Ryan Cooper

I was blogging for the Monthly  this weekend, and this time I'm actually going to do a compilation of all the posts I wrote, because I'm rather pleased with how they turned out. To wit: 1. There was a bit of a fracas around pictures showing a meltwater lake at the North Pole. Turns out that's something of an exaggeration . 2. What can we learn from PayPal accidentally giving some guy $92 quadrillion for a few minutes ? 3. Why my fellow broke young men won't be slickered by conservative scumbags into bailing on Obamacare . 4. Social Security evades the effective demand problem with forced saving by transferring the money rather than storing it. 5. Walter Russell Mead is just completely full of shit about climate change . 6. Tom Coburn has this fascinating view that you should win elections if you want to implement your agenda . 7. An America where voting just broke down by race would suck balls . 8. Against the housing status quo . This one is almost enti...

My previous post got some pushback on Twitter: Before I get to the point, a bit of throat-clearing. I was profoundly irritated by this exchange. I was making what felt like (and still appears to me in retrospect) an honest, good faith effort to engage. That got me 1) instructions to read a book I have in fact read most of, and 2) an ad hominem implying I'm a service job tourist.* Maybe my point was wrong, maybe I was in fact perpetuating the oppression of the working class, but if so, I still don't know why, all that was accomplished was pissing me off. Eh, you might say, that stuff happens on Twitter all the time. But for some reason this one really got my goat. (To be clear, I'm not holding a grudge against Ms. Jaffe for this. People have bad moods, maybe my post really was that dumb, maybe I'm taking offense unreasonably, whatever. Thanks to my new Twitter chum Alexios13 for providing some perspective.) But after chewing it over for a bit, I think that thi...

It's been a few times now I've had full weekday control of the Monthly 's headline blog, Political Animal, and I feel like I have a decent idea now what it's like being at the top level of blogging. (Not to say that I am  at the top level, of course, just that I've walked in those shoes for a few days and gotten some blisters.) Anyway, the first thing I've noticed is that it is really, really hard to do well. I've had days before when I just didn't have anything to do and ended up at home writing 4-5 posts in one day on this site, but pro blogging is an entirely different beast. The expectation is that during the day you will write 10-12 posts. This includes an intro music video, a lunch links post, and evening links and/or video. So that means 7-9 short, punchy essays on something , with maybe 1-2 of those being longer and more worked out thoughts. This ferocious demand for content is both good and bad. The iron weight of responsibiliy—the knowledge...

Here's what I managed to wring out of my brain today: How cats always land on their feet. Behind a mysterious greenhouse gas that is 14,800 times more potent than carbon dioxide. The actual media has arrived. Elite lawbreaking roundup. Sorry I called you a gargoyle, Tyler Cowen, but you're still wrong about morality and monetary policy. Will France's ultra-wealthy go Galt?? Yep, hedge funds are a ripoff. Will the media punish Mitt Romney for bald-faced lying? It's time for The People to have some free money! Tomorrow I'll be over there as well, so check it out!

Day I Can't Remember and Wouldn't Want to Well, it was a great trip with my folks down the Salmon. I'll give you a more detailed update in a bit, but in brief it was about a week, we took four dories (here's a picture of one of those), four rafts, and I rowed my own boat (a raft). We started from the Corn Creek put-in and did our take-out slightly above Riggins. It's good to be back, though it was marvelous being disconnected from everything. The Great Electronic Hivemind has a way of denting one's focus that I'm going to try to avoid more in the future. As in this idea of the Slow Web --I like that a lot. Finally, thanks very much to my guest bloggers! You guys are the best. That's the first time I've done that and it worked out rather well, I'd say. More to come soon.

I'm heading out of town for awhile, going on a trip with my parents in northern Idaho on the Salmon River. Therefore you probably won't hear from me until about July 24th. (So excited!) I have, however, gotten a couple of guest bloggers, Minjae Park and Danny Vinik. I encourage them to post as little or as often as they like (make sure you introduce yourselves, guys). With that, I leave you. Be back soon!

Sorry for the downtime, folks, the power has been out at my place. Above you see my backyard, featuring a victim from the DC storm. Trees fall over surprisingly easily here. In case you didn't notice, I was blogging at Political Animal over the weekend. Here are a few of the better posts: 1. A view from our dystopian future . The power was (and is!) out at my place, and I had to hunt around for a cafe that wasn't packed. Thus, a bit of a rant about climate change. 2. Drug policy and argumentative positioning . Self-proclaimed moderates should recognize the value of the wings. 3. Generational warfare . Trying to find some common ground between young and old. 4. Batman as financial regulator . The banksters are the real lawbreakers in this world. 5. Better ways to promote public health . Liberals should lay off the elitist paternalism. It's annoying. Hope everyone made it through the storm okay. Regularly scheduled posting should resume soon.

Well, I'm finally done for the time being filling in for Ed Kilgore. I kept meaning to put something up here but full-time blogging really wrings out my brain and I couldn't muster the energy. So, for now, here is a selection of the best posts I did over the last week or so: 1. Science Denial Is a Large and Growing Problem . This one blew up a little on Twitter. 2. Concern Trolling in the Times . Bill Keller recommended this one. Turns out, he is a remarkably terrible columnist. 3. Mitt Romney and Firefighters . The future holds more wildfire, bet on it. 4. Remember When Breaking the Law Used to Mean Something?  Nixon was a criminal, sure, but Bush was  every bit as lawless. Plus, nobody cares, which is way worse. 5. The Liberal Path to Power . Summing up a lot of my recent thinking. 6. Jon Stewart and False Equivalence . Constant vigilance. 7. Poor Understanding of Monetary Policy Is Killing the Democrats . We need a crash course, children's book, something. ...

