With that out of the way, let me proceed to our traditional weekend roundup. I was extremely pleased this week to have our first guest post from the distinguished philosopher Jamie Whyte. I’ve been a great admirer of Jamie’s writings since I discovered them a few months ago, and I thought his contribution here—on a radical proposal to improve democracy—was fabulous.

We had two other lively discussions this week, one on why Olympians are like Ponzi schemers (with a followup post a few days later) and one on the fiscal stimulus package on the occasion of its one-year anniversary.

Come back Monday for more!

I’ve long wanted to blog about the astonishing mathematics of Alexandre Grothendieck, who was surely the greatest mathematician of the 20th century and arguably the greatest of all time. This week, I had occasion to blog not about the mathematics per se (I’m still figuring out how to do that in a readable way) but about the remarkable letter from Grothendieck that surfaced last month, and the intellectual property issues that it raises.

Having started the week with one remarkable letter, we ended it with another, this one from Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on the issue of secession.

In between, I asked readers to enlighten me about some stuff I just don’t get, we saw new evidence that people are less religious than they say they are, and we used a study on beauty and daughters to illustrate how statistics can deceive.

I’ll return on Monday, probably with a few more thoughts on secession. Have a good weekend!

This week we had an explanation of why there is magnetism, a discussion on how to teach math, a debate on child labor and a followup thereto, and a half-hearted defense of Abraham Lincoln—the sort of eclectic mix that you’ll find in The Big Questions. Have you bought your copy yet?

More on Monday!

It was a week of madness. We started with a post on hysteria about debt and deficits, visited Michael Pacanowsky’s classic investigation of whether the utterance “Please Pass the Salt” can cause salt to travel, and dredged up an old proposal to reduce carbon emissions by making everyone wear a device that plugs up one nostril—segueing from the latter into an even crazier proposal from this week’s Washington Post. We rounded out the week with some educational madness, which gave me a chance to plug the brilliant writing of Caitlin Flanagan.

Note: Wednesday’s blogpost currently links to just the first page of Pacanowsky’s article; in the next few days I hope to have permission from the copyright owner to link to the entire thing.

On a less mad note, there’s an economic principle that says it’s best for everything to be taxed equally; paradoxically (until you understand it) this means that capital income should be taxed not at all. Last week, we saw that this is because a tax on capital income implicitly taxes current and future consumption at different rates; on Tuesday of this week, we saw that it’s also because a tax on capital income implicitly taxes current and future labor at different rates.

Next week: More madness, more sanity, more economics, and probably some math and some physics as well. See you then.

Last weekend’s roundup triggered some lively back-and-forth regarding the Supreme Court and freedom of speech. Wednesday night’s Obama/Alito showdown was old hat to readers of The Big Questions, who had already been on top of this issue for a full four days.

With the start of the week proper, we had two more lively discussions, over relativity theory and capital taxation; never let it be said that this blog is narrowly focused. We also had a report on my collection of really bad animal books, and we saw pictures of a watermelon car.

Upcoming next week: A recap of the relativity controversy, a few words on how to think (and how not to think) about the national debt, and much more. See you Monday!