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Begin New Search Author Daniel Wahl Publication Year within 25 Years

41. The Curious Life of Richard Feynman

Author:
Daniel Wahl
Publication Date:
10-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Objective Standard
Institution:
The Objective Standard
Abstract:
Twelve-year-old Richard Feynman's room was a mess. Old, broken radios were scattered across the floor; spark plugs and electronic gizmos overflowed from a big wooden box; a well-worn microscope protruded from a tabletop covered with specimens and slides; and a book titled Trigonometry for the Practical Man lay open on the bed. Richard navigated through the chaos of his room, walked out the door, down the hall, and into his three-year-old sister Joan's room. He woke her, saying he wanted to show her something wonderful. They left the house and walked through the streets of Far Rockaway holding hands. When they reached a golf course, far away from the city lights, Richard stopped and said, “Look up.”1 There, in the sky above them, shone the aurora borealis, a beautiful green curtain of light caused, as Richard explained, by excited nitrogen atoms colliding with one another and emitting photons.2 Few twelve year olds knew this phenomenon was taking place; far fewer knew how. But Richard was not an average boy. Richard was the kid who presented a book report about a tale of mystery and adventure while delaying the revelation that he was talking about a math text.3 He was the kid who earned the curious title “the boy who fixes radios by thinking.”4 He was the boy who, in high school, won math competitions by circling his answers mere moments after the questions were asked.5 Richard read voraciously on any subject that interested him, amassing, integrating, and applying an ever-expanding wealth of knowledge. When his friend Arline told him that she was studying the works of Descartes in her philosophy class and that Descartes had proved the existence of God, Richard replied, “Impossible!” After examining Descartes' argument, Richard confirmed his initial conclusion: “It's a bunch of baloney.” When Arline said, “Well, I guess it's okay to take the other side. My teacher keeps telling us, 'There are two sides to every question, just like there are two sides to every piece of paper'”—Richard excitedly shot back: “There are two sides to that, too.” He grabbed a strip of paper, gave it a half-twist, connected the two ends, and handed her a one-sided piece of paper known as a Möbius strip (named after its discoverer, August Ferdinand Möbius). The next time her teacher repeated the cliché, Arline held up her own Möbius strip and said, “Sir, there are even two sides to that question: There's paper with only one side!

42. Nothing Less than Victory: Decisive Wars and the Lessons of History

Author:
Daniel Wahl
Publication Date:
10-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Objective Standard
Institution:
The Objective Standard
Abstract:
Americans today have been told to expect years of military action overseas. Yet they are also being told that they should not expect victory; that a “definitive end to the conflict” is not possible; and that success will mean a level of violence that “does not define our daily lives.” John David Lewis holds that this defeatist attitude is completely at odds with the lessons of history. In Nothing Less than Victory: Decisive Wars and the Lessons of History, Lewis shows how nations in the past that faced far greater threats and more formidable foes than America does now went on to defeat their enemies and win lasting peace. Lewis examines six major wars, devoting one chapter each to the Greco-Persian wars, the Theban wars, the Second Punic War, the campaigns of the Roman emperor Aurelian, the American Civil War, and two chapters to World War II. He shows how the Greeks defeated the mighty Persian empire, how the Thebans shattered the mirage of Spartan invulnerability, how the Romans swiftly ended a long war by attacking the enemy's home front, how Aurelian battled enemies on many fronts to reunite Rome, how William Tecumseh Sherman marched through the American South and destroyed the Confederate will to fight, and how America achieved a permanent victory over Japan. While recounting the key events of each conflict, Lewis draws several important, universally applicable lessons.
Topic:
War
Political Geography:
America and Romania

