Hidden order in the Balinese “religion of water”

With lucid exposition and gorgeous graphics, anthropologist Stephen Lansing exposed the hidden structure and profound health of the traditional Balinese rice growing practices. The intensely productive terraced rice paddies of Bali are a thousand years old. So are the democratic subaks (irrigation cooperatives) that manage them, and. . .   Read More

Time capsule secrets

High school classes and world’s fairs do it. Universities and builders and companies and municipalities do it. They bury little hoards of things they think people in the future will treasure— the future being ten years or ten thousand or never (most time capsules are immediately forgotten). Something strange, deep, and. . .   Read More

Ancient American politics

ROGER KENNEDY, the former head of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History and former Director of the US National Park Service, is so eloquent that Walt Kelly based a “Pogo” character on him (the bear P.T. Bridgeport, whose speech balloons are circus posters).

Roger Kennedy’s most driving current interest. . .   Read More

Maps and time

DAVID RUMSEY’s spectacularly illustrated lecture, “Mapping Time” is not just about maps. It is the future of data and knowledge handling. People literally gasp at the things Rumsey shows can be done.

I love it when techies, artists, and historians all gasp at the same time. That happened with David Rumsey. . .   Read More

Long-term Policy Analysis

Dewar is head of RAND’s Pardee Center on very long-term policy—35 to 200 years

For over half a century the RAND Corporation has influenced national policy and invented major intellectual tools. Packet switching (Paul Baran) came from RAND; so did scenario planning (Herman Kahn); so does the current. . .   Read More