Applied Epistemology

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James Wood aptly observes: "Perhaps the disciples just meant more to Jesus than a few hundred thousand Asians." He does a good job explaining J.L. Mackie's old point that the free will defense is a total failure for traditional Christianity, since the notion of Heaven (e.g.) implies a world

...or, the key to all optical illusions.

The NYRB's Elizabeth Drew is evidently charmed by Jim Webb.

On one of my last quizzes of the semester in critical thinking, I give the following example of bad reasoning (taken almost verbatim from a real think tank report I found on the web):

In 1964, when the bracero program ended, 86,597 people were apprehended by the INS for illegal immigration. In 1976, INS apprehensions were 875,915—a more than 1,000% increase. This indicates there was a significant rise in illegal immigration.

Jay Cost has, as usual, an excellent analytic perspective on the (mercifully ended) Democratic nomination.

Justin Smith has written an interesting essay on early modern ideas about human races. I found especially suggestive his observation that the decline of cataclysm-based theories about race was a key step toward replacing myth with history.

The things you discover when you're curious about Coney Island:

c.1200, from Anglo-Norm. conis, pl. of conil "long-eared rabbit" (Lepus cunicula) from L. cuniculus, the small, Sp. variant of the It. hare (L. lepus), the word perhaps from Iberian Celtic (classical writers say it is Spanish). Rabbit arose 14c. to mean the young of the species, but gradually pushed out the older word 19c., after British slang picked up coney as a synonym for "cunt" (cf.

It's funny. When I assessed Obama's chances before the primaries began, I thought he'd never connect with ordinary folks; he has always struck me as sounding rather like, well, a typical liberal Oxy student (albeit a very articulate one). I felt it fairly likely, even as late as pre-Super Tuesday, that he would go the way of George McGovern and Gary Hart. But he has beaten the odds -- even after, surprisingly late in the campaign, his opponents finally realized that -- duh -- he is a classic Adlai Stevenson-style intellectual liberal Democrat. How did he manage to avoid the "elitist" label for so long? And how does he continue to deflect that angle of attack, even after his bluntly Frankfurt School "cling to religion and guns" remarks have become well-aired?

In the dark age of 1991, before Marvel produced its own movies, it produced an unspeakably bad licensed comic. Click on the links at the end of the article.