With our headline blogger still largely out of commission dealing with a medical emergency, I've been doing more blogging over at the Monthly site. If you're looking for something to read,  check it out !

Reflecting back on my stint blogging for the Monthly's Political Animal headliner blog, I have a few thoughts: 1) It ain't easy. Being able to crank out ~12 posts in a day is, when I think about it, an extremely strange skill. You've got to be a fast writer, a faster reader, and able to come up with a coherent point (little ones count) about issues extremely quickly. 2) I have some talent at it. Not to toot my own horn, but I think given that it was my first time I did a reasonable job. By the standards of, say, Matt Yglesias, I'd say it was pretty amateurish--I had some repurposed posts from this blog, and a couple posts that I knew were half-assed when I was writing them--but on the other hand, I thought I had a couple of solid ones too. That was by far the most blogging I've done in a single day, and adjusting for my lack of experience I'd give myself a B+. Give me a bit of practice and I think I could keep up with the big dogs. 3) Most importantly, I ...

This time the job I didn't get was at The New Republic , being a reporter-researcher, which is a kind of small step above intern, but paid a little with some benefits. Rats. The funny—or perhaps unsurprising—thing is that each rejection is a little less of a downer. I feel like I'm learning something from each one, honing my technique, and learning how this business actually works. I didn't think it would really be easy—though I have had some breaks already—but the big realization has been that all the big-time names I have been reading these last few years all got tremendously lucky. It's no coincidence that most of the big-time bloggers—Sullivan, Yglesias, Drum, Klein, Dave Roberts, etc.—all started blogging from about 2000-2003. There was a window there, and that window is now shut. But I ain't giving up, not by a long shot. Something Old Man Coates said in the video above really spoke to me (about 45:00), when he was telling his own story of coming up as ...

Made a few minor design and layout updates here. Let me know if you've got any strong opinions.

David Roberts was quoted the other day by Harold Pollack: For climate change, there are very few Jonathan Cohns, Ezra Kleins, and Merrill Goozners – very few in that non-government, non-NGO middle tier who combine serious knowledge of policy with the ability to write for the general public. The level of policy knowledge on cap-and-trade is abysmal. That goes for the journalists, pundits, and pols just as much as the public. Something clicked when I read this. I've been feeling recently that I'm sort meandering in my purpose here, that I need to find a bit of a specialty and settle down some. Not that I won't keep publishing lots of random crap, but that I should focus a bit more. Energy and climate make a lot of sense to me. I've got the science background. I'm a committed environmentalist--Edward Abbey is probably my favorite writer, even today. I know a bit about the policy, and the basic economic logic of externalities, but I don't have the policy de...

I should take another look at this post from yesterday. I saw this post by Conn Carroll and was exercised, rightly I think, by the howling errors contained therein. Obamacare's costs have doubled, he argues, by comparing summations of costs which included not only different sets of years in which the program was active, but also just different numbers of years. It wasn't just an apples-to-oranges fallacy, it was different numbers  of apples and oranges. A more elementary error would be hard to imagine. Energized by the old Someone Is Wrong on the Internet juice, and the correct possibility that I might get some traffic from the liberal healthcare wing, I banged out a quick bit of lefty snarking, calling Carroll all sorts of nasty names. In my hurry, I included not only the above critiques, but a comment about how a $1.76 trillion "gross costs" figure he mentioned did not appear in the CBO report. I was wrong about this. Not only was the figure in the report, it...

Since I can't afford gifts for all my loyal readers (or anyone, come to think of it), I present to you some pictures. I was going through some of my sister's pictures from back in the day and found some atrocious ones of me circa 2004, back before all my hair fell out. I was a college freshman then. Here's me as a wannabe war photographer with a 10-buck camera. Here's me doing my best "jaunty." This one might be my favorite.  Boy looks into the future! Hard to believe that was seven years ago, and that I have only gotten more embarrassingly hideous since then. This life stuff doesn't let up.

Apologies for the recent darkness here. I spent last weekend in Princeton visiting an old Peace Corps friend. This week I'm heading back to Colorado to have Thanksgiving with my family, so posting will probably be light.

It recently came to my attention that not only is there a Washington Post sports reporter named Ryan Cooper , there's another music journalist also called Ryan Cooper .  To avoid confusion, I have decided to start using my middle name professionally, a la DFW , and I'm also moving domains to here .  Hopefully this will be the last time and I can keep this one for the rest of my life.  Also hopefully, the douchebag factor of demanding more syllables for myself will be offset by the greater name precision. I'm going to name my son Ezekiel, or Patton, or Franzisstein the Magnificent. Update your bookmarks!  www.ryanlouiscooper.com

I wasn't satisfied with the way the header looked on the old one, so I've changed things up a bit. Let me know what you think!

Blogger just ate my last post.  I'm going to try to retrieve it somehow, but until then hang tight.

I often get asked why I write so many posts about US politics, or random science crap, and so few Peace Corps-related posts, or even sometimes about my jaded tone.  I got an email yesterday: Why are you always so negative?  You're giving the Peace Corps a bad name.  Focus on the positive aspects of your experience, talk more about your village! My answer is that this is my own personal space, and I follow wherever my random, disorganized thoughts lead.  I'm jaded and cynical because I value straightforwardness and honesty very highly, and I call it like I see it.  If you don't like it, feel free to direct your browser elsewhere.  Questions, comments, and requests are always welcome, but please don't gripe about how I'm harshing your mellow—I do this for free.