Brilliant insights from Dmitry Orlov on building in the round and peak oil.
“Let’s face it, we, the civilized, educated, enlightened part of humanity like things to be straight. Let primitive tribesmen live in picturesque and practical round huts—we require abstract boxes of steel and concrete clad in plate glass, with plenty of nice straight lines, true vertical and horizontal planar surfaces and lots of ninety-degree angles to please the eye. Let these tribesmen spend their days meandering up and down picturesque winding paths laid down by grazing animals—when we build a road, we take a map and apply a ruler to it, and anything that’s in the way of that ruler, picturesque or not, must be dynamited and bulldozed because everyone knows that traveling in straight lines is more efficient.”
Full article at: ClubOrlov
Owen: This reminds me of a children’s book about people who live in square houses versus roundhouses. I’d like to read it again. I think it’s called Village of Round and Square Houses. “The story of the village of Tos–where the women live in round houses and the men live in square ones–is told from the point of view of a young girl who grew up there.”