Having read this bit by Heather MacDonald, I'm looking forward to seeing the El Paso Opera's production of Il Trittico in March.
Puccini’s Il Trittico (“The Triptych”) is a collection of three short one-act operas; it makes a strong case for limiting every opera to a single act, if the results would match Puccini’s accomplishment here. Each one-hour opera is a marvel of compression and dramatic tension. Every note expresses an emotion; every emotion drives the plots to their inexorable conclusions.
...I'm still going with Scotland.
Banning Keith Richards from smoking onstage was not enough. No, there's still tough competition from Canada, New Zealand, and the Netherlands. What then can the plucky Scots do to ensure ultimate victory?
Introduce legislation requiring a license for kilt-wearers.
File this under "That which cannot be made up."
(Hat tip: Thaddeus Tremayne at Samizdata)
Quick question: does it make sense to you that an empire which used to run Pakistan, Mesopotamia, and Egypt wouldn't have had a Muslim in the House of Lords until 1988?
Well, you wouldn't think so, and you'd be right. Lord Ahmed, the scourge of Salman Rushdie, is most certainly not Britain's first Muslim peer, no matter what the Evening Standard or the New Statesman may write about him. Plenty of other writers are blowing this, too (in Britain and in America), and it appears Lord Ahmed even believes himself to be Britain's first Muslim peer. If so, he's as wrong as the rest of them. He may be the first Muslim life peer, but he's not the first Muslim to be a member of the House of Lords.
Rowland Allanson-Winn, the 5th Baron Headley, was Britain's first Muslim peer. Al Haj Lord Headley became a Muslim in 1913, and, according to a book I bought and read in Jeddah, he was the President of the British Muslims Society in London and made the haj twice, in 1923 and in 1927. He died in 1935.
I'm just a humble blogger, and I'll tell you, this kind of research really kills me. Between checking my book and running a few online searches, I bet it took me a good fifteen minutes to put some facts together. It's a good thing we have real professionals in the field of journalism. 'Cause, you know, they have editors and fact-checkers and all.
Larry Summers, former treasury secretary (and former president of Harvard University) has some bees in his bonnet. What he calls tax "reform," for example. Which, to his way of thinking, means higher taxes.
Which ones? All of 'em, apparently. According to this conversion with James Pethokoukis at the U.S. News & World Report Capital Commerce blog, Summers would like to see the Bush 2001 and 2003 tax cuts repealed -- "at minimum" -- he'd like to see tax increases become automatic, he'd probably add a value-added tax, and he thinks we need universal health insurance and more education and retraining programs.
Oh, and there's this:
What about the current capital-gains-tax rate?
It is certainly not too high.
But wait, there's more!
What about congressional attempts to push China on the yuan?I think attempting to bludgeon China is a very risky course, and I think we are better off addressing issues with China multilaterally, and I think we are better off engaging in dialogue than making demands...I think that is the right answer, and we don't have the prospect of bludgeoning them into anything else...And I think the effort to do so could be quite counterproductive.
You like that one? According to Larry Summers, "bludgeoning" Communist Chinese dictators is counterproductive...but doing so to productive Americans is okay. That, in his mind, is "open" trade. Open season on the productive is what it should be called. Where in the hell do we keep dredging up and empowering such slime?
Cassandra's warnings were unheeded, but they weren't false. Stephen Bainbridge brings Cassandra to mind in his discussion of Sarbanes-Oxley:br>
While we thus don’t know whether SOX in fact benefits the economy, we do know that it has imposed a much higher regulatory burden on U.S. public corporations than the law’s sponsors ever imagined. According to The Wall Street Journal, for example, publicly traded U.S. corporations routinely report that their audit costs have gone up as much as 30 percent, or even more, due to the tougher audit and accounting standards imposed by SOX.
The chief regulatory culprit is SOX section 404, which requires both management and the company’s outside auditors to annually assess the firm’s internal controls over financial disclosures. The Securities and Exchange Commission initially estimated that section 404 compliance would require only 383 staff hours per company per year.
