Two very good things have happened:
David Friedman’s The Machinery of Freedom, one of the most influential free-market anarchist works of the last 100 years, is now available online (in PDF format).
Kevin Carson’s latest book, The Homebrew Industrial Revolution, is now in print.
Hooray!
Roderick, is it true that Atlas was actually condemned to hold the sky away from the earth? And if so, why did all the sculptors misrepresent the punishment?
Well, if you look closely at most depictions of Atlas you will see that he is actually holding up an orrery; not a globe, so technically it is accurate.
Yes, the sky was conventionally represented as a globe with the stars and constellation (though not always strictly as an orrery). Of course in that case Atlas should have been inside it — but then one couldn’t see him, so by artistic license Atlas was represented as holing up this spherical symbol of the sky. And that then gets misinterpreted later as the earth.
See this example.
So — technically — if Atlas did shrug, he would immediately be crushed.
I’m just sayin’.
Samson Shrugged?
Works for me.
Thanks, Roderick.