingly make another appearance on the web. (A mouthful, isn’t it?)
Here are a few things that have caught my attention and entertained me on the web recently.
There you have it. Scatological history, immigration, war, politics, and academic gossip all in one fell swoop.
As the saying goes, so much to learn, so little time. One of many topics that I know very little about is economic theory. Few of my friends have a grasp of it either, although I suspect many of us, at times, think we have a handle on it.
To the rescue come Harvard professors Dani Rodrik and George Borjas, debating the economics (and the politics) of recently proposed US immigration reform, and specifically a guest worker program. Although Borjas and Rodrik hold different opinions on the benefits — social, moral, and economic — of the proposed reforms, Rodrik offers this common ground:
Interestingly, the difference of views has nothing to do with the economics of immigration, on which I think we all agree. Expanded immigration is likely to exert downward pressure on workers’ wages in the U.S. Where we disagree is on whether the gains to the rest of the world make this still a worthwhile effort (in the context, of course, of efforts to cushion the adverse effects on U.S.).
I’ll be keeping an eye on these two blogs, trying to gain some insight into the economic arguments for and against the latest proposed immigration reforms, the merits of which I am extremely skeptical, yet eager to learn.
Sometimes I wish we had writers with the skills to excoriate the dunces and low-lifes of the political class the way Mark Twain did. Then I read something like Christopher Hitchens’s commentary on George Tenet’s recent public display of self-beatification, and I think, “This is Mencken,” more scathing and more efficient than Twain.
In his latest effusion, he [Tenet] writes: “I do know one thing in my gut. Al-Qaeda is here and waiting.” Well, we all know that much by now. But Tenet is one of the few who knew it then [in 2001], and not just in his “gut” but in his small brain, and who left us all under open skies. His ridiculous agency, supposedly committed to “HUMINT” under his leadership, could not even do what John Walker Lindh had done—namely, infiltrate the Taliban and the Bin Laden circle.
Whether your politics fall on the left or the right, you’ve got to admit that this kind public humiliation of failed government officials is often necessary and therapeutic.