This is not a rate problem

Hat tip: Mish)

All the king's men

Martin Hutchinson insists they have the power:

At their two-day meeting that starts today (Tuesday), U.S. Federal Reserve policymakers will have to grapple with a moral choice that is well beyond the pay grade of central bankers - choosing between the financial stability of U.S. homeowners and world hunger.

That’s not an exaggeration. Interest-rate policy normally only affects the world economy at the margin, but it has now been so expansionary for so long that the Fed’s interest-rate strategy has turned into a moral dilemma of sorts. In short, the central bank’s monetary policy will likely determine whether millions of U.S. homeowners lose their homes or millions of the world’s poor starve.

There's just one problem: there is no guarantee, in fact it is very unlikely, that lowering rates will 'save' the housing market in any measurable way. That's because the problem of the housing market today is not simply one of rates.

Hutchinson is perfectly correct that Fed policy has been too expansionary for too long*. That in and of itself caused a housing price bubble - a period in which prices grow beyond any reasonable relation to the value of underlying asset. Bubbles, by their very nature, change the financial landscape.

Why can't housing values rise at double-digit rates forever? Because the purchased product must be paid for by a buyer who, no matter his belief in the value of the house - and no matter the rate he negotiates on his loan - is restricted in what he can pay. House prices are ultimately capped by household cash flow; therefore a bubble, no matter how big it grows, must pop. And when it does - as it has - it leaves in its wake people who are unqualified to buy another house. Maybe even more important, it leaves both lenders and borrowers who are unwilling to get fooled again. Yes, lowering rates can lower payments**, but it cannot turn back the clock.

To assert that the Fed can rescue housing is to assert that the bubble can be re-blown, that attitudes and credit scores can be restored ex-post-facto to the way they existed in 2005, that we can resurrect hundreds of now-bankrupt subprime lenders to toss cash to strawberry pickers for $700,000 homes, that banks will again issue 30-year money on a wink and a promise, that investors - from US cities and retirement funds to foreign banks - will never again ask exactly what it is their money is being invested in, that everyone will forget the horrendous losses of the past two years and go on as if nothing happened. None of those rely on short-term interest rates, and therefore they are outside the power of the Fed to change. That market is as much a part of history as Holland's tulip exchanges.

That leaves two options: either the Fed will lower rates and destroy the dollar while not rescuing the housing market, or it will raise rates and save the dollar while not rescuing the housing market.

If you want to know which will happen, figure out which is worse for the poor and bet on that.

* I would say since its inception in 1913. But that should not surprise us: that was the reason it was created. An institution which creates money from nothing and lends it at interest can always be counted on to create too much for the good of the borrowers.

** Though with big banks like Citi raising capital at 8.4%, you have to wonder how much of the Fed's expected quarter point will dribble down to us strawberry pickers.

431bc and all that

I'm taking part in Vox Day's Voxiversity study of the Peloponnesian War, and it really could not have come at a better time. This semester is almost over* and HIST700 Ancient Greece is coming down the pike. Sometimes I think the universe was designed specifically with my desires in mind.

Since I have to write up three books for that one anyway, and since I have not read Thucydides in 20 years and didn't have a copy on hand**, I ordered the cheapest used copy of "The Landmark Thucydides" - that's the Strassler translation with VDH's intro that everyone raves about - I could find.

Well, when I opened the package, I immediately noticed the sticker that said 938.05 T532Lt on the spine, and I'm like, "Crap, it's a library book.***" So I looked inside the cover and was surprised to find it previously inhabited the Army's Command and General Staff College at Leavenworth.

And therefore I am pleased to report that it looks extremely well-read. So we've got that going for us, anyway.

* And I'm at that point where I'm quite sick of 'these' classes and looking forward to my next ones. In fact, today I was actually trying to calculate whether if I completely blew off the last Spanish test I would still have an A. It would be close, best not to chance it.

** And since I am a world-class cheapskate. It would be a cold day in hell before I pay full price for a book, even a nice hardcover edition (which this was not). I figure with as many booksales as I haunt, I'll eventually find it in the form and for the price I want.

*** I'm not complaining, I'm just saying. That's the price you pay for not paying full price.

Cry 'Havoc' and let slip the kittens of war

Actually, they were dead serious

JR Nyquist lets us in on a little joke:

The Declaration of Independence begins with the assertion that “all men are created equal.” But this is a fiction, not to be taken seriously. The Founding Fathers were not serious. Russell Kirk once pointed out, “The Declaration of 1776 is simply a declaration – and a highly successful piece of immediate political propaganda.”

According to [Pat] Buchanan, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address also used egalitarian sentiment “to ennoble the Union’s war to crush the South’s fight for independence….” Other presidents have relied on democratic or egalitarian slogans in wartime, such as Wilson in World War I and Roosevelt in World War II. The past use of ideological slogans to justify a nation’s cause should not obscure the real reasons wars have been fought.

National survival and national interest, the bedrock of national patriotism, have nothing to do with ideology. Buchanan quotes from Lincoln’s letter to Horace Greeley: “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not … to destroy slavery.” The slogan of “equality for all men” should never be taken seriously.

Actually, the forefathers were quite serious, serious enough to pledge (and pay) lives, fortunes, and sacred honor in a war to win the right to rule themselves, to turn their whole world and the world of their children upside down politically, socially, and economically. But while serious, “all men are created equal” is and always has been limited by the phrase which follows, “…and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” It is not, at its core, a statement about nations or even governments, but is a religious assertion about individual people and their place in God’s universe.

As for modern egalitarianism, the forefathers were not foolish enough to believe that all men were as tall as George Washington or as old as Ben Franklin or as good-looking as DotDot, nor did they believe that it was a result of institutional oppression that Michael Jordan makes more money than I. Instead, what they were saying, and what they were fighting for, was freedom from the idea that because some men are born into certain stations they held the right to enforce their ideas and will on men of lower estate. They were fighting against the aristocracy of blood, but they could help but put in its place an aristocracy of talent, where they knew from experience there was an innate equality based on the differing abilities and actions of individuals. That modern Americans find that hierarchy of talent oppressive is hardly the fault of the founding fathers; unlike us, they were perfectly willing to suffer the consequences of their conscious actions.

Certainly the Declaration was propaganda***, certainly it was a slogan, certainly it remained a goal rather than an accomplishment, but the fact that men like Lincoln used it without believing in it does not negate it; it simply proves that men often live by their pocketbooks rather than by ideals. Its power arises not from the vision of the rulers, but from the innate understanding of the person preached to that it is how things ought to be.

