If you're already depressed about the current state of the world, it may not be a great idea to read Livy's history of Rome.

From the Loeb Classical Library edition of Book II, translated by B.O. Foster (paragraph breaks added):

But not only was war with the Volsci imminent; the citizens were at loggerheads among themselves, and internal ( Read more... )

On Saturday, the ladies and I went to see the exhibit of artifacts from Dura-Europos at NYU's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World. It was a small exhibit by NUC museum standards, but holy hell, what a collection ( Read more... )

The US national debt is now greater than the entire annual production of our economy! So if our government were to seize all production from all Americans for a whole year, it still wouldn't pay off what we owe ( Read more... )

Via the Blunt Object, Classically Liberal unpacks the tragic--and sometimes despicable--missteps Ron Paul has taken in attempting to deploy the paleolibertarian strategy of attracting votes by pandering to the worst impulses of social conservatives:

So, how did this strategy work out in Iowa ( Read more... )

LabRat, on the Iowa Republican caucus:

Dear media at large: Paul coming in a close third is not a sign there is something wrong with Iowa, it is a sign there is something, perhaps many things, wrong in general. The gentlefolk of Iowa were not particularly inclined to the Wookie vote before, but they have to choose from among what they are ( Read more... )

I've said before that NYC mayor Mike Bloomberg is the greatest current threat to our Second Amendment rights because he's much smarter than the increasingly sophomoric internet trolls who now run the Brady Campaign and VPC, and because he's seemed to know how to choose his battles ( Read more... )

There is no sense in which a "Santorum surge" is a good thing.

Market watch: Gold bugs’ unmerry Christmas

Santa brought the gold bugs quite a present last week. It was very big and extremely nasty...

From the previous Friday’s close to the low on Thursday, the CME February gold contract...plunged $82.10 or 5.1%...The article, apart from comments about "radical gold bugs" is even in tone, but the ( Read more... )

[h/t to DooT.]

Gun fires from girl's purse in Cheyenne Starbucks

Police in Wyoming say nobody was hurt when a small [derringer] that was inside a girl's purse fired while she was in a Cheyenne Starbucks ( Read more... )

Philmo shares an article by Justin Alexander from 2007 that shows me I've been thinking about D&D all wrong for a very long time:

D&D: Calibrating Your Expectations

There’s a common fallacy when it comes to D&D, and it goes something like: Einstein was a 20th level physicist. So, in D&D, Einstein - that little old man - has something like a ( Read more... )