An admirer of Robert Fisk has made a favorable comparison between General Wesley Clark and the Roman Emperor Hadrian.

I listened to Wesley Clark in Henniker, New Hampshire at the start of the weekend and heard between the lines the classic warning of a first-class warrior against the folly of limitless empire:

"Beyond the Euphrates began for us the land of mirage and danger, the sands where one helplessly sank, and the roads which ended in nothing. The slightest reversal would have resulted in a jolt to our prestige giving rise to all kinds of catastrophe; the problem was not only to conquer but to conquer again and again, perpetually; our forces would be drained off in the attempt."

The words are not Clark's, or mine. They are the reflections of the Emperor Hadrian (ruled AD 117-138), among the last of the great Roman chiefs.....

While it is true that Hadrian pulled back from the Euphrates and made deals with the Dacians, these areas had already been pacified, and he pulled back because he felt the empire had been overextended. Building the famous wall between England and Scotland also stressed Hadrian's idea of clearly defined, defensible borders. There is not one iota of evidence that Hadrian ever backed down from a war once it started. One of Rome's worst wars, in fact, started after Hadrian's pullback: the bar Kochba rebellion, discussed infra.

Now, I cannot state conclusively that Hadrian's pullbacks were seen as "weak" and emboldened Shimon bar Kochba or any of the Jewish rebels. Rebellions in Judea had been going on for many decades -- long before Hadrian was born. In order to make the claim that the pullbacks emboldened the rebels, you'd have to get inside the rebel leaders' heads and analyze their thinking, which Romans did not do; although they did present Hadrian with the head of bar Kochba. But the fact is, the uprising did start after Hadrian's pullbacks. The empire had grown quite huge and unwieldy, so adjusting the borders may well have been the reasonable, prudent, and wise thing to do. Certainly it was not appeasement. But, in the eyes of angry, messianic radicals, waiting for any sign that their moment was at hand, a pullback by the Romans from other outlying provinces could very likely have been seen as precisely the evidence of weakness indicating an opportune moment to strike.

So much for Hadrian and how the border pullbacks of a vastly overextended empire might have played a role in the timing of a revolt. What has this in any way to do with General Clark? I didn't make the analogy, but the only way I can makes sense out of it is if I accept the underlying premise that the United States is a vast empire which needs a Hadrian to pull back from its overextended borders. Otherwise, the analogy makes no sense.

But even if I accept Mr. Ludlow's premise that we are another Roman Empire (and that presidents are the same as emperors), the argument still doesn't make sense -- precisely because pulling back failed utterly to create a magical Pax Romana for Hadrian. 90,000 Romans died in the bar Kochba war. In those days, each man had to be killed the hard way; by swords, spears, arrows. Today this would be called hand-to-hand combat. Adjusted for the relative size of the populations, 90,000 Romans becomes 500,000 Americans. (Around 50 million lived in the Roman Empire.)

No matter how you look at it, that's a pretty expensive peace. And on top of that, consider the 580,000 Jewish deaths....

Contrast General Clark's view:

One thing I've learned is--in my work in the Balkans and visits elsewhere around the globe: you very seldom solve political problems by killing people; you intensify them. The killing needs to stop."

While it might be true that killing fails to solve political problems, war is much more than a political problem, as Hadrian discovered.

Anyway, for a variety of reasons, Clark is no Hadrian.

I think Mr. Lydon ought to pull back from his rather strained analogy.

Here I go, being hypersensitive again...

Here's a new weapon in the arsenal of insults: a man who believes himself a modern prophet (and who gives orders to Jesus, Mohammad, Buddha, Karl Marx, and even God) now thinks I am a "DUNG-EATING DOG!" According to the prophet, Jesus "failed," but "we" will succeed if we get rid of the dung-eating dogs.

I am not sure where I first found the link, so I am crediting these two places where I saw it.

This confirms what science has been saying all along. Sheesh! What an unsanitary anal-ysis!

And I thought they ate dogs over there where Moon comes from.

I saw this story on Drudge, but then when I went back to give Drudge credit, the story had been pulled!

I guess that means that now there are two stories: the Muslim honor killing, and its disappearance off the Drudge Report site. (I cannot read the mind of Matt Drudge, so I will not speculate, lest I be accused of "hypersensitivity." Might just be an accident....)

Anyway, the story is a real charmer: Dad (a strict Muslim named Abdalla Yones) did not like the fact that his daughter had dated a Christian boy, so he broke down the door to the bathroom in which she had barricaded herself and stabbed her eleven times. She died.

According to the story, there were twelve such deaths in Britain last year.

It strikes me that there is no honor in killing members of your family to uphold certain interpretations of religious texts. In this respect, the Christians and Jews are far more civilized than the Muslims. True, the Old Testament commands that disobedient children be put to death. But only a very few kooks believe in such nonsense -- and as far as I know they have not dared put these psychotic "religious commands" into practice.

UPDATE: It also strikes me that if the disappearance of this story was intentional, that would not be honorable journalism. I plan to keep checking Drudge to see whether it reappears. (Here is confirmation that it was linked there earlier this morning.) I do hope the story's "death" was not deliberate....

At the core of the debate between fundamentalists and non-fundamentalists is a problem over the definition of truth.

I am not a moral relativist by any stretch, and I do believe in such a thing as absolute truth. There are such things as facts, things which either happened or did not, and much stuff which can be proven to a scientific certainty. People such as "deconstructionists" who assert that there is no such thing as the truth sicken me.

They also sicken almost all reasonable people. So why the hell are they so often presented as the only alternative to fundamentalism? Clearly, they are not.

And why are fundamentalists so often presented as the only "Christians" in the country, or the world? I know it is easy to give the squeaky wheel the grease, but is this fair?

Fundamentalists assert that the only absolute truth is whatever particular version of it that they assert comes from God. Each particular fundamentalist group -- whether the various Christian varieties, Muslims, Hindus, etc., claims to know this as absolute fact, and they assert that their truth is written in books which were either directly inspired by God or dictated by him. The problem is that there are too many competing branches of fundamentalist truth -- and simple logic dictates that they cannot all be right. Otherwise, truth really would be a relative thing -- to be determined by the adherents of each particular philosophy thereof.

Certain fundamentalists would hate me for saying this, but the insistence by so many groups that only their group knows the truth gives ammo to the advocates of moral relativism and those in the deconstructionist camp.

