In case you've got some spare time

Some topics of note:

• Fahrenheit 9/11 — Michael Moore’s newest movie is out and is, according to most of the reviews I’ve read (and not terribly surprisingly), an unabashed and unapologetic piece of propaganda. Which means, depending on your ideological persuasion, you’ll probably either love it or hate it. Christopher Hitchens hates it, whereas the subtitle of David Edelstein’s review pretty much expresses his sentiment: “Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 is unfair and outrageous. You got a problem with that?”. At some point, I’ll probably watch it and post a review here.

• Globalization — A topic we’ve discussed here a few times already, but I came across two interesting articles today that explore some new themes. In the first, “Low Taxes Do What?”, Thomas Sowell argues that jobs “exported” from the United States by globalization have been significantly outweighed by jobs “imported” by that same globalization. In the second, “Beggars Can Be Choosers”, Bob Murphy makes the surprisingly controversial case that charity doesn’t hurt people. Both are worth a read.

• the gravey train — That’s the name of John Graves’ new weblog. John is a quantitative researcher at the Urban Institute, a fellow Sewanee alum and a good personal friend. Check him out.