Worth Reading for January 2008
1/31 A good post from Robert Bruner, Dean of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. A key quotation: “Artists in business are visionaries, inventors, entrepreneurs, and general managers, people who create something larger out of the assembly of resources, 2+2=5. They are quick learners; they recognize problems and opportunities ahead of the crowd; they shape large visions and enlist others in support; they communicate well and are socially-aware (in the ‘macro’ sense of understanding big issues in the world and in the ‘micro’ sense of reading a room full of people to understand their issues); they serve with integrity; and leaders have a bias for action.”
(Via Mark Lerner.)
1/29 Russ Roberts has a wry post on just how evil Walmart is. Noah Stahl defends the for-profit corporation against the usual slanders.The Prometheus Institute has published its quarterly online magazine (PDF). And British Heritage magazine’s profile of the excellent Margaret Thatcher.
1/28 I contributed a blurb to the back cover of Professor Jerry Kirkpatrick’s new book: Montessori, Dewey, and Capitalism. I recommend it to anyone interested in the important connections between philosophy and educational policy and practice.
1/27 Courage and technology: Watch these guys fall off a mountain and glide. (Thanks to Eric for the link.) Courage and political revolution: this documentary on Estonia’s “Singing Revolution” sounds moving. As is Tibor Machan’s account of his escape from Communist Hungary as a youth.
1/24 Professor David Mayer has his 2008 Prospects for Liberty essay up at his website. And I recommend his Thomas Jefferson, Man versus Myth essay, now available from Amazon.
1/23 A new tutorial from Michael Newberry on warping negative space. An intriguing hypothesis from novelist Lee Child, creator of the Jack Reacher character, about the origin of the thriller. (Thanks to Bob H. for the link.) And at the Atlasphere, John Enright’s review of Quee Nelson’s The Slightest Philosophy.
1/19 Economist Larry Sechrest has a fine essay on the heyday of entrepreneurial American shipbuilding—and why it ended. (Thanks to Sean for the link.) And economist Craig Depken has a brief item on Atlas shrugging in the railroad industry, circa 1908.
1/18 Freak show round-up: David Thompson reports on the extraordinary leftist bias of recent French school textbooks: “Economic growth imposes a hectic form of life, producing overwork, stress, nervous depression, cardiovascular disease and, according to some, even the development of cancer,” asserts the three-volume Histoire du XXe siècle, a set of texts memorized by countless French high school students as they prepare for entrance exams to… prestigious French universities. The past 20 years have ‘doubled wealth, doubled unemployment, poverty, and exclusion, whose ill effects constitute the background for a profound social malaise,’ the text continues. Because the 21st century begins with ‘an awareness of the limits to growth and the risks posed to humanity [by economic growth],’ any future prosperity ‘depends on the regulation of capitalism on a planetary scale.’ Capitalism itself is described at various points in the text as ‘brutal,’ ‘savage,’ ‘neoliberal,’ and ‘American.’ This agitprop was published in 2005, not in 1972. “… And just in case they missed it in history class, students are reminded that ‘cultural globalization’ leads to violence and armed resistance, ultimately necessitating a new system of global governance.” A recent extreme anti-humanist manifesto published by Oxford University Press—David Benatar’s Better Never To Have Been: The Harm Of Coming Into Existence: “Most people believe that they were either benefited or at least not harmed by being brought into existence. Thus, if they ever do reflect on whether they should bring others into existence—rather than having children without even thinking about whether they should—they presume that they do them no harm. Better Never to Have Been challenges these assumptions. David Benatar argues that coming into existence is always a serious harm. Although the good things in one’s life make one’s life go better than it otherwise would have gone, one could not have been deprived by their absence if one had not existed. Those who never exist cannot be deprived. However, by coming into existence one does suffer quite serious harms that could not have befallen one had one not come into existence. Drawing on the relevant psychological literature, the author shows that there are a number of well-documented features of human psychology that explain why people systematically overestimate the quality of their lives and why they are thus resistant to the suggestion that they were seriously harmed by being brought into existence. The author then argues for the ‘anti-natal’ view—that it is always wrong to have children—and he shows that combining the anti-natal view with common pro-choice views about foetal moral status yield a ‘pro-death’ view about abortion (at the earlier stages of gestation). Anti-natalism also implies that it would be better if humanity became extinct. Although counter-intuitive for many, that implication is defended, not least by showing that it solves many conundrums of moral theory about population.” And here is Carlin Romano’s fine take-down of John Gray in the Chronicle. (Thanks to Bob H. for the link.)
1/17 
The Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship has published the second issue of its newsletter, Kaizen, featuring an interview with New York City artist Michael Newberry, news about the Center’s courses in development, last semester’s student-prize winners, and a teaser about our next issue.
1/15 Some very dangerous mountains. And pictures from early Everest expeditions.
1/13 Munira Mirza asks: Is modern art a left-wing conspiracy?And here’s a fascinating piece on How Curators Saved Afghanistan’s Treasures. A key quotation: “In 1988, they secretly moved the highlights of the collection to a vault in the Central Bank at the presidential palace. Seven men had keys to the vault. All seven keys were needed to open it, so by spreading them around and keeping their locations secret (in case of death, a key reverted to the keeper’s eldest son), they were able to preserve the treasures.” (Via ArtCyclopedia.com.)
1/11 Ronald Radosh reviews Jonah Goldberg’s new book Liberal Fascism. A key historical quotation: “the very term ‘liberal fascism’ came from the pen of H. G. Wells, the famed socialist author who delivered a speech at Oxford University in 1932 that included hosannas to both Stalin’s Russia and Hitler’s Germany. ‘I am asking,’ Wells told the students, ‘for a Liberal Fascisti, for enlightened Nazis.’ Democracy, he argued, had to be replaced with new forms of government that would save mankind, producing a ‘Phoenix Rebirth of liberalism’ that would be called ‘Liberal Fascism.’ Like the activism, experimentation, and discipline that made the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany new dynamic societies, the West too could reach such a plateau by adopting the new soft fascism that suited it best.”
1/10 The excellent Ayaan Hirsi Ali has a must-read piece in The New York Times. (Via TIA Daily.)
1/9 Historian Paul Johnson draws lessons on leadership from several key twentieth-century events. And some things haven’t changed:
then- ambassadors Thomas Jefferson and John Adams report to Congress what they heard in their meeting with the Tripolitan ambassador. A key quotation:“… it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their [Qur’an], that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every [Muslim] who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.”
1/8 Philosophy—I’m in it for the money.
My blog is worth $0.00.
How much is your blog worth?
Maybe I should re-think my strategy. And here’s a humorous dialogue on the metaphysics and epistemology of the Identity Principle:
(Thanks (?) to Jules for the link.)
1/7 I’m back from a break over Christmas. Some art links to start the new year off: Lester Hunt reflects on the enduring significance of the cave painters.
An unknown Michelangelo sketch has been identified. Meanwhile, Donald Pittenger reflects on James Elkins’s Why Art Cannot be Taught and offers this saddening observation: “art students reflect their own times (and influences) to such a degree that, after a period of years, one student’s work seems indistinguishable from all the others. And this is likely to be true for all the presumed inventiveness of today’s art school; in 50 years the probability is that the stuff will look pretty similar. Moreover, almost no student currently enrolled is likely to ever be self-supporting by art sales, and even fewer will be ‘known’ even locally. Nevertheless, cohorts of students continue to pass through the educational system and faculty members congregate time and again to conduct critiques that, in the long run, are likely to be meaningless in the history of art.”
3/30 Here is an occasionally snarky interview with the gutsy 
