Dad's finishing "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man". Better to do, to choose, what you love rather than doing something for which you castigate yourself.

With Mr. Ahmadinejad so much in the news yesterday, one wondered, and suspected not, that he likewise castigated himself in his life's pursuits.

Also yesterday, we saw Adam Curtis' interview elaborating his production, "The Power of Nightmares". He attributes high ideology, a motivation run off ideas, to the neo-cons. And charges that a "politics of fear" is pushed onto a naive public. Yet it's a day where one mind, one person, can be massively dangerous, so one fellow's fear is another's prudence.

In the perspective Curtis sketched, are those motivated by Ideas strictly in service of a Hobbesian struggle indicated with a politics of fear? Ideas, are they not lofty and sublime, and thus quiet apart from fear?

I began "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" yesterday. Easy reading on macroeconomics, good case study on a cultural pathology. With castigating globalization running through the author's story, how much is entirely his own perspective and how much heavy editorial shaping? I am wondering what the ending will be like.

The book could make a nice Father's Day present.