Chicago Resplendent

Chicago has been beautiful the last few days. We finally got a good rain and some cooler weather. It's a great city in the summer, and today I'm going to do a little exploration as I'm headed up north to buy a knife.

A few notes: First, I greatly admire Maggie Gyllenhaal. I saw her on the Daily Show, and she just sparkled. If Maggie were to ask me out on a date, I would say yes, even if she wanted to do Thai food and I wanted to do Indian. I would do Thai food in those circumstances.

Second, I just finished In Defense of Globalization, by Jagdish Bhagwati. His brother, incidentally, is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of India. Anyway, the book is informative and quite amusing. His basic take on globalization is that empirically it has proven to be a positive thing, despite its potential shortcomings. He's no corporate shill, though, and I enjoyed his acerbic asides about the political process in America and abroad.

Finally, I'm just starting Liberalism and Empire, by U.S. Mehta. He taught me a class at Amherst. The book suffers from lack of clear organization so far, but I'm ready to forgive him because his prose is so captivating. Already he's mentioned three or four books that I just have to read. Because liberal political philosophy came from England, and because England's primary imperial experience was in India, many prominent liberal thinkers wrote on India. John Stuart Mill, for instance, worked for the East India Company for thirty-five years.