This week I finished:
The Ultimate Resource 2, by Julian Simon: This book is fascinating. I first came across Julian Simon and his influence in 2022, as I posted in The book The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels; freedom, ingenuity, progress, and related books, videos, and resources, which includes many videos and peer resources I dove into then.
A libertarian friend wrote in response to words in an email, “When you use the word depletion, though, I cringe a little bit. Have you read Julian Simon’s Ultimate Resource or some of the more recent work along the same lines, like Superabundance?”
I had read Superabundance in 2024, as I posted in This week’s selected media: January 28, 2024: Superabundance, The Population Bomb, War Is a Racket, Finding the Mother Tree, Gandhi. Wow, a lot in a week! plus watched many interviews with the authors. I read some of Ultimate Resource 2, but I don’t think I read it comprehensively.
My friend’s email about cringing at the term depletion was important. I had used the terms “pollute and deplete” throughout my manuscript without thinking they would lead anyone to cringe. Was I alienating readers? Was I missing something important?
I didn’t have to skim much to see I was missing plenty important. I had to be honest with myself. I had read the work of Simon, his peers, and those influenced by him to see how they were wrong. With that attitude, I didn’t need to find much to dismiss them.
Now I decided to read them to see how they were right—that is, to be open to being persuaded and to learn to see the world from their perspective. That is, to empathize with them. I soon saw why my friend cringed and I felt embarrassed at having dismissed a thoughtful work out of preconception, not from thoughtful consideration.
I had to read, or listen, to every word, and did. Environmentalists, especially Paul Ehrlich, treat Simon as a fool. He is not a fool. Moreover, most arguments against him, he treats in the book. You may not agree with him, but anyone who does, when they hear someone criticize him with an argument he treats in the book, will see the criticizer as not knowing what they’re talking about.
I have to reflect on what Simon says (no pun intended) and consider how it affects my book and outlook. In this weekly report I’m just going to report that I read it and found it worth reading. In the future, I’ll write more specifically how Simon’s work affects mine.
I’ve already started rereading Superabundance.
Melania, about Melania Trump: How often do you see a movie on IMDB with a rating of 1.6 out of 10?
According to Wikipedia:
The film received overwhelmingly negative reviews from critics, who criticized its self-promotional or propagandistic nature. Its high production and marketing costs, paid by Amazon, fostered discussion about the motivations behind its financing and distribution. The film was a box-office bomb, grossing $16.7 million on a $40 million production budget.
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On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 10% of 62 critics’ reviews are positive, with an average rating of 2.8/10. The website’s consensus reads: “Presented with great pomp and circumstance but little insight, this documentary purports to be an up-close view of the First Lady while curiously revealing very little about her.” Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 5 out of 100, based on 18 critics, indicating “overwhelming dislike”.
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The documentary filmmaker Kyle Henry stated that Melania was not a documentary and instead campaign advertising and a bribe. Julie Cohen … criticized it as having “no artistic or journalistic integrity” due to Melania’s editorial control and questioned the price Amazon paid.
How could I not be curious about how bad it could be?
I didn’t find it bad, just uninteresting. I think Melania wanted to communicate how much she cared and worked for how the presidency looked from a fashion sense, as well as philanthropic. It showed a few weeks in her life, but lacked depth.
She seemed on her own, maybe not lonely, but remote, distant, and friendless. She rarely smiles. The people she talks to are paid to spend time with her except her husband, whose conversation with her seems impersonal. She talks about her son and father but doesn’t spend time with them. She and Donald don’t sleep in the same room, it seems, at least not the night after his swearing in. That day may not represent normal days, but I would think two spouses that loved each other would relish falling asleep together after all they’d been through. She cares about her appearance but Donald is obese and doesn’t seem to care how he looks.
She seems tragic, like she once had ambition to reach high status and technically did but at the cost of a loveless marriage lacking intimacy and no purpose. She spends insane amounts of money on things she’d like to make a difference but few care about.
I hoped to find someone interesting, but the term vacuous kept coming to mind.
She polluted like crazy. Every other scene, it seemed, showed her as the only passenger on a flight of a big jet, the only passenger in a cavalcade of giant SUVs, requesting work from many people using lots of materials.
I wouldn’t call the movie horrible but I wouldn’t recommend it.