Here in France for the year, I marvel that a country can be so advanced and rich and organized, such a complete civilization when you’re living inside it, and yet not seem to matter much to the world at large.

The reason is simply scale. France has 67 million inhabitants, so with 320 million, the USA is four or five times bigger. France has no chance against a disparity of that magnitude.

What if there were a rich, organized country four or five times bigger than the USA? Well, the population of China is around 1380 million. Stay tuned.

[30 January 2018]

In the last couple of days I’ve had two good examples of somebody saying it all in just four words.

An academic couple were reminiscing about how they got through final exams years ago. She described how she prepared an elaborate diagram detailing what topic she would work on, each quarter-hour throughout the exam period. He said,

“I just read stuff.”

And now here I am at the MONA museum in Hobart listening on the audioguide to the German artist Julius Popp describing his work bit.fall, in which words appear as if by magic in falling water droplets. It’s remarkable when you first see it, and for him after a few years, it seems it’s still remarkable:

“I get sometimes chickenskin.”

[4 February 2018]