LNG-By-Rail? For New England? For The Archives -- March 18, 2018

Link here.

What's to like? Certainly not these:

• increased rail traffic
• increased likelihood of mishap
• increased CO2 emissions (for what it's worth)

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On Tax Assessments

Interesting essay, "Why History Goes in Circles" by Eric Ormsby in this weekend's edition of The Wall Street Journal.

It begins:

Ibn Khaldun pops up in the most unexpected places. This late medieval Tunisian-born thinker (1332-1406) has been celebrated by historians, economists, sociologists and ethnographers, not to mention scholars of Islamic thought, often rather vaguely and without any precise understanding of the nature of his ideas.

He has been called “the father of sociology” or the first “philosopher of history,” among other honorifics. In 1935 the popular English historian Arnold Toynbee, the author of “A Study of History” in 12 volumes, waxed rhapsodical over Ibn Khaldun’s accomplishments, claiming that his “Muqaddimah” (“Introduction” in Arabic) was “undoubtedly the greatest work of its kind that has ever been created by any mind in any time or place.” It doesn’t detract from Ibn Khaldun’s genuine originality to note that this claim is the sheerest hyperbole. Yet it had the happy effect of putting Ibn Khaldun back on the intellectual map, and it contains an element of truth: His speculations on history were unprecedented, his theories both novel and persuasive.

As Robert Irwin notes in his excellent “Ibn Khaldun: An Intellectual Biography” (Princeton, 243 pages, $29.95), his subject’s influence has also been pervasive, if often subterranean.

To take one surprising example: On Oct. 1, 1981, President Ronald Reagan alluded to him in a press conference when he invoked “a principle that goes back at least, I know, as far as the 14th century, when a Muslim philosopher named Ibn Khaldun said, ‘In the beginning of the dynasty, great tax revenues were gained from small assessments. At the end of the dynasty, small tax revenues were gained from large assessments.”

(The president added—O forlorn hope!—“And we’re trying to get down to the small assessments and the great revenues.”) As Mr. Irwin shows, Ibn Khaldun’s cyclical notion of history also underlies classic works of science fiction, such as Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” trilogy and Frank Herbert’s “Dune.” No other Muslim author, let alone one writing in high-flown classical Arabic, has had comparable influence on thinkers and scholars in both the Islamic world and the West.

Prince Salman is not mentioned in the essay -- you know, the one that has imposed huge tax assessments on his kingdom.