Tag Archives: humor

"Libertarian socialism." The reality is, if you really break it down, socialism is just some system of governance which affords some form of social ownership over the means of production. Democrats and Republicans alike have almost always supported some variant of socialist policy when it suits them. I myself follow a decidedly purist strain of this philosophy often referred to as libertarian socialism. While in the past I've danced with the devil of full-tilt Bolshevism and I continue...

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action The animation above comes from a cool page of causal inference animations by Nick Huntington-Klein (h/t Alex Tabarrok), which go through, step-by-step with scatterplots, how different methods work. Alex was one of many who offered helpful tips for getting through undergrad econometrics. Call for papers for the Y-Rise conference Dec 15-21 on the science of scaling promising interventions. They have research networks looking at...

Don’t know about you, but watching the daily news isn’t much fun these days (nor is the weather/climate), and this week in particular, I am sorely in need of light relief. There was even a riot at my local swimming pool yesterday.So back to the abandoned series of ‘Friday funnies’: here’s a few previous FP2P posts that might just qualify. Coincidentally, they are the ones that the people I talk to often remember best. Hope they are acceptable – I once received a complaint because the...

Hotel Mount Washington where the Betton Woods Conference was held in 1944. Bretton Woods is the name of the town in New Hampshire.Global MonitorThe Bear On The Balcony At Bretton Woods

As he retires from being a Senator; he has made many noises about being opposed to many things Trump has done as President. Except that is all it was, no action and just noise. “In an announcement that many saw coming, Senator Jeff Flake, of Arizona, announced on Friday that he would retire from humanity, effective immediately. Speaking to reporters at the Capitol, Flake said that the demands of being a human being had ‘taken their toll,’ and that it was...

I gazed out the eighth-story window of a humble – bashful, even – apartment at crowds of pedestrians on the street below, feeling drawn to those crowds, blissfully lost in their collective thoughts, basking in a sense of universal oneness and kindness toward everyone and everything. I held a specially designated Study Mug to my chest, nestled just so, withholding for a time the pleasure of that first sip. At last I relented, and gave in to sweet temptation, raising the Mug to my lips. Ugh...

I gazed out the eighth-story window of a humble – bashful, even – apartment at crowds of pedestrians on the street below, feeling drawn to those crowds, blissfully lost in their collective thoughts, basking in a sense of universal oneness and kindness toward everyone and everything. I held a specially designated Study Mug to my chest, nestled just so, withholding for a time the pleasure of that first sip. At last I relented, and gave in to sweet temptation, raising the Mug to my lips. Ugh...

Although religious cults are the subject of many glowing news stories, what seems to get missed is that they can sometimes also have a darker side. The effects on those involved are not always as positive as current affairs journalists would have us believe. The following recounting of an untrue story offers an example of this.  Troublous Times for the Sunshine Cult – A Short Story Saul (real name Jackson Daly) stood amid general hilarity by the lake, drenched in moonlight and old and...

We begin in the US: …the Dyke March Collective also ejected three people carrying Jewish Pride flags (a rainbow flag with a Star of David in the center). According to one of those individuals—A Wider Bridge Midwest Manager Laurel Grauer—she and her friends were approached a number of times in the park because they were holding the flag. “It was a flag from my congregation which celebrates my queer, Jewish identity which I have done for over a decade marching...

My wife has been enjoying the recent skits about the Trump administration on Saturday Night Live. I can see why. Even Melissa McCarthy has managed to be funny in her impressions of Sean Spicer. Until now I would have sworn that reports of McCarthy having a sense of humor were some sort of urban legend. SNL has a long history of generating memorable Presidential impressions: Chevy Chase (sort of Gerald Ford), Dana Carvey (Bush the Elder) and Will Ferrell (Bush...