Cato has a Blog

Well, kind of. The Cato Institute has launched an interesting new project called Cato Unbound. It's a combination blog/magazine billing itself as "a virtual trading floor in the intellectual marketplace, specializing in the exchange of big ideas." Each month they will present an essay by a prominent scholar on some big issue of the day, then they will present critiques of that essay and an exchange of ideas with other prominent scholars, who will respond to the original essay and to one another. And they're off to a great start.

The first issue has an essay that answers the question of what three constitutional amendments would you pass if you had the power to do so today, and it's written by James Buchanan. Who's he? Only a Nobel Prize winner in Economics. His essay will be critiqued by Akhil Amar, one of the more brilliant legal scholars in the country, by Alex Kozinski, one of the more brilliant Federal judges in the country, and by William Niskanen, chairman of the Cato Institute. That's a hell of a lineup of thinkers. This will be well worth reading every month.

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As of yesterday, readers had made an astonishing 3,878 individual ratings of the essays in the Blogger SAT Challenge. The average rating was 2.76, compared to 2.9 from the expert judges.
Accoring to Aubrea Wagner, the 17 year old winner of the Christian World View essay contest in which students were asked to write an essay on the following theme:
Remember yesterday when I said that only one essay scored a six on the Blogger SAT Ch
Yes, yes, I know Darwin Day was Februrary 12th. Nevertheless, the Alliance for Science is sponsoring an essay contest in Darwin's honor and, if you're a high school student you can still celebrate by writing an essay.

Nit: there is no Nobel Prize in Economics There is a Nobel Prize in "Economic Sciences" in memory of Alfred Nobel. The prize winner is selected by the Bank of Sweden.

One might consider it a minor issue, but I, quite frankly, do not. It bothers my partner--who was trained in economics--but from what I can tell, economics is largely a political activity.

http://nobelprize.org/economics/laureates/

"a virtual trading floor in the intellectual marketplace, specializing in the exchange of big ideas."

What pretentious twaddle. Generally when making an analogy it helps if there's an isomporhism.

By Ginger Yellow (not verified) on 06 Dec 2005 #permalink