Pseudo-profound bullshit commemorated: The Laffer Curve

Today the New York Times celebrates, deadpan, a fake relic of a historically influential example of pseudo-profound bullshit. Under the headline “This Is Not Arthur Laffer’s Famous Napkin,” The Times says: It is one of the iconic moments in modern economics: A young professor named Arthur Laffer sketched a curve on a bar napkin in […]

The Imminent Death of Celebrating the Deaths of Non-Celebrities

Dead celebrities fared better and better against other dead persons as the twentieth century progressed, suggests this study of who was celebrated and who was not: “Dead Men Do Tell Tales: The Apotheosis of Celebrities in 20th Century America,”  Timothy J. Bertoni [pictured here] and Patrick D. Nolan, Sociation Today, vol. 10, no. 1, Spring/Summer […]