About myself: My name is Dan Hirschman and I am a (budding) Sociologist. My interests range over a variety of topics but lately I have been very interested in Economics (both as a way of understanding the world and as a social phenomenon). I’m also interested in the Free Software/Open Source movement, Fair Trade coffee, and other examples of ‘ethical consumption’. My earlier work (of which there is very little) mostly focused on immigration from Latin America to the United States. I am also interested in the rhetoric of research, and in particular quantitative methodology. Lastly, I’ve spent a lot of time recently pondering the 2008 presidential race and learning how to cook.

About this blog: The idea of a commonplace book came to me from the delightful A Series of Unfortunate Events, by Lemony Snicket. This blog will hopefully serve as a sort of commonplace book for my thoughts on the above subjects. In particular, I hope to use it to motivate myself to read a bit more carefully, and post little book and article reviews as reminders to myself at least.