And true this ideology has little to do with national survival and perhaps national interest** but it has everything to do with the reason a nation ought to survive. Patriotism's value does not arise from my ability to say, “America is the greatest nation in the world because I was born here,” nor is its purpose to extend the life of a nation simply for the sake of continuity or history or power. Rather it is to ensure that the nation, at the end of the day, at the end of one’s life, is worthy to be passed on to one’s children, that they may enjoy the right to life, liberty, and property that is the universal gift of the Creator of the universe.

* meaning “without external constraint or incentive”

** If we define that as the leverage power of one nation over another.

*** information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc.

Color me so surprised

I'm the new affirmative action demographer guy here now. Really. Go figure.

Break out the ClueBat

Tony Elliot of OpEdNews has it all figured out:

A solution to outrageous gasoline and resulting product price increases.

I'll admit first off that I know absolutely nothing about OpEdNews*. But I am going to work from the assumption, based on a) its complete confidence in a simple yet heretofore overlooked government-imposed solution, b) the absolute futility (bordering on idiocy) of that solution, and c) the claim that the author is a "Political Commentary Columnist" who "belong[s] to many political groups and organizations," that the aforelinked site, shall we say, leans left. And that's fine, because I haven't given out a good fisking in a long while. But I'm in the mood.

This "solution" is so stupid that the treatment it deserves qualifies as felony assault in more than 2 dozen US jurisdictions. I'm not providing that treatment because I'm a rectum of nearly epic proportions**, but because as gas prices continue to rise, more and more people are going to call for just such solutions, which will exacerbate the problem no little bit. I apologize to the author in advance (and would do so on his site if it did not require registration), even as I break out my ClueBat:

All I hear in the news these days are reports of world wide consumer complaints about rising gasoline and food prices. However, I haven't heard one word from anyone offering any ideas as to what to realistically do about it.

We might as well get the real solution, such as it is, out of the way. If one is going to mockingly eviscerate someone else's solution, it's only fair to present the real one up front. So here it is:

Prices depend upon three variables: supply, demand, and the medium of exchange. There is nothing that can be done about supply in the short term. In fact, if Peak Oil is here, a real possibility, then supply is about to become stubbornly inelastic. What we have is what we have, and if $120 oil does not increase production, it's likely because it cannot physically be increased for other, technical reasons. The same is true for demand. If $120 a barrel oil and $3.50-$4 gas does not cause a reduction in usage, it's because it cannot be reduced short of banning the market itself.

That leaves the medium of exchange, the dollar. It is no secret that I have been a consistent critic of El Presidente's economic policies, not because I'm a Democrat*** but because they are tailor-made to destroy the medium of exchange in which we measure rice and gas and houses and plastic Pokemon toys. Gas is going up in large part because the dollar is going down****, and there are two ways to reverse that trend.

The first is to balance the Federal budget. Today. Rather than continuing to issue $600 billion new dollars, at least, for this year's spending, we need to issue none, zero, zip, zilch, nada. We need to cut spending and, yes, raise taxes, so that people feel the full effects of all the government they demand. Our Alice in Wonderland fiscal policy is directly responsible for the fact that all commodities, not just gas, are in an upward spiral. It may require immediate withdrawal from Iraq and Germany and Korea and Japan, it may require cancellation of the scheduled helicopter money drops and subsidies for "affordable" housing loans up to $720k. But supply and demand works for dollars as well as oil, if you want to raise the value of a dollar, you have to reduce their supply, and to do that, the supplier, the federal government, must stop issuing them every time some politically-connected group screams for more. Government spending should be cut by at least half. At least.

The second is to raise interest rates by a factor of five, or better yet abolish the Fed and let interest rates find a natural level on their own. That would probably mean recession or depression, but we are getting both anyway compliments of the massive inflation we have undergone since our last one. What it will also mean is an end to Wall Street Finance, in which most Americans spend their workdays moving dollars rather than building or growing things people can use or eat, which we today buy from other countries with printed dollars.

Raise the value of a dollar and you reduce the price of oil and food proportionally. Not only is it a solution that is completely within the power of government, it is the only solution that will work over any time horizon.

Now, I suspect that the author, like most Americans, would say that cutting the US budget or raising taxes are not 'realistic.' That's fine. But actions have consequences, and these are the consequences of our previous actions. If we do not wish to change our actions, we have little right to bitch about the consequences.

That said, let's move on:

The solution to this problem is to drastically drop the world price of a barrel of crude.

Yes, just like the solution to my four-minute mile problem is that I need to run faster.

The United States has the power to drop the price of crude by 50% in a matter of hours if we chose to do so.

The Feds have no power to reduce the world price of oil any more than they have the power to reduce the world price of fish sticks and wine corks. We don't own the market, net-supply the market, or control the market; the price is what buyers and sellers, worldwide, of contracts for the real commodity agree upon. That said, should we reduce the price by half, all other things being equal, it also reduces the cost in China and India and Germany by the same proportion. Do we expect that to not increase demand? Exercise for the student: work out for yourselves what the effect on prices would be from that increase.

What the U.S. Government needs to do is to announce that it will begin an immediate mandatory gas rationing plan for all 50 states. This plan should mandate an odd and even license plate number for purchase of gasoline on selected days of the week.

So I can buy gas on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and every other Sunday. Does that change supply? No. Does it change demand? No. Does it change the value of the medium of exchange? No. How then, exactly, is this supposed to lower the price? The author seems to forget to say, I suspect because he has not bothered to answer the question for himself. I only buy gas once a week anyway, does it matter what day I buy that gas if I am driving the same car the same distance over the course of that week? Let the reader decide, but realize that this is a rationing plan that sidesteps the actual pain of rationing, the actual decrease in usage, the actual 'going without no matter what.' It's a perfect liberal solution because it demands symbolic action and expects real results.

Such a rationing plan, just by the U.S. alone, would, “in my opinion”, drop crude oil prices on the world market by 50% within hours of the announcement and by much more in the following weeks.

My dad used to have a saying about opinions, not fit for a family-oriented blog such as this, which ended with the phrase, "and they usually stink." He was correct. Especially so in this case, because this "rationing plan" does not ration anything but time, and adds nothing to the market but another layer of bureaucracy and regulation that makes it even less efficient at delivering oil from ground to gas tank than it already is. If less efficient delivery of a product to the consumer is a solution to high prices, I look forward to my next heart transplant, which should cost me $5 and some change, and will come with a 5-pound block of government cheese thrown in to assure I'll need another.

