Imagine that you’re in an elevator when the power goes out. The systems that made it possible for you to easily travel between floors without even being aware of them are suddenly very obvious by their absence. You’re trapped – all by things you never even bothered to notice were all around you all the time. All you can hope is that these systems are re-started before you starve to death. Sound familiar? It’s how James Burke opened up his landmark BBC series Connections in 1978. This series challenged us all to look at the way our world was constructed a bit differently, a bit less at the contributions of one person and more at the connections that made it all possible.
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Category Archives: People & Culture
All about the standing-upright chimps that really love to talk about themselves.
Be Not Afraid
Across the globe, May Day is Worker’s Day, a celebration of Labor forged in what may well be the first Big Idea that transcended national boundaries. In the USofA, we made sure our Labor Day was insulated by all of summer from this idea because it was so troublesome. Marxism, Communism, and all of the various isms that make up this Big Idea have their day everywhere but here. For all of the trouble they gave us this seems almost quaint in today’s world.
SPQR
As someone who likes to look for historical parallels, it’s only natural that I’d have the rash break out that I get every few years or so; a burning desire to read up a bit more on ancient Rome. No, it’s not that I think our own nation is about to fall as Rome did – far from it. What’s far more interesting to me are the times when Rome was right on the verge of terrible disaster but somehow managed to pull back – to start the games and the parties all over again. It’s that resiliency, carrying on despite having several unquestionably mad Emperors, that I find interesting.
Eyes on the Prize
The problem with the Left is that they don’t understand the Nazis didn’t set the Reichstag fire.
There’s little I enjoy more than taking an argument to a conclusion just past absurdity. It’s a style better suited for comedy, but it’s also a way of being just a bit demure and disarming. When done well, this technique allows any subject, no matter how taboo, to be talked about in an abstract way. If nothing else, every murder needs an autopsy, and the millions of murders performed by the Nazis require constant analysis so that we don’t allow it to happen again. Ready?
Specialists
There is no single, widely accepted definition for an Economic Depression. The most common call is a deep recession, a GDP loss of about 10% or unemployment above 15%. Some will tell you that it’s a long recession, 6 quarters or more of loss. I’ve argued that it’s nothing more than the unusual event of a sudden and dramatic drop in money supply, an event that has now happened about 5 times in the history of the USofA (1812, 1857, 1893, 1929, and 2008). A few people insist that there is only one Depression, The Depression, starting around 1929.
What if we’re all wrong? What if the best definition of all has little to do with money or other numbers in a table, but with people – what they do and how it all connects together?
Barataria - The work of Erik Hare 