Published on 20 Aug 2016
To protect himself from retaliation for his populist policies, Tiberius Gracchus ran for tribune a second time. On election day, he sought protection from the crowd among rumors that wealthy elites planned to assassinate him, but accidentally sent a message that he wished to be not elected, but crowned as king. A Senator formed an opposing mob that killed Tiberius and 300 of his supporters on the spot.
____________Tiberius looked to shore his support as many people questioned the way he’d stripped Octavius of office. His chance came when the King of Pergamum died, and left his kingdom and all its land to Rome in his will. Tiberius stepped in to tell the Senate he would draft a bill to deal with this new land and submit it directly to the people. This outraged the Senate: foreign policy had always been their domain, and even those who had been silent during his squabble with Octavius now spoke against Tiberius. Fearing retribution, Tiberius ran for tribune a second time: an unprecedented political act that would make his person sacrosanct. On Election Day, Tiberius received a warning that the wealthy elites of Rome planned to assassinate him and stop his re-election. He tried to indicate to his supporters that his life was in danger, but since they couldn’t hear him above the din, he did so by pointing at his head. One onlooker interpreted this as him asking for a crown, and brought this news to the Senate. They called upon the consul to stop it, but he said he would just nullify the vote if that happened. One Senator did not accept this response. He gathered his own mob to take things into his own hands. They caught Tiberius and killed him, along with 300 of his followers. Many who escaped were later executed or exiled, and Gaius – the brother of Tiberius – was refused when he asked for his brother’s body back to hold funeral rites. It was the first great act of political violence in Rome, and it set the stage for a new age of violent upheaval. After all, harming a tribune was supposed to be not only illegal but a sin before the gods, so if this mob had done just that and escaped without punishment, what other laws could not be broken? Into this troubled stage stepped Gaius Gracchus, already known for his fiery disposition and now determined to take up his dead brother’s cause.
September 8, 2016
The Brothers Gracchi – III: Ochlocracy – Extra History
QotD: The US space program was “a WPA for engineers instead of artists”
… even when uttered by the First Lady of the American Screen, any blather about the constellations leaves me as cold as Neptune. Yes, as a teenager, I obediently watched Cosmos like everyone else. But neither Carl Sagan’s corduroy charisma nor those glossy special effects fired up my heart and brain, any more than all those NASA expeditions to vacant rocks in the sky that had punctuated my childhood (and interrupted my cartoons).
The space program was a spectacular waste of extorted tax dollars, a WPA for engineers instead of artists. Watching nerdy small-government libertarians swoon in pathetic conformity over Apollo and SpaceX proves once again that Conquest’s Laws are bunk: Everyone is, in fact, a raving liberal when it comes to his pet passion. Elon Musk is a welfare queen.
Bores insist that the space program has spun off a host of indispensable inventions, but these they can rarely name, and besides, such wonders, if truly crucial, would have been developed anyhow — perhaps even faster, and more cheaply, had the government left trillions in stolen cash in the hands of private enterprise.
Perhaps some readers will find my opinions more palatable if phrased this way: “Federally funded spaceflight is the quintessential neoconservative project: a giant, wasteful crusade designed to fill Americans’ supposedly empty lives with meaning.”
Kathy Shaidle, “The Lovers, the Dreamers, Not Me”, Taki’s Magazine, 2016-08-23.
September 7, 2016
10 Rare And Obscure WW1 Era Guns I THE GREAT WAR Special feat. Rock Island Auction
Published on 6 Sep 2016
The next Rock Island premium auction happens this weekend: http://www.rockislandauction.com/
The era before and during World War 1 saw rapid development in firearms. Some of them were only prototypes or only saw very limited production. In collaboration with Rock Island Auction we present 10 rare and obscure firearms of the WW1 era.
QotD: Plato, Epicurus and Democritus
For Plato, the world of appearance was a kind of dream, and the real world was something that only the initiated could begin to understand through logic and mathematics, and perhaps a dash of magic. So far as it existed, matter was evil, and the universe was strictly bounded in space and time.
For Epicurus, the world of appearance was the real world. There is a void, or vacuum, which is infinite in space and time. It has always existed. It will always exist. It goes on forever and ever. In this void is an infinite number of atoms. These are very small, and therefore imperceptible, but indivisible particles of matter. They have always existed and will always exist. They are all moving through the void at an incredibly rapid and uniform speed. The world as we see it is based on combinations of these atoms. Every atom is hooked, and the collision of atoms will sometimes lead to combinations of atoms into larger structures, some of which endure and some of which we can eventually perceive with our senses. All observed changes in the world are the result of redistributions of the invisible atoms that comprise it.
