"His accounts of the world are sometimes so eccentric as to be almost Martian. He has argued, for instance, that a higher proportion of black women than white women are fat because the supply of eligible black men is limited; thus, black women find the likelihood of profit from an elegant figure too small to compensate for the costs of dieting. As John Donohue, a law professor at Stanford, delicately puts it, "A little bit of empirical support goes a long way for him."

Critics find Posner exasperating, because often he doesn't take the trouble to answer their careful refutations. It is not that he is incapable of doing so--it is, rather, that he is more attracted to rhetoric than proof, and believes it is more powerful. He is not, in the end, very interested in the sort of prudent rigor that produces watertight logic. He is not the type to spend years testing his arguments for leakage, sealing tiny cracks and worrying endlessly over possible ripostes: he would rather risk sending them young into the world, flawed but forceful, with the advantage of surprise. And yet the uproaious pugilism and the desire to shock evident in his pages are nowhere visible on the surface of the man. "I have exactly the same personality as my cat," Posner likes to say. "I am cold, furtive, callous, snobbish, selfish, and playful, but with a streak of cruelty."

Discuss.