Nothing earth-shattering, but CEI recently named me a senior fellow. I need to order new business cards, but other than that, not much will change as far as day-to-day policy analysis. CEI is a principled organization as well as a great place to work, and I am grateful that they have put up with me for more than a decade so far.
Posted in Housekeeping, Uncategorized
This website is powered by WordPress, which has provided an excellent hosting service for many years. This is a note I sent their customer service regarding an upcoming change to their editing interface.
Please do not force migration to the new editor. The blocks system is non-intuitive and has no obvious reason for existence, because paragraphs.
Blocks are prone to accidental unwanted formatting changes at the click of a mouse, with no intuitive way to undo them. This has caused me to delete entire draft posts and have to start again from scratch.
The pop-up menus for each and every new paragraph/block are not only unnecessary, they obstruct other text in the post. This is more than a little annoying.
The new editor also works poorly with copy-and-pastes from Microsoft Word, requiring time-consuming re-editing for spacing issues–a special kind of tedium for longer posts.
Do not want. Please terminate the individual who came up with blocks and set fire to their home.
Posted in Correspondence, Housekeeping, Uncategorized
A tradition on this blog is a year-end roundup of short reviews of books I read during the year. It serves two purposes. One, it’s a reference for future research. It can be difficult to remember, years later, which book offers a certain argument or insight that is relevant to a current project. Two, readers hopefully get some good book recommendations.
I kept notes but didn’t publish last year’s list. Combined with this year’s pile, it’s a bit much for one post. So I’m trying something different. I’ll schedule a new review to run each day or so until everything is up.
Individual posts will also add more format flexibility; some books are more thought-provoking than others, so reviews range from a single sentence to several hundred words. Other books complement each other that I wrote joint reviews for them.
All reviews will be tagged in the “Books” category, so they can be viewed together.
I might continue this model for 2019 and future years, posting new reviews as I go. Or I might go back to one year-end list. I haven’t decided yet. Reader feedback is welcome.
Here are the lists for 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016.
Posted in Books, Housekeeping
Today is my last day working at CEI’s Washington office. Next week, my wife and I are moving to the Chicago area. I will remain a CEI Fellow and work remotely.
Readers of this blog won’t notice many changes. I will continue to cover the same suite of regulatory, monetary, and financial issues I always have. I will merely be much colder when writing about them.
The reason for the move is family. We’re Midwesterners by birth as well as temperament, and much as we love DC, ten years away is enough. We’re looking forward to being closer to our families and, we hope, to starting a family of our own soon.
I would like to express sincere gratitude to all of my colleagues, especially CEI founder Fred Smith and his wife Fran, for whom I interned back when I was a grad student (and coauthored a paper). My boss and frequent co-author Wayne Crews has done as much as anybody to help build my professional career. Over the last year, I have begun to work closely with Iain Murray, and look forward to continuing to collaborate with and learn from him on a variety of issues. Lawson Bader has proven to be absolutely the right choice to succeed Fred as president, and CEI is soaring to new heights under his leadership.
It has been a privilege to work with them and all of our other colleagues for the last six years–and my privilege it will continue to be. Thank you all.
Posted in Housekeeping
WordPress tells me this is the 2,000th post here at Inertia Wins. Thanks for reading, and tell your friends.
Posted in Housekeeping
It’s year-end list season, so here are this year’s ten most popular posts:
Posted in Housekeeping
If you’re a holiday traveler, you will appreciate this song. Click here if the embed doesn’t work.
In related news, due to holiday traveling, there will be limited blogging until late next week. A scheduled post or two will pop up in the meantime, but that’ll be about it. Thanks for reading, and see you then.
Posted in Housekeeping, Security Theater
Tagged christmas travel, holiday travl, remy, tsa
