The portrait of “Ensign Chuck Hord,” a Navy man lost at sea in 1908, may be the greatest—or perhaps only—prank in Pentagon art history.

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Muphry’s Law is the editorial application of the better-known Murphy’s Law. Muphry’s Law dictates that:

1. if you write anything criticising editing or proofreading, there will be a fault in what you have written;
2. if an author thanks you in a book for your editing or proofreading, there will be mistakes in the book;
3. the stronger the sentiment in (a) and (b), the greater the fault; and
4. any book devoted to editing or style will be internally inconsistent.

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1. You’ve got the curves to supply my demand!

2. Let’s go to bed and try to disprove the law of diminishing marginal utility.

3. You’re my very favorite kind of moral hazard.

4. I have a feeling you really understand the “nature of the firm.”

5. Baby, I love you so much I’m willing to forgo my exit option.

6. Wanna talk about our private goods?

7. You’re an economist. I’m an economist. How about a little horizontal integration?

8. Now those are some tangible assets!

9. I’ll reveal my preferences if you will.

And the very best pick up line to catch your own economist, as well as the filthiest thing ever said in public by an economist (and I include various jokes I’ve heard at cocktail parties) is brought to us by the dynamic duo of Roberts and Papola, and comes straight from their new Hayek/Keynes rap video.

1. Bottom up or top down?

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But then, when I look at the field of candidates, I get that “Directed by Michael Bay” feeling. It’s not as bad as I felt in 1996 when it was clear that Bob Dole was going to be the nominee. That was like watching Stephen Hawking heading out to sea on a surfboard. You didn’t know exactly what would happen, but you knew it would end badly.

– Jonah Goldberg, in today’s G-File, on the field of potential 2012 Presidential candidates

“Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality” is a fanfiction retelling of Harry Potter. It takes place in an alternate universe in which Harry Potter was raised by loving foster parents who instilled in him a great love for science, rationality, and continuously questioning everything around him. He attends Hogwarts, but attends determined to figure out what in the name of Isaac Newton is going on and how, exactly, magic fits into a rational, scientific universe. The results are rather hilarious.

I discovered the story while reading Eric S. Raymond and loved his capsule description.

Read it and laugh. Read it and learn. Eliezer re-invents Harry Potter as a skeptic genius who sets himself the task of figuring out just how all this “magic” stuff works. The science is real – it really would be a lot harder to explain transformation from a human into a cat than mere levitation, for example. When Harry, confronted with a magical time-travel device, is immediately terrified that he might be holding an antimatter bomb, this is actually a more justified fear than many readers may understand.

But the characters are not slighted. Eliezer is very good at giving them responses to the rather altered and powered-up Harry that are consistent with canon. The development of Minerva McGonagall is particularly fine.

Strongly recommended. And if you manage to learn about sources of cognitive bias like the Planning Fallacy and the Bystander Effect (among others) while your sides are hurting with laughter, so much the better.

I read the first few chapters and wasn’t really getting into it. I put it down. Then I picked it up and read a few more pages. Now I’m hooked and I can’t put it down.

Go, read it. Don’t make me be the only one hooked on this. Grab it as an ePub or Mobi file for your favorite eReader. (Be aware that the story is still on-going and you’ll need to periodically re-download the file to get the latest updates.)

I agree. There are many things not to like about Governor Palin. Her sense of humor isn’t one of them. He also points out a great example of President Bush’s humor.

Any advice for parents of teens? “Look them in the eye and say, ‘I love you and there’s nothing you can do to make me stop loving you. (pause) So, stop trying!’”

As I was reading President Bush’s memoir, I was reminded that I do like his sense of humor and his personality. It was just his policies that I mostly disliked.

A couple of days ago I wrote about why I wouldn’t be writing a series on this blog rebutting Norm Geisler’s and Frank Turek’s I Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist, a book I feel is pretty emblematic of Christian apologetics as a field.

This is the beginning of that series.

I changed my mind and decided to write it for a couple of reasons. First, I was pretty convinced that such a series would be merely redundant, since Kyle over at ExChristian.net has already done an excellent job of putting paid to Geisler and Turek’s book, but on further reflection Kyle’s responses to the majority of these arguments aren’t (all) mine. Second, the book’s 12-step line of reasoning for why the Bible is divinely-inspired and inerrant also looks like a handy way to organize a discussion not only of Geisler and Turek’s points, but the points of other Christian apologists like the odious Dr. William Lane Craig. Third, I have to read the book anyway – I promised – so I might as well get some mileage for Joe’s blog out of it.

