Needless to say, it’s a fascinating insight into a strange American era.  The book is filled with tension between the sudden possibilities of life in the postwar United States – the trajectory hinted at in the Great Gatsby followed through to its logical conclusion where cars, sex, alcohol, divorce, travel and the wild, strange sound of jazz are unexpectedly available – and the purposeless drifting and nihlism of living without any great force of history or pre-determined role or destiny to drive one along.  The 1960s were about to shake American society to its core, and the real life characters portrayed by Kerouac hum with the barely contained energy of the coming explosion.

In San Francisco we stopped in at Vesuvio for a beer – a bar visited by Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac:

Poor farming practices, drought and wind combined to strip the land of its topsoil and blanket everything in endless dust for several years.

(photo from Wikimedia Commons).

“Commissar Markov has long been a loyal party member, but I fear his growing influence in state policy. Perhaps it is time to cash in a favor from my friends at the Kremlin.”

More Яolcats here. This is why the internet was invented (ok, maybe not, but it should be why the internet was invented).

Rather ponderously paced, but an interesting insight into the drastic effect the corporatisation of farming had in the U.S. The theme of vast, anonymous commercial organisations arbitrarily destroying productive industries and lives certainly resonates in 2009.

Clinton and Bush had the same experience (scroll down here).

Possible causes:

• no longer has to dye hair in order to look younger than John McCain
• following Bush Administration’s introduction of everyday use of ‘signing statements‘ to alter reality, now simply orders all Americans to regard his hair as black not grey rather than actually implementing black hair policy
• can’t stop re-reading article about how the odds of his own bloody murder have shortened from 16-1 to 12-1
• has undergone the introductory CIA orientation video, “covert alien control of Earth and you: a beginner’s guide to puppet leadership”

Longevity

With occasional maintenance, the clock should reasonably be expected to display the correct time for the next 10,000 years.

Maintainability
The clock should be maintainable with bronze-age technology.

Transparency
It should be possible to determine operational principles of the clock by close inspection.

Evolvability
It should be possible to improve the clock with time.

Scalability
It should be possible to build working models of the clock from table-top to monumental size using the same design.

As a civilization we tend to build large objects purely for their functional benefits. For instance, most of our skyscrapers and other large structures are designed to be destroyed and replaced after 100 or so years. So I am attracted to ideas like this, which involve building things intended to stand the test of time for what they mean, rather than simply for what they do.

1. Bush family cat dies (possibly of shame); Bush’s nickname for cat is “Kitty”.
2. Cats commence takeover of worldwide news media with German putsch; weatherman demonstrates excellent comprehension of cat psychology.
3. Nick Cave outed as fan of cat-related artwork; meanwhile artist’s cat gives him schizophrenia and causes him to start painting demon cats.

A vast majority of the nation, 73 percent of the country, disapproves of the job President George W. Bush is doing. No president has ever had a higher disapproval rating, not even President Richard Nixon at the height of Watergate.

In other words, despite:

the immense scope of crimes and abuses, which included campaign fraud, political espionage and sabotage, illegal break-ins, improper tax audits, illegal wiretapping on a massive scale, and a secret slush fund laundered in Mexico to pay those who conducted these operations

which was known by the end of the Nixon administration, not to mention a much more damaging war in Vietnam, the average American still thinks Bush II is doing a worse job than Nixon. Really, it makes McCain’s performance so far look pretty good…

It’s written with a clear-eyed understanding of modern US history, and in particular highlights the twin sources of damage to the American ‘brand’ abroad represented by the apparent collapse of the laissez-faire approach to the financial system and the mistakes of post September 11 foreign policy. It also addresses the domestic political trends which have led to the present situation, whereby both Republicans and Democrats had bought in to a similar view on the need to regulate particular parts of the economy.

Fukuyama argues that there is a real prospect that America’s ability to project power, be it military power or ’soft’ power, will be severely diminished, and that this may have long term implications for the promotion of liberal democracy around the world.