Michael Brown, Ferguson, and Implicit Racism in America

In recent weeks, everywhere I look I see pieces written by people about the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Some of the pieces support Brown, others attack Brown, all of them make explicit or implicit claims about what the incident means for America’s soul. All of them seem to take as a given that this incident tells us something we didn’t already know. The truth is that like any individual death (regardless of whether it was murder or an accident), Michael Brown’s does not tell us what the general trends are in America. All it can serve to do is highlight an issue. To understand what’s really going on, we have to look at that issue in a wider statistical context, and this piece seeks to provide that context.

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Jafar: Agrabah’s Atatürk

Today I’d like to turn to an old theme–the tendency for Disney movies to disparage intellectual villains in favor of physical heroes and apologize for economic and social injustice. Previously, I wrote about how The Lion King, rightly interpreted, is really about Scar’s attempt to liberate the hyenas from a racist lion oligarchy. Today I’d like to do something similar with Aladdin, reconstructing the plot so as to render Jafar the hero.

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Why Developed Countries Deny God

I ran across a fascinating Pew survey today about the extent to which people in different parts of the world believe that belief in god is necessary to justify moral views. It is a rare thing to get such a comprehensive look at the philosophical and theological views of people all around the world. Even more interestingly, the Pew survey reveals important relationships between the kind of society we have and the way we think about moral philosophy.

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Developing Countries Shouldn’t Host the Olympics

The 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia got started yesterday. In the run-up, we’ve heard a variety of zany stories, from booked hotel rooms that for whatever reason were not ready to a road so expensive it could have been paved with foie gras. The Sochi games may go off without a hitch from here on out, and I wish the Russians the best of luck, but developing countries are not good choices for hosting major sporting events, whether they be the Olympics, the World Cup, or any such thing. I say this not because the athletes and foreign press have to make do with inferior conditions (although sometimes they do), but because it is not in the interest of the citizens of developing countries for their states to host these games.

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How Food Subsidies Make You Poorer and Kill African Babies

Recently in the United States, congress has been fighting with the president about food subsidies. The bill for renewing food subsidies also renews the food stamp program, which helps very poor individuals purchase food. Congressional republicans are seeking to make cuts to the food stamp program, denying food stamps to those who are not in part-time employment or in job training. They seek to pass a version of the farm bill that permits state governments to deny food stamps to the unemployed. The president threatens to veto the farm bill if it includes language of this kind, preventing a renewal of the subsidies. There has been no resolution to the dispute as of yet. Today I wish to argue that congressional republicans are attempting to kill the wrong part of the farm bill–they should be targeting the farm subsidies rather than food stamps for the unemployed.

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