Author Archives: skepticlawyer

The spam filter, she is touchy

July 1, 2009 – 12:15 pm

I’ve just had to let about four bazillion people out of the spam can, and since it was eating comments across three threads, an apology across all three seemed a bit redundant, so here’s a general apology for anyone who’s been stuck for however long. We’re not doing it deliberately, and I’m sure it will [...]

Posted in Blogging | Comments (1)

New Divide

June 26, 2009 – 6:53 am

Michael Bay has become notorious for taking good ideas and shitting on them: this is how you get a whole sequence in Team America: World Police dedicated to how shit his take on Pearl Harbour really was.
Perhaps it’s in all our interests that the Transformers franchise is proving harder to kill. This is in part [...]

Posted in Music | Tagged , , , | Comments (23)

Maxwell’s Silver Hammer

June 21, 2009 – 10:37 am

As Legal Eagle, Deus Ex Macintosh and a couple of others know, I have three characters in this novel who are — to greater or lesser degrees — torturers. One of them also has an excellent sense of humour. I mean, the little shit’s actually outstandingly funny. I tried to change this early on in [...]

Posted in Fark!, Literature, Music, Popular culture | Tagged , , | Comments (5)

‘These are the days of miracle and wonder’

June 14, 2009 – 8:03 pm

A few thoughts occasioned by our fighting over abortion and law, abortion and terror, abortion and Christianity, abortion and rights. They are scattered thoughts, alas. These debates do not bring out the best in us.
As I wrote it I was listening to War of the Worlds. Go figure.
1. When my parents married, my father refused [...]

Posted in Feminism, Religion | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (41)

There are only 7 plots…

June 9, 2009 – 4:51 am

… And all of ‘em are in Homer.
Well, that’s the story, anyway. Sometimes the magic number is eleven. Sometimes the magic number is three. Sometimes it’s something else. Sometimes Virgil gets a look-in, but usually Homer gets the blame for the sum total of basic plotlines in Western Literature. I used to think this assertion [...]

Posted in Books, Fark!, Literature, Popular culture | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (50)

Some melancholy cliometrics

May 17, 2009 – 3:07 am

Often, the historian does not have what he wants, but what he gets. Consider the ancient world. The Roman Empire was a large affair, a huge, literate, rationally administered, urbanized fact, extending over at least six centuries. From it their survive 10 million words in Latin, and 100 million in Greek. Of these, 90% are [...]

Posted in Feminism, History, Religion | Tagged , , | Comments (37)

Hedonism, Inc

April 30, 2009 – 7:32 am

More than one commentator over many years has made the point that the liberal choice architecture of capitalist societies is actually incompatible with capitalism itself: getting up on Monday morning to do one’s work for The Man involves not getting so wasted on the weekend that capitalist acts between consenting adults become impossible once the [...]

Posted in Music, Personal liberty, Politics, Popular culture, Privacy | Comments (11)

Libertarian Writing Bleg

April 23, 2009 – 7:40 pm

As a few people around the place know, I’m currently writing a novel. I’d originally had grand plans of getting it finished before starting at Oxford in 2007, but that didn’t happen. It does look likely that it’ll be finished by the end of this year, however, which is both a great relief and slightly [...]

Posted in Drugs, Economics, History, Law, Marriage, Politics, Taxation | Comments (40)

Elect a new people

April 7, 2009 – 5:27 pm

Over at LP, Paul Norton outlines some more research indicating that people do best when they have more control over their own lives, with a particular emphasis on heath outcomes. Who knew? No, I’m not being nasty, but this has been one of the most solid findings in social science, and for quite some time.
Paul [...]

Posted in Economics, Politics | Tagged , , , | Comments (19)

‘Bollywood with Brass’

April 4, 2009 – 8:45 pm

Yes, it’s a music post and… not about Metallica. 

Since I’ve been at Oxford, I’ve discovered large numbers of people who study extremely interesting things. This goes without saying. As you’d expect, there’s lots of putative cures for cancer, philosophies of law, population genetics and so on to be found among the Oxford graduate community. [...]

Posted in Art, History, Music, Religion | Tagged , , , , | Comments (21)