UK friends and readers

The RSPB is holding a final vote on their competition for most wildlife-friendly farming practices. If you vote online before September 5, you get entered in a raffle for a free weekend at a posh hydro/spa in Leicestershire (weird: Gloucestershire is in my OS's dictionary, but not Leicestershire). The prize drawing is only open to UK residents, so I can't enter; but I figured some of you might like to.

(no subject)

RIP, Sir John Keegan

Sometimes controversial, sometimes a bit of a hack, but overall a talented and ground-breaking military historian.

really?

I'm reading this essay by Christopher Bassford, criticizing John Keegan's analysis of Carl von Clausewitz, and I'm puzzling over the idea that one (any one) would represent either "policy" or "politics" as being a solely rational endeavour. Certainly, in some ivory tower utopia, it might be please to think that the formation and execution of policy and the political process that determines both who plays the role of policy maker and how their policies are carried out are both rational. Who wouldn't like to think that the process of coming to important decisions and the implementation of those decisions would be rational?

But does anyone really believe that they *are*, in the real world? Surely not.