The Transhuman Comedy

From Arts & Letters Daily I found an article about a new edition of Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom. One of my great frustrations is Hayek's relative obscurity. I've mentioned his name in a room full of intelligent, highly educated people, PhDs or grad students, and received blank stares in return. If you've never heard of Hayek, you owe it to yourself to read the article for an adequate summary of Hayek's life and his early works.

A pleasant surprise: The New Criterion is a conservative journal of culture--imagine a cross between the Sunday culture section of the New York Times and the Goldwater-era National Review--but the article accurately reports Hayek's self-identification as a "liberal" in the 19th century European sense. I won't complain too much that they left out the title of Hayek's essay explaining his political views, when I can tell you it's Why I Am Not a Conservative.

More on Hayek here. Ready to read him? The Road to Serfdom was my first book, but I'd suggest The Constitution of Liberty as a better introduction to his thought.

Labels: emergent phenomena, Hayek

When I checked the front page of today's Onion, I had a sinking feeling when I saw the news brief headline, "White-On-White Violence Claims Life Of Accounts Receivable Supervisor": yes, that's right, Herbert Kornfeld is dead.

The earliest Herbert Kornfeld column in the Onion I found in searching its archives is from November 1997. That sounds about right, slotting into a time in my life when I had 20-something aspirations to hipsterdom coupled with dot-com era superficiality. The premise: a white uber-nebbish accountant (the photo strongly reminds me of Derrick Tate, perhaps with a pinch of Darby Bunch) writes about life in the accounts receivable department of Midstate Office Supply in gangsta idiom. He drives the Nite Rida and wields the Letta Opena of Death against the Accountz Payabo posse, etc. As I said, the perfect thing for modern-day superficiality. I can read a Herbert Kornfeld column while wearing a $60 t-shirt with an ironic message and pretend I'm down with hip-hop culture. But like every Saturday Night Live sketch since Schmitz Gay Beer, Herbert Kornfeld was a one-joke pony that went on too long. The Onion did the right thing in killing him off gangsta style.

BTW, I'll be looking for Irving Weinbaum's arrest in a coming issue. (Scroll about two-thirds down).

Oh, and forget pouring out a forty in memory of Kornfeld. Next time I'm at a hockey game and my team scores a shorthanded goal, I'll say, "Cash Room Bitch Be Having My Shortie."

Labels: The Onion