Yet those who do not see religious texts as absolute truths, but see the fundamentalist assertion of truth as one form of religious opinion -- why, these people are then painted as moral relativists, and on top of that, are told that they are not "real" Christians -- even though some of them might believe in God and attend church. Predictably, this leads to name-calling.

I have tried to argue logically with fundamentalists, and gotten nowhere because of this stumbling block over the definition of truth. (An interesting analysis of this problem can be found here.) I don't even waste my time arguing with those true moral relativists (often known as "deconstructionists") who dispute the idea of truth, because there is no basis even for rational discussion. After all, if there is no truth, there is nothing to debate, and really, no reason to discuss anything. A bumpersticker I saw in Berkeley summed it up rather nicely: "WORDS ARE NOT TRUTH." (OK, fine; no words for him!)

The biggest enemies of the fundamentalists are not radical secular atheist deconstructionists. Likewise, the biggest enemies of the latter are not the fundamentalists.

These two opposites agree on the real enemy. The real enemy are ordinary "fuzzy" Christians, and ordinary, more or less secular, live-and-let-live agnostic types -- the kind of people who believe in God but don't think the Bible is literally true, or maybe believe in God but aren't completely sure of anything else. (Maybe even people who think they are atheists but aren't really sure of that!) They want these people to be afraid to speak, and they want them out of the debate.

"Christian" has become a dirty word, and the fundamentalists share the deconstructionists' delight in that fact. Sure, they'll write books and cry crocodile tears, but they love the fact that ordinary people are afraid to call themselves Christians.

Even agnostics have become afraid to state their honest belief in things like truth, or good versus evil. That is because they are told by fundamentalists that without God there is no truth, and by deconstructionists that there is no truth at all, or good and evil.

Note the ironic agreement by deconstructionists and fundamentalists:

"NO GOD, NO TRUTH."

The majority disagrees, but you'd never know it....

This story is a real outrage:

Homes & Gardens of November 1938 showed off Hitler's fashionable home. Homes & Gardens of 2003 would rather kill the story than apologize....

It is frankly sickening that Homes & Gardens should display concern for its copyrighted material rather than contrition for its endorsement of a monster. This is a great story for the blogosphere.

Once again, we see the copyright laws being used to stifle free speech -- this time an important discussion of the copyright holder's Nazi-glamorizing role in history.

Outrageous. If the bastards can get away with this, then I say we take on the damned copyright laws. Get rid of them, rewrite them, defy them by means of civil disobedience followed by First Amendment litigation all the way to the Supreme Court. This country's founding fathers were very uneasy about interfering with the free flow of ideas. Thomas Jefferson feared the very abuse we see here: monopolists using state-granted power to control the flow of ideas.

Don't just read this; read the Flea's whole piece, and then do something!

UPDATE: Lest anyone think there are no lessons to be drawn from Homes and Gardens' publicity romp with Hitler (or other "ancient history"), Instapundit supplies a more modern example of media gullibility -- John Burns' (New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winner) report (via John Leo) that:

the vast majority of correspondents in prewar Iraq played ball with Saddam and downplayed the viciousness of the regime.

UPDATE: Lynn at Reflections in d minor supplies a link to view JPEGs of the actual Homes & Gardens Hitler sycophancy piece, as well as links to the other intrepid bloggers who won't let Homes & Gardens get away with this perversion of the copyright laws.

I don't know if my blogfather is being dissed or not, but here's the situation. I just found out that Kim du Toit called Jeff a "fool" for nominating him to be Secretary of Defense. While du Toit then graciously offered to be head of the ATF (promising that "there'd be some changes" under his regime), he really doesn't appear to be grateful for the valuable contributions Jeff has made to the Second Amendment. Never has he mentioned Jeff's Weekly Media Gun Bias compilations (a public service considered an institution elsewhere), nor has he blogrolled Jeff.

This seems odd, if not unfair, especially considering that Kim du Toit has proudly boasted of his status as a "nut":

I’m doubtless on some ''nut'' list with the FBI or Secret Service by now anyway.

Now, I am not asking Mr. du Toit to give my blogfather a link, because that is strictly his business. However, because Jeff is a leading gun nut, I do think it is fair to ask whether the fact that he is a self-described gay gun nut might be the source of the problem. Does this make people uncomfortable? I have no way of knowing, but I have experience -- twenty years of experience -- on the subject of being a gay gun nut. We get it from the right, from the left, and from the majority of homosexuals. There is nothing you can do which will put you more in the line of fire than to declare you are a gay Second Amendment supporter. It is high treason to all sacred cows of the conventional left (which wants to own homosexuals and disown the Second Amendment) and the conventional right (which wants to disown homos and own the Second Amendment). Thus, homosexual gun owners find themselves politically homeless. And all too often, anathema to both sides. If anyone can explain the logic to me, I would love to hear it. I have been waiting for twenty years.

If you ask me, gun nuts should hang together, lest they hang separately....

=================================

Jeff, by the way, links to James R. Rummel's post about outdoor sculpture, in which he asked if anyone is interested:

You know, those big concrete shapes that are put up by cities to generate interest?

....big and ugly they also add a little charm to the urban landscape....

NOTE AND UPDATE: James links to a cool blog in Esperanto with some good links to pictures of such sculpture, like these horses of different colors.

Well, this all just begs the question of Berkeley's controversial Guardian Sculpture, a large, surreal archer which stands guard over Berkeley's waterfront. The City of Berkeley, with its propensity for politically correct, Stalinist art, immediately took a disliking to the piece, which had been donated by the artist and erected by a group of citizens. It was denounced as "a violent image" and "warlike." The City was therefore going to have it hauled away, but was stopped by the organized outrage of local citizens who put a measure on the ballot to save it. It stands there to this day, a lone voice of defiance against politically correct tyranny. Here's a close-up shot.

Speaking of four legged avatars, Donald O'Connor's death reminded me of his brilliant acting in the "Francis the Talking Mule" film series. The chemistry between him and Francis was perfect, and those films remain some of the best American comedies from that surrealist, deliberately goofy, early 1950s period. The mule, of course, has infinitely more sense than any of the humans, and does much to establish the importance, dignity, and (of course) real sanity of those American underdogs often known as "nuts."

In my favorite film of all time, "Francis Covers the Big Town," psychiatrist Ernest Goodrich ("one of the top men in the psychiatric field") is reduced to a nervous breakdown after being cross-examined about his dreams by Francis -- a beast Dr. Goodrich confronted in the hope of exorcising the "hallucination" from his young patient's mind.

