And then there was the radio announcer who delivered the public service announcement with great enthusiasm but the wrong stress, "Ladies, don't forget to take your fat cans to the butcher today!" Or so goes the story.

You sure that wasn't the Liberation Front of Judea? I like Dorothy L Sayers's dramatization of Barabbas (or rather his shadowy boss) as a Zealot, working to chase out the Roman imperialists and looking for a charismatic leader for a front man. And finding, of course, that the local charismatic person was not interested in the job.

Precisely. 'Shermis did concede one point: he did not do a regression analysis on the data in his study. He said that was part of the conditions he accepted in order to...' So much for people who think the Ed Biz is run by dimbulbs who are slow to catch on. Took them only a few decades to emulate the drug industry. Odd thing, though: In the bit I read I didn't see anybody noting that the author, who accepted that condition, is a m*therf*ck*ng wh*re. Maybe the critics realized that calling him that would be carrying civility too far.

Hey, there's a real need for Americanization and Propaganda Services, at least for the Right. It was just this morning that a lot of survey info came from the Pew foundation concerning immigration. What tickled me especially is that the generation of grown children of Latin and Asian immigrants are quite substantially more likely to be Democrats than their parents. It almost seems the more American you get, the more you like Democrats' understanding of what it's all about. (For what it's worth, of course, but it has strong merits of the negative sort when stood next to the Republican version or versions.) The topper: They are much more likely to be unworried about gay marriage and abortion. Wave goodbye to those natural family-values voters you were trying to talk your racist fellow GOPers into pursuing. In fact, if some Republicans really care about those issues, they ought to be demanding more immigration; and, obviously, paths to citizenship, so their new friends can vote.

Orwell's distaste for Nazis was clear and started early; it had something to to with his decision to fight in Spain. After the Spanish Civil War was over, he had little more use for the Soviets, which of course he made very clear. So I'm not sure where the subtleties are. It's true that the offices of the Ministry of Truth bore a strong resemblance to those of the BBC. He attributed this to his really bad impression of the BBC propaganda arm from when he worked there.

"They're trying to kill us with the incredible laughtasticness of lines such as these, yes? " Ja! Beigerhund das oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!

I see what you're trying to tell us: Victor Davis Hanson is the Republican intellectual that Newt Gingrich wishes he were.

Wouldn't think of it!

Non-economist speaking: Most interesting thread. But it's not clear to me why these are two separate problems. Like, why are the boundary conditions as assumed in the first approach not the same as the phase boundaries in the second? (Also, BTW, not a physical chemist, having found the subject behind a high energy barrier and not having had the luck to tunnel through.)

Erudite blog, isn't it? It's pleasant to think that the readers will recognize Joe Hill's face as well as his most famous song. Or they can at least infer one from the other. It makes me reflect on my fortunate youth, as I heard The Preacher and the Slave at an early age, like seven, and it was years later that I first ran into In the Sweet Bye and Bye. And years still later that I lived for a while across the street from Patten Bible College in Oakland, which would play pious tunes on its sweet-sounding (yuck) electronic carillon, among which was this one, to my amusement. Also amusing over the years: hearing Republicans denouncing pie-in-the-sky promises without knowing whom they're quoting. "You'll get pie in the sky when you die" is still a good line, I think, to get a kid's attention with.

DrDick said Fudgie's afraid of snakes bigger than his dick. What a shock. So inch worms give him the willies? We saw what you did there.

It's an awfully long-winded presentation for the absolute worst piece of statecraft in the history of civilization. Maybe that's a bit unfair: after all, how many people have ever had the *opportunity* to get into all-out war with the Soviet Union and the United States in a period of six months? A brilliant achievement nonetheless.

"so the US leaked to the German embassy on Dec 10th that the US was going to declare war on Germany." [citation needed]

Curse you! You've made me long for a Bloody Mary, and I don't even like vodka.

You can't be serious, asking about the GI Bill! It's famous for having opened The University to people who didn't belong there. How can that not have cheapened standards and led to the failure of high culture? Really, I can't understand how anyone could be so out of touch with the wisdom of the fucknoses. Lucky bastard.

