Suppose there’s a precedent that people don’t like. A case comes up and they are debating whether the precedent applies. Often the most effective way to argue against it is to cite previo...
https://cheaptalk.org/2014/10/12/solidifying-bad-precedents/
Excellent article by Lawrence Wright: Al Qaeda was originally envisioned as a kind of Sunni foreign legion, which would defend Muslim lands from Western occupation…. Bin Laden had asked Zarqawi...
https://cheaptalk.org/2014/06/17/what-is-the-difference-between-isis-and-al-qaeda/
These are my thoughts and not those of Northwestern University, Northwestern Athletics, the Northwestern football team, nor of the Northwestern football players. As usual, the emergence of a unio...
https://cheaptalk.org/2014/03/26/thoughts-on-northwestern-football-unionization/
The NRA successfully lobbied to stop gun control legislation. Several Democrats sided with Republicans to defeat it. But the NRA seems to have spent more than necessary to defeat the measures...
https://cheaptalk.org/2013/04/29/dividing-blame-and-conquering-guilt/
Imagine a genie which randomly imposes across-the-board budget cuts unless Congress votes to stop them before they happen. This would be a good genie. Its easy to blame the other side for not c...
There are two actions, A and B, and there are two observable types of people L and R. Everybody is the same in the following sense: for any single individual either A or B is the optimal acti...
The case of The Oscars: BEST PICTURE “This is a preferential system. I’m putting Amour at No. 9 because I’m just pissed off at that film. Beasts of the Southern Wild is a movie that I ...
https://cheaptalk.org/2013/02/24/annals-of-manipulable-voting/
Its called Nostra Culpa and its a 16 minute 2 act opera dramatizing the exchange on Twitter between Paul Krugman and Estonian President Toomas Ilves about that country’s austerity program. �...
https://cheaptalk.org/2013/01/22/krugman-v-estonian-president-twitter-flame-war-the-opera/
As budget negotiations get underway with the threat of sequestration looming, it’s worth recalling a basic lesson from game theory. Consider two parties in the same vehicle speeding towards a c...
The average voter’s prior belief is that the incumbent is better than the challenger. Because without knowing anything more about either candidate, you know that the incumbent defeated a previo...
https://cheaptalk.org/2012/11/05/elections-incumbents-and-information/