BRINKTASM!

Brink Lindsey riffs with David Frum on today's Bloggingheads.tv.

And yes, I do have an intellectual man-crush on Brink.

Bob Wright Kicks All Manner of Ass, Or, I Read Books so You Don't Have To

Philosopher, historian, commentator, grand poo-bah of the mighty Bloggingheads.tv site Bob Wright has a new book out, modestly entitled The Evolution of God. I would have preferred something a bit more grandiose, like The Almighty: A Memoir or Me 'n' the Lord: Bob Wright and God Through History, but this is good enough. Cato Unbound has an adapted excerpt from Wright here.

Gist: The more groups think in terms of zero-sum (the number of resources available to all groups is fixed, so every dollar/job/widget/worshipper/soul/whatever Group A gets is a dollar/job/widget/worshipper/soul that Group B can't get) the less tolerance groups will tend to show about their differences (Group B will often find itself at war, both metaphorically and literally, with Group A), while the more groups think in terms of non-zero-sum (occasionally called "enlightened self-interest") the more likely they are to be tolerant and interact, since the focus shifts from fighting over who gets which piece of the pie to growing the overall size of the pie. This is an argument Wright has put forth in other books, most notably Nonzero, and articles and here he uses it to describe the interplay (or, all too often, lack of same) among religions.

There. To paraphrase Peter Griffin, I just saved you seventeen bucks and a number of likely boring, boobless hours. Possibly boring and likely boobless though it might be, The Evolution of God will be making its way to my reading list. This is a smart guy who writes smart stuff and in today's world more than ever, such stuff should not be ignored.

Climate Engineering

To the degree that climate change is harmful, this is the kind of thing that will allow us to escape or mitigate the damage, not useless attempts at conservation that are often thinly-disguised attacks on modern consumerist culture.

Nastalgianomics

The Cato Institute's Brink Lindsay has a new paper (PDF) out in which he savages a Nobel-winning economist like only His Brinkness can. Fun for the whole family. Speaking of family, the family in the cover picture ... shouldn't there be Negroes or Communists menacing the young daughters' virtue? Or something?

By the way, another one for the liberal types who equate social justice mainly with income egalitarianism: Do you prefer another "Operation Wetback"? It would lower the competition among low-skill workers for low-skill jobs, thus boosting wages for those jobs (some equality-focused commenters, most notably Mickey Kaus, make this argument explicitly in supporting strict anti-immigration reform). If so, why are citizens of the USA more entitled to the rights to sell one's labor than non-citizens?

Future & Freedom for a Friday

Freedom: The feeling of loss that Ms. Sepich endures to this day is beyond words. What happened to her daughter is beyond imagination. But taking DNA samples of the merely accused instead of convicted? I have very mixed thoughts on this, probably mixed enough to have the Libertarian Party take away my membership card, but I'm still working through various pros and cons.

Future: It was forty-five years ago that Dr. Robert Ettinger published The Prospect of Immortality, the book that kicked off cryonics. Thank you for your foresight, Dr. Ettinger, and best wishes for your continued good health and contributions. We still need you, 'cause we ain't there yet

Happy Birthday, Reason and Rational Thought!

Happy Birthday, Reason and Rational Thought!

2009 marks the 350th year of the Royal Society, which has as good a claim as any as the birthplace of the Enlightenment. And if you're thinking to yourself, "wow, I should really write a novel based on that," well, Neal Stephenson beat you too it, writing not just a novel, but an entire series, The Baroque Cycle. It's a story in the seventeenth century about the Society and the beginnings of natural philosophy, coupled with global political intrigue and no small degree of sex. It includes Issac Newton; Leipzig; a captured whore's daughter who sleeps/cons her way into great wealth and power yet remains always admirable and becomes the leader of an anti-slave revolution; two orphaned brothers, one of whom becomes a straight-laced and highly-regarded military man, the other is Jack, the swashbuckling "King of the Vagabonds", who falls in love with the aforementioned whore's daughter; King Louis XVI (or was it the XIV?) of France, Britain's shadowy, unspeakably evil Star Chamber, a man named Enoch Root, who might or might not be an immortal wizard, the chase for the Philosopher's Stone, the Tower of London, the heist of a mammoth fortune from Arabia, clashes over religion, class, wealth, and, for good measure, the first kidney-stone removal.

Those who can do better that that are welcome to try.