meninthemirror

Make it hail!

"Dame Judy Dench (Introduced to the game by Vin Diesal)"

That is perhaps the most heart-warming and unexpected mental picture I can imagine.

It's become a political/branding issue recently. You'll never see a company involved in the industry call them "tar sands", and you'll very rarely see political opponents of the industry call them "oil sands".

Tar has more negative connotations than oil in the public mind. There's also the point that etymologically, 'tar' is used principally for substances manufactured by humans, while the sands are a resource in place.

So call it what you want, most people don't really care.

But if we're arguing by analogy anyway, why would modern Kansas be less similar to the modern United States than Canada in the 1990s, New Zealand in the 1980s, or 1950s America?

More examples are persuasive, but closer examples are persuasive too. Post-war USA had very different economic conditions than modern USA, and was essentially the last major economy standing in the world.

I don't know much about New Zealand in the 1980s, but talking about Canada's economy in the 1990s without mentioning the start of Canada-USA free trade in the late 1980s is cherry-picking explanations.

Good evening,

First, I wanted to say thank you, this has been a really interesting AMA so far, with thoughtful and detailed answers (which isn't always the case).

Second, I was wondering if you had some broader thoughts on the "Arab Spring" as a whole, and what the US can/should do at this time to help other countries like Syria and Tunisia to transition into stable democracies.

Thanks again.