World Issues Prospects for a Multi-Polar World Contrasting and synthesizing the perspectives of Balaji Srinivasan and Peter Zeihan. Skim down to the section on "Contrasting Geopolitical Outlooks" if you want to get to the main part of this post more quickly. IntroductionThe present moment certainly feels like we can't take anything for granted anymore. Recent events such
archive 2022 Year in Review Annual retrospective 2022 was not a very active year here on The Drafting Table (because it was a very active year at home and at work). I had seven posts, the fewest of any year since I started this blog. However, I've got a backlog of something like 10 partial
Book Seven Games in Silica The topic of AI/ML (machine learning) is getting a lot of buzz right now. That makes this book review pretty timely. I.Seven Games: A Human History by Oliver Roeder is a book that came out this year. It is about board and card games, the seven alluded to
Water Two Rivers in Asia Travel, geopolitics, and water—this post is a review of two books that sit at the convergence of several of my interests. It can also be seen as the inland accompaniment to this post covering coastal areas in the same general region. The River at the Centre of the World:
Links Assorted Links (Summer 2022) Wow, it's been 5 months or so since my last post. I'm still here—in fact, I have 10 or more posts at some level of draft but time to write has been in short supply—and I hope to publish a bit more in this second half of 2022.
New Brunswick NB Budget 2022: Staying Healthy New Brunswick would appear to be in a very reasonable neighbourhood when it comes to several healthcare metrics (per capita): spending, acute care beds, hospitals, and physicians. So why does the system feel so strained?
Links Assorted Links (Winter 2022) Time for another links post. This time around, I'm trying an approach of more links but shorter descriptions than usual. First of all, I wanted to share an essay I had published elsewhere: "Deepfakes and digital resurrections". Â (The organization that put on this essay contest, FaithTech, also promote the "digital
DIY Tensegrity Footstool This didn't take too long to build, but it was fun and unique. Tensegrity is a structural technique that relies on elements under tension for its integrity (hence the name). Tensegrity structures also have elements under compression, but their discontinuous arrangement gives a gravity-defying appearance to the whole. After seeing
Review Mini-Reviews 2021 Last year was a busy year on the personal front (due to a growing family) so I didn't have as much time to write reviews of things I read compared to previous years. Still, I wanted to have some highlights and notes to reference in future posts; the collection below
archive 2021 Year in Review Looking back on another year of writing this blog Last year, I had only 9 posts. This year, I managed 12, which is within my target of 1 - 2 per month, albeit at the low end. I have a few more drafts started, including a couple that I was
Economics in Video Games Contango in Patrician 4 Economic concepts in computer games is a subject I've previously written about. This time, I'll look at trade of commodities in a game that I think implements it well. Patrician IV is a game set in the historic Hanseatic League, a late medieval trading network centered in northern Germany and
Canada Confederation's Widening Gyre This is a short post to check in on an issue I wrote about a year and a half ago. In my review of the New Brunswick provincial budget in 2020, I discussed Equalization payments and linked to a manifesto against them that some Albertans had made: ... "These changes
DIY Bangle Board This post describes a couple of recent DIY projects I wanted to share. My wife has a collection of bangles and was looking for an efficient way to store and display them. I made a board with pegs to hang them on. Here it is after the main construction (which
Research Batch Test to Evaluate Microbial Disinfectant Decay... During 2020 - 2021, when there was less going on than normal, myself and the research group at the University of Waterloo where I did my Master's studies took the time to finally get a draft manuscript that had been sitting on the back burner for a while ready for
Links Assorted Links (Summer 2021) It seems like a good time for another links post. To start with some good news, lumber prices seem to be returning to normal (compared to what I remarked on 6 months ago). Although there are rumours that other supply-chain-related shortages could persist or even worsen through the fall. A
Computer Toward a more decentralized internet This was a topic I wanted to learn more about, and sometimes the best way to learn something is to try to write/teach about it. Introduction It's no secret that there's a lot of angst right now about social media and the internet at large. From concerns about censorship
Personal Affordable Wedding Tips Some suggestions from me and my wife's experience last fall. Before we got married, both of us considered family highly important. We’re now around eight months into our marriage and this sentiment has only increased. Two truly are better than one. We’re both very glad that we didn’
Map Cartography in the Wardrobe The Chronicles of Narnia is one of my favourite children's series. Every good fantasy novel is incomplete without a map. While the Narnia books include some maps, they tend to focus on the area where each book is set; there is a comprehensive map in the back of some editions,
New Brunswick NB Budget 2021: Damage Report When I wrote last year's version of this post, the Coronavirus pandemic was just becoming apparent in North America. Since then, most of us have obviously had our expectations for 2020 disrupted, and public finances were no exception. In this post, I want to compare what was planned for the
History The Left Bank of the Rhine This post contains a review of Lotharingia: A Personal History of Europe's Lost Country by Simon Winder, along with a bit of programming practice I did recently. Lotharingia is a history/travel book about the swath of Europe where French and Germanic cultural regions come into contact—and frequently, over
DIY Kitchen Cart This post is a quick description of a recent DIY project I did. One of my first projects of 2021 was building a storage cart for my kitchen. Here's a picture of it: Finished cart (except for stain/varnish).The top surface has space for baskets of bread and fruit.
Links Assorted Links (Winter 2021) I like to save up interesting links I find that are related to themes I've covered here on my blog, and then share them periodically. To start with, here's a chart mapping the current state of the field of mathematics. Also on the subject of math, check out this video
archive 2020 Year in Review My customary annual retrospective. At the start of the year, I mentioned I intended to reduce my blogging frequency to one or two posts per month. I didn't even hit that target (ending up with 9 posts)—but I had a very good reason: this year I got engaged and
Book Monsoon Prospect Here's the promised forward-looking Part 2 to the historical book reviews from Part 1. In the previous part of this series, I wrote about some of the history of the Indian Ocean. In this part, I'll be looking at the geopolitical outlook of the region (including the South China Sea
History Monsoon Legacy This post is the first part of a two-part series I have planned. It is about the history of trade on the western Indian Ocean and is based on reviews of a couple of books I read this year. Part two will look forward at possible developments in that region.