If one of the Founding Fathers looked 233 years into the future and saw that the men currently dominating America's foreign policy had the last names "Baker," "Hamilton," and "Gates," they would probably assume the country had undergone absolutely zero demographic change.

One of my complaints with some "smart growth" urban movements is that they can seem like rather thin veils for anti-family and anti-free market agendas. In California and Los Angeles, you see a lot of urban renewal "mixed-use" plans floating around that don't seem all that keen on people having big families, doing big things, or you know, buying big stuff at their leisure.

Of course, in CA, you also see a lot of libertarian-lite, "let's pave everything for people's SUVs" philosophies in the local governments of OC, Riverside, and Ventura counties. All things considered, it's an interesting mix of how people view "progress."

Anyway, Seattle's fast-becoming a worst-case scenario for those who abhor utopianism. This opinion piece by James Lileks illustrates (for me at least) the end result of some of today's social engineering ideals.

America is not [the UN's] model; America is the example of what is wrong with progress. The idea of people living in large houses with nice lawns, driving a personal vehicle (by themselves, on the route of their choosing) to the store to buy big steaks subsequently cooked on a carbon-emitting outdoor grill -- well, who wants to live like that?

About 6 billion people, if you give them the chance. But forgive them, Kofi; they know not what they do.

The idea of people sitting at home in sweatpants watching a big TV while shoveling in the Haagen-Daz mortifies the social engineers; they can practically feel the planet wobble on its axis from the cumulative weight of so much freedom and prosperity.

The preferred model for a nice, controlled population is a dense city where your small apartment has a tiny fridge stocked with bean curd molded into pleasant, food-like shapes. Trains take you to your job, which is either building trains, fixing trains, designing public service posters for trains, cleaning trains or writing software to operate trains. Once a week you'll pull on your best taupe-hued hemp jumpsuit and take the train to the biweekly Culture Expo to hear something held up to enlightened ridicule (anything's game, except Islam and Global Warming).

It may sound like hell itself, but at least it's sustainable.

If I recall correctly, three+ years ago, Asa had a chance to meet a lonely Martin Nodell and even gets his autograph. Asa kept walking. And now Nodell is dead! Anyway, let's all take a few minutes to remember the creator of a great superhero, and one of the Golden Age's all-time good-bad costumes.

Continuing a theme of recent education-related postings, comes this NYT story about the massive underclass of under-educated, skill-less East Indian college grads. India's vaunted ability to churn out engineers and docs for the West is apparently concealing some massive structural problems.