Miscellany

1_A good post on the limits of heredity.

2. This is David Broder's brain. This is David Broder's brain on the broken window fallacy.

3. This cookbook is excellent. It came in as a registry item, and I'm so glad it did. I don't know about other people, but I find it so easy to get excited about making interesting main courses and neglect side dishes. It's also nice that it's organized by season.

4. I had a request from a friend to write something about this Matthew Yglesias piece on law school licensing. I agree with the thrust of it. That is, it's good that the cartel is breaking down and that that is making it easier for the poor to get legal services. At the same time, we're in a weird intermediate period where the cartel hasn't quite broken down enough that aspiring lawyers have many cheap training options. The ABA accreditation rules still make law school wildly expensive for most. Many of the requirements that make legal education expensive, such as restrictions on what type of materials the law library must contain, probably do little to improve the education of lawyers. (Many of the specified materials on that list are available online for free or can be obtained easily online if the school provides student with Westlaw and/or Lexis access.) I hope things shake out so that a weakened cartel means less debt and lower salaries, but who could tell what direction the profession will wind up taking.