Though we are not able to see these atoms, we can infer their existence by looking at the world that our senses can perceive. All events — the wearing away of a rock by water, for example, or the growth of crystals or trees — can be fully explained by an atomic hypothesis. Since there is nothing that cannot be so explained, there is no need of any other hypotheses. In a surviving explanation of his method, he says:
…[I]n our study of nature we must not conform to empty assumptions and arbitrary laws, but follow the prompting of the facts.
Everything in the universe is made of atoms. We are made of atoms. Our souls are made of very fine atoms. Our senses work because every other physical object is continually casting off very thin films of atoms that represent it exactly as it is. These films strike on our senses and give us vision and sound. Heat is produced by the vibration of atoms temporarily trapped in structures that prevent them from their natural onward motion.
Whether or not anyone can at any moment think of a likely explanation, all events in the universe can be explained in purely naturalistic terms. Assuming atoms and motion, no further hypotheses are needed to explain the world.
Epicurus was not the first to explain the world by an atomic hypothesis. That was Democritus (460-370 BC). But he seems to have developed the hypothesis with a consistency and detail that took it far beyond anything that earlier philosophers had conceived.
Perhaps his most notable innovation is the doctrine of the swerve. There are two objections to the atomism of Democritus. The first is that if the atoms are all moving at the same speed and in the same direction, like drops of rain, there is no reason to suppose they will ever collide and form larger compounds. The second is that if they are not moving in the same direction, they will collide, but they will form a universe locked into an unbreakable sequence of cause and effect. This conflicts with the observed fact of free will.
And so Epicurus argues that every atom is capable of a very small and random deviation from its straight motion. This is enough to give an indeterminacy to the universe that does not conflict with an overall regularity of action.
Sean Gabb, “Epicurus: Father of the Englightenment”, speaking to the 6/20 Club in London, 2007-09-06.
September 6, 2016
Romania in World War 1 I THE GREAT WAR Special
Published on 5 Sep 2016
Visit the Fortress Museum in Przemyśl: https://goo.gl/maps/8vdZ8AbqapG2
Romania’s history before World War 1 was heavily influenced by the great powers surrounding them. Not only was a considerable minority of Romanians living in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Romanian royal family had ties to Germany, Britain and Russia. After fighting in the Balkan Wars, Romania remained neutral during the first two years of World War 1 but decided to join when the moment seemed right.
Could this be a winning strategy for Il Donalduce?
Jay Currie suggests a three-part plan that might bring about a Trump victory in November:
First, announce that a Trump administration will decriminalize marijuana.
Second, announce that every single person serving time for marijuana related offences is going to be pardoned on condition that they spend a three month intensive period in a pre-employment boot camp. And announce that, from the day Trump takes office, any criminal record for marijuana offences will be expunged as of right and right now.
Third, commit serious federal resources to creating paths to employment for the people who have either been in jail or who have had criminal records as a result of pot convictions.
You can picture Trump saying, “Let’s bring our kids, and their fathers, home.”
The last twenty years have been about incarcerating black people and Latinos for all sorts of crimes. Some of that is justified, but a lot of it has been felony marijuana arrests which should have been traffic tickets but got bumped because of priors, plea bargains and three strikes laws. It’s time for that to stop.
People’s children, husbands and wives have been sent to prison for a reason that an increasing number of states think is wrong. Washington, Colorado, Oregon and Alaska have legalized recreational pot and the federal government has gone along. Medical marijuana is legal in many other states. More states have either medical marijuana or recreational marijuana on the ballot in November.
The Donald does not have to say pot is a good thing. In fact, if he is smart he will say it is a bad thing and that he does not want any sensible American to use it; but it should not be a criminal thing because, if it is, there will be a disproportionate impact on black, Latino and poor white communities. That is just a fact.
QotD: Minimum lot size regulations hurt the poor
Other things equal, the larger the lot, the more you’ll pay for it. Regulations that specify minimum lot sizes — that say you can’t build on land smaller than that minimum — increase prices. Regulations that forbid building more units on a given-size lot have the same effect: they restrict supply and make housing more expensive.
People who already live there may only want to preserve their lifestyle. But whether they intend to or not (and many certainly do so intend) the effect of these regulations is to exclude lower-income families. Where do they go? Where they aren’t excluded — usually poorer neighborhoods. But that increases the demand for housing in poorer neighborhoods, where prices will tend to be higher than they would have been.
