Random Thoughts (Political Edition)

Then again the Vikings did give way to the Normans, a civilized people as any in northern Europe. Norman Sicily was one of the most dynamic kingdoms of the age.
 
SirEdward said:
Well, they used urine to wash their clothes too.
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Yupp for more of the many uses of lant, look no further.
They did have pots standing in the streets of Rome to collect the urine and these pots were even taxed by Nero and Vaspasian which is one of the most hilarious resource taxations ever... IMHO...

nomix said:
Funnily enough, that's part of what brought them down, at least militarily. Barbarians who'd learned their methods while being legioneres in the Roman armies finally defeated them.
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auxiliaries not legionnaires (only a born citizens of Rome could become a legionnaire IIRC)
 
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Election has been called for the 21st of August
 
salle said:
Yupp for more of the many uses of lant, look no further.
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I admit some of those uses are really amazing. Lanted beer... My mind is not so open as to conceive that.

They did have pots standing in the streets of Rome to collect the urine and these pots were even taxed by Nero and Vaspasian which is one of the most hilarious resource taxations ever... IMHO...
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"Pecunia non olet", used to say Vespasian (money don't stink). Incidentally, the name of the emperor remained in the italian language to indicate public toilets in the streets, particularly the old ones, the kind -without- the automatic sanitizing and the coin slot to open the door. He was the one who first ordered to build those things. It was the time when Rome had a million people in it.

auxiliaries not legionnaires (only a born citizens of Rome could become a legionnaire IIRC)
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I don't know, actually, but I think it depends on the century. Surely by the last decades of the western roman empire pretty much everyone could become legionnaire.
 
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SirEdward said:
Nobody is perfect... but it still better than caste system.
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No doubt.

SirEdward said:
Yes, but you still had the choice to actually become a part of (not be enslaved by) a very big and rich and advanced empire. They weren't out to destroy or pillaging only, but to conquer.
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But we still just did it for a laugh.

SirEdward said:
Not in every time. During the golden age of the 2nd century, things were quite calm.
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The Soviet Union was generally speaking very calm. Most military dicatorships are. :p

SirEdward said:
Sadly, it was a very long time ago. I wish we still had a bit of those skills and discipline.
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Imagine the great cars the Romans would have built!

SirEdward said:
they overthrown them, rather than defeat them. Rome has not ceased to exist when outer populations took the power it once had. The new conquerors became kings over the same people who were serving the emperors until the day before. And they continued to learn from Rome just like Rome did with the Greeks. Somehow, we could say that maybe, just maybe, the roman skills passed on to other populations, such as those who then became the germans. Think about it, our stereotype is for them to be organized, disciplined, good engineers, aggressive and determined. Who knows... ( :p :) )
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Yeah. Roman laws became the backbone of most European countries until the middle ages.

AiR said:
Vikings seem to have been the Hells Angels of the iron age. Sadly while they did write, they liked to carve stuff into rocks. Quality work, but there's only so much rock. Most rune stones say things along "Fjordnir was here" or "Thorleif is a sheep fucker" and things along those lines. Some are cursed.
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They also invented the SMS, which was a little piece of wood carved with a message. Used in church, for instance, to communicate when the latin ramblings of the priest got too boring.

One thing that's interesting, is that people have found that type of sticks saying, in essense, "Fjordnir has poop on his penis". Homosexuality was very common during Viking times, and since Fjordnir had poop on his penis, it meant he was the dominant male in the relationship. Being the dominated male was shameful.

AiR said:
If we want to get a more in depth look into the vikings, or anything else, we have to turn to the more enlightened people of the day, the muslim scholars who apart from making up useful things like numbers also wrote real accounts on real paper. Thus we know how a ship burial took place. Involves lots of drinking and sex. And tatoos. Did I mention vikings rode ships only because the Harley had not been invented yet?
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True, very true.

AiR said:
In typical Hells Angels fashion, the vikings were basically travelling slavers. Their name later gave name to their hunting grounds, Russia.
Altough cool, to non-vikings they were probably considered as civilized as a blow to the head.
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Yeah. But we did it for a laugh.

