Action Required: Email Subscription Change

If you've been receiving new blog posts of "The Wheel" by email subscription, notice that this service will be changing in mid-July. The service available for years (provided by FeedBurner) will be going away, requiring all subscribers to resubscribe using the new service (provided by Feedrabbit). To do this, use a desktop browser (not a mobile browser) to go to The Wheel's home page (https://marksteger.com). There, look in the right side menu for the "Subscribe by Email" link. Or, you can just go to the subscription service directly here
(https://feedrabbit.com/?url=http://www.marksteger.com/feeds/posts/default). Subscribers will receive each new post in their email inbox immediately after publication.

Paved A Way: Extermination as Government Policy

Amazon Who is the worst villain in history? Hitler, right? And what makes him the worst villain? Genocide, right? The word was even coined for him. Where does Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar rank on the list? Top ten? Top hundred? Or so far down the list that your first reaction is "Who is Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar?" I'm reading "Paved A Way: Infrastructure, Policy and Racism in an American City" by Collin Yarbrough. The city is Dallas, Texas. I'm blogging as I go, using whatever parts of the book catch my attention. It fills us in on Mirabeau B. Lamar.

Paved A Way: "Dallas Doesn't Give a Damn About its History"

Amazon I've begun reading "Paved A Way: Infrastructure, Policy and Racism in an American City" by Collin Yarbrough. The city referenced in the title is Dallas, Texas. Instead of reading it all the way through and then writing a short review (my usual practice), I've decided to blog as I go, using whatever parts of the book catch my attention. A good place to start is with this quote in the opening chapter: Robert Lee Thornton, Dallas’s former mayor, once said, "Dallas doesn’t give a damn about its history; it only cares about the future." Paved A Way

Raya and the Last Dragon (2021)

Rotten Tomatoes

Raya and the Last Dragon (2021): A conventional quest movie. 5 yr-olds will like the plush friendly dragon. (Are all dragons friendly now?) 10 yr-olds will like the quick, smart dialog. Parents will like the message of inclusiveness and trust. Me? I'm not the target audience. B-

TIL: Whatever were the Founders Thinking?

Growing up, I heard a lot about what the Founders were thinking when they drafted and adopted the confusingly worded 2nd Amendment to the Constitution. The dominant argument (by NRA types) was that the Founders intended the right to bear arms as a safeguard against tyrannical government, a protection should an evil King George III ever arise again and seek to take away our precious liberties. It seemed to be a compelling argument to my young self. But it wasn't the last word on the subject.

In the Heights (2021)

Rotten Tomatoes

In the Heights (2021): Caribbean-American musical. The block is gentrifying. Neighbors are being priced out or moving to follow their dreams. Yet, the neighborhood holds together. Cast and plot are a little crowded, but the joy and message of "Paciencia y Fe" come through. A-

Review: The Ministry for the Future

From The Ministry for the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson:

Everything was tan and beige and a brilliant, unbearable white. Ordinary town in Uttar Pradesh, 6 AM. He looked at his phone: 38 degrees. In Fahrenheit that was— he tapped— 103 degrees. Humidity about 35 percent. The combination was the thing. A few years ago it would have been among the hottest wet-bulb temperatures ever recorded. Now just a Wednesday morning.
	Amazon

This is speculative fiction from the near future, when the world can no longer ignore global warming. Lots of things touched on here, from science to economics to government to terrorism, sometimes dramatized, sometimes just straight talk.