"My dreams are my own affairs!", Dr. Goodrich shrieked. "Get me out of here! Get me out!"

I'll leave you with something for your dreams: horses who sing doowop. Of course, you have to synchronize their singing by clicking on each horse with your mouse, one at a time, until you achieve a pleasant result. If a horse doesn't synch properly, click it again to stop it, then keep trying until you get the timing right.

Oh well. Synch or swim!

(I've had my fill of trying to lead horses to water....)

Today must be Cool Picture Day -- because I just found a great new blog with numerous color photographs like this one showing a wall of guns. (Thanks to the Flea.)

Hey, anything that gives Charles Schumer indigestion is all right by me!

I have a "gut feeling" that Senator Schumer would like the Maxim Gun too!

In case of earthquake, simply hold on and ride it out!

From Solomonia (a never-ending source for techno-oriented fun and wit), I found this picture, taken in Santa Cruz, California. (Where else?)

If viewing the picture makes you feel romantic, by all means go to this site, and read about the very cool god of earthquakes.....

UPDATE: On the other hand, Walter in Denver highlights the (purported) view of a more modern god, that the people who got the earthquake in Santiago, Dominican Republic, had it coming. (Wouldn't you think San Francisco's sodomites would have rated more attention than Santiago?)

A blogger I have complained about before now claims to have identified "the real debate":

The real debate is between Christianity and all its values verses the secular atheist elites and their lack of same. Between their sliding scale morality, which means sodomy is OK as long as your partner is over eight years old and of the same sex and the proscription of same. The battle between Thou shalt not Kill and the seculars so-called "situational ethics", meaning I killed him because he hurt my feelings is OK but I killed him because he broke into my house is not OK. The fight between the moral relativism of the Left and the moral clarity of the Christian; meaning to the secular and the atheist everything except smoking is OK almost always if one can prove (sort of) that he or she is a "victim" of white America against the clear prohibition of murder, adultery, and lying in Christian doctrine. The purpose of sex should not be ejaculation and orgasm, but children and family is a concept rejected and scorned.

Finally people like O'Reilley, Ingraham, Savage, and now David Limbaugh together with more than a few others are paying attention. This attack on Christianity is funded by both the Ford and the MacArthur Foundations that toss hundreds of millions of tax free dollars to the tax exempt ACLU. We cannot ignore the role the ADL and other Jewish orgs are playing in this, particularly in the attack on Gibson's "Passion".

Face it. Christianity has always been dangerous. So has real democracy. It is no accident that democracy has only taken hold in Christian countries. No Muslim, Confucian, Buddhist, or African Tribal society has ever wanted it. Only Christian countries wanted it and developed it in the modern world. Successful Democracy is a Christian concept. Period.

I don't even know where to begin with such indigestible morsels of thought. I don't want to be too hard on this blogger, but twice now I have given him the benefit of the doubt as a satirist.

In all honesty, it's hard to excuse this latest outburst as satire. Mr. Veit's overall tone here strikes me as disrespectful of the American founding: unappreciative and unpatriotic.

Is Mr. Veit serious? I have asked around, and a blogger I greatly respect (who has been blogging longer than I have, and who is one of the best writers in the blogosphere) thinks that Howard Veit might be "a malicious weather vane, angry with whoever, whenever for whatever reason." Considering that Mr. Veit is a fan of Michael Savage, whose entertainment style could be described the same way, the goal may be one of generating ratings. Michael Savage struck me as an agent provocateur type, and for all I know the same thing may be going on with Mr. Veit. It makes sense, considering the calculated and provocative anti-gay insults, mutual praise going back and forth between Veit and a well-known anti-Semitic organization, repeated attacks on leading Jewish organizations like ADL and B'nai Brith as well as comments like this one about Jews:

Jews are in the forefront of the separation of Church and State but have no problem taking money from same; makes you think it might be separation of Christian Church and state is all they are really interested in.

Let me start by reminding Mr. Veit that the word "democracy" is Greek, and the concept we in the West know and love took root among the ancient Greeks, hundreds of years before there was such a thing as Christianity. When Jefferson, Paine, Madison, Franklin, et al. put their heads together over what sort of government was to replace the tyranny of European monarchy, they not only examined the early "Town Hall" style of local governments in the colonies, but they meticulously researched the pagan past (Greek democracy and Roman Republican political theory) and even looked at the societies of their pagan contemporaries (American Indian democracies). For the most part, Christian countries at the time of America's founding had no concept of democracy in the American sense. Kings ruled by divine right, and that was seen as the Christian way. Our founding was a clear break with the past, and a restoration of two lost Classical Values: democracy and republicanism. (I am sure Mr. Veit understands the difference between a democracy and a republic, and that he knows our founders intended to create a republic; to avoid semantical bitchiness I will use the word "democracy" in the general sense as Mr. Veit obviously did.)

It would, however, be unfair to assert that there were no true European democracies between ancient times and the American Revolution. The oldest democracy which can truly be said to be Western is the Icelandic Althing, which was established in 930 AD. (I can understand why Mr. Veit would fail to cite the Althing, because when he did his research he probably noticed that the Vikings had not yet been "Christianized" -- which would render his thesis suspect....)

In addition to Greece and the Rome, there have been numerous other ancient non-Christian democracies and Republics -- even in Asia! There are a number of successful democracies in Asia today which are by no means Christian. While there are not many democracies in Muslim countries, Turkey is a genuine success story, and Malaysia is working on it. (Maybe even Iraq....)

Despite all of the above, Veit solemnly proclaims that

"democracy has only taken hold in Christian countries."

There is, of course, a well-organized movement which maintains Israel is not a democracy. Might the following statement offer a clue as to whether its author shares such sympathies?

We cannot ignore the role the ADL and other Jewish orgs are playing in this, particularly in the attack on Gibson's "Passion".

Finally, while I don't think it's necessary, I should add a word about Veit's division of the world into the "Christians and all its values" and "secular atheist elites," the latter of whom share the following "sliding scale morality":

sodomy is OK as long as your partner is over eight years old and of the same sex and the proscription of same.

"situational ethics", meaning I killed him because he hurt my feelings is OK but I killed him because he broke into my house is not OK.

everything except smoking is OK almost always if one can prove (sort of) that he or she is a "victim" of white America against the clear prohibition of murder, adultery, and lying in Christian doctrine.

