No, this isn't a Heinlein as libertarian prophet post, it's a connection that came to me when I read a new story at Science Daily . In 1952, Heinlein wrote a short story entitled Year of the Jackpot which had, as its main character, a statisician named Potiphar Breen. Breen collected statistical curves on everything, in an increasingly crazy world. Minus some really good writing, here is the basic premise from a plot summary : Breen is a statistician. Working mostly for insurance companies, he advises them on probability and trends. In his spare time, he studies cycles. Human behavior seems to run in cycles, with prices, wages, hemlines, fashions, and entire economies crashing and rising again for no reason, except that each was following the ups and downs of a cycle. Three big cycles bottomed out in 1929, causing the Crash of 1929. It is now 1952, and every cycle he tracks will either trough or crest simultaneously in about six months. In the end [and I literally mean in th...

http://www.amazon.com/Stranger-Strange-Land-Robert-Heinlein/dp/0441790348 I am pretty much a stranger in a strange land. When I compare myself with Valentine Michael in the book, I realize I am pretty much a stranger in a strange land. I say this because I believe in personal responsibility, individual freedom and human liberty. If you want to fuck whoever you want to fuck, I could care less. If I want to pursue any modicum of happiness I will as long as it does not screw the people around me over. I am going to do it and take responsibility for it. Without any preconception of what the world should be, and accepting things as they are, I am pretty much as idiosyncratic as a Martian. Though I am not nearly as rich- except as the Greeks used to say in the kind of richness that no "shipwreck, can take away" (knowledge)- I pretty much argue that every person is whole in themselves and should grow up and be responsible for themselves and others. I guess every libertarian feels t...