It seems that there has been a blogger revolution of sorts.

Emily if you send me Ari's e-mail I can reinvite her if she forgot her username and password and all that.

Drew I know you will make it through everything you have to do, if only by the fact that you are so damn ornery! I miss talking politics with people. Physics grad students seem wholly uninterested. My Advisor, Dr Engles, is awesome though. Last year there was a flyer apparently in the building advertising for equipment so you could make your own beer. He wanted to put a flyer up next to it advertising for equipment to grow your own marijuana just to seee how many people would actually answer the flyer. He also disparages the fact that so many people suck in pullman. Just today he said, welcome to pullman, sarcastically three or four times. he noted the fact that there is not even a semblance of an honor code. Cheaters, drinkers and druggies. wow, if he can see it then why am I here anyway?

Rachel I hope you enjoy your break. I don't know about anyone else but I am so looking forward to thanksgiving break it is almost too much to handle. I have to teach lecture in front of 150 people on monday and wednesday and who knows if they are going to get anything out of it. I am way better at individual tutoring than lecturing.... I am sure it will go fine.

Who knows what will happen if we don't try it?

hey, does Ari have a thing on Blogger? i got a couple emails from her wanting to be in touch... seems like she should be on here? maybe she's forgotten?

Rachel, I have always said there is only one difference between a facist and a communist. A facist will destroy the world on purpose, a communist will do it by accident. As such I say boo to any socialist movement as it inevitably reverts to a crazed communist-dictatorship. Wealth cannot be redistributed. No society will ever achieve perfect contentment among its entire citizenry. These are simple facts which communism and socialism refuse to admit to. In a democratic republic such as ours, however, everyone at least has the chance to rise as far as talent and will can take them.
Be thankful we don't have to go to the streets. I see so many countries where the power of government and law come out of a gun instead of an election ballot. We have it differently here and we all should thank our lucky stars.
Wow, I haven't expoused politics in a long while it seems. Feels good.

Oh, Drew, I need a bigger revolution to be happy. Take to the streets! ... Okay, perhaps not, but I do get more excited about Catalunya's recent elections--their previous coalition of the socialists, the greens, and the separatists has reunited, and hopefully they do some good there.

Now to hopefully make you all wish you were here: I'm disappointed in our weather today; it's only going to get into the 70's. ;) Actually, this evening I'll be running away to San Francisco for a long weekend away from school. Leaving for a whole weekend is making me a bit stressed (all that work I could be doing!), but perhaps that's why I need a few days away from here.

I have completed a major course here at law school. It's called Appellate Advocacy, where law students act like real lawyers taking a case up for appeal. We write thirty page briefs about a legal issue, then we go and argue that legal issue before a panel of "judges" made up of our writing professors and fellow students. The oral argument part went very well and I think the brief I submitted will finally be free of the comment that has dogged me for years: "you're too wordy." Still, I worry about all the little clerical errors I missed in the final checking. I worked on it for weeks and finally put seventeen hours straight the night before it was due. Enough law school stuff. I hope that everyone is well and feeling ready to take on whatever challenges they have before them.
Before anyone says anything, yes, I am aware the Democrats have taken Congress. I say fine, if that's what the people want then so be it. Jefferson said, "A little revolution, now and again, is a healthy thing." I am just glad that we can do it at the polls instead of in the streets.
Take care everybody, sorry I haven't been in touch recently.

No, i guess i haven't read anything making sense of this concept that you have to keep a base unemployment rate to combat inflation. Basic economics texts seem to just take it as a given (though this makes no sense when, as you say, the Phillips Curve was discredited by the "stagflation" of the 1970s). But i think we can reason through this. Inflation is nothing but an increase in the money supply without a companion increase in productivity. If market pressures raise wages without raising productivity, i think i can see how this would be inflation. Prices might go up just as much as wages, nullifying the wage gains. On the other hand, if the markets for goods and services were completely competitive (with no monopolies or oligopolies with price-setting powers, and no mind-control advertising that keeps consumers from being rational, self-interested actors) sellers would not be able to raise prices as wages rose, and they would be forced to cut dividends to investors, compensation for CEOs, etc. This would not be inflation, but genuine redistribution of wealth.

You see how i can call myself a libertarian even though i care about equity? The free market is a lot more equitable than people think. The problem is that conservatives have been so sucessful at convincing the world that what we have now is a free market when it is anything but.

Oh Keith, I didn't realize how much I missed your intellectual rants randomly punctuated by incredibly crude and hilariously uncalled for jabs. When can we get the Peterson House back....