Such dishonesty ("lying in the Christian doctrine" -- or any other doctrine) squarely puts Mr. Veit on the same moral level of those "sliding scale moralists" he condemns.

And that is not moral relativism!

UPDATE:

Here's one last gem for all you unemployed jerkoffs who have nothing better to read:

You take their money and you do what they want. It's called a job. Plumbers have them, machinists have them, secretaries have them; everybody has them but the unemployed jerkoffs on the web.

Who said that! Bill O'Reilly? No; that was Howard Veit, whose weathervane is now angry at Daniel Weintraub (see discussion here) and the Blogosphere:

None of the people pissing and moaning on the so-called blogoshpere earn their living writing for a daily newspaper. Weintraub, like the millionaire "artists" in Hollywood, wants to say what he wants on somebody else's dime, and then get paid for it. Fuck him. That's life 101, something these pampered writers want nothing to do with.

YES!

AT LAST!

PEACE® IN OUR TIME!

(Click on these beautiful, fabulous, glamorous images to find out more!)

(Breakthrough peace announcement courtesy of Being American in T.O. Thank you Debbye!)

Has the Nobel Peace Prize Committee been notified? I cannot think of two more deserving Peace Prize candidates.

More test results! Thanks again to the Blogosphere's great giver of tests, Ghost of a Flea, I found the identity of my Lost Souls character!

You are Christian.


Poppy Z. Brite Quiz - Which Lost Souls Character Are You?
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While I am woefully ignorant of Lost Souls, I am so flattered by these test results that I think I'll just revel in my ignorance.

By the way, the Flea is now a blogfather! Be sure to stop by, and also check out the Flea's blogson. It was just a little over four months ago that I also found a blogfather. It makes for a wonderful bond.

My congratulations!

UPDATE: Christian is apparently a vampire. As a form of life extension, that's OK. I just don't especially like the historical Dracula, who makes real vampires look sweet and innocent. You can read about him by clicking on the blood:

NOTE: This is a continuation of my "Fall" series. You can read Part One here.

As I wrote last night, Constantine the Great's theological beliefs included the pagan god Mars along with the apparently monotheistic Jesus Christ. I say "apparently," because there was quite a ruckus among the early Christians over the Trinity. It was felt in some quarters that Jesus as a separate son of god was heresy to monotheism, because (obviously) once you allow any god -- even the one and only god -- to have kids, well, that's paganism. No more one god. To get around this problem, those early Roman anti-pagan guys (called "doctors") fought ferocious ideological battles to create and drum into the minds of all followers the idea that God the father and god the son were the same. Can't have a son of god as a separate entity. Whether Jesus himself knew or understood this, once again seems irrelevant.

Many people have had serious problems with the Trinity concept for many years. The early Christian leaders Arius and Athanasius debated it fiercely, with Constantine eventually resolving the matter in favor of the Athanasius position: Jesus was not created by God, but existed for all time along with God. One of the problems I have with the Trinity is that it contradicts the claim of Jesus being the Jewish Messiah, because the Messiah is not God, but a man descended from King David and then anointed. If he was the Messiah, then the Trinity is wrong, and if the Trinity is right, then Jesus was not the Messiah (unless Judaism is to be rewritten retroactively for Christian purposes).

Many people have died over this stuff, which gets quite complicated. A couple of lively discussions may be found here and here.

Thomas Jefferson, by the way, said this about the Trinity:

"....[T]he Athanasian paradox that one is three and three but one, is so incomprehensible to the human mind, that no candid man can say he has any idea of it, and how can he believe what presents no idea? He who thinks he does, only deceives himself He proves, also, that man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without a rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm of reason, and the mind becomes a wreck."

During the same period that the Trinity concept was being formed (primarily during the Fourth Century), Christians made a quantum leap from being persecuted to being persecutors. For the first time in human history, Christians held real, raw, state power. It is a well-known adage that power tends to corrupt, and the early Christians, being men, would therefore have been prone to corruption like anyone else. Merely placing the label of "saint" on their leaders does not alter the reality that they had power, and they used it. Not only against pagans, but against their fellow Christians.

Here's Catholic historian Hans Kung on this subject:

Constantine, who was baptized only at the end of his life, pursued a tolerant policy of integration until his death, in 337. His sons, who divided the empire, were different. Particularly Constantius, the lord of the East, engaged in a fanatical policy of intolerance against the pagans: the death penalty was threatened for superstition and sacrifice; sacrifices were stopped and the temples were closed. Now Christianity increasingly permeated all political institutions, religious convictions, philosophical thought, art, and culture. At the same time other religions were often eradicated by force and many works of art were destroyed.

It was the emperor Theodosius the Great, a strictly orthodox Spaniard, who at the end of the fourth Christian century decreed a general ban on all pagan cults and sacrificial rites and accused of lese-majesté (laesa maiestas) those who broke this law. That made Christianity now formally the state religion, the Catholic Church the state church, and heresy a crime against the state. And after Arius, there was to be no shortage of new heresies.

What a revolution! In less than a century the persecuted church had become a persecuting church. Its enemies, the "heretics" (those who "selected" from the totality of the Catholic faith), were now also the enemies of the empire and were punished accordingly. For the first time now Christians killed other Christians because of differences in their views of the faith. That is what happened in Trier in 385: despite many objections, the ascetic and enthusiastic Spanish lay preacher Priscillian was executed for heresy together with six companions. People soon became quite accustomed to this idea.

Above all the Jews came under pressure.

Kung, Hans, The Catholic Church: A short history (Modern Library Edition, New York, 2001) pp 37-38.

I have read numerous accounts of this very impressive revolt, and I will try to summarize its essentials. Simeon bar Kochba (the name has several spellings) was a Messianic figure, and although not considered the Messiah by many people today, at the time of the revolt many Jews believed he was. Like most ancient leaders, he had to be tough and ruthless. To join his army, you had to either uproot a cedar tree or else cut off a finger! (Definitely not an army for wimps....)

The Romans were naturally skittish about rebellions in general, but especially in Judea, the locus of a very serious war just 60 years earlier. So, they kept a very close watch on arms, not allowing anyone to manufacture them except contractors under hire by the Roman military. Bar-Kochba's men very cleverly set up weapons factories which deliberately made shoddy weapons they knew would be rejected for Roman military use, and returned as "junk." This enabled them to assemble vast weapons stockpiles, which were concealed in caves.

