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Vernal Venturings, Part Tři

By on May 7, 2019 4

A few afterthoughts:

a) Re my San Diego trip, I forgot to mention that I also had lunch at Coasterra (great waterside views), and revisited the mountain town of Julian (see my driving directions).

b) Back in San Diego, I also revisited Captain Fitch’s Mercantile, a bookstore in Old Town. Sadly, it’s become less interesting (to me, anyway). On my visit last year, they had shelves and shelves of Dover classics on history and mythology, and I bought several. But now, while they still have plenty of Dover, it’s mostly just children’s books.

c) In Prague I revisited another bookstore, Kanzelsberger on Wenceslas Square, but that was a little disappointing too. On my previous visit their English-language section had lots of books by Čapek, Kafka, and Hašek. On this trip they still had plenty of Kafka, but no Čapek or Hašek. I did pick up Bohumil Hrabal’s Closely Watched Trains, Umberto Eco’s Numero Zero, and a new translation of Hans Fallada’s Little Man, What Now?, though. (I read the first two at cafés in Prague and am just finishing the third now.)

d) One of the most distinctive features of Prague is the various black and white tile patterns that adorn the sidewalks. You can get a good look at them in backgrounds in the first half of this video:

Vernal Venturings, Part Dva

By on May 3, 2019 11

In my previous post on my recent peregrinations, I neglected to mention that while in New Orleans I also visited the Barataria Nature Preserve (a boardwalk through a swamp with alligators sunning themselves along the path).

In San Diego I hung out with my good friend Gary Chartier. On my last day I had lunch at Bali Hai, a childhood favourite I hadn’t revisited since the 1970s.

Prague was delightful as always. I realise it’s the first European city I’ve been to four times. Had dinner with a bunch of the CEVRO students at Gruzie, a cool underground Georgian restaurant. Met some Molinari/C4SS fans.

On this trip I visited some Prague locales I hadn’t had a chance to on previous visits: the Jewish Cemetery (the old one in Josefov, not the somewhat newer one in Žižkov with Kafka’s grave, which I’d visited previously) (I’d also visited Čapek’s grave in Vyšehrad on a previous trip) (and Hašek isn’t buried in Prague) and Pinkas Synagogue, the Cubist Museum (can you believe two of the leading Czech cubists were named Kupka and Kubišta?), the art nouveau Obecní Dům café, and the Petřin Lookout Tower and oddly charming Mirror Maze.

Vernal Venturings

By on April 16, 2019 5

Two weeks ago I was in New Orleans for the PPE conference. I gave a talk at a panel on self-ownership, and moderated two panels I’d organised, one on anarchist legal theory (with [a subset of] the Molinari/C4SS gang), and one on race and social construction. We discovered a great 24-hour Middle Eastern restaurant, Cleo’s (the new one on Decatur, not the old one-inside-a-grocery on Canal).

Last week, back in Auburn, I attended our department’s 11th annual philosophy conference, this one on explanation and idealisation in science. During Q&A I rode my precisive/non-precisive hobbyhorse as usual.

Right now I’m in San Diego for the WPSA, where I’ll be presenting my Shakespeare/Godwin/Kafka talk. Yesterday I stopped by the Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore and bought volumes 6 and 7 in the Expanse series (which I’ll be blogging about in due course; just for now I’ll say: it’s good, read it). Had a delicious farfalle al salmone last night at a sidewalk table at Buon Appetito in Little Italy, and enjoyed an omelette-and-bagel breakfast this morning at Harbor Breakfast to the sound of great jazz songs old and new. (I’ve also been violating the laws of physics, because why not?)

(The day before catching my plane from Atlanta to San Diego, I’d planned to drive up early, go to a bookstore in Atlanta, have a leisurely dinner, and then spend the night at a hotel. But the threat of tornadoes, severe thunderstorms, and two-inch hailstones kept me in Auburn until the evening when the forecast expired, so by the time I got to Atlanta there was time only for a quick bite at the 24-hour Waffle House across from the hotel.)

Next week I’m off to Prague, where I’ll be giving a workshop on praxeology at the CEVRO Institute, and then presenting a slightly revised version of my Čapek/Kafka/Hašek talk (yes, more Kafka!) at the PCPE. (The revision is a very slightly fuller discussion of my suggestion that Kafka’s bureaucratic nightmares are intended to be read at two levels – a political level, where they’re condemned, and a theological level, where they’re not. There’ll be a print version eventually, inshallah.)

Free Comic Book Website Day

By on March 22, 2019 0

Heads up: on March 30th, DC Universe, the DC Comics* streaming service, will be free for one day. It features newer DC shows like Titans, Doom Patrol, and the new season of Young Justice, plus a bunch of older movies and tv shows, both live-action and animated, including favourites like Batman: The Animated Series and not-so-favourites like the 1970s Shazam! live-action tv show. There are lots of popular DC offerings it doesn’t have (yet), but if you like comic-book shows at all, you’ll find something to binge on (and March 30th is, happily, on a weekend).

I won’t be bingeing DC on March 30th, because I’ll be hanging out in one of my favourite cities with some of my favourite people. But if you’re not equivalently fortunate, catching up on some DC shows might be an acceptable alternative.

 

 

 

* “DC Comics” stands for “Detective Comics Comics.” Or possibly for rhis rhis koilē.

Forthcoming Anthology on Dialectical Libertarianism

By on February 27, 2019 0

[cross-posted (with slight variations depending on audience) at C4SS, BHL, and POT]

Several C4SS people (Jason Lee Byas, Kevin Carson, Gary Chartier, Billy Christmas, Nathan Goodman, and your humble correspondent) are among the contributors to a forthcoming anthology, Dialectics of Liberty: Exploring the Context of Human Freedom, edited by Chris Matthew Sciabarra, Roger Bissell, and Edward Younkins.

Not the actual cover

Not the actual cover

Other contributors, from a variety of libertarian traditions, include Robert Campbell, Troy Camplin, Douglas Den Uyl, Robert Higgs, Steven Horwitz, Stephan Kinsella, Deirdre McCloskey, David Prychitko, Douglas Rasmussen, John Welsh, and the editors themselves (Sciabarra, Bissell, and Younkins).

In Sciabarra’s words: “These essays explore ways that liberty can be better defended using a dialectical approach, a mode of analysis that grasps the full context of philosophical, cultural, and social factors requisite to the sustenance of human freedom.” Sciabarra notes that while “some of the authors associated with the volume may very well not associate themselves with the views of other authors herein represented,” a “context-sensitive dialectical approach” is “living research program” that “will necessarily generate a variety of perspectives, united only in their ideological commitment to freedom and their methodological commitment to a dialectical sensibility.”

Sciabarra has devoted his career to exploring such an approach, most notably in his “Dialectics and Liberty” trilogy Marx, Hayek, and Utopia; Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical; and Total Freedom: Toward a Dialectical Libertarianism.

Check out Sciabarra’s announcement of the Dialectics of Liberty anthology here, and the abstracts of chapters here.

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