182 - A Bureaucracy of Ghosts

Snow on the mountains. Starting to teach Jurassic Park. The tallest novelist of all time. Crichton’s most controversial novel. Was Crichton a good novelist?

Trapped in the bathroom. Is the science ever settled?

Harmful Content. Militant non-musicians. Compliance. Kris vs. The Looping World. Lost malls. Hunting for bookstores in a small town. The worst bookstore in the history of America. Return policies on dirty magazines.

Osmos with the cosmos, or you will be socializing with a bureaucracy of ghosts. Sex positive interrogative counter-scientism societal utopianism.

Indistinguishable news organizations. Garmonbozia pablum. Does Liberal and Conservative mean anything? Should we have a Women Party and a Men Party? People can’t see anything from another point of view, but more importantly, they can’t see their own point of view.

Kindness as a placating sinister force. People get more feral the more “nice” the conversation gets.

Giving people responsibilities. The Gold Bar Test. Cults are about structure. Preview of 2024.

JDO’s imaginative challenge brings him to Swift Current, where a man wheels a cross through town and a Chinese restauranteur has problems with his fake hand.

The Harari Main Market. The chaos of markets, the harmony of trading. Looking closely at Mayan and Aztec societies. Hardy Boys cover designs. Reassessment of danger from the fear of serfs to a kind of danger you’d want to be a part of.