Otters, dogs, & liberaltarians

by E.D. Kain on June 11, 2010

For those of you who haven’t been paying attention, Megan McArdle and Peter Suderman are off to get hitched. Congratulations to them both!

The good news doesn’t end there, however. Guest-blogging at McArdle’s digs while the newlyweds honeymoon we have:

Katherine Mangu-Ward of Reason magazine.

Cato research fellow and friend of The League, Will Wilkinson.

Cato fellow Julian Sanchez, who can now guest-blog for free off his royalties for inventing the phrase ‘epistemic closure’.

Courtney Knapp who I hear blogged regularly once upon a time, and who I’m looking forward to finally reading….

And, because Megan wanted to change things up a bit, Cato scholar Timothy B. Lee.

If there are more I suppose they’ll post their intros soon.

Should be good.

{ 14 comments }

1 Rufus F. June 11, 2010 at 12:52 pm

I’m glad they’re getting married. Marriage can be tough, but I’m sure that any difficulties they might face will be fixed by the market.

2 Simon K June 11, 2010 at 1:06 pm

That should make Megan’s blog at least 80% less irritating.

3 Dylan June 11, 2010 at 9:40 pm

This may just be me, but every time I read the phrase “epistemic closure” in a political context, I want to scream, “That’s not what it means!

4 Mike Farmer June 12, 2010 at 12:32 pm

@Dylan,
Thanks — Sanchez didn’t invent epistemic closure, he misused the principle which has been around for quite a long time.

5 Jason Kuznicki June 12, 2010 at 3:37 pm

@Mike Farmer,

Julian has acknowledged that he deliberately deformed the meaning of the phrase. This sort of thing happens all the time.

6 Mike Schilling June 12, 2010 at 9:41 am

And, because Megan wanted to change things up a bit, Cato scholar Timothy B. Lee.

Yup, that’ll add a lot of ideological variety.

7 Simon K June 12, 2010 at 9:08 pm

@Mike Schilling, Heh. But y’know Cato employs people with a very wide range of different views – I mean Tim Lee isn’t particulaly libertarian except on network-related issues, and Bjorn Lomborg is some kind of generic European Social Democrat. Dislike them if you want to, but they’re the least ideologically purist of all the major think tanks and they do deserve some credit for that.

8 Barry June 14, 2010 at 7:59 am

@Simon K, “Bjorn Lomborg is some kind of generic European Social Democrat.”

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT! Climate change denialists are on the right.

9 Jaybird June 14, 2010 at 8:07 am

@Barry, by definition?

10 Simon K June 14, 2010 at 11:49 am

@Barry, Right, yes, of course. Everyone must be safely categorised or cognitive dissonance might cause our tiny brains to explode. Thank goodness for that.

Or you could try learning what people actually believe (hint – to be a denialist you have to actually deny that something is happening) rather than labelling them. But that might be effort and cause thought – probably not worth the risk.

11 Mike Farmer June 12, 2010 at 9:06 pm

Jason, yes, I should have clarified that, but I was actually clarifiying the invention claim in this post. I’m not accusing Sanchez of anything — he did state it was inadvertently improperly applied.

12 Barry June 14, 2010 at 8:02 am

In the end, the only difference is that some of those guys might be more honest than McMegan – which wouldn’t be hard. I still think that she shouuld get a Michael Kelly award for the post she wrote the day after HCR passed (the one which complained about the ‘tyranny of the majority’).

13 Mike Schilling June 14, 2010 at 12:01 pm

@Barry, Is that the one where she complained that people who favored HCR did it mostly to piss off people like her?

14 Jaybird June 14, 2010 at 11:32 am

Greece just got Junked by Moody’s.

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