Drawing Group last night, and I got some promising studies.

The last two weeks have been busy writing about synthetic marijuana, a new Minnesota drug statute, and a September raid on a Duluth head shop that raises questions about  official respect for the Fourth and Sixth Amendment. (The Fourth is the one about being secure in our persons houses and effects, and the Sixth says we're entitled to a speedy and public trial.)

At drawing group we talked about the new Vikings stadium that the state and city are going to subsidize. Sue had mentioned last week that a sports stadium anchors a lot of downtown businesses. I mentioned that professional sports provide a venue for deal makers to network. This week Sue said that the stadium is important to the future of the Twin Cities economy. I said that that is the reason I opposed the stadium. I mentioned The Limits to Growth, and Australian Graham Turner's confirmation that the LTG 1972  predictions for significant curves (Non-renewables, per-capita services, per-capita industrial production, per capita agricultural production, population, and pollution) were on track as of 2002. I said that the modelers had been able to avoid mid-century collapse only by limiting births to deaths and industrial investment to depreciation. Kathy had read about LTG recently, including the 2030 prediction for collapse, which comes from some other sources than the study. The modelers refused to be that precise, and the curves drop sharply in different parts of the century for different scenarios.

I said that I recognized that mine was a minority opinion, and that people need jobs.

One specific action that LTG suggested was stewarding capital by building things that last and that are easily repaired. Appropos of that, I'm writing this on a borrowed computer. Google has changed the format for Blogspot, and my browser doesn't support it. My perfectly good computer won't handle the update. This is something I've already experienced with YouTube, and -- I believe -- Facebook. Hell of a use of capital.