Lessons

Learn what not to do with a can of WD-40.

Learn this proof. It is unassailable, and of utmost importance.

The true threat to our environment

Dihydrogen Monoxide. Nasty Stuff. (via P&S)

Thomas Jefferson Lives

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

And I Wish I Had a Pony

Or maybe something a little more manly. Anyway, reminding me why I've never liked him (even so, I wish he had won in 2000), Al Gore: I wish that we could have had in the 1990s the deafening scientific consensus that has emerged in more recent years.

Define loser

Tabarrok has a story about compensating the losers of a policy that I think is instructive.

An Important Point

Don't compare quality of care by using cost. Terrible.

Thank you

Mankiw:

Note that points 1 and 2 are about political philosophy rather than economics. Economists can have opinions about these matters, but our opinions are not much better or worse by virtue of our training than those of anyone else.

This is something that often bugs me. People who are experts in one area often act or are treated as if they are experts in other areas. That doesn't that they have nothing to offer in those other areas, but they and we need to keep in mind the limits of their (possible) superiority.