Aug
17
2026

Here's Looking at Euclid

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Our Amazon Eye Candy du Jour is a lovely "Past Master Euclid's 47th Proposition Masonic Coffee Mug".

Background: Euclid's 47th proposition is more popularly known as the Pythagorean Theorem. From the Google AI:

The image shows the traditional Masonic Past Master's Jewel, featuring a scaled carpenter's square and a pendant depicting Euclid's 47th Proposition (the Pythagorean theorem).

The Square: Represents virtue, morality, and the master's authority over the lodge.

The 47th Proposition of Euclid: Engraved on a silver or rectangular plate pendant hanging from the square, symbolizing geometry, science, and the foundational truth underlying Freemasonry.

Maple Leaves Variation: The right arm of the square is adorned with five maple leaves, a specific regional or commemorative motif sometimes used in Canadian jurisdictions.

So I didn't know any of that before this morning. But I had already read Christian Britschgi's article in the latest issue of Reason, so I knew the answer to his headline question: Why is it called Euclidean zoning?

The practice of separating homes, businesses, and factories into their own dedicated districts is called "Euclidean zoning." Given that Euclidean zoning involves the slicing and dicing of city maps into color-coded districts, you might assume it is named after Euclid, the ancient Greek "father of geometry" who laid down the rules for drawing lines and shapes on flat planes. But if you ask an urban planner, he will tell you that Euclidean zoning is actually named after a town in Ohio.

In 1922, Euclid, Ohio, passed a comprehensive zoning code to protect its small-town character from expanding, industrial Cleveland next door. The code drew the ire of the Ambler Realty Company, which objected to the town's imposition of a residential-only zone on a piece of land it had hoped to use for industrial development.

The company promptly sued, which ultimately led to the Supreme Court's 1926 decision in Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co. While zoning might have been "arbitrary and oppressive" 50 years ago, Justice George Sutherland wrote for the majority, the complexities of modern urban life required local governments to carefully plan which land uses were allowed where. "A nuisance may be merely a right thing in the wrong place—like a pig in the parlor instead of the barnyard," he said.

And so our country's sad slide into statism continued…

Christian goes on to explain that Euclid, Ohio, was named by the team of surveyors who laid out the town boundaries; they were Euclid fanboys, having been trained in mathematics. I couldn't find anything that said they were Freemasons, but I didn't look very hard.

Also of note:

  • Woke One was craaazy! Five years ago, I was pretty cheesed off at NASDAQ's announced DEIsm: NASDAQ wants to kill my retirement. I quoted a Jeff Jacoby article that revealed their announced requirement that index-listed companies have “one director who self-identifies as a female” and a second who “self-identifies” as “Black or African American, Hispanic or Latinx, Asian, Native American or Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, or . . . as any of the following: lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or as a member of the queer community.”

    The Biden-era SEC approved this, but the courts did not. Quoting Google's AI:

    The Nasdaq board diversity rules were officially vacated and eliminated in late 2024 and early 2025. Companies listed on the exchange are no longer required to meet board diversity targets or publicly disclose demographic diversity matrices.

    And, as I type, the NASDAQ composite index is up 23.58% over the past calendar year. My investment portfolio thanks you, NASDAQ.

    For more on the Woke One Walkback, see Dace Potas at USA Today: Hong, AOC admit woke went too far. So why trust them now?

  • Pandering to the Antisemites. Looking at the Democrats fighting to replace my current CongressCritter, Chris Pappas (who's running to replace retiring Momma Senator Jeanne Shaheen), NHJournal notices Stefany Shaheen's Closing Message: 'I Hate Israel, Too!'

    Silverstein. Rosenfield. Brownstein.

    Those were some of the names on the front page of the Union Leader this weekend in a hit piece pushed by the Stefany Shaheen campaign targeting Maura Sullivan.

    Shaheen calls Sullivan politically suspect for taking money bundled from supporters of AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

    And we all know who gives money to pro-Israel groups, right?

    As Eric Cartman puts it so delicately on South Park, “the J-O-O-S.”

    The hits didn’t stop at the Union Leader.

    Shaheen had two of her allies, former state Sens. Jon Morgan and Tom Sherman, hit Sullivan in an op-ed for the Portsmouth Herald. “Sullivan has raised about 10% of her total campaign funds through out-of-state AIPAC donors. That’s a lot!” they wrote.

    Both those newspaper links above are paywalled. But the Union Leader article can be read at Yahoo. Fun fact from that: Stefany Shaheen "has full access to [Jeanne] Shaheen's extensive campaign fundraising rolodex, which helps explain how she has more than $122,000 from D.C. lobbyists compared to Sullivan's $10,000."

  • A dismal veep, part II. Erick Erickson looks at the economic musings of JD Vance: The Vice President Thinks Low Prices Are Bad.

    Two weeks ago the online right spent an entire week fighting about a twenty dollar burrito. Some of the loudest voices in that fight were people who spend their days defending Vice President Vance, and their complaint was affordability. Things cost too much. Working people cannot get ahead. The burrito, they said, was indicative of the burden on the young. The Vice President himself got into it, going after Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen’s weight because Thiessen would not buy the argument. It is “quite obvious the man has never missed a burrito,” Vance posted on August 5.

    Then, someone found this video of the Vice President in 2023, at an American Moment event, when he was in the Senate, arguing that things are too cheap for Americans. In his own words:

    “This is like, maybe super heterodox. I am not sure that I think the reserve currency is actually good for the United States of America. I think there is a good argument that reserve currency status is akin to coal in Appalachia, it’s a resource curse, right? It allows your consumers to consume very cheaply, right? That’s been the story of the American economy for the last 15 or so years, uh, even before that, is we can just borrow basically in an unlimited way because we have the reserve currency.”

    Read that a second time, because he tells you his whole theory and I do not think he heard himself say it.

    JD is gonna run on making prices higher? Hoo boy.

  • Artificial photosynthesis update? At the Rational Optimists Society, Stephen McBride looks at The Rockefeller of solar.

    NASA has reprimanded Casey Handmer more than once. His crime? Solving problems too quickly.

    So he quit to work on something much harder.

    Today Casey makes natural gas out of sunlight and air, identical to the stuff that heats your house and cooks your dinner.

    Casey's company is "Terraform Industries". More detail:

    Petrol, diesel and natural gas are all hydrocarbons. Carbon is floating in the air around you. Hydrogen is in every drop of water. Turning these abundant natural elements into fuel is simply a matter of rearranging their atoms.

    What makes this practical? The price drop on solar panels.

    I left a comment on the article alluding to my crackpot idea: Artificial Photosynthesis. Instead of using the process for fuel (which, eventually, just returns the carbon to the atmosphere), you could "rearrange" the atoms into hydrocarbons that could be sequestered. Carbon capture! Climate change solved!

    But before they could say "we thought of that already", I looked at the Terraform Industries' blog. As it turns out, they are working on that too.