And it’s not just middle-class families that do this. Very wealthy residents of exclusive neighborhoods and districts also have an incentive to support limits on construction in order to maintain their preferred lifestyle and to keep out the upper-middle-class hoi polloi. Again, the latter then go elsewhere, very often to lower-income neighborhoods — Williamsburg in Brooklyn is a recent example — where they buy more-affordable housing and drive up prices. Those who complain about well-off people moving into poor neighborhoods — a phenomenon known as “gentrification” — may very well have minimum-lot-size and maximum-density regulations to thank.
When government has the authority to restrict building and development, established residents of all income levels will use that power to protect their wealth.
Sandy Ikeda, “Shut Out: How Land-Use Regulations Hurt the Poor”, The Freeman, 2015-02-05.
September 5, 2016
Vikings sign 10 to their 2017 practice squad
Twenty-four hours after the “final” roster cuts are made, any players who were claimed off the waiver wire join their new teams and players not claimed are eligible to be signed to a team’s 10-man practice squad. There were a couple of surprises, as the Green Bay Packers put in a waiver claim for running back Jhurell Pressley after his impressive two-touchdown performance in the final preseason game, and wide receiver Isaac Fruechte chose to sign with the Detroit Lions practice squad instead of the Vikings (he pointed out that Detroit only has four receivers on the 53-man roster, while the Vikings have six, and he preferred the odds of eventually getting on the field in Detroit).
Signed to the practice squad today were:
- G Willie Beavers 64
- WR Moritz Böhringer 81
- TE Kyle Carter 86
- G Isame Faciane 69
- S Shamiel Gary (spent preseason with the Miami Dolphins, not yet listed on the Vikings roster page)
- RB C.J. Ham 30
- DT Toby Johnson 90
- CB Tre Roberson 36
- QB Joel Stave 2
- DE Stephen Weatherly 91
Another fascinating historical character – Julie d’Aubigny, Mademoiselle La Maupin
After briefly recounting the you-couldn’t-make-it-up life of…
… a fellow called Ignaz Trebitsch-Lincoln (Wikipedia biography here), who was (variously) a Jewish, Presbyterian, Buddhist, spy, British MP, Nazi, propagandist, and would-be Balkan oil cartel mogul. Oh, I forgot to mention: claimed reincarnation of the Dalai Lama and Japanese-backed candidate for the Emperor of China. (Not bad for a poor shtetl boy who started out as a Hungarian orthodox Jewish yeshiva student.) Nothing about this man makes any sense whatsoever unless he’s a character from a movie script written by Thomas Pynchon for Woody Allen.
Charles Stross then outlines the life of an even earlier gender-bending character from the French royal court (we’d already been introduced to the Chevalier d’Eon last month):
This was going to be a bumper-pack of implausible larger-than-life characters from history, but I sort of overran my target. If you want some homework, though, you could do a lot worse than read up on Julie d’Aubigny, Mademoiselle La Maupin (1673-1707), cross-dressing swordswoman, opera diva, lethal duelist and seducer of nuns (and briefly mistress of Maximillian II Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria).
As wikipedia notes, dead-pan, “due to Mademoiselle de Maupin’s beautiful voice, her acting skill, and her androgynous appearance, she became quite popular with the audience, although her relationship with her fellow actors and actresses was sometimes tempestuous … Her Paris career was interrupted around 1695, when she kissed a young woman at a society ball and was challenged to duels by three different noblemen. She beat them all, but fell afoul of the king’s law that forbade duels in Paris” (so she fled to Brussels and waited for the fuss to die down while having an affair with a foreign head of state).
Or, as Badass of the Week puts it, “Julie D’Aubigny was a 17th-century bisexual French opera singer and fencing master who killed or wounded at least ten men in life-or-death duels, performed nightly shows on the biggest and most highly-respected opera stage in the world, and once took the Holy Orders just so that she could sneak into a convent and bang a nun. If nothing in that sentence at least marginally interests you, I have no idea why you’re visiting this website.” Nothing particularly unusual here: just another 17th century bisexual Annie Lennox clone and opera star with a side-line in sword-fighting.
Asymmetric Information and Used Cars
Published on 8 Jan 2015
George Akerlof, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, analyzed the theory of adverse selection – which occurs when an offer conveys negative information about what is being offered. In the market for used cars, Akerlof posited that sellers have more information about the car’s quality than buyers. He argued that this leads to the death spiral of the market, and market failure. However, the market has developed solutions such as warrantees, guarantees, branding, and inspections to offset information asymmetry.
QotD: Critical gun safety tips for when the police arrive at the crime scene
There were other stories, and commercial breaks, and about thirty minutes later came an update to the shot burglar story: The newscaster now said that it was apparent that the police had shot the homewowner and more details would be forthcoming.
