URLs du Jour

2017-10-03

Proverbs 20:17 is pretty good:

17 Food gained by fraud tastes sweet,
    but one ends up with a mouth full of gravel.

I would hope so.


■ Another day, another horror, another round of predictable knees jerking. Brian Doherty at Reason asks: How Could Anyone Deny the Need for Tougher and More Stringently Enforced Gun Laws in the Wake of the Vegas Slaughter?

To resist an instant call to more or tougher gun laws or enforcement in the wake of terrors like Vegas, you need to understand it is not only that existing laws and regulations will not reliably prevent such crimes as long as guns exist. All the new or expanded national gun control laws advocated as sensible and necessary would have had no effect on horrible crimes such as occurred in Las Vegas last night, even if perfectly enforced, as Jacob Sullum explained at Reason earlier today. (Nor, it seems to me, would wider skilled civilian possession of guns likely done much good in this particular scenario. Hard as it is to admit, some tragedies are not meaningfully preventable.)

This is grown-up thinking. Here's the opposite, from my own CongressCritter, Carol Shea-Porter:

"Something".


■ George F. Will asks: Is the Supreme Court about to plunge into a political thicket?

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments tempting it to plunge into an impenetrable political thicket. It will consider a lower court’s ruling that, if allowed to stand, will require the judiciary to determine whether and when partisanship in drawing electoral districts — something as old as the Constitution — is unconstitutional. And courts will wrestle repeatedly with cases requiring them to decide how to decide how much partisanship is too much.

Gee, that sounds like a swell idea. Once again, I recommend my own crackpot idea to obviate gerrymandering.


■ Tom Petty died, and that's sad, especially since he was only a few months older than I am. But Monty Hall also passed away, and that got me thinking about the Monty Hall problem, Marilyn vos Savant, and how many smart people made fools of themselves: The Time Everyone “Corrected” the World’s Smartest Woman.

Despite its deceptive simplicity, some of the world’s brightest minds -- MIT professors, renowned mathematicians, and MacArthur “Genius” Fellows -- have had trouble grasping [the Monty Hall problem's] answer. For decades, it has sparked intense debates in classrooms and lecture halls.

As one of the experts quoted says: "Our brains are just not wired to do probability problems very well."


■ This is Pun Salad, and Halloween is a'coming, so we would be remiss if we did not point you to 26 Punny Halloween Costume Ideas From a Pun Champion. All guaranteed to induce moans. For example:

13. Wear a sign that says Route 666. When people point out the extra 6 as a mistake, correct them by saying “No, I’m the Route of All Evil.”

I'll be dressed as usual: small-town homeowner wishing he had a moat.


■ And your tweet du jour:


Last Modified 2019-01-06 6:29 AM EDT