Earthsea is the world invented by the late Ursula K. LeGuin. Across five decades, five novels and a volume of short stories and essays, she created one of the most memorable, self-consistent and vivid imaginary universes in literature. LeGuin, in her lifetime, earned eightHugos, sixNebulas, and twenty-twoLocus Awards, and in 2003 became the second woman honored as aGrand Masterof theScience Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

The Earthsea stories themselves have won an astonishing number of awards:

Book	Awards
A Wizard of Earthsea	Boston Globe-Horn Book Award(1969) Lewis Carroll Shelf Award(1979)
The Tombs of Atuan	Newbery Honor(1972)
The Farthest Shore	National Book Award for Children’s Books(1973)
Tehanu	Nebula Award for Best Novel(1990) Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel(1991)
Tales from Earthsea	Locus Award for Best Collection

The oldest complete written sentence has been identified. It’s written in the Canaanite language, about 1,700 years ago. There are earlier writings, but they are simply names or sometimes the owner of the object.

This artifact was found at Tel Lachish in Israel, once a major Canaanite city-state in the second millennium BCE. The artifact measures just 3.5 by 2.5 centimeters (roughly 1.38 by 1 inches). The artifact was excavated in 2016, but it wasn’t until more recently that the inscription was discovered. The inscription reads,

As the numbers show, lettering is right to left. When that ancient engraver reached the right edge, he rotated the artifact 180 degrees and continued. The engraver ran out of room again (“Plan ahead,” anyone?) and had to engrave the 17th character below the 16th.

The translation? Translated, the…

At times the sheer, perverse, pig-headed stupidity of Americans threatens to overwhelm WC. It’s self-destructive, appalling and likely to be fatal soon if we cannot find a way to overcome it.

You think WC is exaggerating? You think this claim is hyperbolic? WC offers three examples – there could as easily be dozens – to demonstrate the point.

Corpus Christi Bay’s Unnecessary Water Crisis

Corpus Christi Bay and the city of the same name are about half way between Houston and the Mexican border. It has a decent industrial base, but aspires to be a second Houston. In 2017, ExxonMobil approached city officials, seeking a large portion of the City’s water supply so the oil giant could build a $10 billion plant to make plastics out of methane gas. The City, because Jobs!, enthusiastically signed over a large portion of the City’s water supply. A year later, the City did