#1
Post rating: +


A thought I had today as I drove past a mattress billboard: by the year 2040 the left/right political divide will disappear and in its place there will be a division between pro-sleeps and pro-funs. Pro-sleeps will demand quiet and more spacious living spaces, while pro-funs will demand more loud music in public, parties, and cohabitation with other funs. The antagonism between these two social groups will seem entirely natural to future society, and social scientists will give us powerful theories explaining how all of human existence has been defined by this rift, and that it origin lies in an evolutionary adaptation in early hominid ancestors. Present day political concerns like big government or domestic spying will seem as alien to the people of 2040 as medieval divine favor is to us.
#2
Post rating: ~
Early conservatives, under the influence of Malthus, opposed every form of social insurance "root and branch", arguing, as U. C. Berkeley economist Brad DeLong put it: "make the poor richer, and they would become more fertile. As a result, farm sizes would drop (as land was divided among ever more children), labor productivity would fall, and the poor would become even poorer. Social insurance was not just pointless; it was counterproductive."
#3
Not Your S.H.I.E.L.D.
Post rating: +
"Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, black children are at the same time too numerous and too few." --Q*bert "The Dolphin" Eco