According to a Financial Executives International survey of 321 companies, however, firms with greater than $5 billion in revenues spend an average of $4.7 million per year to comply with section 404.
"Oh, that's not so bad," I can hear the rejoinders already. "Business can afford that kind of thing. They'll find a way; that's what business is for."
To be sure, some of these costs were one-time expenses incurred to bring firms’ internal controls up to snuff. Yet, many other SOX compliance costs recur year after year. For example, the internal control process required by section 404 relies heavily on ongoing documentation. As a result, firms must constantly ensure that they are creating the requisite paper trail.
In addition, other ongoing expenses imposed by SOX include legal fees, premium increases in directors and officers insurance policies, and higher director fees to attract qualified independent directors to serve on boards of directors.
These costs are disproportionately borne by smaller public firms. A study by three University of Georgia economists, for example, found that post-SOX director compensation increases have been much higher at small firms. For small firms operating on thin margins, these and related SOX compliance costs can actually make the difference between profitability and losing money.
"As a result," writes Professor Bainbridge, "SOX has substantially distorted corporate financing decisions."
Hmmm....what was that lesson again?
From Ryan Stewart at Cinematical:
Angelina told me that the project is still on the table, but "the thing with Atlas is just, we all feel that it's one of those projects where if you can't do it right, you really can't touch it. So we have not had all the pieces come together. There's not been a director that's right to come on, or all of those elements. So until it does, you know, I certainly don't want to be a part of something that's just put together to hit 'this date.'"
Given my expectation that the movie will suck, I don't see this as bad news. But at least this kind of delay indicates that someone is taking the book seriously, rather than as a star vehicle.
(Hat tip: Mack Rawden at Cinema Blend)
I mentioned, in a previous post, taking the task of memorizing the kings of England. I meant to imply that we could make it less of a task, less onerous, even possibly fun, and while having that bit of fun, we could get the memorizing done in less time than expected. I still think so. Shall we get to it?
The kings and queens of England were William the Conqueror, William II, Henry I, Stephen, Henry II, Richard I, John, Henry III, Edward I, Edward II, Edward III, Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VI, Edward IV, Edward V, Richard III, Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, Elizabeth I, James I, Charles I, Charles II, James II, William III and Mary II, Anne, George I, George II, George III, George IV, William IV, Victoria, Edward VII, George V, Edward VIII, George VI, Elizabeth II. That's a list of 41 items (if we throw in the two Cromwells, there will be a total of 43 heads of state: the same number as there have been heads of state of the United States).
So we have our list, and we know we want to memorize it. What now?
One thing we can do is to -- as in all other fields -- stand on the shoulders of giants. Generations of English shoolboys have memorized this list, so we should be able to do the same. With this thought we've accomplished two things: one is motivation, in other words, if they can do it, so can we; the second is, let's see whether we can cheat and find some of their old methods.
Well, we can. A traditional memory aid to the kings of England goes like this:
First William the Norman,
Then WIlliam his son:
Henry, Stephen, and Henry,
Then Richard and John;
Next Henry the Third,
Edwards one, two, and three.
And again after Richard
Three Henrys we see.
Two Edwards, third Richard,
If rightly I guess;
Two Henrys, sixth Edward,
Queen Mary, Queen Bess.
Then Jamie the Scotchman,
Then Charles whom they slew,
Yet received after Cromwell
Another Charles too.
Next James the second
Ascended the throne;
Then good William and Mary
Together came on.
Til, Anne, Georges four,
And fourth William all past,
God sent Queen Victoria:
May she long be the last!
Or this one, also anonymous:
Willie, Willie, Harry, Stee,
Harry, Dick, John, Harry Three.
One, Two, Three Neds, Richard Two,
Harry Four, Five, Six. Then who?
Edward Four, Five, Dick the Bad,
Harrys twain and Ned the Lad.
Mary, Bessie, James the Vain,
Charlie, Charlie, James again.
William and Mary, Anna Gloria,
Four Georges, William and Victoria.Ned Seventh ruled til 1910,
When George the Fifth came in, and then
Ned Eight departed when love beckoned,
Leaving George Six and Liz the Second.
