While getting ready to go to work I finished “An Amish Patchwork : Indiana’s Old Orders in the Modern World” by Thomas J. Meyers and Steven M. Nolt (2005). I’ve learned that there are several Amish settlements, some of fairly recent origin, that I haven’t yet visited by bicycle or otherwise. I wish someone would do a book like this for Michigan.
The Moral Life of Cubicles. Found in The New Atlantis, by way of Arts & Letters Daily. Cubicles were originally intended to erase hierarchical distinctions in the office, and to empower workers. But the removal of authoritarian management meant new demands on workers, which can be thought of as a loss of privacy. The article also says some things about bureaucracy that are important to keep in mind when we consider things like nationalized health care. The article doesn’t say this, but it can be deduced. Either the system has to be bureaucratic and impersonal, or the government will have to stick its intrusive nose in our personal lives in places we once would have said are none of its business.