Since you asked: No I don't have a 'plan B.' Antisemitism is real in America and requires vigilance and a readiness to combat and build alliances with good, caring fellow citizens. But I believe in this country and its promise and I'm not going anywhere.

Things don’t seem to be going well at the Heritage Foundation.

how do people who think miracles are impossible explain how we often traverse an infinite series of midpoints and move to another location?

The fall of "When prophecies fail": Another social psychology classic turns out to be based on fabrications and lies. In 1954, Dorothy Martin predicted an apocalyptic flood and promised her followers rescue by flying saucers. In “When Prophecy Fails “ (1956), the now-canonical account of the event, Festinger, Riecken and Schachter claimed that the group doubled down on its beliefs and began recruiting—evidence, the authors argued, of a new psychological mechanism, cognitive dissonance. When Prophecy Fails is one of the most influential case studies in 20th-century social science. It shaped popular understandings of how belief survives disconfirmation, and became a touchstone for explaining the origins of religious movements... But the case was misrepresented. The cult did not persist, proselytize, or reinterpret its failure as a spiritual triumph. Its leader recanted, the group disbanded, and belief dissolved. Drawing on newly unsealed archival material, this article demonstrates that the book's central claims are false, and that the authors knew they were false. The documents reveal that the group actively proselytized well before the prophecy failed and quickly abandoned their beliefs afterward. They also expose serious ethical violations by the researchers. The newly unsealed Box 4 of papers contain transcripts, telephone logs, research notes, channeled messages, and internal communications among the researchers. Collectively, they reveal serious ethical breaches: fabrications, covert manipulation, and at least one instance of interference with a child welfare investigation. One coauthor, Henry Riecken, posed as a spiritual authority and later admitted he had “precipitated” the climactic events of the study. This article shows that the authors of When Prophecy Fails misled their readers—and that scholars in psychology, sociology, and religious studies have been building theories atop a collapsed foundation. The full scope and variety of the misrepresentations and misconduct of the researchers needed the unsealed archives of Festinger to emerge, the full story could not be written until now. Every major claim of the book is false, and the researchers’ notes leave no option but to conclude the misrepresentations were intentional.

I'm learning what retirement is like due to the government shutdown. It turns out I hate it.

My current goal of reading is to be the greatest living anglophone literary critic. I'm not sure how many assassinations that would currently require (dozens?) & I'd never hire hit men to murder my friends. Besides, it would deprive me of the chance to read the best book reviews.

Human level intelligence achieved

Are there any gender discrimination lawyers barred in California who are looking for an interesting case? Please get in touch with me.

yikes. unfollowing now. Sorry i saw a joke tweet he made a while back and followed. Didnt know he sewed together different body parts to cheat death only to abandon his creation and die of hubris in the arctic

Plum speaks! This is such a treat. I had never heard his voice.

The most important thing I’ve learned as a lawyer is that you would not believe what people write down.

I have one FREE signed copy of Intellectual Conservatism: From Burke to Scruton to gifted to someone. If you are interested in receiving the book, please repost this post and I will chose someone at random.

“Some will want to play on by debating which side bears the burden of proof. Myself, I think this pastime is as useless as it is undignified.” — David K. Lewis

Please help me get the word out about the new websites for Legal Theory Blog and the Legal Theory Lexicon. Reposting here and on other social media sites is great. It would be especially helpful if law school faculty members could send an email to their colleagues with the new addresses. Legal Theory Blog is at legaltheoryblog.com. The Legal Theory Lexicon is at legaltheorylexicon.com. Thanks in advance for you help.

I know people think New Yorkers are rude, but today a guy helpfully yelled at me from an open car window: "Hey fuckface, your backpack's open. Better zip it or somebody'll rip you off."

This dissertation was with Southwestern College in New Mexico, which is very much a New Age-focused, spiritualist institution with a website built during the Clinton Administration. It is hardly representative of higher education and otherwise harmless. Save your outrage.

Trouble brewing.

One of the interesting arguments in this book is that America's 1787 Constitutional Convention was a soft coup pulled off by George Washington. A sort of benign Oliver Cromwell. And James Madison and Alexander Hamilton were more or less his agents in advancing it.

Am I the only guy who doesn’t get why people think Peter Thiel is a brilliant theorist?

There *finally* seems some good data on a crucial phenomenon that I've hoped to find for years, on Chinese home ownership. The fact that China has an extremely high official home ownership rates (north of 90%) is a source of a lot of interest and confusion