I received these pictures via email. There are of three-dimensional chalk drawings made by Julian Beever, a British artist.
Chalk Drawings by Julian Beever

John Stossel comments on the Wisconsin’s State Legislature passing “Healthy Wisconsin” which will give “free” health care to everyone in the state. As usual, he is right on the money. Although I am not sure if the progressives (btw, what a contradiction in term) will learn the right lesson from this example, since they have not learned the lesson from other countries’ failed experiments with socialized medicine. Perhaps, they do not want to learn? Perhaps for some of them everyone having the same and equal access to health care (even if bad, and it will be worse than what we have now and definitely worse than what we could have in a truly market driven system) is more important than the life saving and improving innovations, and the cost reductions a free market health care system brings. But, on the other hand, could one really suppose them to be that misguided?

You poisoned my brain with your rage-filled words
your hands struck me with your greatest strength
you ceased to live and I was born

the venom your mouth spewed at me
the mayhem your hands inflicted upon me
drove me to the top, past your hatred and despair

you defined yourself through me
sought to thrive by throttling my spirit
because I was more worthy of life than you will ever be

I survived you because I let you go
purged my anger and reached indifference
you are nothing, nothing, nothing without me

But I will always be my greatest achievement
the fiercest battle, the most glorious victory of my life.

©’07 Anja Hartleb-Parson

I am proud to say that my translation of Stephen Hicks’ essay “Ayn Rand and Contemporary Business Ethics” is now available online on his website. We are putting the word out to German sites as well.

The movement there is pretty small. Ayn Rand is not a well known name. The German translation of Atlas Shrugged ranks #18.227 on Amazon.de (#771 on Amazon.com, paperback) and the one of the Fountainhead ranks #47.245 (#6,503 on Amazon.com, Centennial Edition paperback). Her non-fiction seems not to be available in translation at all.

I don’t. And in case you are trying to skip those dreaded footnotes, think again. You may be missing out. Sigmund Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents contains some of the most hilarious footnotes of all time. To sample, here is one on the control of fire.

“If we go back far enough, we find that the first acts of civilization were the use of tools, the gaining of control over fire, and the construction of dwellings. Among these, the control of fire stands out as a quite extraordinary and unexampled achievement…. Psycho-analytic material, incomplete as it is and not susceptible to clear interpretation, nevertheless admits of a conjecture – a fantastic-sounding one – about the origins of this human feat. It is as though primal man had the habit, when he came into contact with fire, of satisfying the infantile desire connected with it, by putting it out with a stream of his urine. The legends that we possess leave no doubt about the originally phallic view taken of tongues of flame as they shoot upward. Putting out the fire by micturating – a theme to which modern giants, Gulliver in Lilliput and Rabelais’ Gargantua, still hark back – was therefore a kind of sexual act with a male, an enjoyment of sexual potency in a homosexual competition. The first person to renounce this desire and spare the fire was able to carry it off with him and subdue it to his own use. By damping down the fire of his own sexual excitation, he had tamed the natural force of fire. This great cultural conquest was thus the reward for his renunciation of instinct. Further, it is as though woman had been appointed guardian of the fire which was held captive on the domestic hearth, because her anatomy made it impossible for her to yield to the temptation of this desire.” (Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents, translated by James Strachey, Norton: 1930/1984, p. 42-43)

I have to go now. I think my guy friends are trying to put out the fire in my fireplace again. Damn primal urges!

I recently finished the last installment of the Harry Potter series. I read the first four books in German, the American version of the 5th and 7th and the UK version of the 6th book. It was interesting to compare the UK to the American version. Although not the same books, I could clearly tell that the American editors had changed some of the British slang that Americans may not be familiar with. It got me thinking if there is not some treasure to be found in the editing, for some innocent British English phrases may be not so innocent in American English. And some may just be hilarious phrases in general. And sure enough, below are some of my favorites, courtesy of the Harry Potter Lexicon:

3rd Book
UK: “pop my clogs” (85); US: “kick the bucket” (110)
UK: “cracker hats” (170); US: “party hats” (230)
UK: “do his nut” (189); US: “go ballistic” (255)

4th Book
UK: “peckers up” (205); US: “spirits up” (227)

5th book
UK: “I got off with McLaggen” (264); US: “I hooked up with McLaggen” (282)