Don't mess with parking

Yes, that is what you think it is

Naturally with all the important places in the country snowed in, I seem to have mostly missed out, maybe a few inches of snow.

But it did lead to a lot of interesting articles on the habits of grocery shoppers, both regularly and at emergency conditions like natural disasters (or 9-11 type events). Prices on milk and bread and gasoline should probably be allowed to go up when there's a blizzard is my only conclusion.

There's also the continued theme that the best methods to handle things are with a minimum of top-down effort. This seems contradictory with all the top-down blubbering that occurred around Katrina and all the concerted governmental and inter-governmental aid focusing on Haiti. But every story I've read of disasters and destruction leads to a safe conclusion that a society that would be well enough organized to possess a stable and effective top-down response, like lots of snow plows, is probably also a society efficient enough locally not to actually "need" them. People will simply adapt and come up with their own response. My own experience was that you can sort of rely on the "central planner" to do a bit of heavy lifting, to do the commons things like highways that nobody in their right mind will get out and handle...and that the commoners will fend for themselves in the meantime while they wait. Apartment complexes were the worst. Pretty much everybody fends for themselves (or rather, pulls together to fend for each other since the owner of the complex is not, in most cases, a local owner who is inconvenienced and thus concerned).

That's not to say that people should be expected to get out and shovel out from under two feet of snow. But it works a helluva lot better when they cooperate and coordinate naturally to handle it on their own.