http://cloudandtree.com/supra/articles/2007/09/04/journals-of-toast-40 en-us 40 one million updates per week <span> <img class="comic" src="/jot/ep/ep40.png" alt="JoT 40" /> </span><br /> I feel psychologically incapable of being concise. Maybe I just need a medium where developed paragraphs don't feel like impenetrable walls of text? Tue, 04 Sep 2007 03:11:00 -0500 urn:uuid:58abcdf6-2136-4fdf-a8e1-f60ad6aa3229 ezrast http://cloudandtree.com/supra/articles/2007/09/04/journals-of-toast-40 JoT <p>Where&#8217;s the new comic, Ezzo?</p> Sun, 16 Sep 2007 15:30:50 -0500 urn:uuid:b26e03a9-eadd-459c-bf6e-94b8be246b0a http://cloudandtree.com/supra/articles/2007/09/04/journals-of-toast-40#comment-192 <p>Hunter/Gatherer tribes had two interesting aspects: 1. There weren&#8217;t a lot of them. 2. High mortality rates, and an unpredictable future.</p> <p>A smaller population makes foraging and migrating easy. You have a small group that moves around eating stuff, and then when it regrows they, or another tribe, go eat it again. With over six and a half billion people, however, agriculture is a necessity. Agriculture wasn&#8217;t developed to allow more free time. Agriculture was developed to allow stability and predictability for large societies. Safer, but doesn&#8217;t allow so much free time. It&#8217;s a tradeoff. Agriculture is also the beginning of the history of man, too. Besides cave-paintings, there weren&#8217;t any histories before agriculture. So the very ability to pass on knowledge, study, and learn requires stability. You can&#8217;t migrate with a library on your back. It&#8217;s much more difficult to learn when the university is mobile.</p> <p>Communism is currently the best happy-medium between workoholism and hunter/gathererism. If it worked.</p> Sun, 09 Sep 2007 19:55:58 -0500 urn:uuid:94a41b86-a887-4c3c-91e8-a845f5e5591d http://cloudandtree.com/supra/articles/2007/09/04/journals-of-toast-40#comment-191