America has the power to roll back the price of crude and in turn drastically reduce resulting price increases such as food and other oil related items any time it wants to. It just depends on whether the two Oil Men in The White House are willing to do what’s right for the World Economy.

That's it. America has the power. All we have to do is tell people on what day they can purchase the same amount of gasoline from stations that have the same supply, and it will magically cost us less than half as much. It's freaking economic magic, whereby a dose of patriotism***** and regulation can overcome the laws of mathematics, economics, and probably physics as well.

Better that the government should pass a law halving the length of the mile, which would at least have the effect of doubling the gas mileage of every car in the nation.

The real problem is not that liberals don't understand economics (though that is A problem), but that they believe that politicians have the power to do anything they want. It follows from that that whatever is happening occurs because politicians want it to happen, exactly, and with no unforseen consequences. And it follows from that that Bush and Cheney want rising gas prices because they are oilmen. Did Nixon, Ford, and Carter want climbing gas prices as well, even though they were NOT oilmen? Oh, well, never mind that.

To the liberal mind, such pricing issues occur because of the evil intentions of (Republican) politicians. In the real world, they occur because the idiocy of (Republican and Democrat) politicians exacerbates real supply/demand equations. In truth, politics cannot make markets more efficient; they cannot even move markets temporarily except at a real cost to be borne later.

Well, now it is later, and the real costs of 70 years of price fixing, manipulation, deficits, and regulation are coming home to roost. The solution is not to add another layer of coercive solution to the problem. The real answer is to stop doing the things that are causing, or at least exacerbating, the problem in the first place.

* and I'll admit second that I don't care enough to go find out for reasons that will soon become obvious.

** though I'll admit that helps

*** In fact, I believe less in democracy with each passing day.

**** If you want in interesting illustration of how the medium of exchange affects prices, price gasoline in the normal pre-1965 US currency, silver dimes. Silver dimes are worth about a dollar each today, which means that you can still buy gas for 30 cents a gallon, provided you have the right 30 cents. The difference represents the destruction of your money by government in the past 40 years.

***** or rather, faith in the omniscience and beneficence of our messianic federal government

A pirate is never daunted

at least not in public:

To some pirates, however, the prospect of international force is not particularly daunting.

"We are not scared of the U.S. troops or any other troops stationed off our waters. Why should we be scared?" asked Siyad, a Somali pirate who asked that his full name not be used for fear of reprisals.

You know, sometimes I wonder if the guys from Monty Python occasionally sneak into newspaper offices and insert stuff like this into stories just to see if they can get away with it.

(hat tip: cfdxprt)

Didn't expect this

Not from the Wall Street Journal, anyway:

I don't want to alarm anybody, but maybe it's time for Americans to start stockpiling food.

No, this is not a drill.

You've seen the TV footage of food riots in parts of the developing world. Yes, they're a long way away from the U.S. But most foodstuffs operate in a global market. When the cost of wheat soars in Asia, it will do the same here.

I guess the food meme is spreading, at least the "need" version of it. And it will be interesting to see how quickly it converts from one based on fear of there being none to one based on confidence; not confidence that "bad things can't happen here*" but confidence that "Whatever the problem, I will do what it takes to solve it for my family."

Most of the stories so far treat food as if it were one big, interchangeable commodity, as if a bunch of bananas was the same as a box of Chex or a side of beef. And as I was walking the aisles at WalMart last night I was pondering how nothing could be further from the truth. One can buy potatoes, just stuck in a bag, for $x. If one spent the same amount of money on potato chips, one would get less. Much less. An order of magnitude less.

One difference of course is processing - we are paying the vast majority of our food money for someone else to put it in a form that is convenient for us. The cheese is shredded, the bacon is sliced, shrinkwrapped and refrigerated, the breakfast cereal comes in a multicolored cardboard box with an internal liner and a little plastic toy**. So long as that is the case, America does not have a food cost problem as much as we have a packaging cost problem, and that kind of a problem is much easier to overcome.

I suspect it will become obvious to us very quickly, and will be overcome just as quickly. As people come to realize they can no longer afford their potatoes to be sliced, fried, and shaped into interlocking pieces stored in a foil-lined cardboard tube with a plastic lid, they'll just buy potatoes in a bag. Or they'll grow their own.

A second difference is transport - it simply costs more to ship bananas from Guatemala than tomatoes from Hays. Some things may be going away or will become prohibitively expensive. So be ready to make substitutions.

Our system has allowed us the luxury of spending far more on packing and moving our food than on the actuall food. And that has been a cushion that will buffer the costs of food so long as we are willing to make substitutions and a few sacrifices of convenience on our own part.

We can all do that; hell for our grandparents it was a matter of course. Which means that if America develops a hunger problem, it will not be because we don't have potatoes in bags, but because people don't have the faintest idea what to do with them and have less interest in learning.

* Which is not even confidence, but denial.

** also known as, an addition to the trade deficit

The experts agree with Mike T

Whose off-hand comment about hippies hurting the poor is supported by 'experts' at the United Nations. And he didn't need either a doctorate or a cushy government job to figure it out:

(CNN) -- Those battling global warming by promoting biofuels may unintentionally be adding to skyrocketing world food prices, creating what one expert calls "a silent tsunami" in developing nations...

"The drive for more biofuels means more investment is going into those crops, meaning less land and less investment going in for food crops, causing a massive conflict and resulting in rising prices, which is having a huge negative impact, especially on developing countries," Clare Oxborrow, food campaigner for Friends of the Earth, told CNN.

I'm amazed at the number of so-called experts who find this sort of thing surprising - when in fact it was so simple that any farmer* could have told you exactly what was going to happen:

• The government was going to give businesses a bunch of money so they could make fuel from corn at a loss**.
• They would buy up as much corn as they could with this free money
• That increase in demand would raise the price of corn.
• Farmers would plant more corn to take advantage of the increase in price
• Therefore they would plant less wheat
• Therefore the price of wheat would go up, too.
• The poor would be screwed by the hippies.
  

Now that it has happened, of course, those who pushed governments into such a foolish and destructive course of action are genuinely surprised not only at the fact that their pet project is destroying the helpless, but that it's not even very good at solving the problem it was designed for in the first place:

[British Prime Minister Gordon] Brown in an article posted on the 10 Downing Street Web site, said, "We now know that biofuels intended to promote energy independence and combat climate change are frequently energy-inefficient.

He now knows. That's because he's so smart***. Which ought to make us all feel better.

But he should have known long before he and the other governments upset the entire world food market for one very important reason: if it was worth doing, it would have been done - for profit and without subsidies - by the free market already.

