Author: chris

The Wall Street Journal reports on a Harris Interactive poll that found that people who enroll in the Do-Not-Call Registry experience a reduction in telemarketing: A large majority of Americans who have registered their phone numbers with the National Do Not Call Registry say are receiving fewer telemarketing calls than before, according to a Harris…

I blogged earlier on Joseph Menn’s excellent article concerning the various powerful interests that are trying to undo state laws that require businesses to give notice of security breaches. His article also has a peek into the financial support behind the various studies that have characterized the identity theft problem as overblown: To press their…

In today’s Journal, Mossberg argues that third party cookies, small text files often used to identify a computer, are spyware: Some tracking-cookie purveyors say their cookies aren’t really spyware because they aren’t full-fledged programs and they aren’t as outrageous as spyware programs like “key loggers,” which record and report every keystroke you enter. Others argue…

Phi Beta Kappa rejected GMU’s application for membership. The Washington Post reports: …Deshmukh declined to provide copies of letters sent to the university from Phi Beta Kappa, but she read some portions to a reporter. One letter from the organization asked about media reports that a Virginia legislator had “influenced your president” to cancel a…

Professor Leiter has reposted a great discussion on economics and its status as a science. BTW: Did you know that the Nobel Prize for economics isn’t really a Nobel? Check out this post where it is explained that the Bank of Sweden, in order to heighten the status of the field of Economics, endowed the…

Some time ago, Stay Free! Magazine published an essay by 1960s ad-man Howard Gossage. In it, Gossage rejects aesthetic arguments against billboards, and instead argues that billboards are a coercive form of advertising that violate individuals’ privacy. Check it: “…there is a very real question whether it has title to its domain. Outdoor advertising is…

I just got back from Bank of America, where they say that they no longer notarize documents! The CSR used some lame excuse about 9/11, saying that they could be liable if they notorized a document! Now, that’s a load of crap. I was able to get my document notarized at a local bank… The…

The National Information Center of the Federal Reserve has this neat search engine that allows you to search the organizational hierarchies of federal banks.

One of the best discussions of fondness of the past and condemnation of the present times was written by Machiavelli in his <i>Discourses</i>. Men always praise the ancient times and find fault with the present, but not always with good reason; and they are such partisans of things past, that they celebrate not only that…