I just installed the Headway Theme on the blog. As such I’m like a four year old kid who has been given a big box of crayons and markers. I can change box sizes, borders, colors, fonts, etc. on a page by page basis using a visual editor. And so I do so, and the results look like the artwork of the aforementioned four year old.

I’ll calm down and tidy things up in a few weeks, hopefully — after I play with all the permutations. Please bear with me.

In the meantime check out the new header. Pretentious, no? But relevant. The diverse reading list portrayed has affected my political thinking considerably. For example:

• Quantum mechanics has taught me the futility of attempting to achieve absolute zero temperature, or absolute zero initiation of force. While we are certainly far from the achievable (or optimal) libertarian ideal, the achievable is far from that demanded by Lew Rockwell and his grumpy band of Praxeologists.
• Paul Samuelson’s Economics describes the Keynesian paradigm clearly, with useful graphics. Critics of Keynes (such as myself) should at least try to understand him, or at least Keynesian Economics as it is understood by the mainstream.
• My hobby of electronics and speaker building (re. The Art of Electronics) has taught me about feedback and stable and unstable filter functions. Adam Smith described negative feedback with his famous invisible hand metaphor. Karl Marx pointed out some unpleasant positive feedback loops in capitalism. I, alas, have come to the conclusion that we cannot blame all the instability of capitalism on the Federal Reserve. If we are going to get rid of the Fed, we need to address some of the positive feedback loops and unstable filters in our financial system.
• The Dilbert Principle because freedom lovers need to be reminded that there is plenty of waste, fraud and abuse in the private sector. (And whenever we have a “too big to fail” situation, the private sector becomes as unaccountable for its failures as the government sector.)
• Modern Chess Openings. Chess teaches the importance of getting the most out of each move. You need to consider attack, defense and long term strategic implications of each move to play well.

I leave it to the reader and/or future posts to figure out the relevance of some of the other books I put in the picture.