- Name: Raymund
- Location: Houston, Texas, United States
I write science fiction (sf) and fantasy, and I'm a book reviewer for Escape Pod (escapepod.org). I follow the sciences--I have a Ph.D. in biochemistry, but also pay attention to neuroscience and astronomy. When not working or writing, I trade currencies, and with what's left of my free time I read sf/f, history, and economics, play computer and board games, keep fit, occasionally fire up the grill, and love my wife.
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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