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This week is a big one in the psychiatry world. The American Psychiatric Association released the fifth edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). What is now a massive 1,000-page tome doesn’t come out very often, but when it does, as Johns Hopkins distinguished professor Paul McHugh writes, the book “shape[s] …
“I have not done anything wrong,” Lois Lerner, head of the IRS’ nonprofit division, told a congressional hearing. “I have not broken any laws.” Then she invoked her Fifth Amendment right not to be second-guessed by the Congress that is supposed to be watching over all agencies of government. Seeing the IRS grilled like this …
The study of crowds has always fascinated people in finance. It’s not hard to understand why. Markets can go to crazy extremes, extremes no one can make sense of. So, one favorite way to explain it away is to say that crowds do dumb things that individuals, upon cooler reflection, would never do. In a …
In my youth, I did several years in Hollywood. My mother, thankfully, never found out. I told her I was a contract killer for the Yakuza, or something, to spare her the truth. Initially, my job in Tinseltown was to act as a liaison between real scientists and studios that wanted to bring some accuracy …
The opening talk at the Bitcoin 2013 conference in San Jose was given by the Wilklevoss twins, purported owners of 1% of the world’s existing Bitcoins. They addressed the burning question of whether and how much Bitcoin ought to be regulated by government. Their primary message: “I don’t think anyone wants a fight — I …
Kings used to “clip” and “sweat” coins constantly to pad the government treasury. Coins would be called in and filed around the edges, with the resulting loose metal coined into new currency for the government to spend. This practice has gone the way of the buggy whip, with the Federal Reserve conjuring up billions from the ether with the ease of a keystroke.
In recent years, calling yourself a libertarian has become, at least in some circles, cool. Desperate media characters like comedian Bill Maher and radio host Alex Jones claim the “L” moniker from time to time in the midst of their nuttiness: leftist environmentalism by Maher, rightist conspiratorialism by Jones. Maher seems to think being a …
The writings of H.L. Mencken — the Sage of Baltimore, the home of Agora Inc. — have been a constant companion for me since the start of my writing life. The brilliance, the language, the insight, the derring-do opinionating, the history, the astounding literacy — it’s all here, and it all flows seemingly without limit. …
I’ve noticed a trend with the writings of Chris Anderson, former editor of Wired magazine and the author of a new book on 3-D printing called Makers: The New Industrial Revolution. It goes like this. He comes out with a book, and the highbrow experts say it’s crazy, that this time he has gone too …
The Cleveland Police Department took plenty of criticism when three girls that had been missing for a decade escaped captivity mere miles from their homes. Ariel Castro secretly held the girls hostage for years doing unspeakable things to them. In November 2001, a neighbor called the police when he heard screaming at the Castro home, …