The Hall of Fire

OK, how about this: businesses and offices across Britain, from major banks to knick-knack shops, have been forced to remove pictures and other representaions of pigs, including piggy banks, because Muslims are complaining that they are offended. You know, I really don't recall British Jews making a...

I suppose I really 'chose' Episcopalianism, in college- but then I Poped when I married into a very Catholic Irish family. Not really that big a difference, except the vicar's wife doesn't host teas.......

I love KJB because of the language, but the lack of Apocrypha annoys me The KJV originally included the Apocrypha; it wasn't until rather recently that it was dropped. Poke around in secondhand bookshops. Actually I got mine when Queens' College Chapel, Cambridge, dump-sold *all* their lovely Victo...

"$%$@ deer, why didn't you wait three seconds?"

Cars don't kill squirrels....indecision kills squirrels.

Your friend is lucky- my brother watched a moose peel the roof off a Lincoln like a sardine tin. Although I certainly don't want to contribute to the "terrible bloodthirsty maneaters" sort of mythology, at the same time I would caution against taking climax predators (or big herbivores) to...

Most versions before modern times (including the King James) were based on [Jerome's] translations. Yes, the KJB was produced by Anglican/Episcopal priests, but the high church in England hadn't evolved away from Catholicism much in 1611. Oh, no. No no no no no. The AV was most emphatically transla...

My "Bible as Literature" class in college used the Jerusalem Bible (with JRR Tolkein listed as an editor; I wonder what he really contributed) as its text. He contributed to the translation of the Book of Job, but it was not his translation alone by any means. Carpenter mentions this in t...

and it had real effects in the medieval world--note the number of kings and heirs to thrones that died in tournaments between 1100 and 1600 or so. . Yes, but. The proper occupation of royalty and niobility was the profession of arms- tournaments were an essential part of keeping your hand in (and s...

It wasn't a revolution because almost nothing societally changed. We severed ties with Britain but the legislatures and courts and laws steamed along uninterrupted- we just elected American governors to replace the old Royal guvs. The Established Churches broke away from the Church of England, and w...

And the result, as night follows day, is terror and tyranny. France, Russia, China, Haiti, Cuba...the song remains the same. The law of the gun means that those with the most guns make the laws.

N.B. The American War of Independence is often miscalled the "Revolution," but it wasn't.

If they had stopped there nobody would be complaining.

The Seattle School Board also ruled that teachers could not disciplne black students for interrupting in class, since interrupting was a "traditional aspect of African-American culture."

The inmates are running the asylum.

Incidentally, the private possession of fully-automatic firearms has been illegal since the Machine Gun Act of 1934.

Back to the OP's question: Prohibition and the modern age sit on opposite sides of a seismic fault in US Constitutional history- the Roosevelt administration, and the Supreme Court Justices FDR appointed during his long, long tenure. Up into the 1930's, it was well-established that the Federal Gover...

Absolutely. Bu of course farmers are farmers the world over, and regard all large predators as threats-to-livestock (true or not). Ironically, we still have plenty of foxes, by far the worst destroyers of poultry and lambs.

Well, at least according to my history books, the invading conquistadores claimed all the land for themselves and regarded the aborigines as something approaching (and often fully) slaves. It's my understanding that the Amazon tribes were communalists and had not developed a concept of land ownershi...

Taken from them? They never owned it in the first place. That may be harsh, but it's an historical fact. That's not the same as saying we might try granting squatters rights, as opposed to running them off, but we mustn't fall into the romantic fallacy that it was ever "theirs." I have no ...

Couple of historical points: Based on what we knew or believed at the time, the decision was (as Truman later related) hard but inevitable. Marshall reported to him in August that the Joint Chiefs estimated between 750,000 and 1,000,000 US casualties in an invasion of the Home Islands, based on the ...

Well, I dunno about the 'perfect.' The current system is an abomination. I'm not sure if single-payer universal is the answer. When you're dealing with negative population growth and increasing life expectancy, as most of the West is, and the US too if you exclude immigration, you have to be very, v...

Precisely. When the UN and EU proved incapable of handling the Yugoslav civil wars, the US and UK were able to intervene effectively unilaterally (under cover of NATO, but....) For the forseeable future we just can't do that. What's truly bizarre is that back in '03 the US and UK had a rock-solid le...