Escape From Pianosa

I keep getting these forwards from people, exhorting me to not fill up on gas on May 15th, in an attempt to strike a fatal deathblow to all Middle Eastern oil producers, by making them… slightly… less… profitable… for one day.

Anyway, the email doesn’t give me any guidance as to how I get my car moving that day. I only fill up once a week, but that gas takes me places for an entire week. Should we all forgo cars and trucks for an entire week? Why don’t we all walk or ride bikes to work? Sounds like a “green” idea to be sure, but a tremendous waste of time and energy.

We may inflict a few billion in lost profit on the Arabs, but what about the damage here? What about the billions and billions of lost productivity and profits for American companies, employees, and consumers? Or the billions of people around the world that consume the goods and services we produce?

So tell me… is this email a product of economic ignorance or a clever stratagem to bring down the U.S. economy as we know it? You decide.

Brian Doherty’s book, Radicals for Capitalism, was an utter joy to read–all 619 pages. In fact, I would’ve enjoyed a few hundred more of his “freewheeling history” of the libertarian movement in the U.S. This masterpiece gives a great deal of context and history to everything I’ve been reading about for the past few years.

Doherty’s well-crafted narrative navigates the thoughts, ideas, conflicts, and lives of the five figures central to the libertarian movement in the 20th century: Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, and Frederich Hayek, while saying a great deal about the myriad other characters (and some were really characters) that have played a role in the advancement of liberty in the United States.

I particularly enjoyed this quote from the epilogue because I think (or hope?) that it sums up the general spirit of liberty that will be so prevalent among members of my generation.:

“Look at it this way: You’re young, you’re intelligent, you have a rough sense that people ought to be free to do whatever the hell they want, mostly, as long as they aren’t hurting anyone else-a simple, honest, live-and-let-live moral sense…You have a basic appreciation for free markets, an idea associated win American politics with the GOP.
“But you are young, and you don’t want to order people around regarding things you know are their business, and theirs alone. You certainly don’t want to be on any team that’s obsessed with locking people up for what they smoke, or treating people differently under the law because they’re gay…
So what are you? You might start thinking of yourself as libertarian.”

The folks at The Distributed Republic (formerly Catallarchy) have posted this year’s version of their always excellent May Day series, in remembrance of the atrocities of Communism.

Sadly, my advanced improv class with the Baltimore Improv group is over. The advanced class was much more challenging than the beginner and the teachers really pushed us to develop new characters.

If you’re in the Baltimore area, I strongly recommend taking one of BIG’s classes; I’ve never had so much fun in my life. If you don’t live in Baltimore, then most major cities have places where you can take classes; if you’re looking to laugh a lot, meet new people, and push your comfort level, then it’s a great experience. On the other hand, if you want to be alone, not laugh, and be comfortable, I suggest skipping the improv and staying home.

So what now? I’ve been reading up on improv here and here (I took a class with Mike, who is now blogging on improv and obscure computer topics in computer programming), I’m going to try out for some improv troupes, and a few of my classmates might be starting up a group of our own.