Finally, the war started when bar-Kochba's men caught the Romans by surprise, and the latter were completely defeated. Unbelievable as it sounds, the Romans lost 90,000 men. This account and many others, also confirm devastatingly high Roman casualties.

Hadrian, still smarting from the death of Antinous, could not back down, so he sent his best generals with hundreds of thousands of more men. It took years to defeat the Jews, but ultimately they lost, and a total of some 500,000 Jews were killed. Jerusalem was completely leveled, rebuilt along Roman lines, renamed "Aelia Capitolina," and Jews were prohibited from entering under penalty of death (except once a year to mourn). Accounts vary as to the exact causes of this war, because Hadrian had been quite tolerant of Jews earlier in his reign; his laws against castration of boys (a common practice among the ancients) seem to have been interpreted as forbidding circumcision of Jewish boys -- something which certainly could trigger war.

Meanwhile, the Christians behaved in what can only be called an opportunistic manner. Hadrian's tolerance of Christianity, coupled with a Christian belief that the Roman campaign against the Jews was divine retribution, would doubtless have contributed to anti-Jewish sentiments. Considering that bar Kochba himself ordered persecution of Christians who refused to renounce Jesus, it is easy to see how Christian anti-Semitism would take on tragic, permanent, proportions. I am sure that like any intelligent leader, Hadrian would have utilized whatever divide-and-conquer tactics were available to help defeat the Jews, and it would not have been in his interest to persecute Christians during a major campaign against Jews.

Once the elements congealed, over the next two centuries, the new, officially Christianized Rome would have been naturally attracted to anti-Semitism as an official doctrine, for both practical and religious reasons.

First and foremost, it erased the stain of many Roman sins. After all, Rome might have gone Christian, but it was still Rome. Not only had the Romans killed hundreds of thousands of Jews, but a good argument can be made that they, not the Jews, were the actual "Christ killers." Religious anti-Semitism was thus in their interest. (The pagans, of course, had no need to expiate such guilt, and no more religious animosity towards Christians than Jews.) Second, if Roman Christians were as intolerant as they were of heresy and paganism, it would have been seen as woefully inconsistent for them to be tolerant of Jews.

I have studied this conflict for some time, and it is hard for me to see any truly wonderful good guys or any truly malevolent bad guys. Not, at least, when they are seen in the context of their times and places (but people who strictly adhere to their precedents today, though, are another matter).

That is the nature of tragedy. What is amazing to consider is that thousands of years later, a single rebellion against Rome continues to have such consequences, but it does. The Diaspora. Christian anti-Semitism. Arab claims that the Jews "never lived in Palestine."

More unfinished business.

(Of course, the early Christians kept having problems with Antinous. More on this problem in Part Three.)

OK, I have finally been tested to determine which of the Greek Gods I am....

And the "winner" is:

Athena


?? Which Of The Greek Gods Are You ??
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I have a comment. Athena is more than the goddess of education and knowledge; she is also the goddess of war. And I mean smart war, not dumb war. For more background, everyone should read this post, as well as the article it refers to. Instapundit does a bang-up job of sizing up the old gods, especially the distinction between the Ares and the Athena approaches to war.

PLEASE. My dear readers: do not make the mistake of thinking that the pagan gods are a lot of superstitious nonsense -- for they are important philosophical concepts in addition to being, er, gods. Monotheists often miss the practical, very real applications of paganism, probably because they get so caught up in (maybe beaten down by) the faith aspects of religion. The gods supply important, timeless lessons -- hence their immortality. Yet you really don't have to believe they are literally there. Faith is not required; a daydreamer's suspension of disbelief mixed with healthy cynicism is enough to keep the old gods flickering. (Even true believer monotheists might pause to ask themselves what would prevent an all-powerful deity from appearing anytime, anywhere, in whatever form he might choose....)

In my view, pagans and monotheists did not define "god" in the same way, and this led to endless misunderstandings.

Oh, speaking of war gods, I am glad to see some progress in the war front. This is a really good thing. It is also a good thing that Instapundit linked to it -- AND especially that Frank J. called it "The Actual Most Important Post I've Written."

IMPORTANT NOTE to those who read Instapundit's paganalysis: The Greek Ares and the Roman Mars are NOT interchangeable. Mars was the Patron god of Rome as well as the Roman god of war, and far superior to Ares (for after all Mars defeated Ares when the Romans conquered Greece).

Mars also had the honor of having been utilized alongside Jesus Christ by Constantine the Great -- not something you'll hear about in most Christian churches.

Nor will you hear that gods (including the God of Genesis) can get smarter, and change, and improve over time.

There is one group of September 11 heroes who haven't gotten the recognition they deserved -- the valiant rescue dogs.

If you haven't done so already, please watch this video, "A Tribute to SAR Dogs." I just watched it and was very, very, moved. Just go to this link, and click on the Tribute.

(via Say Uncle, via my blogfather Jeff.)

Here's the mystery photo for the day. I can't tell you what it is exactly, because that would spoil the mystery, wouldn't it?

Considering the dark, depressing nature of last night's post, I thought I'd post something more optimistic, more cheerful.

Something upbeat.

For the Fall.

It's the last day of summer and so I am trying to catch up on unfinished business.

The question of whether or not a blog can have unfinished business seems a bit ridiculous even to pose, because blogging is an ongoing, daily effort. To the extent that right now the unfinished business of this blog might involve unfinished business of history, then I doubt it will ever be finished.

Bearing in mind the possible futility of my topic, the last day of summer (just before the Fall) seems about as good a time as any to write about the last days of Rome (just before The Fall), but here I am, again contemplating the conflict between religion and sex. A conflict I did not create, but which will not go away -- and which compels me to write frustrating essays which will not be welcomed by those I want to reach.

Steven Malcolm Anderson's citation of Maggie Gallagher is as good a place as any to begin:

The idea that sex is a simple appetite for orgasm, is I think Barry, contradicted by pretty much all of human experience, without dragging metaphysics into it. Sex is interpersonal in ways that eating simply isn't. Sex involved not only physical pleasure, but possibilities of suffering, rejection, triumph, union, and affirmation that eating really does not. If sexual desire were only a desire for pleasure, people who never be moved as they are to do and suffer so much in restless search for its satisfaction.

I once explained to a man that sex always has a spiritual component. He gave me this look, this look that said: "You're a girl. You don't have a clue."