"...he will die lying to himself, howlingly, soullessly empty." "The Death of Ivan Illich" without the pathos.

Those dogs are barking? Is the British slang intentional here? Must be. That commenter sure as hell didn't get off at East Ham. (One stop short of Barking. On the District Line.)

Or Noble Lords, since they didn't have dynamite in those days.

Am I actually the first to ask, Has anybody told Victor Davis Hanson about this?? Seriously, this is a nice and specific presentation of what really went on in the early stages of the withering of the Roman state as its extremities died. When I read a little about the process in college, probably in a book called The Making of the Middle Ages, I brought away one useful perception, that this is what breaking down into anarchy means in real life: the dictatorship of the local bully boys. Succeeded in due time by the more successful of their grandsons, now called Nobel Lords. Not a romantic view of anarchy or anarchism, but an accurate one.

@mort_fin "in the american bars where i hang out, most people couldn't string 3 complete sentences together to form a coherent financial argument." And that, I presume, is *before* they start drinking?

[Good, managed to wait till I wasn't **F*I*R*S*T**!!!!!1!] [No offense, obviously, to Walled, who did no such thing.] Ol' PZ outdid himself in that posting; not an easy feat. I also note his participation in the thread, which looks more active than usual; not hard to understand in light of the preceding thread(s). And thanks for this posting; trust somone with a nym like "Science" to give us the actual information. (Would that we could so trust as a rule.) In a couple of earlier interminable nasty threads on this flap, I never saw exactly the terrible, terrible thing that Watson said that got everyone so up in arms; one might have conjectured that there could have been something wrong there, which made it almost surprising how measured her language was.

Could we conclude, then, that the people who move the billions in the debt market aren't really quaking with fear about the default? I wonder, do they know something? (No wonder at all why they're so afraid of the imminent years of hyper-inflation that they're lending 10 years at 3+%, but that's been obvious for over a year.)

@ Gene O'Grady Dammit, sir, you stole my opening paragraph. Word for word, except terser and better than I'd have done it. The question is, of all things, WHY the desert tortoise as a scapegoat for all the money the gummint wastes on blog pages and the like? Someone estimated the cost of keeping such a page open at $125 a year. Dunno if that's right, but it can't be many orders of magnitude off. So, all you have to do is shut down one million of them, and you've saved 1/8 of the famous amount that, with one here and one there, starts getting into real money. (My quick check into Everett Dirksen shows me that the consensus is that he never made that remark, but he liked it enough not to want to complain about it.) And do that only a thousand times, and you've got a substantial part of the deficit! How could you go wrong? But still, why the desert tortoise? This admin, for all its faults, isn't a notorious enemy of conservation and stuff. Reading comments in (I think) the Guardian, I found that the tortoise is a political issue now. The solar power companies that are collecting their Federal subsidies to build facilities in the desert are having to contend with other Federal people who are protecting the habitat of the tortoises (threatened species). This is serious business. (See how the gummint always wastes your money by not even keeping a united front?) So now we know. Did Biden know why he was fed this particular issue to mock? Quite possibly not. Has he been told by now? Probably, one hopes, he has. Do we expect a retraction and the firing of some industry shill working in the Democrats' anti-deficit speech factory?

The practice (sending a check & expecting it to be kept rather than cashed) isn't always well received, though. When Einstein mailed a particular manuscript, he noted that the postage had been less than the amount my father had sent to cover costs, so he sent a check for about $2.50 for the difference. My father naturally wrote back to Einstein's secretary acknowledging receipt of both and noting that he intended to keep the check rather than cash it. Ms. Dukas replied that many people did that, and it messed up the bookkeeping, and he should cash the thing, and she'd send him the canceled check when it came back. (Hmm, does anybody remember canceled checks?) So he had the pleasure of going down to Wells Fargo, endorsing the check, and handing it across the counter with its Albert Einstein signature -- and the bored teller took it and cashed it without blinking. Oh, well. But the check is now a family heirloom, *and* we got the $2.50 as well. Probably more valuable than my own catch, the rubber clown nose autographed by Patch Adams, Wavy Gravy, and Robin Williams.

Sounds good. And so nice to hear about directly after it closes.