We have our names (items) and we know the total number to be memorized. Does natural memory play a role here, or even possibly help? Well of course it does: you already know the names and positions of two items on this list. Is Queen Elizabeth still alive? Yes. Well then, she is the last item, isn't she? And wasn't old William the Conqueror the first king in our list? Yes, well, first
means first.
Let's play around with these lists and see what we can do with them. The first anonymous poem doesn't really provide a structure that would help -- the rhyme scheme is irregular, so no help there, and there's an erratic number of rulers per line throughout the poem. Plus, it's incomplete, isn't it? But I like the way it reads: "First William the Norman, then William his son..." And it's been around, so it must have helped somebody. In other words, it can work for our purposes.
The second anonymous poem has some promise: the structure itself can help us in our memory quest. First of all, it has fourteen lines and is divided evenly into seven rhymed couplets. That gives us nothing about the content (the kings) but it does help us to remember the memory aid itself (the poem).
What I would do here is to memorize the rhyming sounds and then lock in the content:
-ee
-oo
-ad
-ain
-oria
-en
-econd
Why would I do it this way? Good question. I could just copy and recite the poem (or both poems), and I'm sure that's how those English schoolboys did it at Rugby and Eton or wherever, but that's just a matter of taking a bit of the drudgery out of a sheer rote approach to memory. That alone is better than nothing, and in fact it's a whole lot better -- but we can do more. If we play around with the poem, we'll prepare ourselves for some of the more mind-stretching things we can do with our memories.
So having read the poem through once, let's say that we recall but a few items: we know that Elizabeth II appeared in the poem as "Liz the Second." But there are two rhyming words in a couplet, so which refers to her? In this case, it's obvious: she is still the queen, so she's last on the list. Therefore, the last line refers to her and the line ends with "Liz the Second." If you were maintaing a numbered list on another sheet of paper, you could now go over to 43 (or 41, if you were ignoring the Cromwells) and write in "Elizabeth II." Your natural memory is probably jogged by the rhyme at this point and you're thinking, "when love beckoned (or, in some versions, when Mrs. Simpson beckoned)." Just go ahead and write it in at the end of that line. Still doesn't tell us much more about who goes where, though.
Next I'd move to the "-oria" rhymes. It's probably pretty easy to recall that those words were "Gloria" and "Victoria," so just go ahead and write them in, too. Somewhere in there is a rhyme word "bad," but hmmm, can't remember whether it came first or second. So, nothing to write there.
But, I do remember --- from "First William the Norman, then William his son," and the "Willie, Willie" from this one -- the names of the first two English kings: William! So I go to my list and on item 1 I write: "William I" and on item 2, I write "William II."
Then I'd go back and read the poem again, going over it a few times without looking at the page (or screen), and correcting my errors until I had it all. I'd read it out loud, too, taking advantage of rhythm, rhyme, and play. Between natural memory and the prompting of the rhymes, it won't take long. You give it a try...I say you'll get it in 20 minutes. Or less.
Probably less.
Once the task was properly ordered, it became easy to do, didn't it? Those of you who tried it know what I'm talking about, because, even if you missed a few names here and there, you still got most of the list, and you did it in far less time than you thought it would take. The cure for the few mistakes you made? Go back and correct 'em, that's all. Even with the corrections, you probably still memorized a list of 41 items, in order, in what was, for you, a surprisingly short amount of time.
You could also memorize the U.S. Presidents, in order, and a few years ago I taught a campus Objectivist group to do just that. Didn't take much effort, didn't take much time. And they all did it, members and visitors alike.
What was done with the kings, above, was more of a one-time trick than a system: we took two poems written specifically for the purpose of memorizing a specific list, and we worked with them. We didn't use a strict rote approach -- we were a bit more imaginative than that -- but a rote approach would have worked here, as it worked for many pupils in the past. But we didn't use an abstract, systematic approach, the kind of thing -- an actual system -- which could have been applied to memorizing anything, any subject, whether in a list or not.
