Category: Federal Reserve

Note from the Poet: Perl is a computer language that programmers are able to write poetry in, due to the large number of available commands.  It’s a game to try to write something that makes sense and also compiles. I’ve wanted to write some Perl poetry for years. This poem actually runs (and doesn’t do anything)….

Each week, Mr. Reed will relate the stories of people whose choices and actions make them heroes. See the table of contents for previous installments. Readers of this series are likely aware of my affection for Poland and the Polish people. Previous essays featured such Polish heroes as two-time Nobel-winning scientist Maria Sklodowska (Marie Curie),…

It’s so much easier to sympathize with our own problems and with the problems of those we love than with the problems of complete strangers. Adam Smith observes in The Theory of Moral Sentiments that our ability to sympathize with ourselves is, in fact, so out of all proportion to our ability to sympathize with…

Science is undergoing a wrenching evolutionary change. In fact, most of what we consider to be carried out in the name of science is dubious at best, flat wrong at worst. It appears we’re putting too much faith in science — particularly the kind of science that relies on reproducibility. In a University of Virginia…

My student, the color drained from his face, explained that a blood feud had just begun that would continue for generations. I had been teaching an MBA class when this student — a Kurd from Turkey — received an emergency phone call from home. In his village, police had responded to one neighbor’s complaint that…