Archive for September, 2008
Vasily Grossman
Tuesday, September 30th, 2008The Russian writer Vasily Grossman was born in 1905 in what is now the Ukrainian town of Berdichev. At that time, Berdichev was still part of the Russian Empire. Vasily Grossman attended high school in Kiev and then the University of Moscow. He graduated from University in 1929 with a degree in a chemical engineering. [...]
Side Aches and Shooting Pains
Sunday, September 28th, 2008A reader writes:
Dear Thinking Man: I’m a fellow who exercises regularly. As a result, I often find myself the victim of a multitude of aches and pains, including these peculiar shooting pains in my balls. Without a doubt, though, the pain that plagues me most are side aches. What ARE these things?
Doubled Over
Dear Doubled Over: [...]
Are our fish really being poisoned with mercury?
Thursday, September 25th, 2008If you smell something fishy in this latest wave of methyl mercury talk, the reason is that there is something fishy in it — very fishy — and it stinks to high heaven. Please don’t be lured in. The relevant facts are these:
In this country, there hasn’t been a single scientifically documented case of fish-related [...]
Bukowski
Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008A reader writes:
Dear Thinking Man: Is Charles Bukowski a great artist?
Billy Badass
Dear Billy Badass: No, he’s not. Bukowski is too sloppy to be a great artist. He lacks vision. He lacks depth and he lacks focus. Reading him, one is reminded of Truman Capote’s criticism of On the Road:
“That’s not writing; it’s typing.”
And yet for [...]
Do Animals Possess Rights?
Sunday, September 21st, 2008Rights are a formal codification of human freedom. They are political precepts that define and delimit human freedom in societies.
That last thing is emphasized because rights would not be necessary if you lived alone, or even if you lived in a small and insular society. Rights derive from three things: human individuation, human society, and [...]
Wind and Solar Energy versus Nuclear
Thursday, September 18th, 2008Energy is like a river; it exists in two ways: flows and stores.
When you store energy, you create a dam to capture it.
What environmentalists call “renewable energy” is really just the stored energy of the sun.
In actuality, there’s no such thing as “renewable energy”: all energy, even the sun, is limited.
Fossil fuels are [...]
Can laissez faire handle pollution and climate?
Monday, September 15th, 2008The United States is still the world’s most prosperous nation, and there is still no need to dwell upon this fact because, for the most part, it’s still uncontested.
The point is worth reiterating, however, if only because it stresses a fact which has been touched upon in a previous article. That fact is this:
So long [...]
Natural Resource and Goods Theory
Saturday, September 13th, 2008The economist George Reisman writes:
The two essential claims of the environmentalists, which I take for granted are already well known to everyone, are (1) that continued economic progress is impossible, because of the impending exhaustion of natural resources (it is from this notion that the slogan “reduce, reuse, recycle” comes), and (2) that continued economic [...]
Environmentalism: cult of death
Thursday, September 11th, 2008Environmentalism, with its attendant army of politicos all armed to the teeth with environmental laws, is, let us make no mistake, the highroad to hell.
Before going all the way green, I urge you to take a longer look into exactly what horse you’re backing here: it may well turn out to be a horse of [...]
Drugs
Wednesday, September 10th, 2008Everyone, for the most part, believes in “freedom” — that is, until everyone finds out what freedom in practice actually means. Then almost no one believes in it.
Rightwing politicos and leftwing politicos don’t of course usually agree on specifics, but they do often agree on principle: namely, that government’s proper sphere of authority does [...]
Glass Recycling
Friday, September 5th, 2008This article is the second part of a two-part series. Read Part One Recycling Trash here.
Take an empty beer bottle. We can either throw that glass bottle away or recycle it.
Assume for a moment that we all want what’s best for the planet. Assume, therefore, that we want to use as few resources as [...]
Freedom versus Equality
Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008A reader writes:
Dear Thinking Man: In your endless diatribes on “freedom,” you’ve managed to leave out one very important thing: a definition of the word. The men who penned the Declaration of Independence wrote out a system of so-called rights that were limited to life, liberty, and happiness for males only — and actually only [...]
Socialism, Nazism, Environmentalism
Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008The National Socialist German Workers’ Party was founded in 1919 and abolished in 1945. It came into full power under Adolph Hitler in 1933, and proceeded at that time to slaughter a spectacular number of people in a relatively short span of years.
Socialists today are of course universally agreed that Nazism was many things, but [...]