El Borak's Myopia

El Borak's Myopia

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Labels: All You Zombies

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My wife knows me too well

So anyway, I told the lovely and gracious Rogue that I was planning to take the week between Christmas and New Years off. Not go anywhere, just hang around the house, work in the yard, read a few books.

She bought me Dragon Age Origins so I'll stay out of her face that week.

UPDATE: Yes, it rocks.

Labels: Dragons is so stupid

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If by 'historian' we mean 'internet atheist'

then we're all on the same page:

Obviously, the above is not an exact chart, but it does represent how some historians view the Christian Dark Ages*. (My guess would be that the collapse of the stable Roman Empire had at least as much effect as the domination of Christian religious dogma that stifled the pursuit of any heretical knowledge.)

Now I'll give Luke** all kinds of leeway in that the Christian Dark Ages is not really his point in this post; rather it's a theoretical Muslim Dark Ages based on demographics. He is also honest enough to posit that the complete destruction of the government and culture and an invasion of swirling hordes of unlettered Barbarians might have something to do with a drop off in learning; Luke is neither wholly bigoted nor wholly foolish. No, my beef here is the assumption - or rather blatant untruth - that he slips in above as a base for his later argument, that the chart somehow represents how some historians view the Christian Dark Ages.

It might come as something of a shock to internet atheists to learn that real, actual historians never use the phrase Christian Dark Ages***. In fact, they don't even really use the term Dark Ages. To buttress the point, I could show all manner of historians not using it, but it's probably easier to go to that treasury of general knowledge, Encyclopedia Britannica****:

"[Dark Ages] is now rarely used by historians because of the value judgment it implies. Though sometimes taken to derive its meaning from the fact that little was then known about the period, the term’s more usual and pejorative sense is of a period of intellectual darkness and barbarity..."

Which pejorative sense is, of course, exactly what internet atheists mean when they use it, and why they anachronously attach "Christian" to it. Even so, that whole, flat, no-learning millennium on Luke's chart, that still exists, right?

That period has also been called the "Middle Ages," which title seems to lack the derogatory power of Dark Ages and on the surface sounds a bit more fair. But our encyclopedia again lets us in on a little secret:

The term [Middle Ages] and its conventional meaning were introduced by Italian humanists with invidious intent ... the notion of a thousand-year period of darkness and ignorance separating them from the ancient Greek and Roman world served to highlight the humanists’ own work and ideals... the humanists invented the Middle Ages in order to distinguish themselves from it.

The Middle Ages nonetheless provided the foundation for the transformations of the humanists’ own Renaissance.

Imagine that! Italian intellectuals created the idea of a thousand years of darkness - with "invidious intent" - to illustrate how advanced and smart they considered themselves. Just look at the ignorance they saved us from! It's the same manner and for the same reason that internet atheists posit one.

The fact is that, if one were going to draw a chart that measured actual learning or advancement, there would be very little rise in Rome - the Romans were not creators, not scientists, and not inventors, but engineers and soldiers - and certainly none in late Rome. The "rise" in Greece might have topped out in 300bc or even a bit earlier. There certainly would have been a drop after 476, but it would immediately begin upward again, slowly at first, then accelerating into the Renaissance and still accelerating today. And there would be room for India, China, Persia, Meso-America, all those places unaffected by the non-existent Christian Dark Ages.

But the irony is that internet atheists, who generally consider themselves the most intelligent, informed, and enlightened people on the planet, rely so often for their arguments on data that is not only demonstrably incorrect and out of step with modern scholarship, but literally centuries out of date. It's almost like recommending Paine's Age of Reason as a serious religious resource.

* Some of you have seen this chart before (I dealt with its shortcomings about 2 and a half years ago) but since Luke's post is from this year, I figured it might be time for a bit of a refresher.

** Yes, it's the same Luke who is involved in a (so far) 7-round debate with Vox.

*** That's not exactly true. A search of JSTOR turns up 3 usages of the phrase in a century of journals. By contrast, a search for "Medieval" brings up a mere 82,300 references.

