Comments on: Shaftesbury Beaver Blogging

By: Tim

Tim — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 09:48:57 +0000

Have you seen this newly published work:
http://bookshop.blackwell.co.uk/jsp/welcome.jsp?source=EMLM&action=search&type=isbn&term=1842172263

By: Patchen

Patchen — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 17:43:09 +0000

Oh, good! I’d worried that the address wasn’t specific enough. You’re welcome — it did seem too good to be true, a novel about giraffes and communism! Hope it reads well.

By: Chris Brooke

Chris Brooke — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 17:23:02 +0000

Yes, it did! A few days ago. And it looks splendid at first glance, but I was waiting until I had a bit of time to look at it properly before writing to you to pass on my thanks. But this comment has pre-empted that process… So many thanks!

(We’re talking about this book.)

By: Patchen

Patchen — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 17:14:22 +0000

Speaking of giraffes, did your book arrive?

By: Chris Brooke

Chris Brooke — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 23:17:55 +0000

I don’t think anyone should apologise for being a pedant, Josh, and, yes, you’re almost certainly right.

By: josh

josh — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 22:49:14 +0000

Thanks for the von Mises quote, Chris; I’d always wondered where Heilbronner (in The Worldly Philosophers) got some of his account of Fourier’s anti-beasts, which I couldn’t find in Fourier himself — but it seems very close to the von Mises passage (Heilbronner himself doesn’t provide a citation for the similar passage in WP, but most of his account of Fourier seems to come from Alexander Gray’s The Socialist Tradition: Moses to Lenin (which itself is good fun). I wonder if Gray in turn was drawing on von Mises.
By the way, sorry to be a pedant, but shouldn’t it be Ashley Cooper, not plain Ashley?

By: Chris Brooke

Chris Brooke — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 18:34:20 +0000

“Debs” is really only half of “Debbie”, so I think you could only claim £3.50 tops (which I suppose we’ll have to round up to the minimum wage).

By: Chris Brooke

Chris Brooke — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 18:32:38 +0000

Since we’re on the subject of Fourier and beavers, Debs, Von Mises says that…

“In Fourier’s state of the future all harmful beasts will have disappeared, and in their places will be animals which will assist man in his labours—or even do his work for him. An anti-beaver will see to the fishing; an anti-whale will move sailing ships in a calm; an anti-hippopotamus will tow the river boats. Instead of the lion there will be an anti-lion, a steed of wonderful swiftness, upon whose back the rider will sit as comfortably as in a well-sprung carriage.”

I don’t think I’ve come across this particular passage in Fourier, but it’s nice to think that it’s there.

By: Debs

Debs — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 18:31:08 +0000

Et voila! You’re like Paul Daniels, only lacking a beautiful assistant called Debbie.

I charge £7 an hour.

By: Chris Brooke

Chris Brooke — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 18:29:27 +0000

Here, of course.