It’s been a few quiet weeks here on the blog, sorry about that. Things on the real world side here have been anything but, with car crashes, car replacements, sick kids, and piles of work crap happening at once. Work in particular has been draining; as it turns out, arguing with recalcitrant consultants during user acceptance testing exhausts the same parts of my brain that argues about economics, metaphysics and ethics. Fortunately all the arguing does make hitting things with a hammer seem really appealing, so there is another blacksmithing post on the way1. A festively holiday themed one, no less!
Until then… Time for another “This is cool, go read it!” post.
Connor Tabarrok writes a fascinating, and creepy, account of some of the predatory tricks various fungi come up with. Yes, fungi hunt animals. (Well, nematode worms, at least.) Fungi get up to some really amazing things. Connor mentioned the book “Entangled Life”, and I concur on the recommendation: more than you ever knew you wanted to know about fungi. More than you realized there was to know, and nicely written, without getting dry.
Fisted by Foucault wrote up an interesting piece on the rightwards swing of European elections recently, as former leftist politicians change jerseys to the right and win2. I think this might be more a swing from revolutionary to reactionary, as described by Eric Hoffer, but interesting non the less.
More interesting is the section on the developing government censorship story.
Plus UK suppression of information on immigrant riots, and Mongolian wrestling. Truly something for everyone!
Common Sense published an interesting account of the changes in mental illness treatment for the indigent and troublesome, with the recommendation that we start mandating treatment. One often hears of the late 20th century closing of mental wards that dumped a lot of people who cannot take care of themselves into the streets, but the more recent changes were news to me. It is a difficult subject to answer definitely, as where does one draw the line between sane enough to make your own decisions or not? Yet a pretty compelling case is made that we are not even bothering to draw the line, much less in the wrong place.
Econ Journal Watch reprints a 1976 essay from Ronald Coase on Adam Smith’s View of Man. Coase was a smart cookie, and correctly recognizes that Smith’s view of human behavior included both self interest and concern for others, both rationality and imperfect knowledge and understanding, and in general a very rich understanding of human nature that modern social science and psychology have struggled to match in the 200+ years sense. A very good essay about a really great thinker by a pretty damn good thinker.
This one with a more… appropriate title. In my defense, I didn’t realize how that last one read till a few days later. I started with something like “banging on steel in really nice weather” and it sort of evolved without my noticing the direction. Now, usually with me it is safer to assume sophomoric before stupid, but not in this case. I am as shocked as you are.
I am not really sure how well the right-left spectrum really holds up in general, and less so here. I am using the language of the essay.