The Difference between Anarchy and Anarchism

I'm going to turn to my old friend The American Heritage Dictionary, third edition. This is the paperback edition of 1994 from Laurel Books. On page 30 there are two definitions of interest.

anarchism n. 1. The theory that all forms of government are oppressive and should be abolished. 2. Terrorism against the state.

anarchy n. pl. -chies. 1. Absence of governmental authority or law. 2. Disorder and confusion.

I think that reproducing the full article from the Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy might overstep the bounds of fair use. The first sentence gives the flavor:

anarchism n. a theory or a political movement which interprets the ideals of human freedom and equality very strictly, so as to exclude all relations of domination; particularly important is the refusal to accept the legitimacy of state power.

Beginning the New Year, a Little Late

My first post since November. It's good to be back!

I spent some time finishing up what I started in November. I had posted my October reading list, but I had not updated the sidebar with the current books. This evening I made those updates. In some cases, that means you now know which books I've finished since October 31, of those which were in progress at that point.

The only book on that list that I'm still reading is the Proust. Okay, I can read French, but Proust is slow going. I need to concentrate my efforts on A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs.

As noted, I finished Complete Italian: The Basics in October. I am, however, working on it again. We're planning our trip to Italy for late April, and I want to be able to order una bella cena without sounding like too much of an idiot.

Reading List: October 2012

October was one of those months in which I finished more books than I started. I was continuing to read in a stack of library books I picked up at East Library in Colorado Springs. In fact, as of today's writing (November 15), I'm still working on that stack of books.

Listed in the order in which I started reading them during the month, here are the books of October.

Marcel Proust, A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs. Published in 1919. I read only a little of this work in this time period, taking in a couple of pages on October 1.

Antonella Ansani, Complete Italian: The Basics. Edited by Suzanne McQuade. Between October first and twenty-first, I finished working my way through Complete Italian, including the accompanying discs. Del primo ottobre al venti-primo, ho letto Complete Italian.

Michael Alexander and John Walkenbach, Excel Dashboards and Reports. I finished up this excellent guide to the construction of reports in Microsoft Office Excel on the second and third of October.

David Gilmour, The Pursuit of Italy. This is one of two histories of the Italian peninsula I've been reading, and both of them cast doubt on the degree to which Italy can be treated as a nation-state, given the importance of regional differences. It's interesting to me that the Italian "reunification," which was not a reunification at all, was occurring at the same time as the American Civil War and the unification of Germany. Of these three attempts to establish the supremacy of the centralizing state over diverse regions, the Italian seems to have been the least successful.

George W. Bush, Decision Points. Since reading this book, I like Mr. Bush, and I respect his thinking, more than I ever did while he was President. This is immediate history worth reading. Seeing what the Republican Party has been coming to, many of us will be looking back with nostalgia to the days of "W."

Bruce Feiler, Walking the Bible. There are some ludicrous errors in this book - a "Toyota Land Rover," for one example. The big problem is that Feiler can't decide where he stands, and his process of "discovery" doesn't seem likely to lead to any resolution of his questions. Is the Bible true? Did the Israelites escape slavery in Egypt? Can Jews and Arabs live in peace? Big questions, but I don't think Bruce Feiler is up to finding believable answers.

Joseph Schmuller, Ph.D., Statistical Analysis with Excel for Dummies. Either you like statistics, or you don't. More Americans are as allergic to statistical analysis as they are to economics. And you either like Microsoft Office Excel, or you don't. I like Excel, and I use it a lot at work. For some unfathomable reason, I also enjoy statistics. I found this book readable, informative, and pleasurable. Not everyone shares my tastes.

Daniel Silva, The Fallen Angel. This is the only book on this month's list that I both started and completed during October. It is also the only work of fiction on the current list. I'm still not sure why I like Daniel Silva's books when his "hero" is an Israeli assassin who cooperates with the Vatican. Even so, these are fast-paced and enjoyable thrillers.

