Free Republic

Nobel Prize winner Robert Aumann commented on the issue of the hostages at the Arutz Sheva - Israel National News Jerusalem Conference. “Consider the ultimatum game,” Professor Aumann began, referencing a known economics problem. “Two players will get ten thousand shekels if they can agree on how to divide it. One suggests splitting it evenly. The other The other insists on taking at least nine thousand shekels. The first player will realize that even though such a demand is irrational, he will still profit by agreeing, and so the rational first player will agree to the terms set by the...

Earlier this year, a phrase was trending because Bari Weiss used it on a talk show: “I’m done with Covid.” Many people cheered simply because the subject has been the source of vast oppression for billions of people for two years. There are two ways to be over Covid. One way is to do what the memo from the consultants of the Democratic National Committee suggested: declare the war won and move on. For political reasons. Deaths attributed to Covid nationally are higher now than they were in the summer of 2020 when the whole country was locked down. They...

There was an extended conversation on today’s Morning Joe as to whether Kim Jong Un could be deterred. The discussion centered around the question of whether Kim is a rational actor. There was absolutely no ambiguity. The panel was discussing Kim’s rationality or lack thereof. Sample statement: John Heilemann asked what Mattis, Tillerson, and McMaster “think about the rationality of this North Korean leader?” But that did not, ahem, deter Mika Brzezinski from saying, in her most serious and somber tone: “When you talk about the rationality of the leaders . . . I honestly did not know which leader...

The big winner was Cruz, and the big loser was Bush. See below. Just to get started on the right foot, let's state at the outset that "the moderators" could not be the winners of a national debate. They can certainly be the losers, however, if they impede, if they are biased, or if they are infantile. That describes the CNBC moderators and the first Fox News moderators, Kelly/Wallace/Baier. They were losers. But for moderators to 'win' means we have relegated the issues and the candidates to some kind of back row. Who were the real winners last night? I...

An Orthodox Jewish woman is suing the Lucille Roberts health-club chain for allegedly pitching a holy fit when she insisted on wearing a skirt during her workouts in Brooklyn. Yosefa Jalal, of Crown Heights, claims in court papers to be filed Friday that she was repeatedly harassed, threatened with arrest and ultimately had her membership revoked for following religious dictates regarding female modesty.

Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) said Tuesday that state regulations governing child labor are hurting the state’s economy, according to the Portland Press Herald. “We don’t allow children to work until they’re 16, but two years later, when they’re 18, they can go to war and fight for us,” LePage said at an agricultural trade show, according to the paper. “That’s causing damage to our economy. I started working far earlier than that, and it didn’t hurt me at all. There is nothing wrong with being a paperboy at 12 years old, or at a store sorting bottles at 12...

Previous studies have examined the effect of income on lottery ticket expenditures using an aggregate measure of income, usually personal income. Reasons exist, however, for believing that lottery expenditures do not respond equally to all sources of income. This paper examines the propensity to purchase lottery tickets from separate types of income, namely income from earnings, transfer payments, and wealth. Using county-level data for five states, we find evidence that lottery expenditures respond differently to changes in each income type, and that ticket purchases are most strongly influenced by changes in transfer payments. Several policy implications follow from our results.

In the run-up to Pope Benedict's current visit to Turkey, TIME Magazine opened its pages to Tariq Ramadan, Europe's favorite Islamist and perhaps the most influential Muslim figure in the West today. Ramadan chided the Pope and Europe for ignoring the positive contributions of Islam to the development of rational thought in the West. Writing in response to Benedict's now-famous Regensburg speech (which prompted outrage in the Muslim world) and the Pope's first visit to a predominantly Muslim country, Ramadan's article, "And He's Still in the Dark", offers a back-handed compliment to Benedict's attempt at dialogue with Muslims, warning that...

Why is it tragic when human activities bring about the extinction of a single species, but natural, that is, benign, when scores of millions of species become extinct in the ordinary course of nature? How can the same result be evil when caused by man and good when caused by Mother Nature? A forest fire started by a discarded cigarette butt does not burn any hotter than a forest fire started by lightning. More than ninety-nine percent of all the species that have ever lived are extinct, extinguished by Mother Nature. If we extinguish a species, we extinguish perhaps one...

There's no helping you. This site is now just a diversion -- like a train wreck. This site is inherently for and about raving egomaniacs, and Jim's site policies -- which amount to excluding reality and actual dialogue in favor of political/militaristic pornography -- is conducive to cognitive dissonance, which at the times your worldview is threatened leads you into psychotic breaks (on the political cognitive plane, that is, and just maybe in other realms too). Not to mention that your baseline politics is based in mythology about American demographics, science, economics, ethics etc. You spoonfeed each other in the...

By the time you read this, chances are that Terri Schiavo will be dead. In a land of plenty, where her parents are more than willing to feed her, where millions of thoughtful and concerned citizens have campaigned for her continued provision of sustenance, she is nonetheless condemned to wither away, literally, by a method that would be considered cruel and unusual punishment when applied to the worst of serial rapist-murderers: starvation. Private money and time has been volunteered to support her; Bob and Mary Schindler, Ms. Schiavo’s parents, have, in a blatant display of statist intrusion, been denied the...

I've been reading Karl Popper's two volume work "Open Society and it Enemies". Here's the amazon.com link:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0691019681/103-5859654-8821426?v=glanceThe thread I posted at commongroundcommonsense.org, "In Defense of Open Society" was inspired by that work. I'd like to start a thread with the same name here because I see this as an important problem that crosses partisan lines. In a nutshell, the central question is this: how can we rationally institute changes in our society? Changes take place whether we consciously bring them about or not, and some changes are threatening to some people. Popper charts some of the philosophers who have tried...

Not since the Revolutionary War has America faced a greater threat to its existence than it does today. A worldwide network of terrorists is bent on destroying us and everything we value. All the more reason to make clear on Flag Day the principles for which we stand. In this age of diversity-worship, it is considered axiomatic that all cultures and countries are equal. Western culture—and its most consistent and highest expression, America—it is declared, is in no way superior to that of any other culture, not even to tribes of cannibals. To deny the equality of all cultures, claim...

The Cosmopolitan IllusionBy Lee HarrisIs it wrong to teach our children to be patriotic? Or may we teach them to be a little patriotic, provided that we also teach them to value and respect the cultures of others? Should they be encouraged to be loyal to their own nation, or should they be taught that they are citizens of the world before all else? These are the questions that were addressed in the justly celebrated essay “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism” by Martha Nussbaum, and her answer was that education should actively encourage “the very old ideal of the cosmopolitan, the person...