There’s lots I want to write about today but have little time to do so. So let me throw out a question with less than earth-shattering importance. Today Nicole’s law goes into effect in Massachusetts, requiring carbon monoxide detectors in every residence. Fine enough, though I guess there’s a libertarian case to be made against […]
The SJC upholds the law preventing out-of-state marriages contrary to the state laws of the origin state.
MassMarrier and Under the Golden Dome are blasting the law and the SJC, so I thought it might be a good time to revive my 2004 post on why that 1913 law is good for gay marriage. Shorter version: […]
I’m feeling a bit swamped today, but thought these posts worth a note:
Kieran Healy on cloning: "I’ve half-joked before that, purely because of this basic point, sociologists should welcome human cloning with open arms. Technically achieving the sort of things many people imagine they could do with cloning —recreate a lost child or relative, produce […]
At .08 Acres, sco gives us a nice review of Markos Moulitsas’ Crashing the Gate and in the process asks:
Is there any way to objectively measure the performance of a consultant? Won-loss record? Dollars spent per vote? Year over year turnout increases? I don’t know what criteria you would use, but I do know that […]
Quote of the day:
A small economics department today is more likely to succeed by assembling a quality group of socialists than free-marketeers.
That’s George Mason’s Alex Tabarrok and Peter Boettke, the former of Marginal Revolution fame, writing in Slate on academic arbitrage. Well, they don’t use the word arbitrage, and it’s not exactly arbitrage, but […]
I’ve noted the Boston Walk of Fame proposal that’s being
considered and developed. I still think it’s a miserable idea. And
Concillor John Tobin apparently is still all for it.
But maybe
if I could suggest a compromise, or another way at looking at this,
how about a Boston Musical Heritage Trail? I’m picturing something
starting in the South End, going […]
In the comments, Keto from Colorblind Society responds to my last
post on immigration:
I agree that the dems also
have a nativist contingent. The difference is that their core
strategy (at the national level, at least) does not rest of fomenting
this element and related racial resentment… The repubs are their
own worse enemy, in this case.
Believe me, I’m not
trying […]
I know there’s a bill circulating in Congress now, but even still I’m surprised at the apparent suddenness immigration has moved from back burner to front. I don’t that I have too much more to say beyond what I chipped in with a couple weeks ago, but here’s some assorted reading:
Brad DeLong challenges Paul Krugman’s […]
Jon Keller interviews independent gubernatorial candidate Christy Mihos. On almost everything, he gave evasive and inconsequential answers. For instance, Mihos is touting a refund on local property taxes using general state revenues. Sensibly, Keller pressed Mihos on what taxes he might raise when state revenues inevitably fall. Mihos’s response?
State revenues collapse because more people, […]
I haven’t gotten too far into this month’s bookclub book, Peter Bearman’s Doormen, but already I’m loving it. Mind you, that could be because I’m a sociology buff to begin with, but the book has a remarkable ability to read the macro-level issues of social conflict and integration in the micro-interactions between people.
As a […]
Go read this post at Blue Mass Group on wind power, conservation and energy policy. It won’t be 100% new to readers perhaps, but the writer, stomv, outlines the problems facing regional energy policy in clear and understandable terms. He certainly frames the issue of power production in ways I’d never thought about. For all […]
At DFACambridge, Shai Sachs pronounces his support for a Central Sq.-Cambridgeport-Allston Rapid Bus line.
City Councillor Craig Kelley and Jeff Rosenblum, founder of Livable Streets, both agree that the term "Bus Rapid Transit" is misleading, since the new line would be more of a bus than a subway. But that discussion is itself a bit […]
Carpundit, a Healey supporter, roots for a Deval Patrick primary win:
I hope its Patrick. Massachusetts isn’t going to elect a black lefty to the corner office. Maybe a black centrist, but not a lefty.
Now, his hyperbole could be intentional, a way of tarring a political opponent. But at some point, the labels you fling around […]
I about choked on my coffee when I read what Stirling Newberry had to say about Kevin Phillips.
But KP is neither truly a historian, nor an economist. Where his book falls short in filling in these themes - he could have used Wallerstein, Fischer, Sen, Clark, Sachs, Stiglitz - and to be honest Newberry […]
I’m long overdue in giving notice to Charles Swift and his excellent City Record and Boston News-Letter. It’s a compendium of Boston history… vanished buildings, forgotten events, context for current debates on planning and urban development. His recent posts - on a 1970s BRA book, Mass. Av in the 1920s, thoughts on the population Census, […]