Keith Heyer Meldahl, Hard Road West. If the many, many settlers who set out from St. Joseph, Missouri, and Council Bluffs, Iowa, back in the 1840s and 1850s had been able to read Meldahl's excellent merger of science and history, some of them would have gone back to Ohio or Indiana to live out their lives without experiencing the Snake River Canyon, the Forty-Mile Desert, or Donner Pass. But what would life be if everyone could the safe and sane path. Recommended for readers of the Roadside Geology books, aficionados of the westward migration, and anyone who liked John McPhee's Annals of the Former World.

Christopher Duggan, The Force of Destiny. This is the other history of Italy to which I referred earlier. You know, Napoleon Bonaparte has a lot to answer for, not only in Egypt, Russia, Germany, France, and Louisiana, but in Italy. Bonaparte's invasion of northern Italy in 1796 to fight the Austrians set off a chain of events that led to Benito Mussolini and Silvio Berlusconi. The mind boggles. Very well written, but you do have to be able to keep track of Italian names and place names.

David Abulafia, The Great Sea. This may actually be the best book on this month's list. It's a long book (783 pages), it is technical in places, and its focus is on the surface and immediate littoral of the Mediterranean Sea. Just one of the virtues of this book is that it has inspired me to re-read a number of classic books set on and around the wine-dark sea, from Homer and Aeschylus to Shakespeare and Gibbon. Whether I'll actually do all that reading remains to be seen.

Reading List: September 2012

In September, 2012, I continued to read some books that I had started some time earlier, as well as some newly begun works.

Joseph Schmuller, Ph.D., Statistical Analysis with Excel for Dummies, second edition (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishing, Inc., 2009.) xx + 480 pages. Index. ISBN 978-0-470-45406-0. $29.99. I started this work-related book on August 23.

Michael Alexander and John Walkenbach, Excel Dashboards and Reports (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishing, Inc., 2010.) xviii + 434 pages. Index. ISBN 978-0-470-62012-0. $35.99. Read 9 August - 3 October 2012.

Emile Zola, Germinal (Paris: Bookking International, 1993 [1885].) 473 pages. ISBN 2-89393-415-X. Read 1 July 2004 - 28 September 2012.

Antonella Ansani, Complete Italian: The Basics. Edited by Suzanne McQuade. (New York: Living Language, 2008.) xxviii + 308 pages. Italian in action. Supplemental vocabulary. Internet resources. Summary of Italian grammar. Verb charts. ISBN 978-1-4000-2415-5. $10.95. Read 12 July - 21 October 2012.

Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy, The Presidents Club: Inside the World's Most Exclusive Fraternity (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012.) 641 pages. Acknowledgments. Notes. Bibliography. Index. ISBN 978-1-4391-2770-4. $32.50. Read 28 July - 3 September 2012.

Marcel Proust, A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs (Paris: Gallimard, 1988 [1919].) xxviii + 568 pages. Bibliographie. Notes. Resume.

Lee Child, Tripwire (New York: Berkeley Books, 1999.) 401 pages. ISBN 978-0-425-20622-5. Read 6 - 9 September 2012.

Bruce Feiler, Walking the Bible (New York: Harper Perennial, 2001). 451 pages. Index. ISBN 978-0-06-083863-8. $14.99. I started reading this book on September 7. As of October 21, I was at page 148.

Keith Heyer Meldahl, Hard Road West (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2007.) xxi + 329 pages. Epilogue. Acknowledgments. Notes. Glossary. Bibliography. Figure Credits. Index. ISBN 978-0-226-51960-9. $25.00. I began reading Hard Road West on September 15. As of October 16, I was on page 51.

Christopher Duggan, The Force of Destiny: A History of Italy since 1796 (Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2008.) xxiii + 653 pages. References. Index. ISBN 978-0-618-35367-5. $30.00. I started reading the book on September 15. On October 16, I was at page 60.

George W. Bush, Decision Points (New York: Crown, 2010.) xii + 497 pages. Epilogue. Acknowledgments. Index. ISBN 978-0-307-59061-9. $35.00. Read 15 September to 19 October 2012.

David Abulafia, The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.) xxxi + 783 pages. Further Reading. Notes. Index. ISBN 978-0-19-532334-4. $34.95. I began reading this history on September 30.

