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Happiness is a well-stocked library. One of the reasons I am in an exceedingly good mood today is that I finally obtained a set of the Cambridge Medieval History series planned by JB Bury to replace the one that was somehow lost amidst the chaos of a past move. This one is actually in better shape than its predecessor, for all that the dustjackets and maps are missing, and I found the whole set for not much more than the going rate of two single volumes. If you’re interested, and if you’re a regular here you doggone well should be, you can find PDFs of the eight volumes here. They’re absolutely worth the download, although at more than half a gig, you may want to burn them to CD rather than leave them on your hard drive.

Anyhow, having happily ensconced myself in the infamous Comfy Chair and settled down to a careful read yesterday evening, I was amused to encounter the following passage in light of last year’s literary labor:

Maximin’s endeavor was to stir up the principalities against the Christians, to organize a rival church of heathenism, and to give a definitely antichristian bias to education. Even the fall of Maxentius had drawn from him only a rescript so full of inconsistencies that neither heathen nor Christian could make head or tail of it, except that Maximin was a prodigious liar. He even denied that there had been any persecution during his reign.
– Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. 1 p. 5

Maximin was the Emperor Gaius Valerius Galerius Maximinus, whose persecution of Christians inspired his rivals Constantine and Licinius to issue the Edict of Milan, the first state recognition of religious freedom, and was defeated by Licinius in 313 AD. The Edict was, like the Emancipation Proclamation, far more a political weapon than a genuine act of moral principle, but it had significant historical and philosophical ramifications. The entire episode is fascinating, not so much for what it reveals about the rivalries of emperors or Constantine’s eminently pragmatic character, but for how it shows the way the heathen attack Christianity has changed very little in the last 1,700 years.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. It didn’t work for Maximin then. It won’t work for Dawkins now.

Notice that whenever an economic prediction turns out to be correct these days, it’s almost never made by a Keynesian or a Monetarist:

“Technicals say it is time to bail out. Cut equity expose and prepare for rout. US depression looking likely. While China’s 2009 implosion could get ugly.”

Mr Edwards — who is of an “Austrian” persuasion, ie hates excess debt — was one of the very few economists to see this whole crisis coming, and to issue warnings clearly and emphatically (unlike others who now claim to have been seers, but in fact hedged). He said interests rates would be slashed to zero and that bond yields would fall to the lowest in history. All this has occurred.

Those who listened to the Voxonomics interview with Passport may recall his strong doubts about the Chinese economy some six months ago. Meanwhile, one of the few economically sane NROniks, Brian Riedl, shows some of the huge flaws in the latest Keynesian “stimulus” plan:

Policymakers are basing the “stimulus” bill on economic models that wrongly assume every $1 of government spending increases the economy by approximately $1.60. Is it really that simple? By that logic, debt-ridden, big-government countries like Italy, France, and Germany should be wealthier than America. And why stop at $800 billion? Such logic suggests unlimited prosperity could be guaranteed by the government borrowing and spending $800 trillion. Should America be basing such costly decisions on these types of economic models?

This should be easy to compare to the last contractionary go-round. If anyone wants to run the numbers, go for it. Just compare federal spending from 1932 to 1940 to the GDP and see if there is a $1.60 increase in the latter for every $1 increase in the former. In the meantime, we’ll be tracking that this year just as we’ve tracked NAR’s 2008 housing prices.

Meanwhile, Republican protests sound more than a little thin based on their performance over the last eight years:
“I just can’t tell you how shocked I am at what we’re seeing. You know it’s clear that they’re moving on this path along the flawed notion that we can borrow and spend our way back to prosperity.”

This video may well serve as a prophetic metaphor for the ultimate fate of those shiny, secular societies in which the multiculturalists and progressives placed such faith. Although, let’s face it, it is kind of inspiring to watch the uniformed police retreating in abject fear.

I have little doubt, however, that the European nations will eventually deal with its Muslims in much the same way they dealt with other unwanted immigrants in previous centuries. It’s important for Americans to remember that the Islamic population in Europe only averages around 4 percent, a fraction of the 15 percent Hispanic population in the United States, and anti-immigration forces are already much stronger in Europe than they are in the USA.

