... and conclusions drawn and promulgated after running data through selective filters coupled to a pre-set agenda?
:)

Funny... I was reading an op-ed piece in our local liberal rag yesterday and the thought crossed my mind that the author's points might have gotten across a LOT faster and easier with a few simple graphs rather than a few complex PARAgraphs... :)

But I'm a Visual kind of guy and pictures can often have a LOT higher data-density than written words.

I'm reminded of the story about Helen Keller, when asked which 'sense' she'd most like to have if she could have only one restored, and she answered 'hearing.'

While 'hearing' has a LOT of good points, the communications bandwidth of it pales in front of 'vision.' But having experienced neither, her answer remains 'her answer.'

I think this is an important point, term. I agree with what MikeM said - that empires die from complex causes, not simple ones - but one of the things we have noticed is that the 'detritus' of our society is increasing. There are more laws, more paperwork, more power groups that get in the way of 'producing something'. The metaphor in my mind is that of a young person who shrugs off bronchitis, but an older person gets pneumonia from the same bug. The US has been a strong and hardy society - as was Rome - but as our culture ages it is easier for drought or migration to become 'the straw' that breaks us.

Fortunately, we are both younger than Rome and higher tech. We still have some time.

Jan

I agree with you, MikeM. For years I have heard Dire Predictions...and mostly they just Y2K themselves into fizzled nothingness. The USA comprises most of the arable region of a continent. Our population is mostly literate and tech savvy. We have an established infrastructure. With the addition of distributed power, internet, and (eventually) 3D printing we can have a lot of physical resilience. (This is one reason that the agendas to move us into dependent urban warrens are dangerous.)

We are waging a philosophical war. If we had another 'new world' open to us, it would be possible to shed the accumulated parasites and power groups, and start over. We can improve on the Constitution, because we now have 200 years of watching what parts of it do not work.

We do not have the option of just taking flight and starting anew, so we have to deal with the fact that much of our population is so removed from reality that they do not see the cause-and-effect relationship between freedom and progress. But this may not matter. If we have sufficient technological momentum, we may be able to make non-production meaningless. We may, simply speaking, be able to out-produce the ballast of society.

Jan

I think that MikeM has the right of it. It is a lot more difficult now to suppress an opinion. One example of this is e-publishing of fiction, non-fiction, and scientific articles (and a lot of hogwash too, admittedly). The traditional 'Press' is still trying to pretend that it has a gatekeeper function with respect to news, for example.

Jan

For hundreds of thousands of years, parents could teach their children 'all they needed to know' about the technology of the world in which they would live as adults. We cannot even guess what technology we will ourselves be learning a decade from now, in a scramble to keep up with our rate of progress.

Ten years from now, if they lock down the Internet, it might be equivalent to currently 'stopping the mail' and assuming you have therefore cut off communication.

Jan

Ha. Not THAT kind of charging!

Jan

That would make the changeability of the past quite variable. If I did not know the outcome of a battle, I could affect it; if I did know the outcome, I could not. Someone else, at the same battle, would have different constraints, depending on what they do or do not personally recall.

Jan, brain hurts now

Who knows?
Hercules may have started out as some mighty warrior mortal of the dim past that fireside poet storytellers turned into a demigod and made further exaggerations. .

No, no: What is RIGHT with this picture. What is right is that you think of this ahead of time. When there is a power outage you do not play music or show lights - you already have shutters or blackout curtains, headphones.

You are correct in that you can make yourself a target. (I once tried to convince a Mormon friend that Grateful Dead t-shirts should be part of the survival cache that he kept. Otherwise Mormon == target.) But, by planning ahead you can see that this does not happen.

It is important to realize that perimeter control is a good way to keep your house from being burglarized AND a good precaution to take in case of emergency situations. Similarly, having food on hand lets you get in a mood for cooking and not have to go to the store at 10PM. Good curtains and shutters help with temperature control. Nothin' for you here, move on along now.

Jan
300lb of GSDs does not hurt either. One of them is curled up on my feet as I type this. Such a warm puppy.

Yes, President Eisenhower and Senator Al Gore, Sr., championed the Interstate Highway System. However, roads were part of the WPA back in the 1930s. We already had two quasi-private examples: the Dixie Highway and the Lincoln Highway. The Works Project Administration just took them over.

I am not sure what you mean by this: "... had I been alive in 1933, with the knowledge and values I possessed just a few years ago, I would have concluded, in response to FDR's "gold raid" of 1933, that it (the country) would be quickly(??) finished!"

Obviously, the country was not finished at all. Is that what you mean. FDR's gold raid, as you call it, affected only the banks. Most private individuals were not affected. Anyone could hold up to three ounces of gold. Numismatists were limited only in the number of $3 gold coins they could hold: one from each date and Mint. Otherwise, no restrictions applied. (See "Gold Was Never Illegal" here: http://www.objectivistliving.com/foru... )

I challenge that. Please show your sources. I found a more complicated - and contradictory - set of sources here:

(1)"... certainly several tens of thousands of individuals, and sometimes apparently a hundred thousand plus-strong. The basic political economy of the Empire – powered by unmechanised agricultural production in a world of low overall population densities – meant that there was always a demand for labour, and..." http://www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/events/refuge...

(2) "Over a century later, the Roman emperor Valens struck a deal with the Goths, allowing some of them to settle in the Roman provinces of Moesia and Thrace (modern Hungary and Bulgaria) in exchange for the provision of soldiers to the much depleted Roman army. The Goths were not treated well by Valens’ officials and in 378 they revolted. Valens undertook a campaign against them which ended in a major defeat in the Battle of Adrianople on 9 August, 378. Nearly 20,000 Roman soldiers were killed and Valens himself died in the battle."
-- https://betweenromeandpersia.wordpres... (Not that this is a second-hand interpretation, not an original source. The salient point is one of semantics. You claim that they wanted welfare. This writer claims that they suffered abuse. That is why I ask you for better sources.)

(3) Your assertion at best falls within the much larger phenomenon of the "Volkswanderung" http://www.ancient.eu/Migration_Age/

Oh, indeed, it is. "They" (capital-T They) cannot force you to subscribe to Their channel. They have to compete against all of the full range of alternative media. Do you realize how many websites are dot cc? One of the one I pay attention to is merely a platform for collectors of ancient coins. They need the exergue because mainstream (government) archaeologists want to deny (free market) numismatists access to "cultural patrimony" (whatever that is). The point is that in that little corner of the markets that no one takes seriously, the Mainstream Media have no influence. I assert that this is not unique. In fact, I believe that it is far more common in total than the number of people who watch NBC Nightly News.