The very first economics book that I read was The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism by Robert P. Murphy. It was short by the standards of economics book, yet it was enough to pique my interest in economics. I had started the journey because much of my seminary training focused on larger issues of social justice rather than just getting individuals “saved and on their way to heaven,” and I had this inner nudge that if I wanted to understand how to change the world, I had to understand how the world worked. For those of you who cringe at the thought of learning a bit of economics, keep in mind that it is more about learning the causes and effects of human action and interaction than it is about numbers, graphs, and gibberish about the monetary base and inflationary spending.
I won’t recount my journey here, since that is not the point of this. But the short of it is that from Bob Murphy’s book I jumped to Thomas Sowell, then finally I read some Ron Paul, and from there found some very enthralling reading at the site of Lew Rockwell, who is the founder of the Mises Institute, where Bob Murphy is adjunct scholar. So I began subscribing to the RSS feeds of the above sites, as well as Tom Woods’ and Bob Murphy‘s. Along with the Capitalism book, Bob has written many many articles at mises.org, and has written a short book called Chaos Theory [PDF], a book that—if you’re willing to consider the unimaginable—will change the way you think about a peaceful existence in society (if you don’t think you’re ready for that, try Butler Shaffer’s Boundaries of Order). I even posted a response on my blog to some spiritual thoughts he had on his.
Anyway, earlier this year Bob mentioned in a post on his blog that he wanted to switch from Blogger to WordPress some day, and wanted to revamp his site a little bit, but didn’t want to spend like a drunken politician. As a WordPress fanatic myself, and one who could manage a little bit of web design as a hobby, I made him an offer, and he accepted.
Now his website has been migrated to WordPress. The site was not a complete redesign, though I do think the new layout is less clunky and is “cleaner.” A few glitches along the way taught me a few things, both about web design and about dealing with famous people. Bob has been incredibly patient and gracious throughout the whole process (I don’t want to sound like I was a total screwup, we just had a few minor unforeseeable glitches), and has been a pleasure to work with. It was really weird talking on the phone with somebody whose voice I’ve heard in dozens of lectures over the past few years.
I do have to mention, though, that without a very good friend, Jonathan Ober, I could not have done as well as the site has turned out. Jon is a true friend and spent plenty of time showing me a few things I hadn’t yet learned about WordPress and the particular theme I chose for Bob’s site. While I managed to get quite a bit done on my own, Jon was a true godsend for those times where I was scratching my head.
So yes… I can do some web design, but I’m not a coder or an engineer. My friend Jon was that side of things for me, when I needed it. And Jon does freelance design as a full time job… my level of interest in websites is just a hobby to make a little extra money.
If you would like to employ my services, please leave a comment in this post and I will contact you by email!
