Category: Random

Web sites like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Orkut are billed as community sites. You can connect to your friends, and find out what they are up to. It’s a good way to keep track of what people you know are doing. I have a page on three of these sites. Since I am not a very…

One of the weirder aspects of writing this blog is that I get regular spam comments. The comments usually have just a few words, along of the lines of “great post, this will really help me with my essay,” along with a link to some commercial web site. At the moment I’m running about 40…

A week ago I got an iPhone. I’m using it to write this entry. It’s an interesting device, since it shows, once again, an old lesson: the more a tool does for you, the more you notice its deficiencies. I say this not to dis the phone, which is actually quite nice. The interface in…

Why do we have immigration restrictions in the U.S.? Does it make sense to advocate for free trade and free flow of capital without also permitting free flow of labor? It’s interesting to ponder how much immigration would increase if there were no restrictions. Many people enter the country one way or another despite the…

So why is health care so expensive in this country? This is a subject I don’t really know anything about, which gives me even more opportunity than usual to speculate freely and leap to broad conclusions. Obviously a big chunk of it is profits taken by pharmaceutical companies, profits which would have much more justification…