More evidence that Obama didn’t write his own books:

The belief that moribund institutions, rather than individuals are at the root of the problem, keep SAM’s energies alive.
– Barack Obama, “Breaking The War Mentality”

The highly indicative sentence above comes from an 1,800-word article Barack Obama wrote for Columbia’s weekly news magazine, Sundial, at the height of the KGB-generated anti-nuke craze in March 1983. Obama was 21 at the time. The sentence nicely captures Obama’s skill as a writer. The noun, “belief,” and the verb, “keep,” don’t agree – one of an appalling five such noun-verb mismatches in the essay – and the punctuation is fully random.

The President-elect is almost surely a complete fraud. There’s growing evidence that he has been from the very start. He doesn’t possess a shred of genuine literary talent, much less intellectual accomplishment; it’s hilarious to see how his supporters who are forced to confront the reality that the absence of a National Merit scholarship proves that he’s not Mensa material try to argue that he must not have taken the PSAT at his elite college prep school. No doubt they’ll argue that his bumbling press conferences in the future are nothing more than proof of his difficulty in speaking down to the level of the sub-genius.

I would say that this administration is going to be more fun than a barrel of monkeys, but no doubt some oversensitive soul would take offense at that. So, I shall simply say that I am utterly delighted that there will be magical negritude in the White House rather than bellicose neoconnery.

Camille Paglia shows her fellow atheists how it’s done:

I have been highly skeptical about the claims for global warming because of their overreliance on speculative computer modeling and because of the woeful patchiness of records for world temperatures before the 20th century. In the 1980s, I was similarly skeptical about media-trumpeted predictions about a world epidemic of heterosexual AIDS.

Not just skeptical, “highly skeptical”. I do so love that woman! The amusing thing is that just yesterday, the New York Times was trumpeting a pro-vaccine book… by a man who has made millions of dollars from his vaccine royalties. Imagine that! As a general rule, it’s always best to be extremely skeptical of the “science” or the “truth” pushed by those who have a tremendous personal incentive to convince you of it.

It’s completely fair for disbelievers to question the motivations of members of the priestly caste in all its modern forms. More believers should, in fact, I believe a statistically significant percentage of televangelists are little more than money-grubbing hucksters. I also suspect a fair number of pastors are more inspired by their desire to be on stage and perform than they are by their purported faith or love of God. The thing is, I’m confident that similarly base motivations apply just as often to politicians, lawyers, journalists, and yes, scientists too.

UPDATE – Speaking of skepticism, I note that the overheated ravages of AGW continue apace:

The cold wave that stunned the nation’s midsection expanded into the Northeast on Wednesday with subzero temperatures and biting wind that kept even some winter sports fans at home. The wind chill hit 33 below zero during the night at Massena, N.Y., and the National Weather Service predicted actual temperatures nearly that low in parts of the region by Thursday night.

All the horror stories of abused children notwithstanding, I have far more faith in the basic human decency of crackhead mothers and violent, alcoholic fathers than I do in the various state child abuse agencies:

Police say three New Jersey siblings whose names have Nazi connotations have been placed in the custody of the state. Holland Township Police Sgt. John Harris says workers from the state Division of Youth and Family Services on Tuesday removed 3-year-old Adolf Hitler Campbell and his younger sisters, JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell from their home Tuesday. Harris says family services did not tell police the reason the children were removed.

It is, of course, REMOTELY possible that the Harris family were abusing their children. But given the fact that it follows a big news story, it’s a hell of a lot more likely that some would-be Nazi at the agency took ironic offense at the children’s names and decided to kidnap them for their own good. One of these days, some angry father is going to blow away a large number of these latter-day fascists and the media will be shocked to discover how much public sympathy there will be for him.

There’s absolutely no question that the Harris parents decided to their children some stupid names. But if giving children stupid names was legitimate grounds for removing them from their parents, CPS would have raised about two-thirds of the National Football League.

Who will collapse first?

Mexico is one of two countries that “bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse,” according to a report by the U.S. Joint Forces Command on worldwide security threats.

All it would take is one narcopoly to assassinate Calderon and the whole structure will likely fall apart. Fortunately, the Great Southern Wall will prevent the chaos from spreading across the border and having a hugely negative affect on Americans… wait a minute….