SirEdward said:
I don't know, actually, but I think it depends on the century. Surely by the last decades of the western roman empire pretty much everyone could become legionnaire.
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Yup. During the last decades, even the last century of the Western Empire, they would have made Nanci Pelosi a centurion if she'd been there. :p
 
nomix said:
Imagine the great cars the Romans would have built!
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And obviously they would have also used latin names for their cars: imagine a car with a good sound... AUDI!

ehi, wait a minute...
 
And the Fiat 500 could've been called the "Ante Bellum". And the Ferrari Testarossi could be called "Casus Belli".
 
More America fuck yeah for you.

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Chris Murphy is the Congressional Rep for this part of the state. A democrat yes but not a particularly liberal one IMO.
 
British_Rover said:
More America fuck yeah for you.
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Speaking of that, All Things Considered just ran a piece about this, but no audio or a transcription yet. They were talking about how rage has essentially become a political position now because people can get whatever "facts" they want nowadays from their favorite news source and make them fit their ideologies. Showing a bit of bias, they stopped just short of calling the Tea Party the "Rage Party".

It starts with a clip from a Democratic Congressman's town hall meeting, and someone asking him about the Justice Department's policy of "not prosecuting a black defendant if the victim is white", and when he said that there just wasn't one, he essentially got shouted down. The examples unfortunately got worse from there on out.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128606442
On YouTube and talk radio, at town halls and rallies, voters seem to be angrier than they've been before. Host Guy Raz talks to journalist Sasha Abramsky about the origins of this wave of rage. Abramsky examined the phenomenon in a recent article called "Look Ahead in Anger." Raz also talks with politicians who've borne the brunt of the anger, including Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) and Rep. Bob Inglis (R-SC).
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Yes NPR has had a couple of stories of interest like that in the past couple of days. Mostly ok talk of the nation. I will post them up when I can. Looking for them now but on my phone.


Read this a couple of hours ago. Tea party federation kicks out tea party express over what Mark Williams has been saying. It certainly look long enough. I was listening to an interview of
him on CNN radio last night on the way home from work. The letter he posted on his blog was the final straw it seems. He pulled it down already but there are exerpts out there.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38299783/ns/politics/



Found the stories on NPR now.

In Politics, Sometimes The Facts Don't Matter

And somewhat related.

Rep. Bob Inglis On Republican 'Demagoguery'
 
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LeVeL said:
I like the "Work harder: millions on welfare depend on you" sticker. I don't think you can really argue that its not true...
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I bet a good portion of people who were bitching about how much of our tax money goes towards unemployment benefits and Medicare aren't bitching anymore.
 
I don't have a problem with my taxes going towards unemployment for those that have lost their job and are actively searching for another. However, when a woman uses food stamps to buy junk food and then drives off in a new Lexus (true story, just ask BlaRo about it)... well, that doesn't sit well with me. There is a big difference between people being helped by the system and people feeding off of the system.
 
LeVeL said:
I like the "Work harder: millions on welfare depend on you" sticker. I don't think you can really argue that its not true...
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How about "Work harder: The troops in Afghanistan depend on you", then?

Just as demagogic.

Oh, and I guess I can say something about the abuse. It happens. It will always happen in a civilized system, and there's little that can be done to properly stop it. We can make it easier to spot, though, but at the same time, we need to avoid the system that worked in the UK during the 30s. Government inspectors would actually look into people's casserols to make sure they weren't eating good meat, too much meat, or giving themselves any luxury what-so-ever. That's not really humane.

Affording a brand new Lexus when you're on welfare does sound iffy, though. I guess they could have bought a well specced Honda for the same money and no one would react, but it's not what it is, but what it seems.
 
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LeVeL said:
I don't have a problem with my taxes going towards unemployment for those that have lost their job and are actively searching for another. However, when a woman uses food stamps to buy junk food and then drives off in a new Lexus (true story, just ask BlaRo about it)... well, that doesn't sit well with me. There is a big difference between people being helped by the system and people feeding off of the system.
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Here's a good article about that.

Welfare is clearly broken, but demonizing Obama about it and using it as another tenuous reason to further the "Socialist Obama" campaign won't solve anything.
 
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