The Tragedy of the Commons, Social Sanction, and the Reprogramming of Cults

The Tragedy of the Commons

We are on an isolated island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The year is 1200 AD, only that we don’t call it that because we have no idea (yet) what an annus domini might be. We live a peaceful life of fishing and harvesting, and our big preoccupation is typhoons. Aside from that, life is sweet.

To build our fishing canoes, we need hollowed out palm trees. Palm trees are useful, in general: we eat the fruit, we build houses with the trunks and fronds, we make fibers for clothing, etc. Sadly, the palm trees grow only in one section of the island.

Colorado 14ers: Mount Shavano

The Deal

After a very successful climb of Mount Oxford, I decided it was time to try something ambitious: a whole week of climbing Fourteeners. As I knew, there are several clusters of them: the Front Range and Sawatch ones were easy to climb from Denver; the Elk Mountain ones were all too hard for me at this point; a cluster in the South comprised the Sangre de Cristo Range; and the final cluster were the San Juan Fourteeners, some of the most beautiful landscapes on Earth.

Colorado 14ers: Mount Oxford

An Easy Version of English

You probably know by now that I know and love Esperanto. There is a lot to love about it: the fascinating history with its plot twists, the way I managed to survive my first Esperanto meeting after three weeks of learning, the travels I did with Esperantists all over Europe, and the amazing people that learn Esperanto - quirky, funny, and often able to converse in a dozen languages.

But lately, I have been concerned. Esperanto had a huge boost with the introduction of the Duolingo Esperanto course a few years ago, but as so often, it was picked up for a few moments and then discarded as a useless hobby. English, we are told, is the International Language, and there is no need for something made up.

4 Days of Driving for 4 Days of Snowboarding Mt Bachelor

Last year’s Great Canada Snowboarding Adventure was the last great trip I had planned linking ski resorts together in a chain. It was by far the most resorts, the longest drive, and the most fun I’ve had on all snowboarding winter adventures, so far, but it also marked an end. There just weren’t that many resorts left I hadn’t visited, and the lost one were isolated, far, and not on any pass system.

Porting a Template from WordPress to Hugo

The End of Capitalism: The Creativity Conundrum

Alright: you suffered through two articles on this already. One about the way the Productivity Paradox killed middle America in the demise of blue collar jobs. Another one predicting a similar demise in white collar jobs due to more automation. But surely the arts are the exclusive domain of humans! How could computers possibly create things full of passion, of desire, of humor, of innovation? How could HAL outshine Van Halen? Could Dall-E best Dali?

Your First Mountain Biking Experience

Some people get into mountain biking because they have a death wish; some others because it’s cool. For me, it was oddly that road biking had become too unsafe after I moved to Colorado. I had been road biking for decades, in one year racking up over 7000 miles on my bike. Then I moved to San Diego and car culture became synonymous with road rage, but I had surfing as a distraction from cycling. When I moved to Denver, the snow season was too short to fill my year and I needed something new, but I heard horrible things about accidents involving cyclists and motorists.

The End of Capitalism: The Academic Delusion

For blue collar workers, the root of all evils was the 1980s. While the world was listening to Madonna and Michael Jackson, wearing giant shoulder pads and holding giant boomboxes over your head, a series of developments crushed into the American Dream like Jaws into a fishing boat. The result was a deep and lasting depression into the heart of America, one that made life outside of large cities precarious and poverty and disillusionment widespread.

Climbing Your First Colorado 14er