I’ve been looking at the comments from yesterday, and I find them very interesting.  I seem to have confused two different attempts at railroad building in 19th Century America.  I’ll try to be more careful as I go on.  But the really interesting thing is the statement that “absolute property rights” would have resulted in…

Yesterday, in the comments, Robert brought up the building of the intercontinental railroad system in the US as a counterexample to things like the Sui building of the Grand Canal–but that’s not a very good example, because it, too, depended heavily on coercion. The owners of railroads may have hired voluntary workers to do their…

So it is Sunday, and I have had what I think of as a very good Sunday morning:  Mozart’s 40 and 41 (the Jupiter), and a great big book. I’ve also had that thing I wanted to talk about last week–remember the Sui dynasty and the Grand Canal?–and I came up with a connection I…

Before I get started on this short note, I want to point out one thing–I don’t moderate this blog. But although I don’t moderate it, the program does, and what the program seems to especially dislike is links. I’m not saying you shouldn’t post links. Links can be useful and informative, and the program doesn’t…

I’ve been having a long and stressful week.  First, and most important, the copyedited manuscript of the new Gregor, called Fighting Chance, was due in yesterday.  In order to get it done, I had to spend a lot of time with papers strewn out over the living room in little stacks with Post It notes…

I am sitting here having a rather interesting morning, if interesting is what you call a situation like this. Late yesterday afternoon, I went to a place–which shall remain nameless, for reasons that should become obvious–I went to one of my usual places, and there in the office where I work was a big plate…

It’s that time of the term–midterm grades are due in tomorrow morning no later than 9, and students who have been told that late papers cannot be graded before midterm grades unless they’re in to me by midnight last night…well, they’re nowhere to be found. This is not as knock down, drag out as it…

Sometime last week, in response to my post about Fallen Angels, a friend suggested to me that I would like, or get a kick out of or something–I can’t remember how he put it–a short story called “The Marching Morons” by C. M. Kornbluth. So I sat down and read it, and I have been…

I have been trying to get around to this post for a couple of days now, but Life has been intervening–and not, as is usually the case, with downers and trouble and general cussedness. I’ve just had actual work to do, and Spring Break arrived and I shut the alarm off on the clock, and…

Sometimes I don’t believe it when I DO see it. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/03/12/a_warning_system_for_disturbing_college_courses_121885.html