Presidents Have Less Impact On Our Lives Than Those Aroun...

Presidents are royalty and we measure our lives by their reigns, but their effect on the country in general is greatly exaggerated. Take me, for example. Mr. Lyndon Johnson’s Selective Service System more or less governed my 20s, and now that I’m old and shaky, his Medicare is very helpful, but for most of us, presidents are part of the scenery, like the great stone heads on Easter Island. Millions of words have been written about Richard Nixon but his effect on my life was minuscule comp...

 Insulation of Elites Compounds Societal Collapse

The scenarios most closely reflecting the reality of our world today are found in the third group of experiments (see the scenarios for an unequal society in section 5.3), where we introduced economic stratication. Under such conditions, we nd that collapse is dicult to avoid, which helps to explain why economic stratication is one of the elements consistently found in past collapsed societies. Importantly, in the rst of these unequal society scenarios, 5.3.1, the solution appears to be on a ...

 Two Kinds of Societal Collapse

Running the model in dierent scenarios produces two kinds of collapses, either due to scarcity of labor (following an inequality-induced famine) or due to scarcity of Nature (depletion of natural resources). We categorize the former case as a Type-L (Disappearance of Labor) Collapse and the latter as a Type-N collapse (Exhaustion of Nature). In a Type-L collapse, growth of the Elite Population strains availability of resources for the Commoners. This causes decline of the Commoner Population ...

 The Insane Clown Posse is Hilariously Ignorant

"No," sighs Violent J. "I figured most people would say, 'Wow, I didn't know Insane Clown Posse could be deep like that.' But instead it's, 'ICP said a giraffe is a miracle. Ha ha ha! What a bunch of idiots.'" He pauses, then adds defiantly, "A giraffe is a fucking miracle. It has a dinosaur-like neck. It's yellow. Yeah, technically an elephant is not a miracle. Technically. They've been here for hundreds of years..." "Thousands," murmurs Shaggy. Violent J shakes his head sorrowfully. "Wh...