Positive Liberty

In which Jason participates in several current memes, sounds off on trivialities, updates his template, and makes a pitch for contributions.

First off, I’ve followed with amusement a number of bloggers who have loaded their entire music library into Winamp, hit “shuffle,” and posted the first ten results–no fibbing allowed. I have done the same, and here is my list:

Depeche Mode - In Your Room Jeep Rock Mix by Johnny Dollar w/ Portishead
The Velvet Underground - Beginning to See the Light
David Bowie - Changes
Rabbit in the Moon - OBE
Talking Heads - Life During Wartime
Butthole Surfers - Pepper
Yes - Astral Traveler
David Bowie - Up the Hill Backwards
The Microphones - Soundwaves
Dead Can Dance - The Ubiquitous Mr. Lovegrove

David Bowie might actually be my favorite musician of all time, and the randomized list turns out to be a decent sample of my musical tastes. Well, except that there is no Underworld or Aphex Twin.

From the music to books, Jon Rowe challenges me to participate in the following blog meme:

1) You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, without a doubt. I might also add Henry Veatch’s Rational Man: A Modern Interpretation of Aristotelian Ethics as both are fairly short.

2) Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Howard Roark, of course.

3) The last book you bought is:

A Cultural History of Masturbation by Thomas Laqueur

4) The last book you read:

Jean Paul Marat, by Clifford D. Conner.

5) What are you currently reading?

Leaving aside the several dozen books I’m perusing for my dissertation, the three I am reading from personal interest right now are Bruce Caldwell’s Hayek’s Challenge (almost done), Randy Barnett’s Restoring the Lost Constitution (just starting), and A Mencken Chrestomathy (meandering about lazily for several months). I will shortly be posting some responses to both Caldwell and Barnett, but I have to admit that I have come to enjoy taking my time at reading–It’s such a pleasant change of pace compared to what I did for general exams.

6) Five Books you would take to deserted island:

I would take as much as possible of Marcel Proust’s A la Recherche du temps perdu, and if this qualifies as fewer than five books, then I would also take, in order, George Eliot’s Middlemarch, Montesquieu’s De l’Esprit des lois, Marguerite Yourcenar’s Mémoires d’Hadrien, and Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables.

6) Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?

If they don’t mind, I would pass it to Miriam Burstein, to Chris Sciabarra, and to Richard Chappell.

[/End meme]

On an unrelated meme, several other bloggers are commenting on the three books they are most ashamed of not having read. It’s a chance to clear the closet of ignorance, to admit that the field of readable books is far larger than we can ever hope to master, and–best of all–to lower expectations for future blogging efforts.

No longer do I have to pretend, like all the other literati, that I know these august volumes.

Ehh… I still feel pathetic to admit that I have not read…

Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia: This is a book that I have skimmed, read excerpts of, and read endless analysis of. I know what it’s about; I know what its argument is. I suspect I would even enjoy reading it–and I admit I’ve got no excuse whatsoever for not having done so already.

George Orwell’s 1984: I know more about this work than any other that I have not actually read. I’m pretty confident I could give a full plot summary if I had to. Still I have not read a single word of the actual book. Now if I know this much, perhaps I don’t need to read it after all?

Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita: I haven’t read a word of Nabokov outside a few essays. But his prose is just so perfect.

And now I do think I’ve had enough of memes for the time being.

Attentive readers will note that I have added a few blogs to my sidebar, deleted some that were inactive, and made a few changes to maintain ideological balance. The goal of the “Notable Neighbors” section is to provide a balance of liberal, conservative, and libertarian links that are all consistently worth reading. If you see a blog there, you can be sure I read it whenever a new post comes up. I also recommend them to you.

Lastly, I have also added a button for making donations to Positive Liberty; it can be found in the “Credits” section. As of now, I am not quite sure whether the button works, and I would appreciate it if someone besides me would make a donation to my account–If nothing else, it would be a fair test of the button.

If you have found Positive Liberty interesting, stimulating, or even just amusing, I would encourage you to contribute a little toward keeping the site in operation.

Update: Thank you to the several people who have sent in contributions as a way of testing the new donation system. It seems, however, that there has been a bit of a difficulty with the button. If each of you could resend in the same contribution that you sent in just previously, I am quite confident that we could get all sorted out.

Update II: More problems with the confounded button. I do think, however, that a few new contributions, perhaps with higher decimal value, might be the thing to try. I will be sure to let you know when the problem is fixed.

Update III: Say, PayPal doesn’t actually read this stuff, do they?

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