http://hbdchick.wordpress.com/2012/09/12/clannish-dysgenics/THE GREAT DIVERGENCE: CHINA
“These immensely rich individuals not only failed to develop a capitalistic system; they seldom if ever acquire that acquistive and competitive spirit which is the very soul of the capitalistic system.”
I’m a big fan of HBD_chick’s effort to explore the relationship between mating patterns, culture, political economy, and economics.
Source date (UTC): 2012-09-12 21:05:00 UTC
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8776880HERITABILITY OF THE BIG FIVE PERSONALITY TRAITS
Thanks to Ashtad Bin Sayyif for the pointer.
Source date (UTC): 2012-09-12 12:11:00 UTC
POLITICS IS SHOW BUSINESS FOR UGLY PEOPLE
Priceless. 🙂
Source date (UTC): 2012-09-11 19:14:00 UTC
HANS HOPPE’S NEW BOOK “THE GREAT FICTION”
I joined the Jeff Tucker’s new club just so that I could get the book immediately on my iphone rather than wait a few days for a hard copy of it. I suppose that’s the most fannish behavior I’ve ever demonstrated in my life. But then, I feel I’ve learned almost everything of value about political philosophy from Hoppe, and that’s more respectable than being a fan of a hair band, and certainly more so than an advocate of a politician.
It’s mostly just a case of crowing that I’ve already got The Great Fiction. I’m sure others have too – probably before I have. But I still feel like a kid who got tickets to a concert after waiting in line for three days.
I’ve only managed to make time to savor four chapters so far, and none of them is from the new material he’s included. But it seems to be better written or at least, better edited. And as such, I think the book is eminently accessible. Something that The Economics and Ethics of Private Property is unfortunately not. But then, that books is an argument, and The Great Fiction appears to be wisdom.
In one chapter, he creates such a wonderful narrative about the difficulty in bridging intellectual disciplines, and you can hear the subtle disappointment with mankind that has come with his age, where once would have been the bravado challenge and opportunity for demonstrating one’s intellect.
Unfortunately, while Hoppe’s intellectual personality comes across better in this book than his prior tomes, I feel a slight loss for those people who only come to know him through his works, rather than his lectures. Because in person he makes the irony of history and our folly with it, come alive with both humor, wit and insight. He ridicules the folly of our human vanity, so that we may comfortably step back and see our most cherished beliefs as patently objectively falsehoods no less mythical than our fairy tales.
I’m savoring these essays, and I don’t want them used up too soon. As a kid, I’d carefully save the halloween candy, so I’d always have some around until Easter. The Great Fiction is this fall’s bag of treats, and begs the same treatment. 🙂
Curt Doolittle.
Source date (UTC): 2012-09-09 16:46:00 UTC
WIERD?
For the past few weeks, healing from surgery, I’ve been haunting coffee shops in Bellevue, often until late at night, because I like the to work in the white noise of happy upper middle class banter near restaurants that serve decent food. And after writing at home in isolation for six months, it’s like coming out of hibernation.
Besides having wireless access, I’ve run in to a whole buch of people, and awkwardly caught up a bit. And I like that.
But I feel like a vagrant crashing a party and I’m perpetually overdressed for the occasion. 🙂
Unfortunately I’m not a prole who can idle about with coffee, cigarettes and absinthe as if it’s Paris in the twenties, feeling like I’m upwardly mobile. It’s too uncomfortable to be ungrounded. So I’m going to have to solve this problem somehow and actually get a space to work in. Either that or take up Peter Kowalczyk’s idea of bumming around Australia. 🙂
Despite my fantasy about retiring to write, it’s a fantasy. I’m too socially inclined to pour over a desk all day. And the hunt of the sales process is just too enjoyable to do without.
Anyway, I’ve got to go get a latte, and figure out why the debugger wont link through the firewall, while I background process how I’m going to solve this particularly difficult problem of how to talk about human calculation (in the wider heuristic sense) because I’m having difficulty getting it across, and I need to kick off the seminar on political philosophy this fall. 🙂
Source date (UTC): 2012-09-09 16:14:00 UTC
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/prison.htmLIBERALS CREATE GREATER DISPARITIES IN RACIAL INCARCERATION?
This is one of those things that just would annoy my friends in Ottawa. 🙂
La Griffe Du Lion is always priceless.
His Smart Fraction theory alone would be worth reading his work. THe fact that he’s hysterically good using modern socratic characters only makes it more enjoyable.
Thanks Ashtad for the pointer.
Source date (UTC): 2012-09-08 22:03:00 UTC
THE DEMAND CURVE FOR COCAINE
Thanks to the irrepressible Robert Murphy.
A humorous way to teach a basic idea: prohibition increases price and demand, and by means of artificial scarcity, distributes vast amounts of money to producers of banned substances. One of the best ways to make money is to provide something that people want, and are willing to pay for, but it subject to extraordinary tariffs.
Oh, to be a pirate on the seas. 🙂
Source date (UTC): 2012-09-08 21:58:00 UTC
http://trib.al/bXkp66A SEA IN A THIMBLE
“If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else’s expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves. – Thomas Sowell, via Libertarianism.org.
Source date (UTC): 2012-09-07 15:44:00 UTC
“REALITY BY CHANTING”
What a great name for a company that produces marketing related software. lol
Done. .com, and .net. Trademark submitted. 🙂
Not divulging the product name yet. But it’s related. 🙂
Source date (UTC): 2012-09-07 15:42:00 UTC
While I’ve been plagued with serious illnesses since college, I have for some reason falsely considered myself a healthy person. Since 2001, after each surgery, I seem to feel quite a bit better. After this last one, I feel radically different. It’s dramatic. I’d come to treat feeling bad as normal. A sort of constant subtle pain.
One of the problems with the alpha male tendency to consider one’s self invulnerable, is that it’s patently false. And reality eventually catches up to you. 🙂 It turns out we are all human after all.
Source date (UTC): 2012-09-07 14:31:00 UTC