300th Blog Entry Madness!

For me, the grand slam is connecting my four favorite topics (which readers must sometimes fear are the only four topics I like): (1) libertarianism, (2) science, (3) sci-fi-type stuff, and (4) rock n’ roll. I’m delighted, then, to notice a bit of trivia that connects the four, just in time for this, my 300th ToddSeavey.com blog entry (and since the site’s only just over a year old as a fully-functional thing, that means I’ve been blogging roughly daily after all — and with those entries averaging about 800 words a piece, it’s hard to believe that some 17 billion of you find the time to read this site every day, but thank you).

Here is that bit of trivia:

I criticized (1) libertarian (2) psychiatrist Thomas Szasz recently on this site and have done so at greater length on FactsAndFears (and in Liberty magazine) — but I did not mention that (3) he inspired a similarly-named Batman villain, a homicidal psycho named Zsasz who, oddly enough, is played (briefly) in Batman Begins by (4) the yodely-sounding former lead singer of the band James.

Don’t try carving a diagram of all those connections into your flesh after your next kill, though, please. Remember: Zsasziness doesn’t pay.

Fittingly, I’ve just learned AEI has a panel coming up on the violent consequences of failure to treat severe mental illness.

(In my mind — and one day a couple of book proposals, schedule willing — you could almost reduce my four favorite topics to two oppositions: fiscal conservatism vs. the wildness of punk, and scientific reality vs. the allure of imagining the impossible.)

P.S. In more substantial and more narrowly libertarian news, Bob Barr officially announced his presidential candidacy yesterday, giving new relevance to our perhaps obscure-sounding topic for the June 4 Debate at Lolita Bar.

P.P.S. One subset of the populace that I think Barr will have a hard time winning over, by the way, is the 15% of Americans who, in multiple recent polls, say the country is “headed in the right direction.”