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Daniel Gross notes that some strange people are suddenly starting hedge funds. For instance, former Secretary of State Madeline Albright, who never managed a dime previously:
Former foreign-policy hands such as Henry Kissinger supply advice to hedge funds and Fortune 500 companies on how geopolitical events affect their investments. Albright is taking this practice a [...]

Jack Shafer remains willfully obtuse about linguistics in his review of “Unspeak” by british journalist Stephen Poole.
He says:
Unlike George Lakoff, who lectures the Democratic Party about the importance of “framing” political debates in order to win them, Poole dismisses this tactic as fighting unspeak with unspeak, as the “pro-choice” and “pro-life” schools demonstrate.
As Shafer’s past [...]

From the comments of Jacob Sullum’s post about a paralegal who impersonated an attorney:
An attorney who represents someone who impersonated a lawyer has a fool for a client.
and
President Andrew Jackson didn’t have a law degree, and he was a pretty decent frontier lawyer. Of course, in those days, being a lawyer meant kicking [...]

Matty Yglesias posted a recollection on something called “The Voyage of The Mimi“. Apparently it was a circa ’80’s educational programming starring young Ben Affleck.
I had no idea what it was about until one commenter wrote:
“I’m fairly certain that to this day I understand the basic principles underlying the construction of a solar still [...]

Henry Blodget writes in Slate:
The problem for investors is that even though stock-picking usually hurts returns, it’s extremely interesting and fun.
His article is a short primer on the usual efficient market/low-cost index funds position.
Good stuff.

louismg looks at the effect of the A’s-Cisco partnership from a fan’s perspective:

With all that said, when one dissects what the networking giant aims to offer the A’s and their fans in the new park, it largely amounts to new ways for us fans to spend more money, not necessarily new ways for fans to [...]

Glenn Reynolds unfolds some of that crazy rightwing belief that underlies support for the war:

As I’ve noted in the past, the Iraq invasion was supposed to be the first step in transforming the region, but once we got there we seemed to lose all momentum, and all interesting[sic] in putting pressure on Iran and Syria. [...]

Noel Murray just watched the movie Dreamgirls. I won’t comment on the movie itself but his review contains an interesting passage that partly explains why critics and moviegoers often do not see eye-to-eye:

I knew going in that Dreamgirls’ songs aren’t so much catchy Motown knock-offs as attenuated musical theater showpieces, but I wasn’t prepared for [...]

Bruce Sterling on the “New Media“:

(((I always like it when guys in new media loudly assert that their new media isn’t like the old media. They’re right, too, because the new media isn’t like the old media, it’s NEVER like the old media. The annoying continuity isn’t the media platform, it’s the PROFIT MOTIVE. That [...]

M.J. Rosenberg notes an article in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz.

President George Bush will order an attack on Iran if it becomes clear to him that Iran is set to acquire nuclear weapons capabilities while he is still in office, Richard Perle told the Herzliya Conference on Sunday.
Notice the vague wording “set to acquire…capabilities”. What that [...]