Historians are going to look back at America’s post-1980 immigration policies and laugh. And, it must be said, Ronald Reagan’s legacy will be likely be severely tarnished by the role he played in helping exacerbate the problem.

I have long been irritated that Maddens doesn’t include the retired players on their rosters of classic teams. And, as is so often the case with unions, it turns out that the reason is due to union leadership failing to dutifully represent the interests it is charged with representing.

Basically, Judge Alsup found that the plaintiffs introduced sufficient evidence to support a finding by the jury that the NFLPA acquired a “fiduciary” duty to take steps to market the likenesses and names, and that the NFLPA (for whatever reason) failed to do it.

Most importantly (and most troubling), the evidence supported in Judge Alsup’s view a finding that the NFLPA gobbled up the retired players’ marketing rights so that the NFLPA wouldn’t have to compete with the retired players’ likenesses and names while trying to get top dollar for the active players. In other words, the jury found that the NFLPA acquired the rights of these potential competitors to likenesses and names of the active players, only to bury the rights to the likenesses and names of the retired players in the back yard.

If true (and the jury found that it is), it’s shameful, and despicable. The jury essentially found that, under the guise of helping retired players, the NFLPA screwed them, making no effort to market the rights to their likenesses and names in order to preserve the millions and millions that were being generated by the marketing of the rights to the likenesses and names of active players.

While the NFLPA has served the NFL players very well in many regards and wisely views itself as a partner of the league owners rather than an adversary, the two areas it has really fallen down is representing the interests of past players in general and the interests of veteran players relative to agents of rookie players. It is insane that a few elite agents are able to hold the interests of the owners, the veteran players, and the competitive quality of the league itself hostage. And while Mike Florio is rivalled only by Joe Buck in his eagerness to strike an outraged moral pose about almost anything, the NFLPA’s callous treatment of retired players is, for once, every bit as awful as he paints it.

If a fourteen year-old girl has sex, is she still human?

Darimont told LiveScience that while he considers the changes to be evolutionary, some biologists consider them phenotypic and, without evidence of genetic shifts, would not call them evolution… One specific example: the overfished Atlantic cod on the eastern coast of Canada. Less than two decades ago, they began mating at age 6. Now they start at age 5.

In support of this impressive science, I note the following report from the Observer: Britons are losing their virginity younger than in the past: for over-55s the average age was 19; within the 25-34 group it was 16; and among 16-24s, 15. That’s a difference of THREE years in two decades; homo sapiens is evolving even faster than the Atlantic cod!

Clearly adults who are attracted to children under 15 should not be labeled pedophiles when they can be scientifically shown to be nothing more than evolutionary change-agents bringing about post-humanity. Based on the increasingly lunatic declarations of its advocates, I’m beginning to suspect we may see TENS collapse even sooner than I’d ever imagined. I still don’t expect to see it happen in my lifetime, but I’m quite confident that it is probable, if not necessarily inevitable. Yet.

Evolution’s defenders are in the position of a bridge builder watching his rickety old edifice sway and bend in the wind. “It hasn’t fallen yet!” he shouts defiantly. But any less self-interested observer will readily notice that it’s only a matter of time before the structure collapses completely. The linked article is evidence of bad science journalism, not bad science, but then, there’s not much about evolution that can reasonably described as science by any non-tautological definition of the term.

They’ve wrecked their home state with their left-liberalism. Naturally, they have no recourse but to go pollute other states with their political filth:

Mike Reilly spent his lifetime chasing the California dream. This year he’s going to look for it in Colorado. With a house purchase near Denver in the works, the 38-year-old engineering contractor plans to move his family 1,200 miles away from his home state’s lemon groves, sunshine and beaches. For him, years of rising taxes, dead-end schools, unchecked illegal immigration and clogged traffic have robbed the Golden State of its allure.

This demonstrates why Open Doors libertarianism is logically untenable. There is no freedom to be found in a population determined to make themselves serfs. I don’t at all disagree with EAS’s previous contention that libertarianism is politically dead as of 2009, except to point out that it hasn’t been noticeably viable in the USA at any time since the early 1920s.