When I was an undergraduate at Loyola I wrote a bi-weekly column for the student newspaper. This week I was invited as a faculty member to contribute on op-ed commenting on the recent campus wide issue of unionizing our dining services employees. Just like when I was in undergrad, it seems to have ruffled some feathers. See the column and the comments here.

He who knows not and knows not he knows not, He is a fool - Shun him.
He who knows not and knows he knows not, He is simple - Teach him.
He who knows and knows not he knows, he is asleep - Awaken him.
He who knows and knows that he knows, He is wise - Follow him.

-Bruce Lee

My book review of Jesus Huerta de Soto's The Austrian school: Market order and entrepreneurial creativity, forthcoming in the Review of Austrian Economics has been posted online at Springer.

My forthcoming paper in Public Choice has been posted online at Springer.

Adam Martin's great post at Aid Watch reminded me of Richard Bell's work. I remember he mentioned something akin to the following: on the American frontier people were against young women reading current literature, for fear that they would be overwhelmed with the urge to commit suicide. Instead they encouraged reading classics and romantic era literature - talk about irony.

Also be sure to check out Mark Canuel's The Shadow of Death: Literature, Romanticism, and the Subject of Punishment. Canuel argues that the romantics were critical in motivating social change away from corporal punishments. I wonder if his claim would also suffer criticism from a dose of the Martin via Levy-Peart Hypothesis. Smith and Bentham were some of the loudest critics against torture on economical / epistemic grounds.

Barkley Rosser summarizes the exchange forthcoming in Advances in Austrian Economics over at econospeak.

David Garland on Capital Punishment.

and Steven Pinker on Violence:

HT Art Carden at Division of Labor

The soundtrack against public schooling seems to be growing in size and quality