“Post-Postmodern Art” reprinted
My four-page essay on “Post-Postmodern Art” was originally published in The Newberry Manifesto in 2001.
It is also available in a re-print edition with images of the relevant works [pdf].
Worth Reading for August 2006
8/31 Is Wal-Mart the world’s biggest poverty eliminator? And Don Boudreaux explains to the negativists at The New York Times why we’re much, much wealthier than in 1967.
8/30 James Lileks explains how to get your postmodern 15 minutes (and a government grant): cuddle and stab a pig. (Thanks to Joe for the link.)
8/29 A mini-tutorial by artist Michael Newberry on the integration of light in painting.
8/28 Keeping up with some influential philosophers: Simon Blackburn on the appeal across 2.5 millenia of Plato’s Republic; a new book on Spinoza’s vision of reason; and 2006 being the 200th anniversary of his birth, a tribute to John Stuart Mill’s enduring liberalism.
8/26 Two interesting items from Johan Norberg: the rise of free market think tanks in Europe, and an example from Bolivia right out of the pages of Atlas Shrugged.
8/25 Shawn Klein with an excellent comment on consumerism in education. (Via Philosopher Stone.) And Glen Whitman explains why college cafeteria food is, ummm, not always the best.
8/24 Why does history matter? Peter Cresswell summarizes fourteen life-or-death lessons from modern history. And: The Dark Ages were Dark: Tyler Cowen quotes from Bryan Ward-Perkins’s new book. Update: With reference to those cultures still stuck in the Dark Ages, Rossputin posts a history test with a public policy edge to it.
8/23 Admirable: Farrah Gray, Entrepreneur.
8/22 Anastasia Krutulis has a clear, short post on the importance of integrating playing and learning. Her post reminded me of a section from the great John Locke’s 1692 Some Thoughts concerning Education: “[G]reat care is to be taken, that [learning] be never made as a business to him, nor he look on it as a task. We naturally, as I said, even from our cradles, love liberty, and have therefore an aversion to many things for no other reason but because they are enjoin’d us. I have always had a fancy that learning might be made a play and recreation to children: and that they might be brought to desire to be taught, if it were proposed to them as a thing of honour, credit, delight, and recreation, or as a reward for doing something else.”
8/21 Corporate accountability for poor performance: Cato’s David Boaz compares the private sector with government. And Andrew Chamberlain compares compensation rates in the two sectors.
8/17 Bring on the witch doctors: Four postmodernists—three nurses and an English professor—object to “fascistic” Evidence-Based Medicine. Update: Roy Poses has this response.
8/16 I’m with Robert Bidinotto on this one: Let’s ban this dangerous nuclear reactor. Via Not PC: BioNuclearBunny on three anti-life environmentalist causes that have killed and maimed hundreds of millions of humans. Finally: Near-Record Corn Yield for 2006 Expected, Global Warming Blamed. (Just trying to get into the spirit of contemporary journalism.)
8/15 Angry Astronomer Jon Voisey on four misconceptions about the Big Bang Theory.
8/14 Excellent: Now available online are the episodes from Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose PBS television series. And Johan Norberg has another datum on globalization’s benefits.
8/13 Unintended consequences and environmental law: how endangered species acts can harm the animals they’re supposed to protect. And an untoward consequence: wise government officials in a Connecticut town shut down a 13-year old’s worm-selling business for violating zoning regulations.
8/12 Professor Peter Boettke argues that “Atlas Shrugged is arguably the most economically literate work by a major novelist in the history of literature.” And reservations about the concept of self-“ownership” aside—human beings are not objects to be owned—here is an interesting online graphical tutorial on Life, Liberty, and Property.
8/11 Another fine post from Rob May: How to Be an Effective Entrepreneur. And: Is European culture becoming more hospitable to entrepreneurship?
8/10 I can relate: Old Testament Parenting. (Via The Volokh Conspiracy.)
8/9 History and philosophy in practice: Victor Davis Hanson on how 2006 looks a lot like 1938. Key quotation: “It is now a cliché to rant about the spread of postmodernism, cultural relativism, utopian pacifism, and moral equivalence among the affluent and leisured societies of the West. But we are seeing the insidious wages of such pernicious theories as they filter down from our media, universities, and government — and never more so than in the general public’s nonchalance since Hezbollah attacked Israel.” (Via EclectEcon.)
8/8 Fruits of the Enlightenment: A Seattle Times review of 999 ideas that changed our lives. And CNN reports that Americans’ houses keep getting more spacious.
8/7 The Foundation for Individual Rights’ college speech code of the month: Don’t call anyone a “dumbass” at Colorado State.
8/5 Will Wilkinson reports that we may very well be the happiest zombies in the world. Here are some suggestive hypotheses about
willpower and success. And at Tech Central Station, Nathan Smith has more excellent world economic news.
8/4 Science and the individualism-versus-collectivism debate: ants are more war-like in collectives and team-sport players are less ethical.
8/3 Edited by Professor Edward W. Younkins and published by Ashgate: a strong-looking collection of essays entitled: Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged: A Philosophical and Literary Companion.
8/2 In The Independent Review, Roy C. Smith and Ingo Walter have a close look “Four Years After Enron: Assessing the Financial-Market Regulatory Cleanup.”
8/1 Margaret Soltan with an interesting observation about what Americans at the beach teach us about American culture. And publishing tycoon Felix Dennis has no-nonsense advice about how to become rich.
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Worth Reading for March 2006
3/31 Being a Brief Guide to Religious Denominations in America:
A Baptist is a man who got saved.
A Methodist is a Baptist who got shoes.
A Congregationalist is a Methodist who moved to town.
A Presbyterian is a Congregationalist who got rich.
An Episcopalian is a Presbyterian who ran for public office.
(Author unknown.)