* so long as he actually farmed rather than being a hired lobbyist for some farmers' organization. Like all such pressure groups, they are created for the purpose of plunder and have very little interest in its side effects.

** This is known as a subsidy, which is completely unnecessary if they could produce biofuels at a profit.

*** so smart, in fact, that when he was in charge of the British Treasury, Brown sold off about half of that nation's gold at $257 an ounce and bought US Treasury bonds with the money. That sale marked the bottom of 20-year bear market, and the price of gold has about quadrupled in the 6 years since then. The US dollar has gone from about 120 on the USDX to ~71.

Hoarding is good

Which is why rationing is the preferred solution:

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Many parts of America, long considered the breadbasket of the world, are now confronting a once unthinkable phenomenon: food rationing.

Major retailers in New York, in areas of New England, and on the West Coast are limiting purchases of flour, rice, and cooking oil as demand outstrips supply. There are also anecdotal reports* that some consumers are hoarding grain stocks.

The lovely and gracious Rogue has mentioned on several occasions over the past few weeks that not only are food prices sky-high and rising, but that the shelves seem emptier than ever. I mentally figured that with rising food prices, stores were more likely than not simply reducing inventory to avoid having so much cash tied up. After all, lots of shelf-supply is on credit and that's getting tight everywhere.

Now I'm not so sure that's the whole story. When you combine a record low dollar, record high-fuel prices, and record-high food prices, which have led to bans on the export of grains and rice from Asian nations** and food riots in a dozen countries, I suspect we are starting to see supply disruptions based on logistics. The JIT supply chain is simply not designed to handle those kinds of disruptions, especially if they last a while.

Such disruptions could certainly grow worse as several factors reinforce one another, i.e. as stores carry less stock for financial reasons, it takes fewer supply disruptions, and smaller disruptions, to leave shelves bare. That has another bad effect: consumers, used to shelves overflowing with nature's and Sara Lee's bounty, are going to get awfully nervous when they start seeing empty ones. That will cause even more empty ones in short order. That's when the food panics*** begin.

It goes without saying**** that if the people standing in the rice line arguing with the clerk over whether you can buy one bag or two had saved up a few weeks' or few months' supply, with maybe a couple extra bags of flour or cans of corned beef hash, rather than shopping every two days and keeping nothing on hand, you would have no need to panic and no need to hoard today.

So why don't more people do it? Why won't people set aside a few months' worth of food just in case? It's not cost. In fact, with food prices rising the way they are, you would actually have saved money, because you would be eating food today you bought at yesterday's prices. No, the reason is far more emotional: saving food is a tacit admission that you might need it. To store up ahead of time is to admit that something bad might happen, that you are the kind of person who believes that bad things can happen. You're a pessimist, a cynic. And probably unAmerican as well.

On a completely unrelated note, the asparagus, horseradish, and rhubarb look great. Tomatoes, peppers, cukes, pumpkin, corn, and canteloupe went in this weekend.

* I wonder if there's an anecdotal government agency that writes and files anecdotal reports, then occasionally leaks anecdotal medical data via the web or periodically loses laptops with hordes of anecdotal social security numbers on them.

** Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Singapore, and Thailand have all been mentioned in the news recently as nations that will either tax food exports or ban them altogether.

*** a.k.a. "hoarding by idiots." Hoarding gets a bad name because idiots wait until the shortage arrives to do it. Far better to hoard when there is plenty on the shelves. Like panic, get it out of the way early so you can then face the problem with a clear head. And if you've already hoarded, then you're not standing in line with everyone else and what little there is goes farther. Everyone wins when smart people hoard.

**** Which has never stopped me from saying anything, obviously.

It's our currency, but it's your problem

The (in)famous words of John Connally echo today:

Jean-Claude Juncker, the EU's 'Mr Euro', has given the clearest warning to date that the world authorities may take action to halt the collapse of the dollar and undercut commodity speculation by hedge funds.

Momentum traders have blithely ignored last week's accord by the G7 powers, which described "sharp fluctuations in major currencies" as a threat to economic and financial stability. The euro has surged to fresh records this week, touching $1.5982 against the dollar and £0.8098 against sterling yesterday.

"I don't have the impression that financial markets and other actors have correctly and entirely understood the message of the G7 meeting," he said.

Au contraire, my cheese-eating surrender-monkey compatriot, currency traders have instead correctly and entirely ignored the message of the G7 meeting, which added up to, in essence, "Seriously you guys, this dollar fall has gone on long enough...*"

Nice words, certainly fit to be delivered in French, but to which I say, "You ain't seen nuthin' yet." We've got a new president coming with more new programs on tap than he has Che Guevara posters thumbtacked to his campaign headquarters' walls. We've got a recession that is already demanding billions of newly-created dollars in bailouts and will demand much, much more in unemployment insurance, FDIC payouts, and maybe even purchasing toxic waste subprime bonds at face value. Hell, we're even printing up dollars and giving them away to any American who can prove he has a heartbeat**. We're going to drive the dollar to nothing. You hear us? Nothing.

You wanna buy them up from us with real goods like the Chinese do? Fine by us; we can print faster than you can manufacture. You wanna buy them up with newly-printed currency of your own? Fine by us; join us in the roller coaster to economic hell***. If you don't want to destroy your own economies, then you can just shut on up and let us destroy ours.

You guys ought to know better****. This is America. We do what we want.

* "...and if things don't change around here, our next statement will be even more strongly worded."

** and we're not even checking THAT very carefully.

*** We'll even save a seat by the fire for you.

**** After all, it's not like Europe has never seen a whole nation go batshit insane before.

I think she should ask him anyway

Snopes wonders if it's real. But, hey, it is Hays, Kansas, after all.

(hat tip: JD)

Everything you see is fake

Especially if there's a politician in the picture.

I just ran across the picture on the right today for the first time. I don't know how old it is, but let me give you a little background on the picture on the left: It won a Pulitzer prize*. It's been made into a statue. And it is a purposeful attempt to manipulate public attitudes through symbolism.

You see, in 1952, Adlai Stevenson had a problem. He was considered** to be a condescending elitist who despised common culture and the common people. He was too good for them. He was too smart for them. And so the common people despised him right back.

That creates a problem, because the common people vote. So in order to show a sense of solidarity, and hard work, and frugality, an image was created, the image of a man who worked so hard, who was so focused and common, that he had worked a hole right in his shoe and seemed unaware of it. And a photographer just happened to be there to catch it***. Of course, the photo didn't put Stevenson in the White House. The commoners still liked Ike. But the kind of people who admired Stevenson's cleverness liked the symbolism of the photo, and it has become something of a trade secret among politicians****.

