Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Light Posting Ahead
I may be too busy over the next few days to post regularly.
I will make it up by guest hosting the Carnival of Tommorow #10 early next week.
In the meantime, I encourage everyone to look through my blogroll on the left side of the screen. In addition to other blogs (in the "periodicals" section), there are some really good essays, papers, and other monographs in the aptly named "monographs" section. If you haven't looked though them yet, now would be a good time. Paul Graham has a new essay that's good. _LEO_On_the_Cheap_ is very timely in light of NASA's rollout of their lunar plan. The global warming panic over recent hurricanes (though I have yet to figure out how global warming makes hurricanes home in on American cities instead of less photogenic foreign ones) makes _Fallen_Angles_ seem more relevant than ever. Anyone who likes wealth can unlock many powerful truths (that are now often considered too impolitic to teach the general public) about how it is made by reading _My_Life_and_Work_, _The_Principles_of_Scientific_Management_, _Who_Gains_By_Innovation_, and (of course) anything by Adam Smith. These mostly older monographs provide a hard nosed and plain English analysis uncontaminated by the truth-obscuring politically-correct mythologies* that are so often required by modern discussions. The rest of the monographs in my blogroll, especially "The Industrial Revolution:Past and Future" and _The_Road_to_Serfdom_in_Cartoons_ are just simply fun reading.
*Which is not to say that all modern political attitudes are mythologies who obscure older truths. My friend Henry's unfortunate (though he claims well intended) concerns over Orientalism, lack of assimilation, and bigotry amoung a particular immigrant community in early 20th Century America may be a good counterexample. Still a publication does not have to be Gospel in order to be enlightening, and examining even (or perhaps especially!) flawed original sources first-hand instead of trusting "Cliff Notes" summations from present authority figures usually provides shocking insights that make you wonder what other crucial information has been glossed over or gone unrecognized by the mediocre minds that write our school textbooks. For example, many decendents of the very same immigrant community that Henry worried (in Chapter 17 of _My_Life_and_Work_) was unwilling to assimilate into American society can now be found publishing the exact same complaints of tribalism, subversion, and bigotry about newer Muslim immigrants and demanding that the moderate Muslim community leaders should, in Henry's words, "remove their protection from the more flagrant violators of American hospitality." Even if this tells us nothing about the accuracy of either's complaints, it tells us a great deal about human nature and puts our present problems in a useful (and in a way comforting) historical perspective that is missing from almost all modern news reporting or history classes.
I will make it up by guest hosting the Carnival of Tommorow #10 early next week.
In the meantime, I encourage everyone to look through my blogroll on the left side of the screen. In addition to other blogs (in the "periodicals" section), there are some really good essays, papers, and other monographs in the aptly named "monographs" section. If you haven't looked though them yet, now would be a good time. Paul Graham has a new essay that's good. _LEO_On_the_Cheap_ is very timely in light of NASA's rollout of their lunar plan. The global warming panic over recent hurricanes (though I have yet to figure out how global warming makes hurricanes home in on American cities instead of less photogenic foreign ones) makes _Fallen_Angles_ seem more relevant than ever. Anyone who likes wealth can unlock many powerful truths (that are now often considered too impolitic to teach the general public) about how it is made by reading _My_Life_and_Work_, _The_Principles_of_Scientific_Management_, _Who_Gains_By_Innovation_, and (of course) anything by Adam Smith. These mostly older monographs provide a hard nosed and plain English analysis uncontaminated by the truth-obscuring politically-correct mythologies* that are so often required by modern discussions. The rest of the monographs in my blogroll, especially "The Industrial Revolution:Past and Future" and _The_Road_to_Serfdom_in_Cartoons_ are just simply fun reading.
*Which is not to say that all modern political attitudes are mythologies who obscure older truths. My friend Henry's unfortunate (though he claims well intended) concerns over Orientalism, lack of assimilation, and bigotry amoung a particular immigrant community in early 20th Century America may be a good counterexample. Still a publication does not have to be Gospel in order to be enlightening, and examining even (or perhaps especially!) flawed original sources first-hand instead of trusting "Cliff Notes" summations from present authority figures usually provides shocking insights that make you wonder what other crucial information has been glossed over or gone unrecognized by the mediocre minds that write our school textbooks. For example, many decendents of the very same immigrant community that Henry worried (in Chapter 17 of _My_Life_and_Work_) was unwilling to assimilate into American society can now be found publishing the exact same complaints of tribalism, subversion, and bigotry about newer Muslim immigrants and demanding that the moderate Muslim community leaders should, in Henry's words, "remove their protection from the more flagrant violators of American hospitality." Even if this tells us nothing about the accuracy of either's complaints, it tells us a great deal about human nature and puts our present problems in a useful (and in a way comforting) historical perspective that is missing from almost all modern news reporting or history classes.