3/30 In the Chronicle, Diane Ravitch has a short history of the College Boards and SAT—and a suggestion that we revive the College Boards.
3/29 An extended interview with Chinese democracy activist Wei Jingsheng, who was imprisoned by the communist Chinese for twenty years. And here’s an interesting, briefer interview with Shelby Steele, author of the new classic The Content of Our Character.
3/28 Professor David Mayer argues that political “progressives” are anything but that.
3/27 Do you recall the (now-debunked) claim that 500 scientists had signed a letter opposing evolution and supporting “Intelligent Design”? Here’s a snappy comeback: the Alliance for Science has published a letter with the signatures of 10,000 members of the clergy who support evolution. And here is a troubling item: some public school districts in Arkansas prohibit teachers from mentioning evolution.
3/25 Collectivism and human rights: Disabled newborns are killed in North Korea, says a defector. Here is a musical based on an unlikely theme: North Korean concentration camps. (Thanks to Karen for the link.) A picture that is worth one-hundred-thousand words: North Korea is dark. And R. J. Rummel has this summary overview of the horror that is living in North Korea.
3/24 In Wired, Will Wright, creator of The Sims, argues that video games build “creativity, community, self-esteem, problem-solving” skills. Not to mention that growing up on video games means you can kick tail on the real battlefield.
3/23 Political philosopher Tibor Machan takes the editors of a recent book on business ethics to task for a package-deal besmirching of libertarianism. And economist George Reisman places the blame for higher oil prices on those who help prop up the Middle Eastern cartel—including the U.S. Senate.
3/22 Is it teaching-versus-research in higher education? Professor Jonathan Zimmerman argues that it is time to give teaching more weight. Or is it athletics-versus-education at some state universities? Nobel Prize-winning physicist Carl Wieman is fed up with the University of Colorado. And here is an example of the education bureaucrat mindset in action. (Via John Enright.)
3/21 Fascinating: a study released in 2005 by Shanghai Jiao Tong University: The Top 100 Universities in the World. The global-distribution patterns are striking: Of the top 10 in the world—8 are in North America, and 2 are in Europe. Of the top 30 universities—23 are in North America, 5 are in Europe, and 2 are in Asia. Of the top 50 universities—39 are in North America, 9 are in Europe, and 2 are in Asia.
3/20 Fortune magazine has a list of 10 cool colleges for entrepreneurs. I especially like the University of Rochester’s idea of integrating entrepreneurship across the curriculum rather than having it located only in the business department. And Forbes has a great list: The Twenty Most Important Tools Ever. (Thanks to Roger for the link.)
3/19 Art insight: painter Michael Newberry explains and illustrates triangulation of light and color.
3/18 Aesthetics—from beauty to edginess: Donald Pittenger begins a chronicle on the decline and fall of the classical face.
3/17 Professor Margaret Soltan suggests that the professor-as-intellectual is obsolete and asks a dangerous question: Do sabbaticals create more value than they cost?
3/16 Fruits of the Enlightenment: Researchers have restored the vision of mice blinded by brain damage. And scientists have harvested stem cells from menstrual blood.
3/15 Bjørn Stærk requests that we translate Shakespeare into English.
3/14 With March Madness upon us, Neal McCluskey takes on the morality of taxpayer money and public university sports programs. (Via University Diaries.)
3/13 Why are there so many unhappy endings in great literature? And how can we change that? Ben Macintyre shows us how To Cuddle a Mockingbird.
3/11 Has another Michelangelo fresco been authenticated? And here is a site with some good quality images of Leonardo da Vinci sketches.
3/10 FIRE has announced its college speech code of the month.
3/9 When government schools fail, some of them turn to the private sector for help. On the other hand, as Mark Lerner reports, some failing government schools turn to yet more centralized, top-down control.
3/8 Simply excellent: Dr. Wafa Sultan on Al Jazeera television. Joshua Zader also has the link and some key quotations from the talk. And R. J. Rummel has the text of a widely-distributed letter written by Major General Vernon Chong, Command Surgeon, Headquarters U.S. European Command, Stuttgart, Germany. Update: Here is a follow-up article on Waha Sultan and her outstanding interview. (Thanks to Karen for the Sultan links.)
3/7 In the new Cato Unbound, philosopher David Schmidtz asks: When does inequality actually make a difference?
3/6 Breath-taking photographs of aurora phenomena. And is Jupiter developing a new red spot?
3/4 In the Literary Encyclopedia, Ashland University’s John Lewis states that “Ayn Rand wrote the most intellectually challenging fiction of her generation” and provides an introduction to the themes of Rand’s novels. Grant Schulyer opines about the state of the debate about Ayn Rand’s literary and philosophical significance. In a talk to SLIS, doctoral student Robert White gives an overview of Ayn Rand’s thought and significance. And if your German is up to it, check out Kapitalismus-Magazin, Freie Radikale—Das Blog der deutsch- sprachigen Objektivisten, and Objektivismus. Update: George Reisman takes Robert Mayhew to task for altering Ayn Rand’s wording in a newly-published volume of her Q & A.
3/3 For researchers and admirers of the Enlightenment: Electronic Enlightenment, a developing site with texts and correspondence of over 3,800 eighteenth-century figures. Check out also the Voltaire Foundation, the force behind Electronic Enlightenment.
3/2 In The New York Times, Dr. Brian Day on Canada’s socialized medical system: “This is a country in which dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week and in which humans can wait two to three years.” Worth reading again is Mark Steyn’s review of a Canadian film, The Barbarian Invasions. And at Division of Labour, Frank Stephenson follows up on the issue of how much high medical bills contribute to personal bankruptcies in the USA.
3/1 At San Francisco’s Exploratorium, a set of science experiments anyone can do. And Australian scientists have grown a prostate gland from stem cells.
