I just finished playing Prospero in The Tempest with the San Jacinto Shakespeare Festival. It was a hard role, almost 700 lines, much of which were expository monologues in the dense poetry of Shakespeare's late style. Next week I have a big audition for the summer of 2009.
I need to take a break from politics until events warrant a comment. Both campaigns are busy slinging mud, with the left as always a bit more dishonest and outrageous. (A rule of thumb: whatever the left accuses the right of doing, the left is actually doing to the right.)
The financial meltdown has been caused by economic miscalculations that came about as the result of government intervention. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans show much understanding of this; they would profit mightily by reading the Austrian Economists. Instead, they prescribe more of the poison that is killing the patient. They are hoping that inflation -- a hidden tax that falls hardest on the weakest in society -- will get us through until the next guy takes over. Then it is his problem. So, instead of a market collapse, every American will "sacrifice for something greater than self-interest." McCain should be happy! Nationwide suffering: altruism doesn't get better than that. (And as a bonus from inflation, because of pervasive economic ignorance, the statists in the government can scream at corporations for raising prices, and use inflation as an excuse to further destroy freedom in America. Really, for big government, inflation is like manna from heaven.)
I hope to relax and get some reading and playwriting done. If all goes well, I will take at least a week off from this blog.
Here are a few links for your enjoyment.
1. What Would Ayn Rand Have Done?
The only quibble in the piece is the writer's idea that Ayn Rand would have hated a postage stamp with her image on it. Since she was a philatelist, I think she would have liked it.
2. Imagine an intelligent creature that hunts other intelligent creatures. The predator delights in cracking open its prey's skull to eat its brains and in snapping its bones to suck out the marrow.
Science fiction? It happened on Earth. The predator was the human being; the victim was the Neanderthal.
8 comments:
I don't know how else to account for the sudden and massive jump in the price of oil the last couple of days, except for one factor: the expectation of huge inflation from the printing of money that will be necessary to pay for the limitless bailout of financial institutions.
Just when oil was coming back to earth, the government managed to send it right back into the stratosphere, simultaneously rescuing the oil dictators of Iran, Russia, and Venzuela, not to mention the sheiks of Saudi Arabia.
I was just catching up on some Rand a few minutes ago, in fact, and wondering what her response would be to the news of the last several days.
On the plus side, it's good to see her mentioned in a sort-kinda widely-read magazine. Maybe it will spark a little more interest in objectivism.
We can hope.
They actually enjoyed eating brains? Ew.
Hope your break from politics does you well, Myrhaf. I have to say your posts lately have been THE definitive place to go to keep up on what's been happening.
Very well done sir!
-Inspector
"Imagine an intelligent creature that hunts other intelligent creatures"
When I read that first sentence, I thought you were going to make a point about the government bailout... I kid you not!
The time article's reference to the Ayn Rand Institute's being an "outpost" for "anti-government thinking" is completely false (this is where the postage stamp assertion occurs). The writer is under the mistaken impression that Miss Rand was an anarcho-Libertarian. THAT is what she would have hated.
I think Rand's likely response to recent economic events is captured in her essay "Egalitarianism and Inflation", republished in PWNI. Anyone who wants to grasp the fundamental principles at play in recent events should read and/or reread that essay.
Typical worthless "sexed up" National Geographic article of the sort that once would have been considered yellow journalism. -- There isn't any evidence whatsoever that home-sapiens hunted down and ate Neanderthal (or at least any more than they did some upon themselves). What is known is that some contemporary stone-age societies ate the organs of the recently deceased in rituals, or removed the organs for other reasons (e.g., the ancient Egyptions).
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