They are acing it, these guys. Election Day is now only a month away. The demoralized Democrats are held hostage by the unemployment numbers. And along comes this marvelous gift out of nowhere, Christine O’Donnell, Tea Party everywoman, who just may be the final ingredient needed to camouflage a billionaires’ coup as a populist surge. By the time her fans discover that any post-election cuts in government spending will be billed to them, and not the Tea Party’s shadowy backers, she’ll surely be settling her own debts with fat paychecks from “Fox & Friends.”

Frank Rich, “The Very Useful Idiocy of Christine O’Donnell,” New York Times, October 2, 2010

“Anyone can revolt. It is more difficult silently to obey our own inner promptings, and to spend our lives finding sincere and fitting means of expression for our temperament and our gifts.”

— Georges Rouault

Twenty signs that your opinions function more to signal loyalty and ability than to estimate truth

I’m always fascinated by the extent to which things that seem subject to epistemological analysis are, in fact, unfolded as behavioral. Are you thinking through, or are you cringing to other monkeys?