I'm on vacation this week

I've been helping get the kids off to school, then coming back home and doing some small tasks that have been left undone for quite some time. I won't go into all that. We seem to have the mouse infestation under control, though. No more disturbing skittering noises in the ceiling. And the yard work's all done and the living room is clean. More or less; I piled junk from another room all over the furniture, so I won't be taking any pictures of it right now.

Yesterday we took our tent up to Pine City and set it up for this weekend's Rendezvous. Stuffed all the heavy junk in it. Nice to get that done early. Now I'm going to listen to a few podcasts and think about doing more housework.

I've never considered asking anyone how to wash a car

I've just grumbled about the fact that nobody ever told me anything about it. Generally I do OK, but I did scratch the crap out of the old pickup truck.

But! With Google, all things are possible! Here are three articles about it: one, two, three.

The latter two have lots more than that, but the first has the best advice on car care info.

That's a bit more than a hint of how I plan to spend Saturday.

Speaking of new posts

It's about time I wrote one, eh? I'm still studying Molyneux to see how pleased I am with his thinking, and since he's put out tons of stuff, it takes a while. And, of course, it seems to me that his thesis on atheism is logically consistent (and that most theology isn't), so now I have to compare that to my own experience. No guarantees where that will lead.

I have choir practice tonight, after the Lenten Service (in fact, we're supposed to sing tonight, though I've missed a couple practices - I'll have to sit this one out). This choir member could use a good talking to.

[Update: I was wrong. The church is putting on a production of The Sound of Music and they were doing a dress rehearsal tonight. I was just a bit freaked.

Oh, and on the contradictions here: thank you, Grapevine.]

The Mises Institute has made Rothbard's History of Thought available online. I like this passage from the intro:

[Oops, I had a spare half line there.]

The continual progress, onward-and-upward approach was demolished for me, and should have been for everyone, by Thomas Kuhn's famed Structure of Scientific Revolutions.5 Kuhn paid no attention to economics, but instead, in the standard manner of philosophers and historians of science, focused on such ineluctably 'hard' sciences as physics, chemistry, and astronomy. Bringing the word 'paradigm' into intellectual discourse, Kuhn demolished what I like to call the 'Whig theory of the history of science'. The Whig theory, subscribed to by almost all historians of science, including economics, is that scientific thought progresses patiently, one year after another developing, sifting, and testing theories, so that science marches onward and upward, each year, decade or generation learning more and possessing ever more correct scientific theories. On analogy with the Whig theory of history, coined in mid-nineteenth century England, which maintained that things are always getting (and therefore must get) better and better, the Whig historian of science, seemingly on firmer grounds than the regular Whig historian, implicitly or explicitly asserts that 'later is always better' in any particular scientific discipline. The Whig historian (whether of science or of history proper) really maintains that, for any point of historical time, 'whatever was, was right', or at least better than 'whatever was earlier'. The inevitable result is a complacent and infuriating Panglossian optimism. In the historiography of economic thought, the consequence is the firm if implicit position that every individual economist, or at least every school of economists, contributed their important mite to the inexorable upward march. There can, then, be no such thing as gross systemic error that deeply flawed, or even invalidated, an entire school of economic thought, much less sent the world of economics permanently astray.

Kuhn, however, shocked the philosophic world by demonstrating that this is simply not the way that science has developed. Once a central paradigm is selected, there is no testing or sifting, and tests of basic assumptions only take place after a series of failures and anomalies in the ruling paradigm has plunged the science into a 'crisis situation'. One need not adopt Kuhn's nihilistic philosophic outlook, his implication that no one paradigm is or can be better than any other, to realize that his less than starry-eyed view of science rings true both as history and as sociology.

But if the standard romantic or Panglossian view does not work even in the hard sciences, afortiori it must be totally off the mark in such a 'soft science' as economics, in a discipline where there can be no laboratory testing, and where numerous even softer disciplines such as politics, religion, and ethics necessarily impinge on one's economic outlook.

