humanities.philosophy.objectivism

On Mar 7, 9:18 pm, Evans Winner wrote:
> How interesting.  I have run into the concept that CSM is a
> pretty good news source before, but somehow, given the name,
> have had a hard time taking it seriously.  Have to take a
> look at them.

Well, forewarned and all. I started subscribing after my frustration
with the Times reached apocalyptic proportions. I never found CSM to
be shilling for Christian Science ever, but, as I said, I found it
deadly dull and eventually let my subscription lapse. The Economist,
however, is great, and they also have a wicked sense of humor that
keeps things interesting. My subscription there too has lapsed, but my
subscriber web access seems to be continuing, so I keep reading it
online. I mentioned the Weekly Standard (voice of the neocons) and
Reason (voice of libertarians), but I find that I read those far less
often, because they are really more about editorializing, in fairly
predictable ways. Today, I'd probably read Reason--I may start a
subscription, as I always read it free at the bookstores. The
rationale for reading WS was that it was the best way to predict the
Bush admin's best move, and I found that in the early years of the
admin, you could be amazingly ahead of the power curve that way.
That's no longer the case, though it may be yet again (in January: WS
was always a much bigger McCain supporter than a Bush supporter--they
"captured" him). Bill Kristol would say "Bush had better do X" and I'd
say to my friends "Bush is going to do X" and they'd say "no, only a
lunatic would do X" and I'd say "you'll see" and then he would and
they did. I recall being the earliest predictor of the war in Iraq I
knew, and this was why I went way wrong in predicting war in Iran: I
used the same method and it stopped working.

Anyway: the Economist. I should also say that to my surprise, since I
thought of it as essentially a for-business magazine (I seldom read
their business coverage, because computers aside, it bores me), their
culture coverage in the back (books, films, etc.) is much better than
I would've expected, and a huge timesaver. And last but not least,
their coverage of American politics is fantastic, because they have
enough of a shared culture to "get" things, but enough distance (the
Atlantic Ocean) to be very objective.