O, for we postmodern suburban West Germanic Anglo-Americans the yeoman will always be the most virtuous and emulable social class. The more relatable Founding Fathers certainly agreed. I aspire to it as well and in my cheerier moments view myself as such, after a fashion, not least because of your own efforts at my early acculturation.

You…[Read more]

“Gentlemen, get the thing straight once and for all – the policeman isn’t there to create disorder, the policeman is there to preserve disorder.” – Richard J. Daley, 1968

The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

Meanwhile the population grows and the phosphate rock dwindles. Small miracles: forget the chemical warfare and thank God for Fritz Haber and his process. Nuclear fission, glorious pinnacle of immediately-post-colonial Science that it may be, cost us a lot more…[Read more]

Can’t have a middle class without the printing press. Or, most likely, a Protestant reformation. It takes a while for a disruptive technology’s effects to be felt in a society. Perhaps less so in a late-stage capitalist society, but still, I wonder what the real shakeout of global real-time communication will look like. Computers only really…[Read more]

What one considers ‘sustainable’ depends on the timeframe one expects to sustain a given practice. On a homestead, perhaps the lifespan of the younger reproducing generation – on a planet, perhaps the lifespan of the dominant resource-exploiting species?

At any rate Earth, as a high concept, has maybe a billion years until the gradual…[Read more]

“Back in my day we only had polio and the A-bomb. And that was all we needed!”

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‘The women of this country learned long ago, those without swords can still die upon them.’

Son appreciates the sentiment, but Grandfather has more of a role than he may realize. (It is the dog who has no useful role!) Perhaps the role of the Family is to provide grist for the mariner’s musings…

You’re up early today (or is it late?). I am too. Your last sentence prodded something loose in my memory …

I remember reading an old lumberjack’s account of the small logging company he worked for transitioning from two-man crosscut saws to gasoline-powered chainsaws, sometime in the 1940s I believe. He said that before the change, a…[Read more]

… however, please note that I do not speak for California. Their politics are baffling. The place is ungovernable.

I’m also not a huge fan of Colorado’s TABOR amendment, for what it’s worth. However, it does seem to have resulted in a much more efficient, somewhat less corrupt state government than was the case in other states I have lived…[Read more]

An honor to have a passing comment become a Skipper post!

The level of direct democracy allowed varies quite a bit between the states. Plebiscite as policy instrument is definitely more prominent in Western states – reflecting widespread dissatisfaction with the governance of the established United States in the mid-19th Century when those…[Read more]

Seems to me that the Kim regime (and pretty much North Korea in general) exists entirely at the pleasure of the People’s Republic of China. Who are also unlikely to react well to Western military action on the peninsula …

Why they have allowed NK to go on for so long I can only guess. Maybe the apparatchiks of their oppressive,…[Read more]

Great link to Nate Silver! November’s undercard is also unusually thick with state ballot initiatives this year, from the expected (weed, guns) to the interesting (health care reforms, Maine’s consideration of ranked-choice voting) to the downright kooky (California). They may not be as high-profile as the national races but it should be an…[Read more]