So now Obama has a similar problem. He's perceived as an elitist. He can't bowl. He thinks people who shoot guns are bitter. That's not good. He needs a symbol, some kind of subliminal assertion that will convince the commoners, without them thinking about it too hard*****, that he's just like them.

As if regular people walk around with holes in their shoes.

* Photographer William Gallagher, 1953

** and certainly not without reason. Of course, for the campaign, the problem is not that he was those things, but that he was perceived to be them (see Machiavelli 16-18). Kinda like how Hillary being perceived a liar is considered more important than her actually being one.

*** One of the major coincidences of history, I assure you.

**** I once ran a house campaign for a conservative Republican who had a pair of shoes just like that to illustrate how hard he was working. I wonder if newspaper editors ever tire of seeing old shoes?

***** If they thought about it for half a second, they'd realize that the whole 'elitist' accusation is pretty silly, since all senators are elitists. But this is the silly season, when the voters are called upon to choose the elitist who lies to them in the most acceptable manner.

What an adventure

I'm amazed anyone else has ever heard of Clarkhouse Creek:

I was sick of this little sewer (beneath Cascade Park), and went ahead to scout, leaving my bulky gear behind, and wanted to see if there was any immediate satisfaction or else I would leave the creek until the summertime’s comfortable 60-degree waters... The pipe opened up into a medium-sized room with brickwork, stonework, waterfalls, and a skylight. “YEAH! Wow! Bring the camera, this just turned into one sexy drain!”

I didn't even know that little drainage ditch had a name until after I had already left Duluth*, but it actually provided one of my favorite wintertime activities as a punk kid: sledding under the streets on ice. Clarkhouse appears just about from nothing a little south of Orange Street on the (since-developed) hillside, and back in the 70s, when it was cold enough to freeze the creek solid even in the tunnels under the street, we used to sled from as far up on the hillside as we could all the way down to Cascade Park.

You had to have one of those sleds with metal runners to really get the full enjoyment, because once you left Bernice's** yard (north side of Skyline) and went underground, there was no snow. With an angle of descent like Duluth enjoys, you could get some pretty good speed so long as the creek was really solid. Anyway, the tunnel under Skyline Parkway was gorgeous, hand-built in the last Depression out of cut stone. But the coolest thing about this tunnel was that the melting snow from Skyline would drip right down over the face of it and freeze solid, so there was always a huge curtain of ice covering the mouth that you had to work your way around.

At the south end of that tunnel you came out in Lisa Bouchard's*** yard for about 50 yards, then it was back under the alley (newer concrete pipe) then through Mary McMullen's yard. But when you got to 9th Street, that's when it got fun.

I mentioned that it had to be really cold to make this workable, and the pipe that ran from 9th Street, under the yard of a girl named Laura (I think) who was in my brother Mike's class and down to near the park we called "The Tornado Slide"****, was the reason. Nearly a city block long, it received a bit of warmth from the fact that it was underground, and very little of that cold Duluth wind made its way through. The result was that, on occasion, the frozen creek would have about a 1/2" of slush on top of it.

Now, you're a 9-year-old kid, hauling ass through a sewer tunnel on an ice sled, and after about half a block you run into an area of ice covered by about 1/2" of mostly-frozen sludge. It doesn't take more than 20' or so of that kind of sledding before your entire head and upper body looks and feels like it has been dipped in one of those 7-11 slushies. Can't see. Can't hear. Can't scream. Then when you finally came flying out of the tunnel, there was a pretty big dropoff (the tunnel exit was significantly above the ground here), piles of branches, knocked-over trees, old tires; pretty much everything you did not really want to hit, on a sled, when you couldn't see anything.

Yeah, it was awesome.

But just south of there, Clarkhouse went underground, beneath Mesaba Avenue - where the aforelinked adventure begins - and beneath Cascade Park, a place where I almost killed myself one time by making a sled jump out of a picnic table.

But that is another story.

* And I was incredulous when I discovered what it was, because I had a friend named Clark who lived one house away from it. Probably just a coincidence.

** Bernice was this crazy bag lady who was about 150 years old and still had an outhouse in the the early 80s. She's long dead now but her house is still there, abandoned. She never mowed her yard but would set it on fire as soon as the grass dried and all the neighborhood kids would come "help" her put it out. Then the fire department would come and really put it out. Then she'd set it on fire again.

*** the hot younger cousin of Joey Bouchard, who was in my class. Lisa never talked to me. Ever.

**** It has a real name, but like many things in Duluth, I don't know it because I always thought my names for stuff were better anyway.

I'm nobody and I approve of this message

Lower spending causes layoffs

Which causes lower spending:

The consumer spending slump and tightening credit markets are unleashing a widening wave of bankruptcies in American retailing, prompting thousands of store closings that are expected to remake suburban malls and downtown shopping districts across the country.

Since last fall, eight mostly midsize chains — as diverse as the furniture store Levitz and the electronics seller Sharper Image — have filed for bankruptcy protection as they staggered under mounting debt and declining sales.

But the troubles are quickly spreading to bigger national companies, like Linens ‘n Things, the bedding and furniture retailer with 500 stores in 47 states. It may file for bankruptcy as early as this week...

Actually, the failing retailers are not as diverse as the NYT would have you believe. Instead they all share (or rather lack) one rather important attribute: none of them sells anything that people have to buy new. Think about it. You can't buy used gasoline or food, right? You have to buy those from a store that sells them new. But the nation is absolutely stuffed with rental garages just bulging with all the household crap we have already bought, can't use, but could re-sell. How much new furniture is being purchased today with the housing market in depression? Not enough to keep the doors open, apparently.

It's only going to get worse as our sad sack money continues its descent to worthlessness, because as that money is more and more dedicated to food and gas and taxes, more and more of that stored-up junk will hit the market. Garage sales are about to thrive, not only because people are not going to want to buy things new, but they are not going to want to pay to store crap they will realize they not only don't need, but never needed. They'd rather spend that money on food.

That means useless companies that sell useless products will continue to go out of business, which means more layoffs, which means less money* to spend. To keep the game going the government will be forced to carry out more helicopter drops; after all, the business of America is shopping.

But even the government can't make people play the game once they decide, at long last, that it really wasn't all that much fun anyway.

* Which might properly be called deflation, but will in all probability not have the kinds of deflationary effects prevalent in the last deflationary depression. FDR could not break the dollar; Bush has already done so.