**** Not because it's 'better' but because it is more general. Britannica generally defines modern professional usages of terms that are assumed in more scholarly works. But the point is that it defines current usage, not the usage of past centuries, which we shall see is the case with 'Dark Ages' as an historical paradigm.

Labels: history

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Tommy

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The New Legions

It's far more civilized so far:

Pennsylvania's school districts will see their retirement costs increase by more than 70 percent next year as the first symptoms of the state's public pension crisis begin to be felt...

That means taxpayers will have to spend $1.1 billion next school year for teachers' pensions, or almost $500 million more than this year.

State and local education officials said the worst part is that next year's increase is just a fraction of an anticipated leap to record public contributions by 2012, when the state and local tab is projected to exceed $4 billion.

A lot of people are fond of making comparisons between the USA and the late Roman Empire; we're going to fall just like them and all that. I think that generally such comparisons are forced and illustrate the writer's psychology more than anything about either Rome or the USA.

But if we are following the Roman model, then I would have to say that we are Rome in the generation following the Third Punic War rather than Rome in the third century. The background is that at the end of the Third Punic War, when Rome utterly defeated and destroyed its long-time enemy Carthage, Rome stood for a while as a republic with no worthy opponents. The result was not immediate expansion (the greatest expansions would come in the next century) but a turning inward of politics that destroyed the republic and resulted in the Sulla/Marius civil war, leading to the Caesar/Pompey civil war, leading to the Imperium.

But what is different this time is the nature of the army looting the Republic. In Marius' day, it was legionaries seeking pensions who ultimately changed the focus of Rome - no longer would issues affecting all be hashed out in the legislature, but rather all politics would devolve to a simple theme: the man who held power was the man who could best command soldiers, and that man was the man who provided them the most booty and the best retirement.

Today, it is not the soldiers who haul off the booty of the republic in retirement, but public employees*. USA today announced this week that fully a fifth of federal employees are now making six-figure salaries**, and hardly a day goes by where one does not see an article explaining that this or that public employee group is going to need $x billion tax dollars in the pension fund over the next few years, an incredible increase over prior years.

And it does not help that government has been the one area of the economy which has been posting increasing employment numbers - more and more employees who will be demanding more and more pensions based on higher and higher salaries. The amount squeezed from taxpayers on behalf of those who are no longer working is going to have to increase massively unless governments get their budgets under control. There is little evidence so far that they - at least beyond the local level - are able to do so voluntarily.

If one considers the government a business, it is easy to see just what kind of business it is: one that is owned not by shareholders or by customers - the customers of government are captive - but by its employees. And a business operated on behalf of its employees is one where there are few incentives to control costs or make a profit; all incentives are geared toward looting customers and company on behalf of the workers***.

If we are Rome, then the good news is that we have a long, explosively expansive period before we fall. The bad news is that relatively few Romans enjoyed that period very much.

* Of whom I am one, technically.

** Which includes a jump from a single transportation department employee making $170k 2 years ago to almost two thousand today.

*** Which is why GM - to pick an example - will be destroyed utterly in short order.

Labels: Financial Death Spiral, history

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Labels: demotivators

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It's such a puzzle

What I can't figure out is how this:

October was the second monthly year-over-year increase for retailers this year and the best performance since April 2008, according to Retail Metrics. The fall momentum has given retailers, beleaguered by a year of sharp sales declines and steep discounting, more confidence heading into the critical holiday shopping season.

Jives with this:

Texas sales tax collections plunged in October over the same month in 2008, the state comptroller said.

Fort Worth’s collections were off 17.3 percent, Arlington’s 4.7 percent, Hurst’s 11.8 percent and Southlake’s 13.9 percent. Sales tax receipts are a major source of income for municipal budgets, and cities have already cut deeply.

Compared to government figures, the 150-year-old John Brown family cipher is a piece of cake...

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Labels: Obamarama

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