Not so in the ancient world! There is simply no dispute that the sexual and the spiritual were linked together in innumerable ways, by gods, ceremonies, cults, religious orgies, ad infinitum. Is it possible that early Christianity, with its stigmatization of sex, and its protracted struggle with the pagan celebration of sexual spirituality, may have placed a sort of damper on the mixing of the spiritual with the sexual? I pose this question not only because of the nature of this blog, but because the Culture War -- and our seeming national obsession with defining the sexuality of other people -- demands that I pose it.

I ask further: did this contribute to a culture of stigmatizing women? Despite their generally subordinate role in Roman life, once the Vestal Virgin cult was extinguished the role of women declined further. While many women had been Christian martyrs, the early church did not allow women to serve as priestesses, and trumpeted the idea of male celibacy as the "ideal." Spirituality was seen as the opposite of sexuality. (The ultimate example of this was the self castration of Origen, said by some to find justification in Christian religious texts.)

Please bear in mind that by exploring these issues, I do not mean to suggest that sexuality and spirituality are always linked, nor that only women can link them. Obviously, more men than women go through their lives seeing sex as a purely physical phenomenon. I do not mean to condemn them in the least; only to pose some questions. For that matter, why must sex (or sexuality) be seen as always one thing or the other? Why must sex be either spiritual OR physical -- any more than sexuality must be either heterosexual OR homosexual?

The concept of Original Sin doubtless did much to reinforce early Christian doctrine that spirituality and sexuality are incompatible. (Whether any such notion is present in the teachings of Jesus seems largely irrelevant.)

Here is my big, unresolved question (which I think may constitute the unfinished business of history): To what extent did early Christianity develop its anti-sexual tendencies as a result of reacting against the ancient Roman world?

Any evidence that the competition between early Christianity and late Roman paganism contributed to a deliberate effort to sever the connection between the sexual and the spiritual (or, worse yet, by setting one against the other) begs the question of whether we suffer lingering effects of this conflict even today. Considering that the Culture War is seen by many as a direct war between religion and sexualty, this is no idle question. (Not for this blog, at least.)

I do not wish to be judgmental if I can avoid it. Despite the deliberately satirical nature of this blog, I am not trying to promote a pagan revival, nor is it my goal to attack Christianity. Do I want to be a mediator? No one has asked me, Christian or pagan, so I guess that question is largely irrelevant. However, in the interests of full disclosure, I should point out that I consider myself a Christian and a pagan. And if anyone wants to tell me I can't call myself that, well, I can because I just did. The failure of Christians and pagans to peacefully coexist in ancient Rome does not obligate me or anyone else. It no more creates a permanent state of Culture War between these two religious philosophies any more than the teachings of Muhammad obligate Muslims to kill Christians and Jews.

Furthermore, if the current debate over homosexuality does not invite a new look at this old history, then what does?

Where is a good place to start? Let's take the last Roman pagan deity, Antinous.

Antinous, the beloved favorite of the Emperor Hadrian, drowned in the Nile River in 130 AD. The emperor was so grief-stricken that not only did he lapse into a deep, lifelong, depression, but he deified Antinous, creating a cult which would rival anything the ancient world had seen, and which lasted right up until it was finally extinguished by early Christians in the Fifth Century. Moreover, Antinous came to redefine male beauty in art and in Western culture. The truth of this physical beauty could not be extinguished -- as even early Christians conceded.

In the Fourth Century, Christians found themselves suddenly at the helm of power in the Roman Empire, and the cult of Antinous must have bothered the hell out of them, for they condemned Antinous in the strongest possible terms. Here's Saint Athanasius:

But others, straining impiety to the utmost, have deified the motive of the invention of these things and of their own wickedness, namely, pleasure and lust, and worship them, such as their Eros, and the Aphrodite at Paphos. While some of them, as if vying with them in depravation, have ventured to erect into gods their rulers or even their sons, either out of honour for their princes, or from fear of their tyranny, such as the Cretan Zeus, of such renown among them, and the Arcadian Hermes; and among the Indians Dionysus, among the Egyptians Isis and Osiris and Horus, and in our own 9time Antinous, favourite of Hadrian, Emperor of the Romans, whom, although men know he was a mere man, and not a respectable man, but on the contrary, full of licentiousness, yet they worship for fear of him that enjoined it. For Hadrian having come to sojourn in the land of Egypt, when Antinous the minister of his pleasure died, ordered him to be worshipped; being indeed himself in love with the youth even after his death, but for all that offering a convincing exposure of himself, and a proof against all idolatry, that it was discovered among men for no other reason than by reason of the lust of them that imagined it. According as the wisdom of God testifies beforehand when it says, “The devising of idols was the beginning of fornication."

There was a precedent for worshipping dead emperors, but not dead boyfriends of emperors. Some people snickered. Others were outraged. But all in all, the general populace of the empire were touched by Hadrian's devotion and loss. A city was founded in Egypt where Antinous' body had washed up. Initiatory mystery rites were begun and his cult spread throughout all of the lands of the Empire. He was identified with the beautiful young god, usually of vegetation, who dies too soon, only to be reborn and join the other deities in the celestial heavens. A whole philosophy of rebirth after death was associated with his cult. His likeness became the last great movement in ancient Pagan sculpture, in the guises of Hermes, Osiris, Adonis, Dionysus and Apollo.

So in the end, Antinous became a young god of healing, resurrection and rebirth, able to bestow eternal life on his worshippers in exchange for their devotion. Consequently, he was attacked viciously by the Christians who wanted to distinguish him from the figure of Jesus they were promoting. Most Romans couldn't see much of a difference, and this infuriated the early Christian writers. The fact that this young male lover of the emperor was equated with their Jesus drove the Christians crazy. Finally, Constantine and his descendants assured that the worship of Antinous would stop. Like all of the youthful male gods of vegetation and rebirth, Antinous was made into a demon by the Christian writers. His rites were forbidden and outlawed. His symbols and iconography were stolen by the Church and given to Jesus. His images were destroyed. The obsessive grief of Hadrian was forgotten, and as homosexuality in particular became increasingly more incompatible with the Church's idea of society, his very presence in history was all but erased and obliterated.

Might he have been trying to slow the growth of this new cult by offering a similar alternative? Did this end up only infuriating early Christians into a counter-reaction? Are we still feeling the effects today?

I don't know -- but it feels like unfinished business to me.

Part Two of this essay will have to await the Fall.

Wow!

