Well, time for yet another post of personal goings-on. Presently, I'm posting from a rented Suburban heading back to Virginia. My parents, three brothers, wife and sister-in-law rolled out of my driveway Friday afternoon, stayed in Louisville for the night (and got to have breakfast with my friend, Gary, who lives there), and then made the rest of the trip to Normal, Illinois. We celebrated Christmas with my dad's side of the family whom I rarely see, and it's pretty nice - I was last out that way, and last saw most of those relatives, probably 10 years ago. Now we're on the way back, trying to make the 14 hour drive in one big overnight trip. It's gonna be pretty trying, but so far so good (though I'm typing in an awfully cramped position).
Before I left for Illinois, I was working pretty intensely on getting a custom application up for the grassroots Ron Paul campaign in Virginia. I'm pretty excited that I got a server provisioned, set up, and the app deployed in about 24 hours. It's a pretty simple app right now, but hopefully I'll get to add some bells and whistles to it. Once it's better tested I'll post the URL for your enjoyment, but the speed of the deployment is apparently catching attracting attention from somewhat higher circles in the campaign (not sure if that's a good thing).
Finally, I'm pretty excited about the book I've been reading on this trip. B.F. Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity was pulled off the shelf and recommended to me by a friend who is a psychologist doing post-graduate work in organizational behavior. I was trying to turn her onto Carson's work on the subject and she ripped Skinner's book off the shelf and insisted I read it. I must admit, I'm fascinated by his behaviorist approach to so many questions that anarchists ask themselves and each other.
What I like about Skinner, as much as I find myself disagreeing with him, is the precision and, actually, honesty of his arguments. He quite blatantly calls out individualists and libertarians for having incomplete, unscientific theories for their approaches to human nature and the corresponding values. Of course, he repaints a lot of the debate in terms that he sets: man is understood as a set of behaviors, selected for by the environment, his feelings merely side effects of stimuli and conditioned reflexes. But there's a lot in this language that facilitates a true meeting of minds between social engineers and individualists. I'm sure I'll be writing more about this book in the future, but I just wanted to make sure my readers got a recommendation for a very challenging and interesting book.
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