Presto’s Ramblings

Hello there!

If you have come to this address, you can guess that my name is Preston Glidden, known to my friends as “Presto.”  I’d like to welcome you to my new home on the web!  I hope that you enjoy it here, and come by often.

I am a writer, or at least I delude myself that I am a writer.  Most of the writing that I did before I started this blog was of a technical nature, but now I am trying my hand at writing about freedom and am eventually planning to write a pro-freedom novel.

I am a hiker who likes to take photographs, though I am still far from being a professional photographer.  The photos that you see in the “Random Photo” block are all taken by me.  There are many more photos at the Gallery, and most of the blog header images are clipped from photos that were taken by me.  I will post more of the old photos that I have taken, and will post new photos as time passes.

I am also an anarchist.  I know that some of you who read this will recoil in horror at the word.  Contrary to popular myth, anarchists are not bomb-throwing yahoos.  We are simply people who believe that a government is not necessary to maintain a stable society.  In fact, we believe that government actually is harmful to society.  Because of the negative connotations of the word, however, I often refer to myself as “pro-freedom,” since I believe that living out from under the guns of authority is the only way one can truly be free.

Looking through my old posts, I see that I have never written a complete, detailed, “Why I am an Anarchist” post.  I plan to write one soon, and will post a link here when it is complete.  If you look through the archives, you will come across posts that I wrote before I became an anarchist.  I preserve them here as a historical record of my journey towards anarchism and the freedom philosophy.

The purpose of this blog is to give me a chance to ramble on about my explorations in the freedom philosophy and other thoughts about freedom.  I am no expert or authority on any of the subjects that I discuss here.  As an anarchist I don’t believe in authority anyway.  I am a regular person just like you who wants to live the freest life possible in an unfree world.

Here you will see book notes, general commentary, and questions that I am pondering.  What you will not see very often is the standard libertarian blogger’s “Outrage of the Day.”  I used to do this often in the past, but now I consider it a waste of time.  From time to time I imagine that I will succumb to the temptation to comment on the latest government outrage, but I will try to minimize that occurrence.

I also reserve the right to post about other subjects that interest me as they come up, but I will try to relate them to the freedom philosophy wherever possible.

I hope that you stick around, and join in on the conversation.

I will post contact information soon, with a brief tutorial on using PGP for the newcomer to email  privacy.

I am always open to suggestions for improvement of this blog.  Please post them in the comments below.