Webmaster Joe, incidentally, is reading and annotating a book of Christian apologetics himself: In Search of A Confident Faith, by Drs. Moreland and Issler. I think it’ll be interesting to see how the two books we’re reading compare. I suspect, for example, to find the two books replicate many of the same arguments. I will, of course, continue to snap at his heels whenever he posts, and gladly invite him to return the favor.

OK then! So here’s Geisler and Turek’s chain of logic, which is designed to take one from no presuppositions whatsoever in favor of Christianity to believing the Bible is the divinely-inspired Word of God.

1. Truth about Reality is knowable.
2. The opposite of truth is false.
3. The theistic God exists, which we can tell from the Cosmological Argument, Teleological Argument, and Moral Argument.
4. If God exists, miracles are possible.
5. Miracles can be used to confirm a message from God.
6. The New Testament is historically reliable.
7. The New Testament says Jesus claimed to be God.
8. Jesus’ claim to be God was miraculously confirmed by his fulfillment of prophecies, sinless life, miraculous deeds, and resurrection.
9. Therefore, Jesus is God.
10. Whatever Jesus/God said is true.
11. Jesus taught the Bible is the Word of God.
12. The Bible is the Word of God and anything which contradicts it is false.

We’ll start either tomorrow or the day after.

If anyone has any good ideas for what to call this series of posts, by the way, I’m open to suggestions. Nothing’s coming to me just at present and unless something does, I’m just going to be boring about it.

ABOVE: Father Tim Jones of the Church of England. Used to be when you invited the pastor over for dinner, you didn’t have to count the silverware afterward.

The BBC informs us (in a story I am for some reason unable to link to – so go look it up) that a priest in Britain has told his flock “God’s love for the poor and despised outweighs the property rights of the rich” – so if times are truly desperate, steal what you need from your local Wal-Mart.

Or any other big corporation, just so long as “they do not steal from small family businesses, but from large national businesses — knowing that the costs are ultimately passed on to the rest of us in the form of higher prices.”

From the Project’s website, we learn:

Socialistic terminology permeates English translations of the Bible, without justification. This improperly encourages the “social justice” movement among Christians. For example, the conservative word “volunteer” is mentioned only once in the ESV, yet the socialistic word “comrade” is used three times, “laborer(s)” is used 13 times, “labored” 15 times, and “fellow” (as in “fellow worker”) is used 55 times.

Now as someone with a B.A. in English and an interest in politics, I’ve always found the propaganda potential in word choice very real and interesting. Still, I’m unconvinced words like “laborer” and “worker” are so much Leftist vocab as they are common words that Leftists have simply run into the ground.

But hey, who knows? Maybe better alternatives do exist – so out of curiosity I jumped onto Thesaurus.com to find a few synonyms they might prefer, then decided to try inserting them in a sample verse.

I chose 1 Timothy 5:18 (ESV): “The laborer deserves his wages.” Clearly runs afoul of the CBP’s standards, so let’s see what we can do with it, shall we?

“The worker deserves his wages.” Hmm. No, that’s definitely no better, is it?

“The blue collar deserves his wages.” Oof, no. Even worse. The United Auto Workers could put it on a poster.

“The drudge deserves his wages.” Apolitical, but seems a little insulting. Looking down the list I also see “peon” and “grunt”, neither of which I feel any better about.

“The farmhand deserves his wages.” Too narrow.

“The stiff deserves his wages.” Too on the nose.

“The wage-earner deserves his wages.” Redundant?

“The migrant worker deserves his wages.” Uncomfortably pro-immigration.

“The grunt deserves his wages.” I told you they were further down the list.

“The manual worker deserves his wages.” If we could only get rid of that darned ‘w’ word. Replace it with “technician”, maybe – but I suppose that would be what the Conservative Bible Project calls “liberal wordiness”.

“The jobholder deserves his wages.” OK, this is technically perfect, but doesn’t it sound like it came out of the company manual instead of God’s Word? Ditto for “staff member” and the like. I just want something with a bit more soul.

Shoot. Well, I’ve been through most of the modern synonyms the online thesaurus has to offer, and I haven’t found any I think would really communicate the proper capitalist spirit in a striking fashion. I guess for me the words “laborer” and “worker” are justified. Maybe the good folk at the Conservative Bible Project are a little more inventive than me, though.

Come to think of it, to believe what they do I guess they’d have to be.

Heh. Related story..