But there is such an approach, and it can be used to startling effect, and by anyone. I threatened to use Arabic vocabulary as an example -- and, next time we meet to discuss mnemonics, I'll carry out that threat.
Oh, and such a list as we have above can be extended forever. You just have to know the names, and we already do know the next two. When the Prince of Wales assumes the throne he will probably reign as Charles (he has been known as Charles all his life) and he will therefore be King CHarles III. His son will reign as King William V. You might laugh at my use of "probably," but remember that Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David, known to his family all his life as "David," reigned as Edward VIII. So show some respect. :-)
Quick: name the Great Lakes. In five seconds.
How'd you do?
Would it be easier if, for example, you knew how many there were? Or if you knew how many there were, and had a key as to the first letter of the name of each lake? And if those keys were, in turn, easy to remember? Sure it would.
The Great Lakes are Erie, Huron, Michigan, Superior, and Ontario. What do we do with that knowledge, in order to learn it, lock it in memory? We play with it a bit.
Can you remember the word "homes?" Of course you can. But try it as an acronym, done this way: HOMES.
H Huron
O Ontario
M Michigan
E Erie
S Superior
That little acronym serves as a mnemonic, giving you two cues: how many items are in the list you're trying to remember, and the initial letter of each word (name) in the list. It's a pretty easy mnemonic to remember, too -- but what if you wanted to make it even more certain that you could remember it? That's no problem, either.
Try this: Picture your own home in your mind. Now, imagine it screaming out of the sky and crashing into a huge (er, Great) lake, causing a tremendous splash.
One more time: name the Great Lakes. How many are there? What are their names? Was it easier this time?
Now, what if you wanted, for whatever reason, to order and recall the lakes in terms of their position, from west to east?
Small Minds Hate Encountering Objectivism!
You might think that translating such a statement into a picture might be difficult, but it doesn't have to be: depending on who you are, you might imagine a Republican politician (or William F. Buckley, Jr., or Jerry Falwell, or your parents, or one of your professors) recoiling in horror from Ayn Rand.
More? How about ordering the lakes in terms of size, from largest to smallest?
Shakira's Heavenly Mammaries Excite Ovations!
I trust you'll have little problem creating an appropriate image.
Again, as with the house crashing into a lake, creating a picture is part of the process. It's true that you may have more fun picturing Shakira and her heavenly mammaries than picturing a house, but it wasn't difficult, I'll wager, to create that mental picture. Aren't you glad you discovered the subject of mnemonics?
What if you were studying for a history exam? Could you, say, memorize the names of the ruling houses of England, in chronological order?
Well of course you could. Readers of The Anger of Compassion already know, of course, that the English royal houses were Norman, Plantagenet, Lancaster, York, Tudor, Stuart, Hanover, and Windsor, but what about communications majors and other unfortunates who don't already have this knowledge? Could another mnemonic help? Does such a thing exist?
Well, let's just do it, shall we? I mean, no point letting your trousers slip half way.
No Point Letting Your Trousers Slip Half Way
There you are, an easy way to recall that the ruling houses of England were Norman, Plantagenet, Lancaster, York, Tudor, Stuart, Hanover, and Windsor (even if various members of that house now style themselves Wessex, or Wales). Again, though, how would you recall what the statement stood for?
Easy: link that goofy sentence to a picture in your mind, perhaps of the Prince of Wales, or Henry VIII. Or yourself. Picture a huge crown on his (or your) head, a seriously unhappy look on his face as he struggles frantically and unsuccessfully and his trousers do, indeed, slip past the half-way point.
Try again: name the Great Lakes and name the ruling houses of England. Even if you didn't know them before, it's a pretty easy task now, isn't it?
It's true that at some point, your natural memory must come into play, but most of us have heard the names of the Great Lakes, and basically know the list even if we can't summon it at will. Ditto for the ruling houses of England. We do know this information, however sketchily, or we knew it years ago, and the problem lies in being able to recall it at will. The problem seems to be knowing where we put it in memory, and how to get it out of there. Mnemonics help us solve that encoding problem. So we're counting on our natural memory and on some sort of system, and together they'll help us get the results we want.
