Posted in Books & printed materials, Fiction, Liberty, Society on January 1st, 2011 2 Comments »
“Oh, I don’t know, but… but people do things in the world. I saw pictures of New York and I thought”—she pointed at the giant buildings beyond the streaks of rain on the cab window—”I thought, somebody built those buildings—he didn’t just sit and whine that the kitchen was filthy and the roof leaking and [...]
Posted in Books & printed materials, Economics, Photography on October 3rd, 2010 No Comments »
Posted in Books & printed materials, Economics on September 22nd, 2010 2 Comments »
Suppose a fence can be produced by using either one high skilled worker or by using three low skilled workers. If the wage of high skilled workers is $38 per day, and that of a low skilled worker is $13 per day, the firm employs the high skilled worker because costs would be less and [...]
Posted in Books & printed materials, Economics, Society on September 3rd, 2010 No Comments »
Veblen introduced some interesting ideas in The Theory of the Leisure Class. My professor seems to insist that Veblen was an early pioneer in the field of signalling. Although Veblen drove his ideas to the extreme to bring in absurd implications that I simply will not buy, there are specific arguments that I find attractive [...]
Posted in Books & printed materials on September 22nd, 2009 1 Comment »
As a boy back in Malaysia in the early 1990s, there were several publications that colored my life. I do not pretend that I comprehended what I read then but I can vividly recall how I loved those pictures, graphs and tables. My father purchased it and I was simply an excited but confused free [...]
Posted in Books & printed materials, Liberty on May 17th, 2009 No Comments »
John Stuart Mill in his introduction to On Liberty writes: It is proper to state that I forgo any advantage which could be derived to my argument from idea of abstract right, as a thing independent of utility. I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions; but it must be utility in [...]
Posted in Books & printed materials on April 5th, 2009 No Comments »
Mein Kampf. No, I am not kidding. You can find it at Kinokuniya at Suria KLCC. It is the book with ominously pitch black cover, on the bestseller/highlight shelf. Sitting close to it when I spotted it was Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead.
Posted in Books & printed materials, History & heritage, Liberty, Society on April 1st, 2009 No Comments »
I now understand a step in the history of evolution of secularism. Though I think it is ultimately irrelevant to why I subscribe to secularism, it nevertheless enlightening to see how the school of thought evolved. Ethics is the work that provided the energy for a quantum leap in the area. Baruch Spinoza completed Ethics [...]
Posted in Books & printed materials, History & heritage, Liberty, Society on February 20th, 2009 1 Comment »
Some philosophers merely argue their philosophies. When they finish their disputations, they hang up the tools of their trade, go home, and indulge in the well-earned pleasures of private life. Other philosophers live they philosophies. They treat as useless any philosophy that does not determine the manner in which they spend their days, and they [...]
Posted in Books & printed materials, Fiction, Liberty, Society on February 12th, 2009 No Comments »
I had never read a book after watching its film adaptation. I am usually dismissive of those who do that. I admit, I am arrogant about this kind of stuff. It is a feeling of those listening to alternative less-than-mainstream music have against those that listen to commercialized songs like Britney Spears’ or Backstreet Boys’. [...]
The name is Hafiz Noor Shams.
For more about me, please go here.