Profound: June 2008 Archives
David Szondy reviews The Way We Will Be 50 Years from Today: 60 Of The World's Greatest Minds Share Their Visions of the Next Half-Century: "The predictions themselves are pretty predictable with nothing being put forth that would disturb a cocktail party at Berkley, CA or Islington N1.... The only thing that really unites these essays is not what they predict, but what they don't. There is a lot about global warming, but not a word about mass migration or the demographic time bomb that the civilised world faces. Exotic diseases gets a look in, but not free trade. And the sort of emphasis on manufacturing and serious industrial scale technologies that once dominated predictions now give way to lean and green. But the most disturbing lack is that there is scarcely a mention of terrorism and none at all of the war we are currently fighting against the Jihadists; a war that by any reasonable estimate we will be fighting for at least another generation."
One of a number of "stories of people who successfully refocused their lives."
"A failure is a man who has blundered but is not able to cash in on the experience." "Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped."
Crunchy Con - "Real England" and reactionary radicals
The elitism of crunchy conservatism isn't all bad: "For example, elitist tastes in coffee and beer in the US taught the masses that there is a such thing as better coffee and better beer -- and now it's easier to find both." Perhaps the same will be true for better urban design.