Thanks to the brilliant (and clairvoyant) Don Watkins, I just discovered a new blogger -- Tom's Nap Room -- who knocked my socks off by thoroughly fisking something I have hated for over 30 years: the dreadful, unspeakable, medieval, PENNSYLVANIA TURNPIKE:

I've about had it with the Pennsylvania Turnpike. More importantly, I hate the PA Turnpike Commission. In case you don't know, the turnpike is a toll road. You pay 5.5 cents per mile to drive on it. This throwback to the early days of interstate travel is past it's prime. The toll booths should be bulldozed, and the civil servant leaders at the commission should be sent to hold signs at PennDot.

(Will the PA turnpike still be there in 2000 years?)

I have driven across the country more times than I can count, and I can bear witness that the worst part of the entire drive is the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Not only that, it's the most expensive. How they get away with it, I don't know; I was told years ago that the toll money goes into general revenue instead of highway maintenance, and while that wouldn't surprise me, I don't know for sure. The damned thing is a cattle chute in the western part of the state, and as if it isn't hazardous enough dodging huge trucks which have no room to manuever, you have to watch out for the State Troopers, who run undercover operations with unmarked, sporty-looking, radar-equipped cars.

Dreadful, simply dreadful!

My congratulations to Tom for blogging about this national disgrace. If Ed Rendell really does want to offer the Democrats an alternative to Hillary Clinton in 2008, he'd better attend to his own backyard now.

Beware, Turnpike Commission, PENNDOT and all cursed bureaucrats who inflict unspeakable tortures on innocent travelers!

The blogosphere is hot on your tail!

NOTE: As is often the case, Blogspot will not let me to provide the full link to Tom's Turnpike post, so you'll just have to go to his home page and scroll down.

Well, shiver me toga!

Like a big wave, the pirate fad has come crashing through the Blogosphere, with many bloggers first donning and now doffing the Jolly Roger. Some of them, actually, sound like the real thing. Here's a good sound byte from a promising young pirate, who's already pillaged and looted his way to the top, as any good pirate should.

I should know, because I just took a test confirming that I am the real thing. Can't call myself traditional, though, because the Classical traditions of this blog are not traditional in the conventional sense. Ah! But the goodie-two-shoes landlubbers have hijacked the word. I don't think they like real tradition any more than they like pirates.

Here's me results -- and if ye don't like 'em I'll see yer insides!

You're the TRADITIONAL PIRATE. Stealing gold,
backstabbing other pirates, being suspicious of
everyone you meet, running from the law...
you're the real thing. People don't like to
mess with you because you always manage to get
your way. Just watch out, those parrots can be
a little messy sometimes....

What Kind of Pirate are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Don't forget the Canadian pirates, either....

Ahoy me North Park maties!

My blogfather Jeff links to this fascinating story about giant rodents the size of a buffalo:

A rodent the size of a buffalo? Researchers say they have found fossils for a 1,545-pound giant that thrived millions of years ago in a swampy South American forest.

"Imagine a weird guinea pig, but huge, with a long tail for balancing on its hind legs and continuously growing teeth," said Marcelo R. Sanchez-Villagra of the University of Tubingen in Germany, the first author of a study appearing this week in Science.

Jeff asks, "Imagine the size of the cats that went after those things. Could that be how Saber-Toothed Tigers came about? Imagine the traps you'd have to set..."

Well, I'll remind everyone that when I am in my Marauding Marsupial phase I am the next thing to a Saber-Toothed Tiger! My favorite marsupial is Thylacosmilus.

All missing links cheerfully devoured!

Who are these people, and what are they saying?

Colby Cosh offers words of wisdom about new restrictions on free speech in Canada (criminalizing "hate speech" against homosexuals):

....what's good for "equality" is usually very bad for liberty, and this case is no different. While Canadian politics have become consumed to obsession with the issue of homosexual marriage--the precise equivalent of a ferocious national debate on the merits of donkey baseball [1]--the Liberals have quietly extended the Criminal Code to outlaw a new class of "hate speech". "Supporters of the bill," the CBC notes, "said fears about censorship are groundless and that C-250 isn't meant to infringe on anyone's freedom of religion." Interesting bunch of "Liberals" we have in this country, don't you think? "Censorship? We just want to outlaw certain kinds of speech--you call that censorship?"

This, of course, is not a new topic on this blogsite.

What the hell is wrong with people, anyway? Freedom of speech works both ways. I mean, there is no one who hates anti-homosexual bigotry more than I do. It is one of the reasons I started, (and a year later, restarted) this blog. But when you silence people, when you stop them from speaking via hate speech laws, you create a completely Orwellian scenario of "thought-crimes." I cannot think of a better way to increase bigotry (and make it more malevolent) than to criminalize it.

It is not often that I find myself agreeing with World Net Daily on any issue pertaining to homosexuality (and I doubt Colby Cosh loves them either), but in this case, I share their basic concern. My quarrel here with some of these moral conservatives is that they seem more interested in having homosexuals taken off the list than they do getting rid of the noxious idea of hate speech crime itself. Still, criminalizing hate speech is wrong, and I think homosexuals (being the latest group to be fashionized by group-think fascism) ought to lead the charge to get rid of this tyranny.

What is it about free speech that so many gay activists don't seem to get? Do they forget that had it not been for free speech, homosexuality would still be the love that dare not speak its name?

Ironically, of course, Muslims are in a double category of being both haters (of homosexuals, Christians, and Jews) and targets of hatred. But (according to WND, anyway) Muslims are probably more protected against hate speech by Christians than vice-versa.

Pretty soon, white people will have no choice but to demand to be placed in a protected category. Like this poor girl.

Years ago, I had a bumpersticker that read "HETEROSEXUALS HAVE RIGHTS TOO!" and I was told that my car might get vandalized if I displayed it, so like a coward I put it on my wall. Now I want it back!

The world is getting more and more ridiculous by the minute.

[1] NOTE: Since Colby brought up the subject of donkey baseball, I did want to remind my readers that this is not a mere figure of speech, but a glorious athletic tradition, as well as (in this country, at least) a political tradition. Get the official donkey baseball hat here.

UPDATE: In this absolutely devastating post, Arthur Silber demonstrates an effective way of dealing with hate speech -- without (gasp!) any help from the government. No "human rights commission" or "hate speech court" could possibly come close to Arthur's moving and eloquent defense of his dignity. If bigotry were ever forced into the closet by these stupid hate speech laws, it would avoid the bright light of scrutiny provided by people like Arthur Silber -- much to the detriment of all. Go Arthur!