Reading List: August 2012

I was reading the following books during August, 2012.

Alexander, Michael, and John Walkenbach. Excel Dashboards and Reports. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishing, Inc., 2010. xviii + 434 pages. Index. ISBN 978-0-470-62012-0. $35.99. Read 9 August - 3 October 2012.
For those of us who use Microsoft Office Excel every day at work, this book is essential. If you just want to produce some nice looking reports with cool graphs and interesting analytic features, it would be a joy.

Ellis, Joseph J. His Excellency: George Washington. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004. xiv + 320 pages. Acknowledgments. Notes. Index. ISBN 1-4000-4031-0. Read July 29 - August 20, 2012.
This is a very good short biography of Washington, based largely on the release of a new edition of his letters. I found particularly interesting Washington's struggles with the economics of slavery at Mount Vernon and his other farms.

Gibbs, Nancy, and Michael Duffy. The Presidents Club: Inside the World's Most Exclusive Fraternity. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012. 641 pages. Acknowledgments. Notes. Bibliography. Index. ISBN 978-1-4391-2770-4. $32.50. Read 28 July - 3 September 2012.
Someone did a biography of Woodrow Wilson entitled When the Cheering Stopped. This is an interesting and entertaining book about life after leaving the White House, and how ex-presidents can help out the current occupant. Sometimes it seems as if Richard Nixon had his coffin in the White House basement, where the bowling alley used to be, and he rose up out of it at night to give advice to the current occupant.

Living Language. Complete Italian: The Basics. New York: Living Language, 2008. xxviii + 308 pages. ISBN 978-1-4000-2415-5. $10.95. Started on 12 July 2012. As if 20 August at page 131.
Language instruction with compact disks.

Nesbo, Jo. The Snowman. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011. 384 pages. ISBN 978-0-307-59586-7. $25.95. Read 19-31 August 2012.
Norwegian author pens another crime novel starring Harry Hole of the Oslo police. Suspenseful, thrilling, with a fair share of hairpin turns in the plot.

Proust, Marcel. A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs. Paris: Gallimard, 1988 [1919]. xxviii + 568 pages. Started on 1 July 2004. As of 13 July 2012 I was on page 174.
This is the second volume of A la recherche des temps perdu, known in English as Remembrance of Things Past.

Schmuller, Joseph, Ph.D. Statistical Analysis with Excel for Dummies, second edition. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishing, Inc., 2009. xx + 480 pages. Index. ISBN 978-0-470-45406-0. $29.99. Begun on 23 August, 2012. As of 27 August 2012 I was at page 30.

Sjowall, Maj, and Per Wahloo. The Fire Engine that Disappeared. New York: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, 2007 [1969]. x + 213 pages. ISBN 978-0-307-39092-9. $14.00. Read 3 - 12 August 2012.
Another gem in the remarkable Swedish crime novel series.

Zola, Emile. Germinal. Paris: Bookking International, 2993. Phidal pour le Canada, 1995. Original publication 1885. 473 pages. ISBN 2-89393-465-X. Started 1 July 2004 and finished 28 September 2012.
I probably made my life unnecessarily difficult by choosing to read Germinal in French, but it's been an interesting experience.

Unemployment and Education: A Note

This is a preliminary look at the problem of unemployment in the United States, focusing on the role of education, or the lack thereof, in determining an individual's employment prospects.

It is apparent that we have a number of problems in the employment area. Unemployment has been over 8% for many months, record numbers of people have been out of work for more than a year, many people have become so discouraged that they have exited the labor force. One fact stands out for me in this sea of gloomy numbers: Not everyone has the same risk of being unemployed.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announcement of September 7, 2012, included the following statement, "The unemployment rate edged down in August to 8.1 percent. Since the beginning of this year, the rate has held in a narrow range of 8.1 to 8.3 percent. The number of unemployed persons, at 12.5 million, was little changed in August."