I said to Bobbi: “Dude thinks there’s a robber with a gun outside his house, calls the cops, goes outside with a gun his ownself. Then cops show up, the light on the homeowner’s ‘I’m A Good Guy’ IFF beacon is burnt out, the cops yell ‘Drop the gun, Buddy!’, he thinks ‘Surely they don’t mean me!’, turns toward them, and gets hisself popped.”
Looking at the TV station’s freshly-updated webpage, it looks like that’s more or less what happened […]
Lessons:
- Once the cops have been called, you don’t need to be running around outside with a gun in your hand. The chances for a blue-on-blue shooting skyrocket in incidences like that. Plainclothes officers get shot all the damn time in similar circumstances. It’s easy to tell who the responding officers are because they show up in a car with blinking lights and they’re all dressed the same. You want to not be on the playing field wearing the other team’s uniform when they show up.
- If you are on the playing field when they show up and you hear “Drop the gun!” then you need to drop the gun. Seriously. Like it just turned white-hot. (This is a good reason to carry drop-safe pistols, BTW. I realize that carrying that 1904 Ruritanian army surplus Schnellblitzenselbstlader in 8.3mm semi-rimmed is really cool, but aren’t you going to feel funny getting shot twice when you drop it: Once in the junk by your own gun when it hits the ground ass-end first, and again in the gut by the responding officer because he’s startled by the gunshot?)
Tamara Keel, “Breaking News…”, View From The Porch, 2016-08-23.
September 4, 2016
Vikings trade for quarterback Sam Bradford
I was busy all day yesterday, so the uproar in the Vikings fanbase over the trade with Philadelphia for Sam Bradford was just background noise for me. I have to say I’m happy the Vikings didn’t bring in some of the other widely discussed options at quarterback, although the team clearly paid a high desperation premium (a first round pick in 2017 and a conditional fourth in 2018 that might escalate all the way to a second if the Vikings win the Super Bowl). I liked Sam Bradford when he was drafted, and I think he’d be in the discussion as a top-five quarterback except for his injuries.
As part of the trade, the Eagles have agreed to pay the bulk of Bradford’s 2016 salary, leaving the Vikings to cover less than half (I assume a contract renegotiation is in the cards for 2017, unless Bradford is able to stay healthy and shine on the field). Bradford is in a great situation for a quarterback with a quickly improving wide receiving corps, the best running back in football and a potentially top-five defence … but notice that I didn’t say anything about the offensive line he’ll be working behind. That’s where the “injury prone” tag meets the gambling odds.
Teddy Bridgewater’s recovery time may stretch into the 2017 regular season, so having Bradford available for the next two years is just plain common sense. If Teddy comes back as strong as he was before the injury, we’ll have a heck of a passing threat to offer, but there’s also the possibility that Bridgewater won’t be quite the player he was and if that’s the case, then Bradford is more than just an insurance policy (though it pains me greatly to even think that Teddy won’t be back as good as ever). That said, anything positive in all of this requires Bradford to stay upright and healthy: if he loses even a few games to injury, we’re back to where we were before the trade.
From Tom Pelissero’s column on the trade in USA Today:
The Vikings had flexibility, with extra third- and fourth-round picks next year from past trades. They have a solid young talent base, having made nine first-round picks in the past five drafts, all of them still on the team. They have an offense built around 31-year-old halfback Adrian Peterson, who doesn’t have time on his side. And they had an unexpected opportunity to make a big upgrade from Bridgewater’s presumed replacement, Shaun Hill, a 36-year-old career backup who’d be serviceable for a game or two, but has never started more than 10 games in a season and lacks the arm to push the ball downfield.
Bradford, 28, has famously battled injuries throughout his career but is healthy now and performed well in the preseason. One of his old coaches in St. Louis and Philadelphia, Pat Shurmur, is now the Vikings’ tight ends coach. And the Vikings felt Bradford would be a natural fit for Norv Turner’s Air Coryell derivative offense.
Another factor the Vikings liked: Bradford is under contract through 2017, giving them options next season if Bridgewater isn’t recovered from upcoming surgery for a dislocated left knee, torn anterior cruciate ligament and other structural damage.
The Eagles gave Bradford an $11 million signing bonus, so the Vikings are only responsible for his $7 million base salary this season. They’ll face a decision in March, when Bradford is due a $4 million roster bonus on the fifth day of the league year. His salary for 2017 is $13 million, with $4 million of it fully guaranteed and another $4 million for injury. There’s also a $1 million escalator if Bradford plays 90% of the snaps this season and $2.25 million in incentives available each year.
