Hello, Blogosphere

I know, I know, I'm late to the game. Everybody really cool already has a blog, so nobody will ever pay attention here. Oh well (sigh!)

I have been bedeviled over the years with little snippets of ideas that I can't use professionally, nor can I use them in other places. But I personally think that they are interesting and worth at least getting out into the world. Maybe some of you will agree with me.

About the title: It refers to the late Douglas Adams classic Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. Reading science fiction has been a serious influence in my life. However, there is an additional element here. Perhaps because of ADD, perhaps just because I'm flaky, I have a really hard time focusing on just one narrow specialty area. My professional training is in Economics (all the way to Ph.D.), I have an avocational interest in politics. But I'm also fascinated by science. I am also a bush league philosopher and amateur historian. In any case, the program of this blog (such as it is) will be to explore broadly across the realms of human knowledge. If I can make this half as interesting as I invariably find Brad Delong's I will be well pleased. Many of the ideas I expect to post came to me while I was walking my big brute of a dog in the predawn hours.

About me: I am a late middle-aged (God, I hope that sixty really is the new forty. Not there yet but anticipating with some trepidation.) college professor. I was born in Ohio where my father's family (or parts of it) has lived for 200 years. My mother's family background is a Yankee father (Maine) and a Southern mother (North Carolina) who were married long enough ago that it was considered a mixed marriage. I've been married thirty years to the same woman and have a son and two grandsons who currently live in the same town as I do. I teach at a public university in a southern state. I find somewhat to my dismay that I have lived here for over a quarter of my life. Although I live in the south, I am definitely not a southerner.

Politically, my most defining belief is that I am radically egalitarian. By this I mean that in my view, Human potential is more or less equally distributed. Thus I see the role of society as enabling individuals to reach their full potential. This implies a certain degree of libertarianism in terms of letting individuals make their own decisions, even when I regard their decisions as foolish ones. It also implies that I feel implacable hostility towards any elements of society which impose artificial limitations upon people's attempts to realize their potential. Consequently I consider both racism and sexism to be vile. This, would place me left of center. I am also committed to democratic governance. (Note the small d, I am also a large D democrat but that is a different issue.)