A more serious objection could be raised, though: "These are simple lists. They're short lists, too. The information in them could be memorized even without use of any mnemonics at all, and lots of people do it all the time. What about longer lists, or more complicated information?"
Good question. My answer? "Yes, I agree, and yes, we can use mnemonics to handle longer lists, such as the kings of England or the presidents of the United States or Arabic vocabulary. In fact, I have taught others how to memorize such things. This, in fact, is where use of memory systems shines over attempts at rote memorization: they help save time and remove drudgery, and so make memorization more effective. So, tomorrow, loyal readers, we memorize the kings of England. We'll get into some other topics, too, including my claim about Arabic vocabulary.
I think you'll remember the Great Lakes until then, too. Shakira will help, too: go ahead and, um, use her.
Michael Nifong is to be disbarred
I hope this goes forward as well: "The players’ attorneys have pledged to seek criminal contempt charges next week in Durham."
This is just disgusting all around:
Wal-Mart, like many other leading corporations, is on the front lines in the cultural battle over the role of business in society. The problem for Wal-Mart is its business model – keeping its costs low so it can pass those savings to consumers – fails the CSR test. CSR {CSR=corporate social responsibility. -- Ed.} supporters want the company to increase its overhead by paying higher wages, providing health care for all its workers, and guaranteeing workers rights by having its employees unionized.Consistent with those themes, liberal shareholder proposals presented at the annual meeting pressed Wal-Mart to close the pay disparity between hourly workers and executives, to deal with the healthcare issue and to provide workers rights.
While Wal-Mart has not yielded to these demands, the company is not immune from the social and political pressure. To seek relief and improve its image Wal-Mart is appeasing the Left by meeting with Al Gore on global warming, pressuring green mandates on its suppliers and joining the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in a press conference calling for universal health care.
Most concerning is the possibility that Wal-Mart might actively support government funded universal health care as a way to shift its employee health care problem to the U.S. taxpayer and ease one major area of criticism. Turning Wal-Mart into a lobbyist for the Left’s agenda represents a serious risk to the free market and, if successful, expands the role of government in our lives.
This is destructive beyond simple rent-seeking, and is truly, truly disgusting. But columnist Thomas J. Borelli (a shareholder activist himself) has a positive suggestion:
In addition, Wal-Mart should use its marketing muscle to sell Ayn Rand’s timeless novel Atlas Shrugged into millions of homes. The book provides insight and perspective regarding the nature of Wal-Mart’s conflict: capitalism vs. socialism; the risk posed by rent seeking corporate executives; and government interference in the free market.
He ends with a bang, too. Read the whole thing.
Should Wal-Mart executives decide to become advocates for socialized medicine, shunning and boycotts would not suffice. One traditional alternative does suggest itself, though, and it's got a more all-American feel than the Molotov cocktail.
Megan McArdle, the "Jane Galt" of the Asymmetrical Information blog, is interviewed here. Excerpt:
Can you name a work of non-fiction which has had a major and lasting influence on how you think about the world? > Like almost everyone else who has moved from left to right, I was immensely influenced by Friedrich Hayek. A friend gave me a copy of The Road to Serfdom, which awed me when I first read it. I suppose other things of his are meatier, but that was my first inkling that there was another way to think about things, so it probably had the biggest influence.
Now, I probably just read too much, but I'm reminded of a comment I saw decades ago -- in Libertarian Review, I think -- to the effect that the fountainhead of the Chicago school of economic thought was not Mises or Menger, but Hayek -- and I'm reminded, as well, that Ayn Rand had little use for Hayek.
In a letter to Rose Wilder Lane, dated August 21, 1946, Rand wrote:
As an example of our most pernicious enemy, I would name Hayek. That one is real poison. Yes, I think he does more harm than Stuart Chase. I think Wendell Willkie did more to destroy the Republican Party than did Roosevelt. I think Willkie and Eric Johnston have done more for the cause of Communism than Earl Browder and The Daily Worker. Observe the Communist Party technque, which asks their most effective propagandists to be what is known as "tactical nonmembers." That is, they must not be Communists, but pose as "middle-of-the-roaders" in the eyes of the public. The Communists know that such propagandists are much more deadly to the cause of Capitalism in that "middle-of-the-road" pretense.
