I don’t put much of my pri­vate social life into this site, but in this case “a pic­ture is worth a thou­sand words.” I have been friends with Fil­ip Marek for a quar­ter of a cen­tu­ry. Despite our liv­ing on dif­fer­ent con­ti­nents, we have man­aged to see each oth­er fair­ly often — most recent­ly in Spain. We first came to know each oth­er through Filip’s involve­ment in the Czech Rev­o­lu­tion, and the friend­ship was sub­se­quent­ly built up from a series of shared adven­tures (in places as dis­parate as Crete and the shores of the Arc­tic Ocean) and shared intel­lec­tu­al inter­ests. We make a rather Cer­van­tean team. I am a lit­tle man, while Fil­ip is a tall, mus­cu­lar giant. This pic­ture, recent­ly tak­en* in the sort of place Fil­ip can often be found, is so evoca­tive that I could not resist putting it up here.

*Fil­ip has just informed me that it was tak­en two days ago, in Switzerland

For sev­er­al gen­er­a­tions, the State of Cal­i­for­nia has been the barom­e­ter of social trends in the Unit­ed States. It was the state Amer­i­cans moved to because they were young, gay, cre­ative, or just because they were sick and tired of work­ing in coal mines or being screamed at by bible-thump­ing ass­holes. If you have been sink­ing into acute depres­sion think­ing of the antics of the Repub­li­com­mies and their Tea Par­ty zom­bies, and oth­er signs of senil­i­ty in Amer­i­can cul­ture, then this should refresh your faith in the Amer­i­can peo­ple: Bill Maher- Cal­i­for­nia is leading

Rem­brandt’s Storm on the Sea of Galilee (1633) 160 cm × 128 cm. The paint­ing was stolen from a gallery in 1990 and its where­abouts are unknown. It prob­a­bly sits on the bed­room wall of some gang­ster billionaire.

A fine, suc­cinct post on the cur­rent dys­func­tion­al state of democ­ra­cy in both Cana­da and the Unit­ed States.

sam­ple:

Indeed an even more impor­tant prin­ci­ple has been lost track of in just the last few years. That is the idea that the Prime Min­is­ter and his cab­i­net only hold office when they can com­mand the con­fi­dence of the House of Com­mons. Remem­ber when Steven Harp­er was held in con­tempt of Par­lia­ment by major­i­ty of the mem­bers? And the Gov­er­nor Gen­er­al let him get away with ignor­ing this and treat­ing it as mere­ly a par­ti­san stunt? One can have a cer­tain amount of sym­pa­thy for the Gov­er­nor Gen­er­al who prob­a­bly felt that if she fired Harp­er instead of let­ting him pro­rogue Par­lia­ment, she would enjoy no sup­port what­so­ev­er in the polit­i­cal class. She was right, but right here the Cana­di­an Con­sti­tu­tion broke down, and few peo­ple noticed or at least took it seriously.