Category Archives: History

Business, Economics, History, Media Criticism, Philosophy, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

The Good Life

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Why does it end?

When poverty is defined as relative want rather than existential need, states decay and societies decline. In the fifth century, Athenians were content to be paid to go to the theater; by the fourth, they were paid also to vote — even as they hired mercenaries to fight and forgot who won at Salamis, and why. Flash mobbing did not hit bulk food stores. The looters organized on Facebook through laptops and cell phones, not through organizing during soup kitchens and bread lines. Random assaults were not because of elemental poverty, but anger at not having exactly what appears on TV.

Obesity, not malnutrition, is the affliction at Wal-Mart. In our strange culture, that someone drives an overpriced BMW apparently means that our own Toyotas don’t have air conditioners or stereos. But that John Edwards or John Kerry or Al Gore has a huge house doesn’t mean that mine is inadequate — or the tract homes that sprout in my community for new arrivals from Mexico are too small.

Of course, the elite have responsibility to use their largess wisely and not turn into the Kardashians. But that a fifth of one percent of the taxpayers are finding ways not to pay at the income tax rate on their large incomes does not hurt the republic as much as 50% of the population paying no income tax at all. The latter noble sorts do not bother us as much, but their noncompliance bothers the foundations of our society far more than that of the stingy, but minuscule, number of grasping rich.

Yup.

History

Even Worse Than We Thought

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Traditional estimates of Civil War deaths have been too low:

Hacker says the war’s dead numbered about 750,000, an estimate that’s 20 percent higher than the commonly cited figure of 620,000. His findings will be published in December in the journal Civil War History.

“The traditional estimate has become iconic,” Hacker says. “It’s been quoted for the last hundred years or more. If you go with that total for a minute — 620,000 — the number of men dying in the Civil War is more than in all other American wars from the American Revolution through the Korean War combined. And consider that the American population in 1860 was about 31 million people, about one-tenth the size it is today. If the war were fought today, the number of deaths would total 6.2 million.”

Difficult to imagine.

General, History, Humor, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, War Commentary

Pompeii

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A tour from Lileks:

We visited some houses, saw the CAVE CANEM mural, the word WELCOME embedded in the stones in front of a house. And above it all, Vesuvius . . . venting.

“Are those clouds?”

“It’s a cloudless day except for one cloud coming out of Vesuvius? I don’t think so.”

“Is it going to explode?”

“Some day. But not today.”

Some day it will, and there will probably a tour group in progress, and a few people will think “now that’s a good tour. They even give you the volcano” while others stare in horror: well, can’t say I wasn’t warned, but jeez, what are the odds.

It’s actually part of a series he’s been running all week, on his European vacation.

[Update a couple minutes later]

This is great, too:

On the ship it was Pirate Night. We got Pirates of the Caribbean bandanas in the restaurant. The menu was pirate themed. (It was also the best meal we’d had on the ship.) There was a pirate dance in the middle of dinner. There will be fireworks on board tonight; the Disney ships are the only ones entrusted with fireworks. Then a dessert buffet and general piratical merriment. I arrred well and hard at the maitre d’ when we entered: it’s table nine I’ll be wanting, me hearties – but once Bradford, our waiter, asked me if I would be dressing up, I explained that my sympathies were with the colonial administrators, just trying to get the money to the mother country without losing it to some thieves. Pirates are interesting, but not admirable, no matter how you gussy it up with yo-ho-hoing and avast-ye-matey exultations of a life unbound from convention and oppression. As all the waiters danced around the room, wearing pirate costumes, I had a vision of a ship 400 years hence, with all the waiters dressed up for Al-Qaeda night, wearing suicide vests and waving automatic weapons.

Sadly, he’s probably prophetic. Or maybe not so sadly. I’d feel a little more optimistic if we’d actually solved the pirate problem. We did for a while, but then decided to try a new, non-effective approach.

History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Heroes Of WW II

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…continue to pass from our presence. Nancy Wake has died at ninety-eight:

Working as a newspaper reporter, Wake found herself in Vienna where she saw Jews being whipped in public by Nazi SS troops. In 2003, she described to News Limited’s then-London correspondent, Bruce Wilson, one of the horrors she witnessed in 1938.

“The Germans and Austrians had set up a kind of Catherine wheel and tied these Jews to it, and as it went around they were beating them and throwing things at them,” she said.

“I thought . . . what had they done, poor bastards? Nothing. So I said, ‘God almighty, it’s a bit much and I’ve got to do something about it’.”

It’s an amazing story. There should be another movie made about her, to reacquaint younger people with her exploits.

History, Social Commentary, Space, Space History

Forty-Two Years Ago

Hard to believe it’s been that long (doesn’t seem that long ago that I attended a celebration in Hollywood thrown by Ron Howard for the quarter-century anniversary), but today is the anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11. Wednesday is Evoloterra, so it’s a good time to plan a get together with family and friends to celebrate. Bill Simon and I, the principal authors of the ceremony, will be discussing it on The Space Show on Monday afternoon.