43. How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes

Author:
Daniel Wahl
Publication Date:
10-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Objective Standard
Institution:
The Objective Standard
Abstract:
Very few economists predicted an economic catastrophe in 2007. Even following the crash, many continued to claim that our present economic course was fine. As for today? “Three years into the mess, economists now offer remedies that strike most people as frankly ridiculous. We are told that we must go deeper into debt to fix our debt crisis, and that we must spend in order [to] prosper” (pp. xi–xii). The source of such seeming obliviousness, according to Peter and Andrew Schiff, is the early-20th-century economist John Maynard Keynes. According to the Schiffs, Keynes taught that governments could smooth market volatility, increase employment, boost growth, and raise living standards simply by going into more debt and printing more money. Although they grant that Keynes was smart, the Schiffs say he developed some very stupid economic ideas—ideas that are false, dangerous, and causing the collapse of America's economy. The Schiffs set out to counter these harmful ideas in How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes. The book is an extended allegory of U.S. economic history, with supplementary discussions and illustrations. It begins with three men living on a tropical island, each subsisting on one fish per day, which he catches with his bare hands. One of the men, Able, devises a better way to catch fish: a net. Thus equipped, he hopes to catch more fish, and faster, leaving himself spare time to make new clothes.
Topic:
Economics
Political Geography:
United States

44. Essays on Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged

Author:
Daniel Wahl
Publication Date:
04-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Objective Standard
Institution:
The Objective Standard
Abstract:
Since it was first published in 1957, Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged has sold more than seven million copies. Remarkably, in that time, the popularity of the novel has actually grown, and, over the past couple of years, due to the parallels between the story and recent events, sales have skyrocketed. In 2009 alone, Atlas sold more then a half million copies. And now a new resource is available for the novel's legion of fans: Essays on Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged,edited by Robert Mayhew. In "The Part and Chapter Headings of Atlas Shrugged," Onkar Ghate indicates why such a collection is of value to fans of the novel: "At over a thousand pages long and dealing with the fate of a civilization, Atlas Shrugged is a story of incredible scope and complexity." Its theme is the role of man's reasoning mind in achieving all the values of his existence. Its plot is driven by a central question, a seeming contradiction: If the men of the mind are the creators and sustainers of man's life, why do they continually lose their battles and witness their achievements siphoned off and destroyed by men who have abandoned their minds? The story focuses on how the men of the mind learn to ask and to answer this question, thereby putting a stop to their own exploitation. To resolve the apparent contradiction demands of the heroes a ruthless commitment to logic: to identify the problem, learn its fundamental cause, and grasp the path to its solution. To liberate themselves, the men of the mind must discover, understand, and then practice a new set of philosophical principles. And for we as readers to really appreciate the story's progression, the same exacting logical focus is demanded of us (p. 1). Assuming "familiarity with the events of each part and each chapter," Ghate highlights "how the part and chapter headings help integrate those events and thus enable [readers] to gain a deeper understanding of the story and its meaning" (p. 2). Gregory Salmieri presents two essays (either of which could be reason enough to purchase the book) elucidating the theme of the novel, which Rand specified as "the role of the mind in man's existence" (p. 219), and discussing how the novel constitutes "the demonstration of a new moral philosophy" (p. 398). . . .

45. Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

Author:
Daniel Wahl
Publication Date:
04-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Objective Standard
Institution:
The Objective Standard
Abstract:
Christopher McDougall's Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen inspires by showing superathletes running hundreds of miles nonstop across treacherous terrain-and argues that these seemingly superhuman feats can be achieved and enjoyed by practically anyone who excises self-imposed limitations. Readers first see these superathletes in action in the 1994 running of a brutal "ultra-race" called the Leadville Trail 100. McDougall describes participation in the Leadville 100, high in the mountains of Colorado, as "running the Boston Marathon two times in a row with a sock stuffed in your mouth"-then hiking "to the top of Pike's Peak"-and then doing it all over again, "this time with your eyes closed." That's pretty much what the Leadville Trail 100 boils down to: nearly four full marathons, half of them in the dark, with twin twenty-six-hundred-foot climbs in the middle. Leadville's starting line is twice as high as the altitude where planes pressurize their cabins, and from there you only go up (p. 60). In the 1994 running, a small group of runners from a secretive tribe based in Mexico's Copper Canyon participated. Called the Tarahumara, they ranged in age from 25 to 42 and ran in sandals, laughing as they left checkpoints more than halfway through the race. They completely dominated the Leadville, finishing first, third, fourth, fifth, seventh, tenth, and eleventh. The question of how these "stone-age guys in sandals" were able to do it, moreover looking like they were just having fun, has captivated the ultra-running world and McDougall. The explanation McDougall posits was discovered-or, according to the book, rediscovered-by modern doctors, track coaches, anthropologists, and ultra-runners. According to McDougall and the maverick scientists he quotes, we are all born to run, and very long distances at that. McDougall argues that the seemingly superhuman feats displayed by the Tarahumara are achievable by us all if we get rid of barriers that prevent us from doing so, including the modern "junk food" diet and mental limitations with regard to age and sex.

