After a bit of a delay, the Diabolical Masterminds website has been updated with The Frighteners.
If Anyone Should Draw the Conclusion that We Have No Emperor
Karel Čapek; Franz Kafka; Jaroslav Hašek
Sarah Skwire’s article on Orwell vs. Kafka here reminds me that I’ve never posted the slides from my presentation on Austro-Libertarian Themes in Three Prague Authors: Čapek, Kafka, and Hašek from last year’s ASC. So here they are; czech ’em out!
Part 1, covering Karel Čapek: powerpoint or pdf
Part 2, covering Franz Kafka and Jaroslav Hašek: powerpoint or pdf
Eventually there’ll be a completed paper as well.
The Restaurant at the End of the State
This cool pic –
– is from this likewise cool collection of sf-themed bars and restaurants.
Cordial and Sanguine, Part 59: The Pinker Angels of Our Nature
[cross-posted at BHL]
Stephen Corry criticises Steven Pinker and Jared Diamond on the diminution-of-violence thesis. (CHT Jesse Walker.)
See also my exchange with Matt Zwolinski and Gary Chartier on Pinker here, and my comments on Diamond here.
Bilbo and the Butterflies
This is such a lovely moment, and one so likely to be cut from a movie version (since it doesn’t advance the plot, as they say), that it’s a great delight to see it in both the Rankin-Bass and Peter Jackson versions of The Hobbit:
(Click for enhanced magnitude.)
Cordial and Sanguine, Part 58: The Burdens of Judgment
[cross-posted at BHL]
Pew polls reveal that switching from a Republican to a Democratic president causes Republican enthusiasm for NSA surveillance programs to fall by 23 percentage points – and likewise causes Democratic enthusiasm for NSA surveillance programs to rise by 27 percentage points.
My Rawlsian comrades sometimes accuse me of being too quick to see statist opinions as culpable rather than as being the result of reasonable pluralism. I think these results show that we shouldn’t be too quick to exaggerate the extent of the realm of political innocence.