Every time I do a Q and A after a college lecture, somebody says (with a fanfare of indignation) - so as to reveal their own brilliance in contrast to my foolishness - "You haven't said anything about overpopulation!"     Right.  I usually don't bother. Their complaint, of course, implies that we would do something about overpopulation if only we would recognize it.  Which is absurd.  What might we do about overpopulation here in...

     In The Long Emergency (2005, Atlantic Monthly Press), I said that we ought to expect the federal government to become increasingly impotent and ineffectual - that this would be a hallmark of the times.  In fact, I said that any enterprise organized at the colossal scale would function poorly in years ahead, whether it was a government, a state university, a national chain retail company, or a giant midwestern farm.  It is characteristic of...

     A side-trip to the local mall - where else to buy ammo around here? - evinced an epic struggle for supremacy of the chain stores between the Great Pumpkin and Santa Claus, with both fat-assed icons trying to shove the other out of the primary display sites as if the store aisle were a WWF ring in some grubby forsaken Palookaville far far from the salons of Washington decision-making, which, I guess,...

     When sober-minded individuals begin to regard an enterprise within a nation as "an enemy of the people" you can bet that some serious blood is going to flow.  This is now essentially the situation for the Goldman Sachs company, which last week announced third-quarter earnings of over $3 billion largely derived from converting zero percent loans from taxpayers into zero risk profits off of anything paying more than zero percent in interest,...

      When that phone call came around six a.m. last week telling President Obama he'd been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, I had to think he turned to Michelle and said, "Honey, our life together has just gotten more surreal."  I was hoping that he would politely refuse it, perhaps making a statement later that morning along the lines: "...since circumstances have placed me in the unfortunate position of prosecuting two wars at the...