The fellow pictured at the top of yesterday's blog post was Taleb: the half-smiling fellow pictured here is Cernovich. They seem to be friends. The fact has lately come under a great deal of discussion, and Taleb has responded, on twitter. "When I have drinks with someone on the left ... nobody on the right bothers me. When I have drinks with someone on the right, the left goes wild. F*** them." The asterisks are in the original. Asked whether Cernovich was a racist, Taleb replied, "#SkinintheGame. He has a Persian Muslim wife (& a half Persian daughter) . Ignore talk (by ppl & abt ppl), observe what ppl do." The phrase "skin in the game" is in essence a "term of art" in Taleb's writings. Never trust anyone who tells you to buy Mattel stock who doesn't own Mattel stock, etc. More broadly, much of academia has isolated itself from the off-campus world, allowing its denizens to be "Intellectuals Yet Idiots,...
