Urinetown

I saw it last weekend with Y. at the University of Maryland, and while it was delightfully acerbic, as advertised, I would have enjoyed it more, perhaps, if it weren't also an apparent harbinger of things to come.

The Paranoid Style in Google Video

I'm currently collaborating on a paper about the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which the Senate, finally, may soon ratify. The main thing holding it up has been anti-UN reactionaries, who recently have producing bizarre ads opposing ratification such as this one:



It's a pack of lies, of course, but also weirdly entertaining, I must confess.

Pain in the RSS

I like Google Reader a lot, but one of the annoying things about it -- perhaps this is true of other RSS software -- is that I will often get a post reacting to a post before I get the original post itself. So, for example, this morning I read Tyler Cowen's critique of Dani Rodrik's progressive trade vision, then read, an hour later, Rodrik's post on... his progressive trade vision. Maybe I'd be better off living backwards, like T.H. White's Merlin.

Best. Rom-Com. Ever.

I must steal this idea.