Globally Rational

//I saw an article today in USA Today suggesting that the legacy of Sandra Day O’Connor, America’s first female Supreme Court justice, has been fading since she retired in January 2006 (after a tenure of over two decades).  The article mentions that the new Court has “undercut several of her most important rulings on issues […]

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//Not Bush or McCain (not by a longshot), but Rush Limbaugh.
Recently, 235 right-leaning bloggers voted on the 25 most influential conservatives in US politics. The rankings are interesting:
#25) Mark Levin: 6 votes
#21) Hugh Hewitt: 7
#21) George Will: 7
#21) John Roberts: 7
#21) Ronald Reagan: 7
#20) Victor David Hanson: 8
#19) Antonin Scalia: 9
#18) John McCain: 10
#14) […]

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//I recently read (in The Economist) about a study showing that over the course of the last 30 years, conservatives have consistently claimed to be “very happy” more often than liberals. Many people try to use this data to say that conservatism directly causes happiness… but before arriving at a conclusion like that, we […]

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//About 200 years ago, the mathematician Thomas Robert Malthus famously wrote an equation predicting that the human population would soon reach the planet’s ecological carrying capacity, causing many of us to die off because of the lack of food and resources (just like what we have often seen with other species). He expected it […]

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//Anybody familiar with the US medical system would completely support New Zealand’s junior doctors in their recent strike. After all, American resident physicians (our counterpart to the Australian “junior doctor”) are overworked (recently, the government limited the work week to 80 hours) and underpaid (~$40,000/year) despite the fact that they’re licensed physicians. They […]

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//Which comes first in a country: the immigrants or the economic success?
It’s like the chicken-and-egg paradox. If there was no promise of success, then immigrants wouldn’t come; meanwhile, if there were no immigrants, there wouldn’t be enough people to succeed (in cosmopolitan countries like the US). Of course, there are exceptions to the […]

Popularity: 25% [?]

//The spirit of the American Dream is dying and I think we should save it… maybe even try to spread it around the world (read the first paragraph of this article if you don’t know what the American Dream is).
The traditional American success story is, by no means, extinct. But the more I […]

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//In the past 100 years, the US has established a reputation as one of the world’s best places to live. The best way to gauge this is by the fact that the US is the first choice for potential migrants in India, China, and all over the world. The obvious reason is that we […]

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