Joe Costello has decades experience in politics, energy, environment, and communications. Traveled and worked across the planet. Long a student of democracy, its demise, possible revitalization.
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Subscribe now An unfortunate and indisputable fact of history is democracies proved no better at peace than oligarchy, monarchy, or tyranny. Using the present United States, ancient Rome, and ancient Athens as examples, it wouldn't be controversial to say they often proved most bellicose. Democratic peace is achieved
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Subscribe now Pat Caddell and I had a long running conversation on which of America's two established parties would be first to collapse. This conversation needed some sense of American history because at this point it's been a century and a half since one of America&
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Subscribe now Lord and everybody else knows I have absolutely nothing to say about fashion, but Vivienne Westwood passed and she deserves a nod. Westwood first became famous with the whole London punk scene. She helped dress it. Without her and partner Malcolm McLaren’s clothes store, the Sex Pistols
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Subscribe now (Continued from II) Unintentionally, the Chip War lays out two very important issues. The first is the issue of the oligarchic structure of American politics. The second is the accepted, tremendously insufficient mindset behind all our technology development. Miller lays out how the National Security State created and
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Subscribe now (Continued from I) The Trump phenomenon says pretty much everything about America today. He quintessentially represents the American Dream in the early 21st century – fame, a lot of debt, infinitely narcissistic, and as big a numskull as he wants to be. Most amazing about Trump is not the
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Subscribe now All technology has revolutionary implications for human life. Many are fairly benign, others quite radical, but all change previous life habits, some completely transform human society. The mid-20th century birthed two of the most radical technologies of human history. Both derived from the recently gained knowledge of quantum
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Sorry to hear of the passing of Terry Hall. He was the main singer of The Specials, another one of those late 70s Brit bands that never received enough attention in the US. Their very fine debut album was released as the Thatcher Era was ushered in, socialism was dead,
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Life in the 21st Century is a reader-supported publication. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber. “As my dear old grandfather Litvak said, just before they swung the trap. He said, ‘You can’t cheat an honest man, never give a sucker an even break, or smarten up a chump.’” -
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Life in the 21st Century is a reader-supported publication. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Great end to an excellent Cup, though not a fan of determining by penalty kicks. The French played consistently best/great in the tournament, but the Argentinians came on strong the last couple games. Messi
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Subscribe now continued from Democracy I On the development of mass and digital media, Mitchell's view is unfortunately conventional: “When it comes to the availability of knowledge of current political issues and challenges, modern society has an advantage over Athenians. The rise of mass media, and especially digital
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To All, I started this a year ago and want to thank you all for reading and greater thanks to all who have contributed monetarily to help move forward. I'm still skeptical of subscriber based models, but a few have made it work. I'm a great
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Subscribe now Thomas Mitchell's Athens: A History of the World’s First Democracy is a great work of classical history. It ranks with the Italian Ferrero's and the German Mommsen's histories of the Roman republic in quality, breadth, and political insight. Mitchell is a