They're all still trying to whack away at the Second Amendment based on an unending attack on John Lott's statistics, and while I agree with Glenn Reynolds that an an independent study should probably be done, my point is that statistics are often completely ridiculous.

This study (link also via Instapundit) proves it:

The Paradox of Terror
Three different countries were recently polled, and respondents were asked whether or not they were satisfied with their lives. The three countries were Israel, the United States, and Canada.

Now. Ask yourself which of these three countries is probably the happiest, and which is the most distraught.

I would have guessed Canadians would be happiest, followed by Americans, and then Israelis. And I would have gotten it exactly backward.

In Israel 83 percent say they are happy.

In the United States 64 percent say they are happy.

In Canada only 45 percent say they are happy.

Another Friday, another online test! This one is designed to tell you which personality disorder you have, and I am indebted to my favorite stalker, Ray Baumgardner:


paranoid


Which Personality Disorder Do You Have?
brought to you by Quizilla

Of course, now that I have posted this, I will know that all of you are planning to kill me, so I'll have to be prepared!

Not so fast! I know what you're thinking!

I HEARD THAT!

... At least I think I was first.

Anyway, I am delighted to see that the phrase caught on, and on today's editorial page of the Washington Times!

Hurricane Hillary is a more powerful storm entirely. Bill Clinton, whose fingerprints have been all over the Clark boomlet for weeks, finally said what anyone paying attention in Arkansas has known since midsummer, that Bill is itching to get her into the presidential hustings this season, not next.

Thanks Wesley!

Pruden, right? (Naturally, Clark has not yet weighed in on my term....)

I'm afraid that blogging will soon be impossible around here, as the power has been flickering already and it really is irresponsible for me to even have this computer turned on. (So, I think this will be my past post tonight.)

I did blog about atomic change recently, and while it wasn't about subatomic particles, I just took another online test, and, while generally positive, the results made me feel, well, small:

Proton -- You are a homebody and generally stick to
what you know and what is familiar. However,
you still have a very powerful personality. You
have a positive outlook on things and you get
along well with electrons and those who are
negative.


What kind of subatomic particle are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

(Thanks once again to the highly atomic Flea.)

I think I'll go out in the storm tonight and search for some electrons!

What a charge!

I don't mean to belabor the point about Hillary's top secret stealth campaign for the presidency....

However, it's hard to ignore the latest weather report.

Despite Bubba's latest remarks, Hillary is still very, very quiet....

But isn't the eye of the hurricane always quiet?

UPDATE: It occurred to me that some of my readers might doubt the, um, credibility of Newsmax (or maybe consider it overly paranoid in the Hillary department). Such readers might supplement the Newsmax analysis with James Taranto's recent Wall Street Journal Best of the Web column.

The Clark move has all the earmarks of genius -- which I think points to a Clinton operation.

Let's talk about some real nuts-and-bolts issues.

If there is one thing I can't stand, it's when too much torque is used in tightening bolts. I worked in a variety of places as an auto mechanic, and one of the first things I learned is NOT to use too much torque, especially when using air tools. Unfortunately, some trigger-happy mechanics (especially younger ones), like the feeling of blasting away at some helpless nut or bolt, and will apply 300 pounds (or even more, depending on how long they squeeze the trigger) of torque. Not only can this break and fatigue nuts and bolts, but it causes untold frustration when the poor car owner has to loosen them. Usually, he does not have air tools, which means that he'll reach a point where he cannot proceed with the repairs. (Or, worse, he will be unable to perform a simple but necesssary task like changing a tire!)

I guess I am too stubborn, but yesterday I broke TWO socket adapters trying to remove a brake caliper. One of them was cheap Taiwanese junk and I didn't care, but the other was a perfectly good Thorsen.

Here they are (offered as a belated, opportunistic sacrifice to the snow gods):

Unfortunately, I do not have an 18mm socket in 1/2 inch drive, so I had to use the 3/8 inch socket with a 1/2 inch adapter. I was able to crack one of the bolts on this bad caliper before the first adapter broke, but not the other. So now I have to buy a 1/2 inch drive socket, and I think it will work if enough force is used. If the breaker bar alone won't do it, I'll put a piece of pipe over the breaker bar -- and if that doesn't work then the breaker bar itself will break. I have broken TWO 1/2 drive Craftsman breaker bars in my time. It takes a tremendous amount of force to break a breaker bar.

Wish I had an air hammer! Wish I could lecture the kid who torqued these damned bolts down.

Of course, many people in my situation would simply take the car to a garage and let them use their air tools to deal with the stupid nuts and bolts.

But that would only perpetuate the endless cycles of excessive force!

UPDATE: Don't be too quick to condemn my appeasement of the snow gods! I will have readers know that following last year's blizzard which dumped three feet of snow in my yard, I created them in a state of near despair. Guess what? The snow eventually stopped, and Spring arrived. (I can cheerfully supply statistical proof to any doubting Thomases out there.) And considering that Hurricane Isabel -- an air hammer if ever there was one! -- is on a collision course with the East Coast, I saw nothing wrong with this gentle plea to the gods: a simple reminder that there is no need for excessive force.

I can't think of a better reason not to fly than this (link from Radley Balko). Jet Blue shared "confidential" records on 5 million passengers with the federal government, which in turn fed them to private contractors, which then sifted and combed through personal data, including:

1. gender (they mean sex)
2. home specifics - Owner/Renter,...
3. years at residence
4. Economic status -- Income,....
5. Number of children
6. Social Security Number
7. Number of adults
8. Occupation
9. Vehicles

Confidentiality is a joke. So is the right to travel. If you want privacy, drive. But don't buy a new car! Seriously; these now contain EDRs (Electronic Data Recorders; the automotive equivalent of the "Black Box" flight data recorder). We're already being photographed everywhere, monitored electronically at toll plazas, and on top of that, now this:

In the Matos case, a judge issued a search warrant allowing the prosecution to harvest the information.

Criminal court cases involving EDRs have been rare, but industry observers expect them more often as the number of vehicles with EDRs increases.

That may make many people unhappy. Fewer than half of the 38,000 surveyed by the Insurance Research Council favored the use of EDRs to investigate accidents and determine fault.

But the insurance industry maintains EDRs are a good idea because the information can help determine what really happened, said Sean McManamy, a spokesman for the American Insurance Association, a lobbying group.

Here are a