There can therefore be no presumption whatever in economics that later thought is better than earlier, or even that all well-known economists have contributed their sturdy mite to the developing discipline. For it becomes very likely that, rather than everyone contributing to an ever-progressing edifice, economics can and has proceeded in contentious, even zig-zag fashion, with later systemic fallacy sometimes elbowing aside earlier but sounder paradigms, thereby redirecting economic thought down a total erroneous or even tragic path. The overall path of economics may be up, or it may be down, over any give time period.

In recent years, economics, under the dominant influence of formalism, positivism and econometrics, and preening itself on being a hard science, has displayed little interest in its own past. It has been intent, as in any 'real' science, on the latest textbook or journal article rather than on exploring its own history. After all, do contemporary physicists spend much time poring over eighteenth century optics?

No, I don't take that use of "Whig" personally. He's referring to Acton and Macauley and others like them. We love them, but they did tend to portray history as constant progress. Progressives took up that style and, in Acton's time, began the process of reversing everything he would have called progress. That's why I call myself, following Hayek (in my case, it's an allusion to Hayek's "Why I am not a Conservative" ), an "old whig."

Oh, here's a great Aristotle quote from the book: "men do not become tyrants in order that they may not suffer cold". That's from page 14 of the book (page 30 of the pdf).

Rosie had her Christmas Program at Church yesterday.

It was a pretty good show - little kids being cute and all that. Rosie seems to have been bitten by the I-gotta-look-cool bug. She didn't smile once. She looked like she had a migraine, though she was perfectly cheerful afterwards.

When she really looked cute was she she and Aliina were sitting together on the low sill of the big picture window in the entryway eating cookies afterward. That would have been a great picture.

Too bad I won't be able to take pictures like that until I pay off the deductable of my car insurance. I had a little fender bender in the old F150. "T-boned" on the passenger side. Accustomed to driving beaters as I am, my nature would be not to even have it repaired. Just bang out the dents myself and rehang the running board so the wife can get in easier. And paint it, of course.

Unfortunately, we're still making payments on it, so the bank insists that we have the bleepin' thing restored to newish condition. You should see the list from the appraiser. Apparently the whole chassis and box have to be disassemble.

It's quite the bummer.

Anyway, that's going to be our Christmas gift to each other, so I don't think we'll be getting a new digital camera anytime soon. The digital video camera claims to be able to take stills, but I haven't figured out how to download them seperate from the video yet.

My Daughter thought I needed a day off so she barfed at school

It took me an hour and a half to line up someone to cover for me, then I went and got her and we spent the rest of the midday reading the climax and denouement of Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince.

It looks like my fears about how she would take it were unfounded. I think I took it harder. You want a spoiler? Lily, James, Cedric, Sirius and Dumbledore share the most important of fates. I get into my fiction, and I've discovered that it shows when I'm reading aloud to someone. My voice breaks when the writer speaks of bravery and loyalty (to an obviously honorable person).

Anyone looking for voice talent? I find that I sound a lot like Sean Connery after I've been reading aloud for little while.

Of course, upon finishing the book I immediately offered my thoughts on how the next book(s) would go, which may have mitigated the apparent tragedy somewhat.

The Wife's late comin' home tonight.

I'm worried. It was snowin' pretty good today.

I went out and scraped off the driveway.

18 degrees. For you foreigners, that's 14 degrees below freezing. Or, let's see, that's 1.8 times... no, divided by 1.8... Oh, divide by two and subract a little! -6 degrees Centigrade! That's my story an I'm stickin' to it!

Anyway, I was expecting the wench at 6:00 and she's not home yet at 8:00.

[My daughter just handed me a bag of Nestle's Semi-Sweet chocolate chips for some unknown reason. But I'll take 'em. Damn good chocolate!]

OK, the wife and youngest child got home at 9:10 and kept me busy until now, but I can stop worrying at least. They stopped at the picture store to pick up the portraits of the girls that we bought. ...Portraits that we bought of the girls.

Oh, well. I still have the chocolate.