The last stolen kiss

It's not often that one pro wrestler kisses another in the ring - and less often that he means it - but this* was a special occasion. The 59-year-old limousine-riding, jet-flying, wheeling, dealing, kiss-stealing - WHOOOOOOOO!!! - greatest pro wrestler who ever lived, will be missed.

* My apologies for the Spanish, but the English Version looked like someone recorded it by holding their camera phone up in front of the TV. Here at Myopia we're dedicated to appearance over comprehension.

What everyone knows about the bible

Micheal Rivero shares some thoughts:

We cannot know what the real historical Jesus said and did because the written record has been subject to editing and alteration for 2000 years by church leaders with varying and often conflicting agendas.

It is known that there are numerous translation errors on the path from Aramaic to English. For example, in describing Joseph of Arimathea's request to Pontius Pilate for Jesus' body, the original texts used the word "Soma", a word that describes an unconscious body. Had Jesus been truly dead, the word "Ptoma" would have been more appropriate. In Latin, Jesus' mother is described with the word "Virgo", which simply means a young woman. The proper Latin phrase for a young woman who has not yet engaged in sex would be "Virgo Intacta", but this phrase is NOT used in the early Latin texts that describe Jesus' mother.

Then we have the discovery by Professor Morton Smith of a document written by Bishop Clement of Alexandria which proves that the Book of Mark has been edited, and a portion or the original writings deleted. Bishop Clement's justification for what could be called a sacrilege was that simply because something was the truth was no reason to allow the masses to know it...

It goes on for what seems like pages, but you get the idea. And the frustrating thing is that it might have been written in the New York Times, because it's what "everyone knows" about the Bible. Except that much, if not most, of it is dead wrong. I thought it might be rather interesting* to see how many errors of fact** turn up in just the first few paragraphs. So here we go:

the written record has been subject to editing and alteration for 2000 years

Our author might be unaware of this, but as translations of the Bible are generally based on the oldest available manuscripts, and a few of those manuscripts were composed within a few hundred years of Jesus' death and resurrection, it is quite impossible for the written record to be subject to revision since then. So immediately, we have to shave 90% or more off this number. It makes perfect sense from a common sense perspective; if I were to introduce "The Book of Second Opinions" or such into the bible today, do we think no one would notice? The written record, translated into a multitude of languages as soon as it was written, simply cannot be subject to alteration that way.

"But El B," I can hear you saying, "new Bibles come out all the time, and they contain changes from the old KJV I have on my mantle. " Of course, you are correct, and there are two reasons for this: language and manuscripts. The language part is simple: it is not always easy to understand what "He runneth upon him, even on his neck, upon the thick bosses of his bucklers" (Job 15:26, KJV) means. We don't speak the same English that was spoken 200 years ago, not to mention 400. Modern versions read something like, "Running against him like a man of war, covered by his thick breastplate; even like a king ready for the fight" (same verse, BBE version). Language changes: occasionally you have to re-translate.

Manuscripts takes a little more work, so bear with me. Our modern bibles are not based on one set of handwritten copies, but on a collection of such, ranging in age from 1600 years old (with older fragments) to 600 or so years, and the reason for this is that before the invention of the printing press, the Bible (or individual books thereof) were copied by hand. These hand-copies are then compiled into a "text," usually still in the original Greek, and from there translated into English. Over time, there are changes to the text***, but those changes take a consistent form: they are toward older versions, which means that over time, our texts tend to eliminate the very "alterations" our author assures us are still going on. Since the purpose of lower biblical criticism is to find the "original" text, to claim that the Bible has been subject to systematic editing by church leaders to accomplish their own agendas could not be further from the truth****.

in describing Joseph of Arimathea's request to Pontius Pilate for Jesus' body, the original texts used the word "Soma", a word that describes an unconscious body. Had Jesus been truly dead, the word "Ptoma" would have been more appropriate.

Unfortunately, this is one of the sillier errors that one comes across, because it makes no sense on its surface - if it was the purpose of the Romans to kill Jesus, and it was, why would Joseph ask for an unconscious Jesus? Such would simply have not been granted. The claim is usually only found in such "conspiratorial" works as "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" and "the Passover Plot." Not that something coming from such works is necessarily wrong, but it takes more than confident writing to make them true. The Greek word "soma," according to Strong's Exhaustive Concordance, means:

1) the body both of men or animals
1a) a dead body or corpse
1b) the living body
1b1) of animals

If Soma is a correct recording of Joseph's request - and we don't know if Joseph conversed with the Roman soldiers in Latin or Greek, but it was almost certainly not the Aramaic mentioned above - it's probable that Joseph was just being polite in not using a more technical term. We do the same today. When we go to a wake, we go to view a "body." Asking the survivors if you could view the "corpse" would be considered to be in particularly bad taste.

In Latin, Jesus' mother is described with the word "Virgo", which simply means a young woman...this phrase is NOT used in the early Latin texts that describe Jesus' mother.

Which statement is possibly true - I don't know the Vulgate - but irrelevant. Since English bibles are translated directly from the original Greek into English, what another "off" language translates doesn't really matter - it's like complaining that the Spanish is incorrect. The author probably means Hebrew rather than Latin anyway (and one can make that case, as the Hebrew "Almah" CAN mean "young woman" but was translated by the Jews - pre-Christ, I might add - into Greek as "virgin"), but that would open the author to a charge of the kind of carelessness that I would be the first to glom onto.

Then we have the discovery by Professor Morton Smith of a document written by Bishop Clement of Alexandria which proves that the Book of Mark has been edited...

This is the old "Secret Gospel of Mark" argument, which seeks to make Jesus part of a secret "mystery" religion. It is not based on textual data, but on the discovery of a letter (since lost) found in a 17th century book and alleged by its finder to be originally written by Clement of Alexandria 15 centuries prior. It was never examined by other experts and since it cannot be examined today, it makes a very shaky foundation for any sentence that has the word "proves" in it, especially in the face of 18 or more centuries of manuscript data.

If one wants to be on more solid ground, one could bring up the fact that there are Mark manuscripts with different endings, known as "Long Mark" and "Short Mark," and one of them is wrong. But these issues have been known to Bible translators since Clement was in diapers - there's nothing either new or conspiratorial about them.

It goes on, but you get the idea. Our author knows as little about the Bible as the religion editors of the Times, relies on questionable scholarship, and fails to check his claims against both history and common sense. But he passes it all on as fact, with nothing more than a confident if conspiratorial tone as proof. That's one reason what "everyone knows" about the bible is on par with what your average creationist Christian "knows" about evolutionary biology.

* forgive me if I'm the only one who thinks so.

