I've spent a good number of hours in the last few days skulking about on some of the Net's more obscure web forums, mainly occasioned by reading (and following the links from) Claire Wolfe's latest essay on gulching. It's all a bit apocalyptic for my taste, but at least it appears that Claire has gotten over the anti-urban bias of all too many Thoreauvian libertarians, who seem to think that everyone who lives in a town of more than 3,000 people is some kind of natural authoritarian.