Tuesday, December 4, 2007
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Last night was cold - 30 degrees or so - and I barely had enough propane to see me through the night. I'm going to have to find some today and with that in mind I've decided to head south from Leeds on AL route 25 and keep an eye out for a propane dealer. I found one about 25 -30 miles out and AL 25 took me south of Birmingham and then gradually westward, eventually crossing I65 at Calera AL where I've holed up for the night, once again at Wal-Mart. My Verizon broadband connection is a little slow here but I'll get by. So far this service has performed very well for me.
Night camp: Wal-Mart in Calera AL
Emergent democracy
Culture brings us together, usually at a very small scale through mutual belief, trust and common interest. It educes, not compels, behavior. Culture codified is law. It is as inevitable as the day the night that as scale increases, law increases. Law enforced is government. Government does not, in the main, educe behavior, but compels it. Democratic or otherwise, rarely, very rarely, does any concentration of power or wealth desire to see subjects well informed, truly educated, their privacy ensured or their discourse uninhibited. Those are the very things that power and wealth fear most. Old forms of government have every reason to operate in secret, while denying just that privilege to subjects. The people are to be minutely scrutinized while power is to be free of examination.