Archive | January, 2012

You May Seek Him In the Basement, You May Look Up In the Air

And so we come, alas, to the end of Sherlock series 2.

Moriarty watching the finale of “The Reichenbach Fall”

Moriarty watching the finale of “The Reichenbach Fall”

I don’t consider anything I’m about to say spoilerific, but those who have an ultra-low threshold for what counts as a spoiler may wish to stop reading now.

Episode 2, “The Hounds of Baskerville,” was enjoyable, though it suffers from being sandwiched between two much more brilliant episodes. I liked the way, whenever the story deviated from the original, it would drop in a little nod to what was being deviated from.

And finally there arrives the long-awaited Episode 3, “The Reichenbach Fall,” in which Sherlock heads inexorably toward his fated rendezvous at Lake Silencio.

Oh sorry, wrong show. But yeah, there are a few parallels ….

Anyway, the final episode was absolutely terrific (I have some quibbles, but can’t really talk about them while staying spoiler-free).

About that crucial scene you’ll want to rewind for: listen very carefully to what Sherlock tells John (his exact wording), and watch very carefully for what is seen and what is not seen (and notice the reasons, plural, for the not-being-seen-ness of what is not seen). If I’m right, we’ve been told and shown pretty much everything we need.


To Serve and Protect

Crispin Sartwell writes:

perhaps it seems obvious that it is in the interests of poor people to have an extremely powerful and pervasive state; perhaps it seems obvious that it is in the interests of rich people to have a tiny powerless state. however, looking at the thing squarely, this is the opposite of obvious. it seems obvious because people keep repeating it or always conceive the terrain this way. but it’s just wackily false with regard to reality. who needs the state more: you know, robert rubin or rodney king?

Read the celý piroh. (CHT Charles.)


Where Minarchists Fear to Tread, Part 2

As previously mentioned, the Society of Political Economy met in 1849 to critique Molinari’s market anarchist ideas. A month later, one of the participants in that discussion, free-banking theorist Charles Coquelin, developed his objections further in a book review of Molinari’s Soirées on the Rue Saint-Lazare for the Journal des Économistes. I have now translated and posted Coquelin’s review also.

These two pieces are especially important as the first critiques ever published (AFAIK) of the idea that the legitimate functions of government could and should be turned over to market mechanisms.


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