Georgetown
law prof Chai Feldblum nominated as a Commissioner to the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission. Katherine Franke has the
story:
This is huge not only because Feldblum would be the first out
lesbian or gay person on the EEOC (which, as
Nan Hunter points out will gain particular significance when/if ENDA is
enacted), but more generally because Feldblum is among the smartest and most
experienced lawyers working on the administrative interpretation and
enforcement of anti-discrimination laws.
Yesterday’s
book titles, rewritten for today (here
and here). Some samples:
Then: The Theory of the Leisure Class
Now: Buying Out Loud: The Unbelievable Truth About What We
Consume and What It Says About Us
Then: Book of Genesis
Now: FLOOD! A true story of heartbreak,
heroism, and the will to survive
(HT: Tyler
Cowen)
Brad DeLong:
The
Chicago School's Intellectual Collapse Continued: Richard Posner Is Uranus…
See
prior Lounge coverage of Posner versus the macroeconomists here
and here.
An
intervention against any visual representation of data (HT: Megan
McArdle):
Why to
choose Harvard law over Yale (1935 version), via Dan
Ernst:
Most of the well-known men at Yale are
men who are themselves bored with the law & have turned
experimentalist. They’re brilliant
enough, & their writings are worth reading, but they are too interested in
explaining to you how the law is a very different thing from what most people
think, & how there really isn’t any such thing as law anyhow. Now this is all very well & worth
knowing, but you don’t practice law by telling a client or a judge that his
traditional concepts are all screwy.
Defective as the tools of the law may be, you’ve got to be familiar with
them & know how to use them. I
think the system & faculty at Harvard does this much better. It’s true that Yale is smaller &
more personal. Harvard is a big,
indifferent school & I hated it for two years. But that very impersonality & size has developed a very
self-reliant & highly competitive student attitude. You have to learn to work out your own
salvation, because no one will lift a finger to help you.
Full text at Et
Seq.
The
World’s Worst Wax Figures. (HT: Andrew Sullivan)
Cool NY
Times interactive: How the Giants of Finance Shrank, Then Grew, Under the
Financial Crisis. (HT: Rolfe
Winkler)
Prior Lounge coverage: Supersize
Me: Too Big To Fail, and Getting Bigger
Via Mark
Thoma, Are differences in risk aversion and competitiveness between men and
women due to cultural pressures rather than innate tendencies?
Gender, risk, and
competition, by Alison Booth. This column describes an experiment in which
girls were found to be as competitive and risk-taking as boys when surrounded
by only girls. This suggests cultural pressure to act as a girl could explain gender
differences that are not innate.
See Danny’s prior related post here.