Housekeeping Notes From Derb: The American Spectator, Radio Appearance, Etc.
03/14/2014
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Just some housekeeping notes here:

  • My fortnightly book review at The American Spectator is up.  (Yes, I originally said “twice monthly,” but fortnightly makes for a neater work schedule.)

This time I take on Predisposed: Liberals, Conservatives, and the Biology of Political Differences by three American political scientists not previously known to me.

Drawing on a mass of work in experimental psychology, neurophysiology, and even—gasp!—genetics, they show us that: “At least at the far ends of the ideological spectrum, liberals and conservatives are emotionally, preferentially, psychologically, and biologically distinct.”

The Amazon description makes the book sound a bit Malcolm Gladwell-ish, but it’s way more rigorous and less gene-shy than Gladwell’s stuff.  Not, I’m sure, that the authors would have any objection to Gladwell-level book sales.

Read my review at The American Spectator.

  • I shall be on Alan Colmes’ radio show this evening, the 7pm to 9pm EST “free-for-all” segment.  As always, I shall be the token conservative.  Alan will try to get me to say something outrageously scandalous to his liberal audience, and I shall try to oblige.
  •  I apologize for the absence of Radio Derb last week.  Normal service has been resumed, and we shall be podcasting to the nations first thing tomorrow.
  •  It’s Pi Day (3.14) in the U.S.A.  Across the pond, where they write dates differently, you’ll have to wait until July (22/7).

There is an excellent selection of Pi Day gifts for the math geek of your affections at mathematicianspictures.com

I particularly recommend their posters—they come in different colors—showing the first million digits in the decimal expansion of pi.  The posters are rather big—four feet by eight—but if you have an appropriate stretch of wall they make a great conversation piece.  It’s useful, too, as a reality hook, to have a reminder to hand of what a million of anything actually looks like.

(I got one of these posters for my daughter when she was at high school, and offered to bring it in and present it to her class.  She:  “Dad, if you do that, I shall kill you.”  De gustibus …)

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