 

But the BLS also stated, "Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (7.6 percent), adult women (7.3 percent), teenagers (24.6 percent), whites (7.2 percent), blacks (14.1 percent), and Hispanics (10.2 percent) showed little or no change in August. The jobless rate for Asians was 5.9 percent (not seasonally adjusted), little changed from a year earlier."

 

Is there good news in that? Since it might as well be impossible to change one's gender, one's race, or one's linguistic identity, it doesn't appear that there's much hope for blacks or Hispanics in the fact that whites have a lower rate, and Asians a lower rate still. It may be hopeful for teenagers that their 24.6% unemployment rate may fall as they get older, but there's a long wait involved, and there may be hazards along the way.

 

But here's another set of figures from the August 2012 BLS report: Total unemployment for those 25 years of age and over was 6.8%, but for those with less than a high school diploma, the rate was 12.0%. For those high school graduates with no college experience, the rate was 8.8%. Those with some college or an associate's degree had an unemployment rate of 6.6%, and those with a bachelor's degree and higher had a rate of only 4.1%.

 

While race and gender may be immutable, and age is uncontrollable, education is clearly something about which an individual can take action. I am not suggesting that everyone with less than a high school diploma should enroll in a four-year college and seek a bachelor's degree, and I'm certainly not suggesting that, if everyone in the United States had a bachelor's degree, the unemployment rate for college graduates would necessarily continue to be around 4%. What I am suggesting is that a lot of people could definitely enhance their prospects of gaining full-time employment by entering into a program of post-secondary education.

Reading List: July 2012

During the month of July, 2012, the books I was reading included the following.

Ellis, Joseph J. His Excellency: George Washington. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004. xiv + 320 pages. Acknowledgments. Notes. Index. ISBN 1-4000-4031-0. Read July 29 - August 20, 2012.
This is a very good short biography of Washington, based largely on the release of a new edition of his letters. I found particularly interesting Washington's struggles with the economics of slavery at Mount Vernon and his other farms.

Furst, Alan. Dark Star. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2002. [1995]. 446 pages. ISBN 978-0-375-75999.4. $14.95. Read 13 - 24 July 2012.
If you liked Eric Ambler, say, or if you're interested in the German-occupied areas of Europe during World War II, or if you just like terrific, atmospheric reads, there's Alan Furst.

Gibbs, Nancy, and Michael Duffy. The Presidents Club: Inside the World's Most Exclusive Fraternity. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012. 641 pages. Acknowledgments. Notes. Bibliography. Index. ISBN 978-1-4391-2770-4. $32.50. Read 28 July - 3 September 2012.
Someone did a biography of Woodrow Wilson entitled When the Cheering Stopped. This is an interesting and entertaining book about life after leaving the White House, and how ex-presidents can help out the current occupant. Sometimes it seems as if Richard Nixon had his coffin in the White House basement, where the bowling alley used to be, and he rose up out of it at night to give advice to the current occupant.

Living Language. Complete Italian: The Basics. New York: Living Language, 2008. xxviii + 308 pages. ISBN 978-1-4000-2415-5. $10.95. Started on 12 July 2012. As if 28 July at page 61.
Language instruction with compact disks.

Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government. A Critical Edition with an Introduction and Apparatus Criticus by Peter Laslett. Revised edition. New York and Scarborough, Ont.: New American Library, 1963. A Mentor Book. xiv + 576 pages. Bibliography. Index. $1.95. Started 30 March and finished 6 July 2012.
One of the great books of the Western World, and a must read as an antidote to the nonsense said about the ideas upon which the United States was founded. Yes, "was founded," not "were founded."

Proust, Marcel. A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs. Paris: Gallimard, 1988 [1919]. xxviii + 568 pages. Started on 1 July 2004. As of 8 June 2012 I was on page 172.
This is the second volume of A la recherche des temps perdu, known in English as Remembrance of Things Past.

Zola, Emile. Germinal. Paris: Bookking International, 2993. Phidal pour le Canada, 1995. Original publication 1885. 473 pages. ISBN 2-89393-465-X. Started 1 July 2004 and finished 28 September 2012.
I probably made my life unnecessarily difficult by choosing to read Germinal in French, but it's been an interesting experience.