Rand also had little use for that other Golden Boy of the Chicago School, Milton Friedman. This Q&A is available in Ayn Rand Answers:
Have you seen Milton Friedman's program Free to Choose on public television?I saw five minutes of it; that was enough for me, because I know Friedman's ideas. He is not for capitalism; he's a miserable eclectic. He's an enemy of Objectivism, and his objection is that I bring morality into economics, which he thinks should be amoral. I don't always like what public television puts on, but they have better programs than Free to Choose -- the circus, for instance. (Ayn Rand Answers, page 43)
Now perhaps some of you think she judged Friedman too harshly. Here's Friedman talking to a libertarian magazine:
Reason: You were involved in the development of the withholding tax when you were doing tax work for the government in 1941-43?Friedman: I was an employee at the Treasury Department. We were in a wartime situation. How do you raise the enormous amount of taxes you need for wartime? We were all in favor of cutting inflation. I wasn't as sophisticated about how to do it then as I would be now, but there's no doubt that one of the ways to avoid inflation was to finance as large a fraction of current spending with tax money as possible.
In World War I, a very small fraction of the total war expenditure was financed by taxes, so we had a doubling of prices during the war and after the war. At the outbreak of World War II, the Treasury was determined not to make the same mistake again.
You could not do that during wartime or peacetime without withholding. And so people at the Treasury tax research department, where I was working, investigated various methods of withholding. I was one of the small technical group that worked on developing it.
One of the major opponents of the idea was the IRS. Because every organization knows that the only way you can do anything is the way they've always been doing it. This was something new, and they kept telling us how impossible it was. It was a very interesting and very challenging intellectual task. I played a significant role, no question about it, in introducing withholding. I think it's a great mistake for peacetime, but in 1941-43, all of us were concentrating on the war.
I have no apologies for it, but I really wish we hadn't found it necessary and I wish there were some way of abolishing withholding now.
"No apologies for it." Just like that. The magazine interviewing him describe him as an "advocate for freedom." This is the guy lauded by so many conservatives and libertarians over the last few decades, the guy whose main accomplishment is the withholding of people's incomes because the state "needs" it. And I guess they still do, because I've had taxes withheld on my income since the early Seventies.
Am I just nitpicking? I think not. For decades now, William F. Buckley, Jr. has been peddling the fiction that he read Rand and the Objectivists out of the conservative movement, and others have repeated it. Libertarians and Objectivists are said to be natural allies who have much in common with many conservatives.
We do not. I agree with Rand that those writers and thinkers who compromise on capitalism have done more good to the Communist cause than to their own, and I'd extend the same compliment to those who vote Republican year after year because a Willkie or a Reagan or a Dole -- or a pair of Bushes -- represents the lesser of two evils. Well, here we are.
One's premises matter. I'm glad for Megan that she's no longer a leftie. I like her blog, too, and I've had it in my blogroll for years. But I note that she still refers to herself as an environmentalist, and I try not to be swayed by illusions about what is what. So I insist on observing distinctions.
And fans of Milton Friedman, take a hint: jeez, when you're trying to increase the reach and power of the state, and your main opponent is the IRS...you think that maybe what you're pushing might be pretty damn evil?
With Gordon Brown, poised to become Britain's next prime minister, having announced his intent to create a written constitution for the UK, I note with interest that Iain Murray at The Corner points out that today is the anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta. He quotes from its provisions:
39) No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land.
He ends his post with: "I wonder if they'll still be valid by the 800th Anniversary."
Good question.The Articles of Confederation didn't last long...
Full text here.
Presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani has released what he calls his 12 commitments to the American people ":
I will keep America on offense in the Terrorists' War on Us.
I will end illegal immigration, secure our borders, and identify every non-citizen in our nation.
I will restore fiscal discipline and cut wasteful Washington spending.
I will cut taxes and reform the tax code.
I will impose accountability on Washington.
