Month: November 2006

Why I’m Not Good At This Political Stuff

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Is anybody else disturbed by mentions of Virginia Postrel and breast implants in the same sentence?
Now, I don’t look at Virginia and see, oh, this; I’m hosting my share of anti-veneration memes. But in spite, or perhaps because, I have met Virginia (and helped put together a stop on her book tour for The Substance of Style [overwrought review warning]), there are certain political issues that really, really don’t overlap with the circle labeled “VP” in my internal political Venn diagram.
I don’t care that Virginia herself has written on the topic; and in particular, I don’t care that I of course agree that these kinds of medical decisions, and the management of any attendant risk, ought to be decentralized, ideally all the way to the level of the individual adult, even if that means practically shutting down the FDA.
I just don’t care. My inner Midwesterner wants to metaphorically leave the room, sputtering over how unseemly it all is. If this is the price of defending (or regaining) freedom, somebody’s going to have to substitute for me until we can move on to a more edifying topic. Like, I don’t know, nanotechnological bionic hornets or something. Call me when this is over.

Mokyr – The Gifts of Athena: Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy

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Mokyr, Joel, The Gifts of Athena: Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy, Princeton University Press, 2002. 359 pp.

[cross-posted on Albion’s Seedlings]

I first became aware of Professor Mokyr (Northwestern University) when I stumbled across his book The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress (1992) during a period of economic history reading late last year. The book was quite strong on the details of technology in the ancient world and Industrial Revolution but virtually skipped the period that Professor Alfred Crosby had considered crucial to the change in mentality in the West (1275-1325 AD in northern Italy) in his book The Measure of Reality. My reading program at the time was meant to fill in the details of the period after the peak of the Italian republics. Instead, it highlighted the fact that science and industry were a rather murky transnational undertaking that didn’t, by itself, lend much assistance to sorting out Anglosphere history. Was England unique, merely lucky, or simply the first? Lever of Riches was fascinating but steered clear of many of the social and political questions that might explain why the economics of the period were so unusual. Economic historians now believe that, before 1850, the contribution of “formal” science to technology remained modest. There was a long period of very modest economic growth in England before Industrial Revolution allowing a rising population between 1760 and 1815 without a decline in per capita income. Income per capita edged up very slowly before 1830. Real wages barely nudged up before mid-1840s. And the switch to mineral economy (as an industrial power source) had been proceeding for centuries before 1750. What was the source of the evident dramatic change that people quite naturally want to call a Revolution?

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Worthwhile Viewing

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On CNN Headline News tonight, Glenn Beck has a program called Exposed: The Extremist Agenda. It’s particularly focused on the Iranian regime and the vast differences between the way it portrays itself to the outside world–and the messages that it sends to its own people. The 7PM (ET) show is on now; it will rerun at 9PM ET and at midnight.