** though to be honest, many of them are errors of carelessness. People who don't know the Bible but write about it tend to make the same kind of mistakes I would make were I to try to tackle, say, astronomy or women's fashions.

*** because all (repeat: ALL) hand copies have some errors that are discovered by comparing them to other copies, usually older ones.

**** that's almost a true statement. One example of just that I can think of resulted in the inclusion of 1 John 5:1 in the KJV. But it is generally excluded from modern versions.

as Carl Spackler might say

So I've got that going for me:

Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Cancer Institute checked death records for 37,000 adults, along with age and weight, and found that people who were overweight [had] no greater risk of dying from cancer or heart disease than those who were of normal weight...

Even more remarkable, the overweight group was less likely to die from a host of other conditions, including chronic respiratory disease, infections, and Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease. While being overweight left people at higher risk of death from diabetes and kidney disease, as a group, people in the overweight category outlived the obese, the underweight, and people at normal weight.

My first thought was that just measuring people's weight at death is a pretty poor way to measure the health of their lifestyle, as people who die of lingering cancer* tend to lose a lot of weight in their final months, and in a strange ironic twist, diet guru Robert Atkins** gained 60 pounds while in a accident-induced coma from which he never recovered. The weight at which one dies, unless one dies in an accident or from a heart attack, probably cannot be strictly correlated to the weight at which they lived.

But I was most interested in the reaction of other scientists to the results of a study that, if it does not fly in the face of conventional wisdom, at least might force a shift in the 'acceptable' ranges. That is not to be, I guess:

"This research should be completely disregarded," says Walter Willett, MD, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health.

After all, what good are studies if they're going to give us results that contradict what science tells us?

* to pick a particularly uplifting example

** He of "Atkins Diet" fame

Bark like Bernanke

A Fed returns to its own vomit:

The model, known as originate-to-distribute, "broke down at a number of key points, including at the stages of underwriting, credit rating, and investor due diligence," Bernanke told the World Affairs Council.

At the same time, financial institutions were tripped up by inadequate risk management and liquidity planning, Bernanke said.

"These problems notwithstanding, the originate-to-distribute model has proven effective in the past and with adequate repairs could be so again in the future," he said.

The model never worked and never could work as anyone with a) familiarity with it, and b) common sense, innately understood. In fact, as Bernanke admits, it broke down at every conceivable point, and it did so completely and immediately once the unique circumstances that brought it into being disappeared. It only lasted as long as it did because it was extremely profitable when housing prices kept rising - that allowed all its problems to be safely ignored because back-end profit was guaranteed on a sale. We could sell million dollar houses to strawberry pickers - who would theoretically flip them to someone else for twice that - and the fun would never end.

The model where one organization sets a value (and collects a fee), another sets a risk factor (and collects a fee), and a third packages such loans for sale (and collects a fee) lacks the one thing that it needs to survive: immediate negative feedback. Because the value-setter is paid more for inflating values but does not face a risk if he's wrong, his incentive is to inflate. The same with other entities that pass the risk on: they all take their money and do not suffer in the short term* for doing their jobs poorly. The only negative feedback occurs when the whole pyramid collapses as it must.

But the fact that the Fed is hell-bent on trying it again just might bring about one good result: its own destruction. The United States had 2 national banks before the Fed. Hopefully this time around we will have learned our lesson**.

* in fact, they are rewarded with higher fees the more wrong they do it.

** Ha, ha. Yeah, I know.

Just a question

What's the difference between a committee and a task force, anyway?

It all depends how you look at it

NEW YORK (AP) -- Retail gasoline prices pulled back slightly from record levels Tuesday and gave some consumers a small break, but a new government forecast said gas could reach as high as $4 a gallon during the summer driving season.

Or the dollar could be down to one quart of gasoline, take your pick.

This is just brutal. If something good happens at the end, someone will need to tell me, because I couldn't watch it. Kinda like the candidate himself.

Other way around redux

Sify News reports what we already knew, sort of:

New Delhi: Establishing a link between climate change and mental health, the World Health Organisation has said extreme weather conditions like floods, droughts and natural calamities can lead to psychiatric illnesses.

"Psychosocial illnesses are a part of the various health issues associated with climate change," Poonam Khetrapal Singh, Deputy Regional Director, WHO, said.

Continuing our theme of "cart before the horse," we've probably got another example right here. In fact, 10 or 20 years down the road, it will probably be conclusively shown that mental illness led to an obsession with climate progress rather than climate progress leading to anything at all.

Opponents of climate progress are still making excuses* for the fact that there has been no recordable warming for a decade and completely ignoring the fact that their carbonista mathematical models, which is the sole 'evidence' for future warming, have never worked. In fact, the vast majority of stories covering climate progress seem to be written to explain why what we are seeing is not what they said we'd see. Good science, that.

I suspect within a few years it will become obvious even to The Gorax that warming has topped out and then a new ice age** will become all the rage. That's good news for Newsweek, because they've got the stories already written.

* This is otherwise known as 'the Denial stage.'

** Which, of course, the press and the next generation of moonbats will blame on some something as obvious as it is unrelated to actual climate progress.

The GOP prepares for an asswhupping

by running away:

The buzz is growing in Washington among election analysts, Democratic leaders and even some dispirited Republicans that Pelosi is poised to increase her majority in the House in the November election and Democrats are also seen as likely to add seats in the Senate.

Republican fortunes have fallen because of a cascade of retirements by GOP lawmakers and because Democrats are outmatching their rivals in both fundraising and voter enthusiasm this year.

As is often the case, the press has its cart before the horse here. The GOP is not in trouble because of retirements; retirements are coming because the GOP is in trouble.

There is no mandatory retirement age for Reps and Senators - they get to retire when they wish, taking their leftover campaign funds with them. And it's hardly a coincidence that following the loss of both the house and senate, Republican retirements have increased dramatically; the same thing happened among Democrats when the GOP captured the house in '96. The main reason for such waves of retirements is simple: it's just not as much fun nor as profitable to be in the minority.

A mass of retirements are not an indication of demography, they are proof-positive that the GOP elders see little chance that they will be back in the majority any time soon, as is the fact that Democrats are out-raising the GOP*. Therefore in the short term it's far more profitable for them to head off to corporate America where they can make some pretty profitable rain.

Baby Seal Hunt II is coming this fall, as not even the monstrous incompetence of the Democrat party can destroy the gift of Bush, at least in the short term. The good news is that they can and will certainly destroy it within a few short years. Ouroboros can't help but devour himself, nor can the Democrats. Then we get to start the process all over again.

* As political donations to parties are not a measure of ideology as much as they are people who must work with the government trying to pick the winning horse.

