1. A comparison of Mr Obama’s acts put in Mr Bush’s shoes. I can’t really imagine an honest left leaning individual saying “no” to any significant fraction of those questions, although likely any number of those things were items they would (privately at least) condemn Mr Obama for doing.
2. I don’t know the contents of the ’64 bill or the ’57 for that matter … but as a for my conservative opinion I’d ask “did the bill improve the conditions for private citizens pursuit of happiness (=virtue).” I’d add that in ’64 I was only 2 (3 in December) so my contributions would be minimal to the debate at the time.
3. Not exactly truly useful but … interesting nonetheless, my youngest daughter and my mother are knitters.
4. The Internet and beauty … and on Liszt, Verdi with his Requiem is another example of a secular (avowed atheist I think) producing moving sacral music.
5. This event was noted elsewhere as a set-piece staged political theatrical production (the town hall was packed with supporters), which if done by the Bush admin would likely have gotten a less salutary treatment by the press. Isn’t that bias?
6. Two articles noted in which Christian thought meets the cultural present.
7. The Hell’s Angels in Denmark. Denmark had a particularly ethical response to Nazi occupation and their seeking Jews for pogrom, so one might consider that their ethical antennae are not broken … which means that one might not want to generically dismiss their response to the spread of Islamic culture as a Neanderthalian move.
8. Judicial candidates apparently must watch their associations. I don’t know what this means … but it may resurface.
9. Ben Myers almost always has thought provoking things to say. Here he begins to consider the difference between writing and blogging in the context of theology.
10. This is a point which is not being defended by the left. Right now, with the left’s domination the public airwaves and much print media, ignoring objections is an effective strategy of theirs. But there is a disconnect between the economic situation which they (and everyone) admits is still fragile and the desire to tack on new economic burdens (the W/M bill and healthcare).
11. The allegorical hermeneutic is one I’m learning right now reading Origen for a class.
12. I suspect this discussion of happiness has at its root that the definition of happiness today is too often interpreted as a ‘feeling’.
13. Two teammates Armstrong and Contador of Astana, and I think that unless there is a mishap (crash) Armstrong really will be riding in support of Contador … and contrary to many predictions will finish outside the top 10.
14. An Israeli offers his opinions on Mr Obama’s policy toward his homeland … and conjectures it’s strengthening the resolve of the policy which (on the surface) he is supporting. Of course Mr Obama is supposed to be “very smart” so perhaps this was his intent. And I put scare quotes on smart not because I doubt Mr Obama is smart or not … but that I think that smart is a measurement that can be casually made. Modern politicians are primarily actors on a stage. An excellent actor may be very good at his craft, but that isn’t the same as what a physicist or mathematician would mean by the statement “he’s smart.”

Well, in a long conversation on the fragility of our civilization with commenter Boonton, one point of contention is apparent. Mr Boonton thinks that the “inflection point” in economic, i.e., the rise of technology in the late 19th century means that comparing today’s culture and civilization to those before is a apples/oranges comparison. Now, everything is different. I demur.

What features characterize today’s technological culture:

• It is highly interconnected.
• That interconnection is fueled and aided by high speed cheap transportation.
• Continued technological advancement is essential.
• Population levels are staggering when compared earlier eras.

Western Rome fell. It was highly connected and had, for its day, cheap transportation with the Roman road system. Yet it fell, and standards of living and population levels dropped precipitously. The statement “standard of living dropped” this cannot be emphasized enough. Roman era was quite wealthy. Technology that existed, for example examining simple wares like fine china was not eclipsed until the 18th or 19th century. Literacy was almost universal in Rome, even the poor and the slaves could read. Charlemagne was illiterate … and a king, the first “Holy Roman Emperor.” Literacy levels of the Roman era were also not eclipsed in the West until … the 18th or 19th century.

Examine the pottery situation for a moment in the Roman era. Pottery shards happen to be a refuse item which survives for archaeologists to find. In Britian, after Rome retreated something quite surprising happened. Pottery vanished. A potters wheel is conceptually quite a simple thing. But it takes a little time to master. It takes just a little infra-structure to maintain. But … the culture that survived in Britain in the post-Roman times had not the wherewithal to do so.

The only holdout and exception then is technology. How fragile then is technology. It is assumed by many that text and our written records, which are in fact robust and repeated and kept in many places, will insure that our technological advancement and prowess is secure. Things however may in fact not be a secure was we imagine. For it is not the written record on which most of our technology rests but instead of on the unwritten and ineffable expertise of those keeping industrial technological machines running and improvements coming. Michael Polanyi notes the example of the German sale to Hungary of a light bulb manufacturing process. The machines were duplicated, the process written down, and training was completed. Two years after the installation was completed … the machine still had yet to produce a single working bulb. Why? Because the people running the machine were not able to transfer the knowledge of how to run the machine elsewhere.

Our industrial processes and indeed our academic scientific culture is ineffable. It is a culture transmitted by master to apprentice. It depends not only on the skills transferred but cultural norms and values which have to be assumed successfully by the student in order for the continued progress of technology, of science, and academic excellence.

Additionally there are hundreds of thousands, if not many milions, of interlocking industrial components which are required for our civilization to continue. Most of these have multiple sources. Many of these (thousands) are essential, the loss of just one, for example high power/voltage step down transformers, would spell disaster. It is likely that many of these thousands of essential cannot-live-without components, of which we are not really aware in our daily lives, depend on just a few experts to continue their production maintenance, and improvement. One pandemic could wipe out a number of experts in many of these components and … it is not implausible that for some few components the expert base might be lost. Then the social unrest of the pandemic would be acerbated with a failure of one or more key infrastructure components keeping things running. Which in turn causes, because of our very high population levels, starvation and deprivation … which causes the loss of more components and bam! Most of us, just like the survivors of the Western Roman region will be back at pre-civilization early iron age levels.

It might not be a pandemic of course. Our worldwide economies are tightly linked. A monetary crises might cause civil unrest. The resultant violence might leave us missing the people needed to replace the lost infra-structure in the wake of just that. Right now there are some who suggest that the academic industry is the next bubble, which might pop under the stress of the current economic woes. This might not leave the scientific culture which in part depends on university cultural elements intact. If advancement of technology ceased … do we depend on continued technological improvement or not? Our culture is dependent on cheap oil. While it is a matter of debate how long cheap oil will persist … it is not really a debate over that it will at some time cease to be cheap. When, is debated. That it will become dear is not. The unrest that might arise on transition from an oil based civilization to a petroleum-is-expensive one, like the other events noted above could be the proverbial straw, breaking the back.

The point is that there are still striking similarities between our culture and the Roman one. It failed … and perhaps a lesson there to be learned is that our time of peace and prosperity is not likely to be as permanent, nor is as robust as we pretend.