Friday, February 10, 2017

Weekend Reading: The Darcy Edition

You almost got another post this week, but I decided to write my post about the FDA over at my professional site. And I was ready to rant about when I started getting angry about politics last night, but decided to escape into my favorite cheesy Dutch detective show instead. (It is called Lord and Master and is in fact the only Dutch show I have ever watched. I like it because the combination or ridiculous plots, beautiful settings, well-tailored clothes, and almost comprehensible Dutch makes it something that lets me completely escape the real world.)

So, let's just get to the links. I named this post to make sure you don't miss the link about Darcy near the bottom. I could move it up here, but my pattern is self-promo, serious stuff, fun stuff and apparently I feel strongly about keeping that.

First up, the self-promo: a nice new review of The Lilies of Dawn. This one was a surprise to me- I hadn't sent a review copy. It is always nice to get a spontaneous review!  (For new readers who might not know: I run a little publishing company and this is one of the books I published.)

An economist looks at whether the low tax, anti-union policies in states like Kansas and Wisconsin actually help their economies. I would like to read a more thorough analysis of the impact of these policies. People keep saying that states are policy laboratories, so it would be nice to read a thorough analysis of what we've learned in those laboratories. Probably something like this exists and I should go look for it. If you know of such a thing, feel free to spare me the search time by dropping it in my comments!

Jeet Heer on how it is turning out that people should have taken Trump literally as well as seriously.

But I agree with Ezra Klein's argument here: there is an institution that can stop the excesses of our current President, they are just choosing not to. So I'm directing my attention more towards Congress.

Apparently there is now a special line for me to call and ask the Oversight Committee to investigate whatever egregious conflict of interest turns up next week.

These stories about people getting hassled by Border Agents scare me. It feels like we are teetering on the edge of something very bad. Ordinary people amplified the cruelty of the immigration Executive Order, which is unsurprising given what we know about human psychology, but still chilling.

This is a good ad:




This is a thoughtful essay from Pat Blanchard about how political circumstances interact with private suffering.

This Washington Post article about healthcare in Idaho is worth your time, even though it will probably make you really sad.

Let's make to Darcy a verb!

Stern bunny of the week:




Fluffy bunnies!


1 comment:

  1. I hadn't read that Ezra Klein piece, but I have come to the same conclusion. It's not that I won't send a postcard to the White House--it's that I think focusing on my various representatives will (hopefully) have more of an effect over time.

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