Helen has posted some characteristically insightful thoughts here.
(My original post on this topic is here.)
Anglosphere
The Road to Serfdom in Cartoons
Via the Ludwig von Mises Institute comes a quite good cartoon version of Hayek’s classic.
Here’s a sample image:
The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic — and How it Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World
Johnson, Steven, The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic — and How it Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World
The Ghost Map is a retelling of the events and consequences of a famous outbreak of cholera in Golden Square Soho, London in the late summer of 1854. As a result of dogged investigation by a polymath doctor (Dr. John Snow) and a gregarious Anglican assistant curate (Dr. Henry Whitehead), the ultimate cause of cholera was pinpointed, and practical steps were taken to contain the disease. Because the cholera bacteria was too small to see in the microscopes of the day, the efforts to control the disease were not only constrained by the tools of science but also by the competing theories of disease etiology (causation).
The major competitor at the time was the “miasmic” or “bad air” theory … bad smells were the basis of disease. Johnson opens his book with a detailed and hair-raising chapter on how the Victorian city of London managed the feeding and waste management for two million closely packed humans. Suffice it to say, people got their hands “dirty” … and conducted daily animal slaughter and recycling on a scale, and at a level of detail, that would put the modern industrialized world to shame. The humble and poor of the London would have quickly recognized the lives of garbage-pickers in Mexico City or Mumbai, however. Pity for a moment, those designated to collect each day’s supply of dog excrement on the London streets, recycled for use in the tanning industry. Nothing was wasted … in a way that would make any Hollywood Indian proud.
Article Roundup
Too busy to blog lately. As a father’s day gift, I am being granted some keyboard time. What follows is the merest surface-scratching on what could easily be ten or more meaty blog posts that will never get written.
I have been following with interest the discussions on Zenpundit, Coming Anarchy, TDAXP and Thomas Barnett’s blog. (I mentioned this “family” of blogs here, and I heartily endorse them all.)
One interesting subject discussed recently is the new book by John Robb, Brave New War
So farewell then, Tony Blair
Tony Blair’s so-called resignation was possibly the most inelegant exit made by any British Prime Minister. By no means the first leader to go before his term was up (of the post war ones Churchill, Eden, Macmillan, Wilson, Thatcher did), his was most the most prolonged and agonizingly dull. By yesterday morning, when the BBC Russian Service called to ask if I would take part in a discussion to be broadcast that afternoon, all I could do was to groan. Hasn’t he gone yet? We are waiting for the announcement, chuckled the producer.