Detailed Abstractions

News From Respected Sources

• Maryland Law Review 71:1 (December 2011) 2012/02/04
  Volume 71, Issue 1 (December 2011): Tributes to Professor Robert I. Keller Donald G. Gifford Daniel S. Goldberg Richard E. Levine Michael Kelly Symposium: The Maryland Constitutional Law Schmooze Foreword: Plus or Minus One: The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, Mark A. Graber The Thirteenth Amendment, Interest Convergence, and the Badges and Incidents o […]
  Maryland Law Review
• $35.9 million says subjective value theory is correct 2012/02/04
  One related story is here. Addendum: Qatar, by the way, last year paid about $250 million for a Cezanne “Card Players.”  The details are now coming out. […]
  Tyler Cowen
• Links 2/4/12 2012/02/04
  A ton of today’s links come from Lambert, including the antidote. If it’s interesting and not attributed to a reader, assume it was due to Lambert. Yes you were right Charles: Plants really can communicate with one another In the Stone Age, when the Wall Street Journal was available only in print, in one section, and had its center column devoted to human in […]
  Yves Smith
• Toward a theory of praise 2012/02/04
  Rogoff’s real hero, however, was Bobby Fischer, the American chess champion of the 1970s. He remembers following the games from the famous Fischer-Spassky world chess championship in 1972, and being awed by Fischer’s play – “It was like seeing the hand of God at work; the originality, the simplicity.” He shakes his head in delight and amazement. Fischer even […]
  Tyler Cowen
• Exponential Finance 2012/02/04
  Yves here. As much as the overall thrust of this guest post has merit, I’m always leery of forecasts that amount to “trees grow to the sky.” I’ve evaluated a lot of tech deals (really weird ones) and I’ve found almost without exception that people get too caught up in the investors’ world view and spend too much time focusing on the technology aspects of the […]
  Yves Smith
• This is Why NC Was Down Much of Friday 2012/02/04
  Above my pay grade. The problem has been solved by splitting the site across two servers. Here is the brief version: Memory usage in server spiked multiple times. See that blue chart above 4Gb line? That is when server starts heavily swapping and then load accumulates and it become unresponsive. I was pretty pleased with my Friday posts, so if you got tired […]
  Yves Smith
• The Case for Gold — Again 2012/02/04
  By David BoazIn the New York Times, Floyd Norris reminds us: The 1980 presidential election was fought by a Democratic incumbent weakened by a poor economy amid worries that the United States had lost its ability to compete in the world. Gold prices had risen to unprecedented levels as the election approached, and the Republican nominee hinted he might propo […]
  David Boaz
• U.S. urges more health care argument 2012/02/04
  The Obama Administration asked the Supreme Court on Friday to expand by a half-hour — to a total of six hours — the time allowed for oral arguments in late March on the constitutionality of the new federal health care law.   In a ten-page motion, U.S. Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli, Jr., said the added time would be provided for the opening arguments o […]
  Lyle Denniston
• Arizona State Blocks Access to Change.org 2012/02/04
  Arizona State University has reportedly blocked access to the petition website Change.org, citing concerns with "spam" emails coming from the site in the wake of a petition posted on the site that advocated lower tuition costs at the university. Today, FIRE wrote a letter to the university asking that Arizona State immediately restore access to the […]
  FIRE
• Friday round-up 2012/02/03
  With the Court still in its mid-term recess, today’s clippings focus on the activities of Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor. The AP’s Mark Sherman (via the Traverse City (Mich.) Record-Eagle) reports that Justice Ginsburg has returned from her visit to Egypt and Tunisia, a trip that was sponsored by the State Department. Speaking to a crowd at […]
  Marissa Miller
• Thoughts on Ammori’s Free Speech Architecture and the Golan decision 2012/02/03
  Thank you to Marvin for an excellent article to read and discuss, and thank you Concurring Opinions for providing a public forum for our discussion. In the article, the critical approach that Marvin takes to challenge the “standard” model of the First Amendment is really interesting. He claims that the standard model of the First Amendment focuses on preserv […]
  Brett Frischmann
• Obama’s Neocon Moment 2012/02/03
  By Christopher PrebleIn his State of the Union address, President Obama emphatically declared, “Anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned, doesn’t know what they’re talking about.” Obama sought to put to rest the notion that he is embracing American decline, as GOP candidates Romney, Gingrich and Santorum have accused hi […]
  Christopher Preble
• The Chinese fapioa, or reverse tip 2012/02/03
  In China a fapioa – the official receipt used for expense claims has a resale face value of 2 – 10% of face value – leaving one behind in a restaurant or taxi is the equivalent of giving a tip (in a culture where tipping is uncommon) and not requesting one allows the person or establishment to avoid ringing the exchange through a cash register. There are two […]
  Tyler Cowen
• Economic Freedom Must Accompany Democracy in Egypt by Marian L. Tupy 2012/02/03
  The latest outbreak of violence in Egypt is a reminder of that country’s halting transition from dictatorship to democracy. The process of democratization in the Arab world that begun with the self-immolation of Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi just over a year ago will likely continue, but the experience of ex-communist countries shows that economic […]
  (author unknown)
• Why Does U.S. Pay to Protect Prosperous Allies? by Christopher A. Preble 2012/02/03
  For some time now, Republican hawks like Sen. John McCain and Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon have been saying that our military budget is inadequate for the threats we face. They like to gripe that President Barack Obama is orchestrating the decline of American power. Some of this is pure partisanship. Republicans criticize Democrats just as Democrat […]
  (author unknown)