I will lead America towards energy independence.
I will give Americans more control over, and access to, healthcare with affordable and portable free-market solutions.
I will increase adoptions, decrease abortions, and protect the quality of life for our children.
I will reform the legal system and appoint strict constructionist judges.
I will ensure that every community in America is prepared for terrorist attacks and natural disasters.
I will provide access to a quality education to every child in America by giving real school choice to parents.
I will expand America's involvement in the global economy and strengthen our reputation around the world
A spokesman for the Giuliani campaign was also quoted as saying thati in President Giuliani's first one hundred days in office his administration will end obesity and nearsightedness, "those two scourges of modern American life," and would work to repeal the law of supply and demand.
I just discovered that Robert Murphy -- the guy who wrote The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism and a study guide to Murrary Rothbard's Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market has also written a series of study guides to Human Action, the Ludwig von Mises classic.
This I find pretty exciting, because while I'm impressed with Human Action, I have to admit that it's really more accurate to say that I'm impressed with the parts of it that I've read, which is not the same thing at all. Nor have I ever finished Man, Economy, and State, for that matter. But I swear I'll finish both books, and I do want Murphy's study guide to the Rothbard book, so I'm glad to see he's turned his attention to Mises also. So, a a few comments:
1. I've heard people argue back and forth over which author is the more "readable" -- Mises or Rothbard -- and I don't get it. While I do sympathize with those who say that somewhat to their surprise they find Mises to be more readable, my impression is that, simply, they were two different men, two different academics, and each had his own style. I enjoy Rothbard and Mises for what each offers me: I'm aware that Mises was explicitly Kantian in epistemology and I've read that he didn't oppose military conscription, and I know full well that Rothbard was an anarchist, so I expect Objectivism from neither guy.
2. As to "readability," some help is on offer (online, yet) from Bettina Bien Greaves and her Mises Made Easier: A Glossary for Ludwig von Mises' Human Action. Highly recommended.
3. Henry Hazlitt, no slouch himself at explaining economic thought, offered a recommended course in reading in the "A Note on Books" section of Economics in One Lesson. He recommends that the reader of Economics in One Lesson move to Essentials of Economics, which was favorably reviewed in The Objectivist Newsletter back in the day, and then to Understanding the Dollar Crisis, by Percy L. Greaves. Basic reading ends with the two-volume Free Market Economics, another one from Bettina Bien Greaves.
Hazlitt then recommends reading major works in reverse chronological order, starting with either Human Action or Man, Economy, and State.
4. The truly ambitious and eclectic could take Hazlitt's reverse chronology advice and, after finishing the intro section of book readings, head on over to George Reisman territory and start there. Reisman, a student of both Mises and Rand, has a lot to offer here.
No, a lot to offer: he offers books and lectures, courses of study, study questions with answers, and most of it available in hardcopy and downloadable form. Awesome selection.
For example, you can get Reisman's own Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics, in hardcover or in downloadable form. There's a Q&A/study guide thing of over 200 pages, available for purchase or for free download. And more, including a downloadable version of Human Action.
But you want the Murphy study guides to the Mises chapters. Don't blame you. Here they are:
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Me, I'm still waiting for the dumbed-down version of I, Pencil...
(Hat tip: BK Marcus at lowercase liberty: individualism for the massess)
How appropriate to see this commentary published on June 2 (the fortieth anniversary of the US release of Sgt Pepper:
It is 40 years since Sgt Pepper, having laboured 20 years teaching his band to play, arranged for their debut in full psychedelic regalia. He leveraged a little help from his friends, notably the vocalist Billy Shears, and a riverboat owner named Lucy who had made her fortune in the diamond business. Mitch Miller, head of A&R at Columbia, dismissed the Beatles as "the Hula Hoops of music". Will their songs continue to inspire future generations? Or will their music die along with the generation intoxicated by their wit and charisma in the mind-expanding 60s?Whenever classical musicians and rock music fans meet, the conversation turns to those four Liverpudlians and how good they really were. Do we only like the Beatles because they were "our music"? Or will they last in the way that Mozart and Beethoven have lasted?
