The Future History of California
“I am building my dream-house on my dream-ranch. My house will be standing, act of God permitting, for a thousand years.” – Jack London
Perhaps you’ve visited the ruins of Jack London’s “Wolf House” — now a state park and museum, and one of many hidden treasures of Sonoma, California…
There is a legend about an encounter between Alexander the Great and Diogenes of Sinope, the Cynical philosopher. …
Subverting Lockdowns with Shelter-Outside
It’s an almost universal law that whenever government declares a “War on X,” the problem of “X” gets worse. The War on Drugs, the War on Terror, and now, the War on Coronavirus.
One bitter irony of the latest fiasco is that there is mounting evidence that the virus was…
Taking Responsibility in an Age of Finger-Pointing
The ominous orange skies over California this week put a damper on my usual optimism. You don’t have to be a doomsayer to see that things are going get worse before they get better. Is there a silver lining to the smoky grey clouds overhead?
First, the bad news…
Modern men can learn from the past
In The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis opens with a meditation on a central paradox of the modern age. This is an era which lionizes the courageous, the creative, and the driven, yet seeks to strip men of all positive values through a faux intellectualism. …
Undoing the damage of bad health advice will take time, but can be quickened with the right mentality.
“Maybe you’ve just sort of lost the will to live.”
True story: 10 years ago I came down with a mysterious respiratory illness that knocked me flat for three weeks, and kept me constantly fatigued for another 3 months. …
The Kennedy March as Civil Disobedience
Health journalists have reputation for blatantly contradicting themselves.
Whether it’s alcohol, cardio, salt, or saturated fat, you can find at least one study to confirm your bias that [fill-in-the-blank] is either a panacea or potent toxin.
With COVID, we’ve been told:
Missing the gym? Hit the Park!
As theories multiply about the origins, contagiousness, and mortality rate of COVID-19, it’s easy to feel powerlessness in the face of so much conflicting information — especially as we are told that we must stay indoors, where the temptation is to feed our apprehension with an endless diet of sensationalist…
Gavin Newsom is calling California a Nation-State; why not declare personal independence while we’re at it?
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for o̵n̵e̵ [free] people to dissolve the p̶o̶l̶i̶t̶i̶c̶a̶l̶ ̶b̶a̶n̶d̶s̶ [quarantine restrictions] which have c̶o̶n̶n̶e̶c̶t̶e̶d̶ [separated] them w̶i̶t̶h̶ [from] another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, t̶h̶e̶ ̶s̶e̶p̶a̶r̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶e̶q̶u̶a̶l̶ ̶s̶t̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ [the pursuit of health and wellness] to…
Lockdown as Shock; Lockdown as Fast
Ahhh, nothing like a good ol’ pestilence to get you thinking clearly about what matters most in life.
It’s easy to get stuck on the painful consequences like forced unemployment — the inability of millions of people to productively serve one another.
In the Lego-model world of perfect equilibrium, we would find new ways to produce and consume harmoniously with little interruption, but in the real world of…
