Outside the Beltway

There were eight people on the stage last night, but the GOP field has narrowed significantly.

Mitt Romney’s jobs plan is detailed, but it doesn’t seem to be impressing anyone.

The White House is still smarting over the fact that they got burned by John Boehner, again.

More examples of fantasy Reagan.

Rubio may be wowing conservatives audience, but is his rhetoric grounded in reality?

Either a bunch of bloggers or one of the world’s smartest economists doesn’t understand economics.

According to Paul Krugman, what the American economy needs is for a bunch of space aliens to invade us.

Netflix will charge $7.99 for streaming video; it’s now a $2 add-on.

Some people still think Mitt Romney’s religion is a relevant issue.

One law school grad seems to think the solution to her employment problems is to sue her law school.

Has technology robbed us of more than it’s given in return?

Why, yes, my iPhone has indeed been tracking me since last summer.

While complaints that there’s too much information for intellectuals to sort through, much less read, are constant, they’re not new. Harvard historian Ann Blair argues in her new book Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information Before the Modern Age that this stress goes back at least to Seneca’s time.

Bastiat vs. the Second Law of Thermodynamics

The Nixon Center has gone from one of the most controversially named think tanks in Washington to yet another blandly named one: Center for the National Interest.

Why does Hermione Granger go to the library instead of just Googling it?

Sarah Palin spoke about Ronald Reagan last night, but seems to have forgotten the optimism that is part of The Gipper’s legacy.

Was the 2011 SOTU a blatant rip-off of past speeches? Or simply banal?

I’m blogging Mark Levin’s Conservative Manifesto. Here’s part one…

The cost/benefit ratio of tablet computers seems to be a bit…. lacking.

Gustavus Adolphus College librarian Barbara Fister explains why she loves getting rid of books.

The Obama administration is banning hundreds of thousands of federal employees from calling up the WikiLeaks site on government computers because the leaked material is still formally regarded as classified.

She didn’t gain national prominence until late August, and she’s going to most likely lost by a wide margin tonight, but Christine O’Donnell received more coverage from the media than any other candidate running in 2010.

Neither Law Schools nor law students are admitting the fact that the legal market has changed significantly.

Has the digitization of entertainment — DVRs, iPods, iPods, digital cameras, Netflix, and so forth — transformed it from fun into work?

Most of what passes for conventional wisdom about learning is wrong.

According to Paul Krugman’s latest column, the massive destruction of World War Two was actually good for the U.S. economy. Sadly, there are people who consider him an expert.

The Associated Press tells its reports to stop using the phrase “Ground Zero Mosque.” That’s a good thing.

The Daily Mash combines two topics that have taken up entirely too many pixels at OTB and elsewhere of late with their parody article “OUTRAGE OVER PLANS TO BUILD LIBRARY NEXT TO SARAH PALIN.”

If it’s online, it’s forever.

Teaching college is a lot more work than outsiders think — although probably not as much work as professors think.

Thomas Jefferson took great pains to hide the word he originally used for “citizens” in the Declaration of Independence.

Fatherhood.gov, the website Obama launched to some criticism yesterday, actually has its roots in the Bush Administration and has a predecessor dating to 2000.