We don’t credit the Swiss postal service with the Special Theory of Relativity because it transmitted Einstein’s manuscript to the Annalen der Physik.
But we do, we do, says Charly.
The Via Appia was built 2,300 years ago. The Romans built aqueducts too. And sewers. They did?
Friday, July 20, 2012
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What a beautiful and flawless piece this of Krauthammer's. De Tocqueville gnashes his teeth in envy, says I.
Thanks, Tecs.
Yes, this is one Kraut's best pieces in a long, long time.
What's happening though with Steyn? He tries hard, but somehow falls a bit short. Methinks pundits must be same as cello players or something. They reach a peak, and then they drift down. Now and then, though, they may perk up, and go gangbusters. They need a spark, like we all do, eh?
As if on cue, Steyn wakes up, and beats Kraut's Via Appia reference by a few hundred years:
Halfway through the first millennium B.C., the nomadic Yuezhi of Central Asia had well-traveled trading routes for getting nephrite jade from the Tarim Basin to their customers at the Chinese court, more than 2,500 miles away. On the other hand, the Yuezhi did not have a federal contraceptive mandate or a Bloombergian enforcement regime for carbonated beverages at concession stands at the rest area two days out of Khotan.
you're right, Tecs, that, thankfully Steyn has a pulse again, but Kraut wrote the better piece in my opinion as it is a cool and rational explanation and review of the important ideas while Steyn is stuck in 'I am so clever' land like Maria in 'West Side Story.'
Steyn's essay seems frivolous in comparison to Kraut's and usually I find Steyn forceful and unavoidably on the right track.
At this point, only the extreme morons believe in Obama so arguing seriously is a weird luxury and perhaps Kraut is doomed to fail. In fact the whole country seems populated by weak-minded true believers and retarded and anti-American (if you will pardon my use of the obviously racist term 'American') black-power nihilists.
In short, AA was always right to be completely pessimistic and we should maybe move off to developing places like Argentina instead of hanging on to railings of a rapidly sinking ship. I write this in sorrow because I love a lot about America and I loved my home for all my life, but I feel that it has been overwhelmed by undesirables that exercise their constitutional right to vote only for an idiot tyrant with a clique of assistants and abettors that work to squeeze the life out of the country. That is the good people that work for a living rather than trying to work the systems for gimmes are the ones getting shafted in all of this.
Sad day when we elected False Dmitri.
You think Argentina is in good shape? Methinks Brazil is doing better.
At any rate, it's a sad spectacle. Maybe Steyn is better at gallows humor, whereas Kraut plays it straight? On balance, Kraut is more thorough, but, as you say, in the end it doesn't really matter, it's all pissin' in the wind.
From comments: What a remarkable coincidence: the inflation-adjusted cost of the Golden Gate Bridge was almost precisely the cost of the Solyndra loan guarantee. What a perfect symbol the bridge was of its era. And what a perfect symbol Solyndra is of ours.
Argentina leads the way? Or the other way around?
Brazil is Argentina without Calderón and Ástor Piazzolla. They also are starving to death and are still killing each other like absolute tribal barbarians.
IMO, Brazil doesn't have the power of culture to even really hold together.
Of course they haven't been led by a military junta stupid enough to attack the UK in a long time.
To think that country of fruity salsa dancers can play ball against the infinitely deeper Tango mind is ridiculous to me, but I had similar thoughts that Obama would lose in a landslide on the assumption that Americans would not be so retarded to elect the prissy little moron.
I was wrong and so I am starting to think that moronic Brazil might win the contest after all. In this decade, only the worst outcome has a fighting chance.
Argentina used to be by far the richest and most developed country south of the Rio Grande, but it was run into the ground by Peron, way before that stupid junta. Brazil has caught up with and surpassed its neighbor to the south; it's now playing with the big boys on the international scene.
Maybe this has something to do with the old Portugal vs Spain rivalry? Who's on top, eh?
You're right about my prejudices coloring my view, but in the contest between Spain and Portugal the pick is very easy. I read the Relaciónes De La Conquista De México of Hernán Cortéz.
You mean, Cortés: Although his paternal surname is sometimes spelled with a final "z" as Cortéz, this is incorrect. Cortéz is a Spanish surname but in Castillean Spanish the letters z and s represent different sounds, and the names also have different etymologies. Cortés' family was distinct from the families using the spelling with z, and he did not use this spelling.
Poww!
Minsk, Pinsk, Cortes, Korhtex.
Where is my VCP?
Probably at a cheap liquor store.
Fess up, ye Spaniards, Cortes was actually Portuguese. Ain't it enough you stole Magelhaes from us?
I thought that Mengele was some kind of Kraut.
No?
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