A bit of good news from Topeka

I gotta admit, I've been impressed with this legislature, first with concealed carry, and now this:

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) - A bill allowing individuals to own machine guns, sawed-off shotguns and silencers has cleared the Legislature.

The Senate approved it Thursday on a 28-9 vote. The House passed it last week 105-18.

The margin of victory ought to tell even the most fanatical gun grabber that headlines like these are probably not telling the whole story:

House Clears Way For Kansans To Own Machine Guns

Machine guns on the fast track

House OKs bill allowing machine guns

Given the screams, you'd think bill provides that AK-47s must be handed out with school lunch tickets*, but they should rest assured that federal laws regarding the ownership of automatic weapons are still in place** like they have been since the 1930s; what this bill does is repeal most state requirements over what the Feds already do. Under previous Kansas law, even someone who could otherwise legally own such a gun could not buy it - Kansas gun dealers were not allowed to own them.

And there was one interesting fact buried*** in the Capital Journal's story that no other scare-mongering press outlet in the state seems to have noticed:

The House gave final approval to a bill allowing dealers, manufacturers and private citizens to own machine guns, which would bring Kansas in line with all but a handful of states.

In other words, as was the case with concealed carry, Kansas is hardly on the forefront of gun law liberalization; it is huffing and puffing to catch up with the rest of the country.

Of course, that doesn't stop the panickers, like Meliss, who lives in Colorado (first comment):

at first i was sad to move but after reading this i am ashamed that i am from kansas. I would never want to live in a state that aproves a bill like this one. I have a 2 year old and do not want him to grow up in fear that some one could have a machine gun. That is a war fare gun not a gun to just have.

I have bad news for Miliss: she already lives in such a state.

On the other hand, I'm not going to tell her. After all, I don't really think it's her 2-year-old who has the fear problem.

* In truth, it doesn't even provide ammunition. Cheapskates.

** and will likely remain so, given the Supremes' repeated failure to pass their ESL classes.

*** I have to give the CJ credit here, at least they had it in their story. Ever since I lived in Topeka, I have considered the CJ the finest paper in the state, for any number of reasons.

En Un Mundo Absolut

Yes, it's a real ad.

You can check out any time you like

Welcome to the Hotel Maryland:

The surcharge on the wealthy would affect about 6,000 people in the state, and it would be in effect for three years.

Sen. Alex Mooney, R-Frederick, questioned whether the tax would chase wealthy Maryland residents out of the state. He asked Sen. Ulysses Currie, D-Prince George's, if that concern had been raised when the new tax was considered.

"It's only for three years, and we felt that with the housing market now, it would take them three years to sell the house and they might want to stay," Currie said.

It does not take a genius* to figure out that one does not have to sell a house to leave a state, especially when one makes a million dollars a year. All one has to do is buy a house in another state and change his residency. "With the housing market now" that would take about 5 minutes.

* That's a good thing, as the Maryland legislature is not exactly burdened with an overabundance of them.

You know, I learned something today

Live Science shares a little bit of history, and a little bit of myth:

It's hard to imagine a more movie-worthy showdown than the one between Antony and Cleopatra on one side with a fleet totaling 500 warships, and Octavian on the other with almost 1,000, for control of the entire vast territory of the Roman Republic.

The Battle of Actium was fought in the waters off Greece – a Roman territory, at the time – and ended in the complete obliteration of Antony and Cleopatra's forces. When it was over, the waters were choked with the naval wreckage, historians at the time noted, as well as the bodies of 5,000 sailors.

Antony and Cleopatra did not go down with their navy. Recognizing their impeding defeat, the lovers fled in their separate ships and were chased down by Octavian. They both committed suicide instead of being captured. To seal his victory and eliminate competition, Octavian went to Egypt and executed Cleopatra's children by Antony as well as Julius Caesar's one and only son.

Except that Octavian didn't execute Cleopatra's children by Anthony, and like the idea that you have to drink eight glasses of water every day, it's hard to figure out where it comes from other than that it sounds good.

Actually, what happened before, during, and after the battle was this:

In the mid 40s BC, Julius Caesar wins a civil war, names his nephew Octavian as his successor, then goes to Egypt to annex it to the Empire. He meets Cleopatra and takes her side over her brother, whom he kills, putting Cleo on the throne by herself and they have a son, whom we will call Little Caesar*. Antony is at this time Caesar's right-hand man. Clear as mud? OK.

ENTER Sheakespeare, stage right: "Beware the Ides of March. Et tu, Brute? So let it be with Caesar." If you've read the Bard, you know Caesar is killed, then Brutus himself is killed, leaving Octavian and Antony in contention for the Empire**. Antony marries Octavian's sister, a widow named*** Octavia, but as the ruling alliance falls apart Cleo sees an opportunity to regain a little of the power she had with Big Caesar and protect Egypt at the same time. She has 3 kids by Antony, whom we will call Philly, Selene, and Alex. Boy, girl, boy.

So NOW we can get to Actium. Octavius beats Antony, who escapes with Cleo during the battle and runs back to Egypt, where they each kill themselves. Octavian now rules the empire, but what to do with the kids?

Obviously, Little Caesar's gonna die. And the reason for that is that Octavian's right to rule comes from him being the adopted son of Caesar**** - but Caesar's natural son is now 17. Well, died at 17. Drowning victim. Tragic. As Octavian said, two Caesars is one too many.

But what of the other kids, Antony's kids? They are no threat to Octavian, and they actually might be useful. So after taking them back to Rome and putting them on display*****, Octavian gave them over to the household of his sister, Antony's (4th of 5) ex-wife, a woman famous for her virtue. While the boys died in obscurity ******, the girl we called Selene (Cleopatra Selene II) later married King Juba II of Numidia, quite a feat if she had been killed off 20 years earlier.

Anyway, short, short version (Ha!) Octavian killed off the one of Cleo's kids who was a threat to himself - the son of Caesar - but he did not do so with Antony's children. LiveScience's history columnist maybe ought to stick to science. The standards are less exacting.

* Because that's what the Romans called him, Caesarion.

** They actually ruled together under an agreement called the Second Triumvirate, even though it was the first official triumvirate, the First Triumvirate being a political alliance between Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus. But those three are all dead at this point, so who cares?

*** in the traditional if unimaginative Roman style

**** Of course, it helps if you have an army, too.

***** The Romans had this thing about making prisoners carry treasure in the parade. The kids were so weighed down with gold chains that they could not walk.

****** They aren't recorded as being killed, they just sort of fall off the pages of history.