Yes, I'm prepared to predict that they will last. As for Mitch Miller's judgment of The Beatles...well, Mitch had a similar-sounding disagreement with a certain founder of Reprise Records -- and with similar results: people still seek out the music of Frank Sinatra to this day, and The Beatles, too. For pleasure. Passionately. And Mitch Miller? Please.
To a neuroscientist, the Beatles' longevity can be explained by the fact that their music creates subtle and rewarding schematic violations of popular musical forms, causing a symphony of neural firings from the cerebellum to the prefrontal cortex.
Absolutely.
Got this idea from Peter Cresswell: he calls it "filing by stuff that's lying around." Sure, there are racks and cases, the physical supporting structure of our music libraries, but how about, Peter asks,
the CDs, tapes and vinyl that -- no matter which way you organise the collection -- just end up regularly lying around the stereo, stuff that gets played so often it just never gets re-filed? If our autobiographical filing shows us the experience of a lifetime lived, wouldn't our regular playlist tell us more about our current selves? Or does it just tell us we should dust more often.
So here's my pile (three piles, actually):
1. Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall
2. The Benny Goodman Sextet 1939-1941 featuring Charlie Christian
3. Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane: The Complete Riverside Recordings
4. Time Out - The Dave Brubeck Quartet
5. Crescent - John Coltrane Quartet
6. Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane
7. The Thelonious Monk Quartet featuring John Coltrane: Live at the Five Spot
8. Reinhardt & Christian
9. Kind of Blue - Miles Davis
10. Misterioso - Thelonious Monk Quartet
11. Chaos and Creation in the Backyard - Paul McCartney
12. Tug of War - Paul McCartney
13. Ėternelle - Edith Piaf
14. Poulenc Chamber Music - Pascal Rogé
15. Poulenc: Le Bal Masqué, Le Bestiaire, Sextet, Trio - The Nash Ensemble
16. Rubber Soul - The Beatles
17. Revolver - The Beatles
18. Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - The Beatles
19. Magical Mystery Tour - The Beatles
20. Let It Be - The Beatles
21. Let It Be..Naked - The Beatles
22. Abbey Road - The Beatles
23. Love - The Beatles
24. Through the Past, Darkly - The Rolling Stones
25. Beggars' Banquet - The Rolling Stones
26. Let It Bleed - The Rolling Stones
27. Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out! - The Rolling Stones
28. Sticky Fingers - The Rolling Stones
29. Exile on Main St. - The Rolling Stones
30. Black and Blue - The Rolling Stones
31. A Love Supreme - John Coltrane
32. Giant Steps - John Coltrane
33. Maverick A Strike - Finley Quaye
34. Fifty Easy Classical Guitar Solos - Jerry Willard
35. Gershwin's Piano Improvisations - Paul Posnak
36. Gershwin Plays Gershwin: The Piano Rolls
Note that Peter's list includes the Beethoven piano sonatas, some of the Benny Goodman small combos, and Thelonious Monk. And Muddy Waters.
And Callas.
I wholeheartedly approve. It would appear that Peter has good taste in detritus music.
Ah, but we have more! For I have, not only a stereo with detritus, not only an iPod, but mobile detritus! There's a stereo in the library and also one in the bedroom, and a cassette player in the car. This category consists of language lessons, for the most part German, Spanish, French, with good numbers of Arabic and Russian thrown in, and some other entries (Norwegian and Italian and Japanese). Items in this category rotate in and out of the machine and in and out of locations.
A splendid time is guaranteed for all, I thought, as I created this blog on June 1, 2003. Guaranteed to raise a smile. Having been, y'know, some days in preparation. After fixing a few holes it got better. I don't say good morning good morning to it every day, but I am still motivated by the thought that a reader can find his way here on a day in his life and find something he likes. I'd love to turn you on, if you will.
So it's my blogiversary here, and, oh yeah, some guys released a record on this day, too.
Hey, if you shared a birthday with East Germany, wouldn't you find it pretty cool that your blog shared an anniversary with Sgt Pepper? I mean, come on: East Germany?