46. Newton and the Counterfeiter: the Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist

Author:
Daniel Wahl
Publication Date:
04-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Objective Standard
Institution:
The Objective Standard
Abstract:
Isaac Newton sought "to master all the apparent confusion of the world, to bring order where none was apparent" (p. 5). He had, as Thomas Levenson shows, a "legendary capacity for study"; and for him frequently "sleep was optional" (p. 9). He was absolutely brilliant. Yet "for all his raw intelligence," Levenson says, "Newton's ultimate achievement turned on [the fact that if] something mattered to him, the man pursued it relentlessly." Equally crucial to his ultimate success, Newton was never a purely abstract thinker. He gained his central insight into the concept of force from evidence "known by [the] light of nature." He tested his ideas about gravity and the motion of the moon with data drawn from his own painstaking experiments and the imperfect observations of others. When it came time to analyze the physics of the tides, the landlocked Newton sought out data from travelers the world over (p. 20). By 1695, at the age of 51, Newton had been at "the leading edge of discovery" for almost three decades (p. 104). He had, as Levenson shows, discovered calculus-"the essential tool used to analyze change over time" (p. 14), and he had "presented gravity as the engine of the system of all creation-one that binds the rise and fall of the Thames . . . to all the observed motions of the solar system" (p. 30). And then "an odd message arrived from London . . . on a matter completely outside his usual competence" (p. 105). The letter, sent by Secretary of the Treasury William Lowndes, solicited Newton's opinion on the worsening shortage of silver coins, a matter of national importance. This unexpected correspondence would ultimately lead to Newton becoming warden of the Mint-and, as such, both an industrialist and a criminal investigator. Levenson tells the exciting story that follows in Newton and the Counterfeiter: the Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist. The problem facing England was that from "the late 1680s to the mid-1690s, the supply of [silver] coins-the basic units of exchange for the daily business of the country-shrank year by year." "By 1695," Levenson says, "it was almost impossible to find legal silver in circulation" (p. 109). This led to a standstill in trade, tenants that could not pay rent, many suicides, and a "general sense of terror" that violence would soon erupt (p. 138). . . .
Political Geography:
England

47. Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism by Susan Jacoby

Author:
Daniel Wahl
Publication Date:
07-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Objective Standard
Institution:
The Objective Standard
Abstract:
n March 2010, the Texas State Board of Education acted to remove mentions of Thomas Jefferson from a standard history textbook. Texas students will now learn not about the author of the Declaration of Independence, but about the author of "The Word our Only Rule," John Calvin.*
Political Geography:
America

49. How Barack Obama is Endangering our National Sovereignty

Author:
Daniel Wahl
Publication Date:
12-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Objective Standard
Institution:
The Objective Standard
Abstract:
Small books can pack a big punch—as proven by John Bolton's latest, How Barack Obama is Endangering our National Sovereignty. In fewer than fifty pages, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations shows that American sovereignty is under siege and indicates what concerned Americans must do to save it.
Topic:
Sovereignty and United Nations
Political Geography:
America

50. The Dhandho Investor: The Low-Risk Value Method to High Returns, by Mohnish Pabrai

Author:
Daniel Wahl
Publication Date:
12-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Objective Standard
Institution:
The Objective Standard
Abstract:
“From a standing start as refugees with virtually no capital, a person with the last name Patel today owns one out of every five motels in the United States” (p. 132). According to hedge fund investor Mohnish Pabrai, one word identifies how these Indian immigrants have achieved this extraordinary success in a little more than thirty years: Dhandho.
Topic:
Foreign Policy
Political Geography:
United States