Those who are familiar with English literature and letters from approximately 1700 CE to 1800 CE know that the period was filled with colorful prose and the moeurs of the time were far from bashful. Novels from that period include Cleland’s Fanny Hill and Stern’s Tristram Shandy, both of which…
It’s a truism that most people will believe whatever you tell them regardless of its plausibility. Millions of simple-minded dupes voted for Trump thanks to a couple of soundbites they could chant happily while waving little US flags (made in China). Their equivalents in the UK flushed that nation down…
When a slender majority of those who voted in the 2016 UK referendum on whether or not the nation should leave the European Union responded affirmatively, the UK set itself on a one-way road to national decline. …
Most readers, familiar with the endless sensationalism of the mass media and the inevitable political polarization that democracy engenders, may assume the title of this article refers to the far-right/far-left divisions that plague us today. As the USA descends into civil chaos and the UK eagerly follows; as France gets…
For 98% of our evolutionary history, life was a zero-sum game. As a species with very limited technology (a few rocks, perhaps a few pointed sticks, and then much later the wonder of fire) we survived on the margins, clinging to existence and dying young. There was no way to…
I recently wrote an article here on Medium called Why Democracy Always Fails, in which I outlined the fundamental systemic problems with the concept of representative democracy and why it cannot be tinkered with to produce meaningful improvements. I explained why democracy always eventually results in populism, which can be…
Few people know much about Saudi Arabia, not least because it’s quite a hermetic sort of country. Even the expatriates who work there glimpse only a fraction of Saudi life and the journalists who occasionally report on some sensationalistic story merely skim over the surface and leave much unsaid. …
Scientific empiricism is the most significant development in the history of our species. Its effects have been far more profound than the invention of fire, the wheel, and any weapon created since one of our distant ancestors smashed the skull of his neighbor with a stone. …
Let’s begin by acknowledging that there’s no such thing as the best city in the world. No matter what criteria we select to arrive at a ranking, personal taste plays such a large role that any claim will be spurious. All we can do is have our own favorites, based…
Today it’s impossible to avoid the topic of climate change. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution we’ve substituted fossil fuels for muscle and as a result our civilization has advanced technologically far beyond anything our ancestors could have imagined. There have been countless benefits, but the easiest way to…