That’s all pretty reasonable if Bradford can plug the hole at the most important position on an ascending team, driven by Peterson and an excellent young defense, that’s moving into a new $1.1 billion stadium this season. The Vikings are betting a first-round pick and then some that Bradford can do it.
The blockbuster trade temporarily swamped news of the final roster, as you’d expect. I made my predictions here and I wasn’t too far off:
- Tackle Jeremiah Sirles. I’d listed him as a likely cut, but he made the final 53. I don’t think he’s got a strong grip on the spot if the Vikings select someone waived by another team.
- Quarterback Joel Stave. If the team hadn’t traded for Bradford, Stave was the only healthy quarterback on the roster after Hill. After the trade, Stave became expendable and will be eligible for the practice squad.
- Defensive tackles Kenrick Ellis and Toby Johnson didn’t make the roster, which I found surprising, but my guesses were biased a bit toward the defence. Johnson is PS-eligible, unless he’s picked up by another team on the waiver wire.
- Linebacker Kentrell Brothers made the final roster, and I’d not seen enough from him in the preseason games to expect him to do more than make the PS. I guess the coaches didn’t want to thin out the linebackers too much this year (or Brothers may be sacrificed for a waiver-wire pickup).
- I’d listed cornerback Jabari Price and safety Michael Griffin as likely cuts, and both were placed on IR.
Those player who were waived are subject to being selected by other teams before they can be signed to practice squads. Teams have waiver wire priority in the same order as the 2016 draft for the first three weeks of the regular season. I’ve noted a couple of players who might lose out if the Vikings get anyone off the waiver wire, but the team is now mostly set to start the season.
Our First Trip To WW1 Locations Was An Epic Journey I THE GREAT WAR Special
Published on 3 Sep 2016
Map of all the locations we went to: http://bit.ly/2bxRZCg
Indy & Flo talk about our first trip to original WW1 locations in Poland and Ukraine. The trip was a great experience for all of us and you will surely like the future episodes we will publish throughout the next months. Thanks again to everyone who made this possible.
QotD: Polybius on Roman incorruptibility
Again, the laws and customs relating to the acquisition of wealth are better in Rome than at Carthage. At Carthage nothing which results in profit is regarded as disgraceful; at Rome nothing is considered more so than to accept bribes and seek gain from improper channels. For no less strong than their approval of money-making is their condemnation of unscrupulous gain from forbidden sources. A proof of this is that at Carthage candidates for office practise open bribery, whereas at Rome death is the penalty for it. Therefore as the rewards offered to merit are the opposite in the two cases, it is natural that the steps taken to gain them should also be dissimilar.
But the quality in which the Roman commonwealth is most distinctly superior is in my opinion the nature of their religious convictions. I believe that it is the very thing which among other peoples is an object of reproach, I mean superstition, which maintains the cohesion of the Roman State. These matters are clothed in such pomp and introduced to such an extent into their public and private life that nothing could exceed it, a fact which will surprise many. My own opinion at least is that they have adopted this course for the sake of the common people. It is a course which perhaps would not have been necessary had it been possible to form a state composed of wise men, 11 but as every multitude is fickle, full of lawless desires, unreasoned passion, and violent anger, the multitude must be held in by invisible terrors and suchlike pageantry. For this reason I think, not that the ancients acted rashly and at haphazard in introducing among the people notions concerning the gods and beliefs in the terrors of hell, but that the moderns are most rash and foolish in banishing such beliefs. The consequence is that among the Greeks, apart from other things, members of the government, if they are entrusted with no more than a talent, though they have ten copyists and as many seals and twice as many witnesses, cannot keep their faith; whereas among the Romans those who as magistrates and legates are dealing with large sums of money maintain correct conduct just because they have pledged their faith by oath. Whereas elsewhere it is a rare thing to find a man who keeps his hands off public money, and whose record is clean in this respect, among the Romans one rarely comes across a man who has been detected in such conduct…
Polybius, Histories VI, 56.
September 3, 2016
Roster cutting, 2016 style
On Saturday, all NFL teams have to cut their rosters from 75 to only 53 players by 4pm Eastern time. That means hundreds of players, both rookies and veterans, all hit the waiver wire at the same time. Twenty-four hours later, teams are allowed to sign up to ten players to their practice squads. Few names that anyone outside the local area will be mentioned, but it’s worth noting that the 53 players who initially make the roster may not be quite the same ones who are on the roster for their team’s first regular season games. In most cases, the top 45-50 will be the same, but the poor guys at the end of the depth chart are still at risk of being cut if the team sees someone cut from another team as being potentially more valuable.
Here are my best guess at who will still be on the roster on Saturday evening (early cuts are listed as of 10pm Eastern time):
