Several sources are talking about how much Bernie Sanders would raise your taxes. For just about everybody, he would, but you get a lot more for them: free health care, free college, better bank regulation, lots more. The only people who are getting hit hard are people who have been treated very gently for the last 30 years. Here are a few hypothetical households and how they would fare:
Single, $20K income, 3 kids. (e.g. a single parent earning $10/hr)
2016 tax: $155, 0.8% effective rate
Bernie tax: $189.1, 0.9% effective rate.
Such a household is probably already on medicaid. if they had college loans, this is would be a huge savings. These are the people (and especially their children) who will be helped most: they will have an opportunity to go to college, where unless they get a "free ride" scholarship, they presently do not.
Single, $50K income, no dependents, no investment income or deductions (i.e. a recent college grad)
2016 tax: $5719, effective rate 11.4%
Bernie tax: 1131.55+4880.50+1373.60=7385.65 14.8%
2016 tax+$2K for medical insurance for a 26 year old: $7719 a 15.4% effective rate.
+5K for college loans: $12719.
Married, 2 kids, $50K income, no investment income or deductions (a "typical" family)
2016 tax: $3468, effective rate 6.9%
Bernie tax: 2263.10+1849=$4112.10, effective rate 8.2%
2016 tax+$3600 for medical insurance for 36 year old parents and young kids $7468: 14.9% effective rate. Bernie saves $3300 a year.
+5K for college loans $12468
Married, 2 kids, $100K income, no investment income or deductions (a 96th percentile family)
2016 tax: $11368, effective rate 11.4%
Bernie tax: 2263.10+9761+1088=$13112.10, effective rate 13.1%
2016 tax+$3600 for medical insurance for 36 year old parents and young
kids $14968: 15% effective rate. Bernie saves $1800 a year.
+5K for college loans $19968
Married, 2 kids, $1M ordinary income, $200K investment income, $100K deductions (a typical 0.1% family, e.g. a very successful doctor or lawyer or upper manager in a big company)
2016 tax: $333,869, effective rate 27.8%
Bernie tax: 2263.10+9761+20,835.2+24,024.1+6529.6+98K+229,584.36=384,467.76 or 32% effective rate.
Health care and college loan costs are negligible on this income. Bernie costs them a few percent.
Single, no ordinary income, $10M investment income, no deductions (a wealthy, stingy widow)
2016 tax: $1,972,340. 19.2% effective rate.
Bernie tax: 2263.10+9761+20,835.2+24,024.1+6529.6+98K+678K+4,012,837.4=$4,852,250.4 or 48.5% effective rate.
Single, no ordinary income, $10M investment income, $4M deductions (a wealthy, generous widow)
2016 tax: $1,173,600. 11.7% effective rate.
Bernie tax: 2263.10+9761+20,835.2+24,024.1+6529.6+98K+678K+2,610,400=$3,449,813 or 34.5% effective rate.
Single, $20M ordinary income, no investments or deductions (I can't imagine anyone like this; it's constructed to create the extreme case)
2016 tax: $7,868,864, 39.3% effective rate.
Bernie tax: 2263.10+9761+20,835.2+24,024.1+6529.6+98K+678K+4016K+5,355,800.1 =$10,211,213.1 or 51.1% effective rate
I found several sources bogusly claiming Bernie would raise your taxes to over 90%. I can't work out any version where this would be correct. The nearest I can come is someone using the "imputed income" scam to add corporate income taxes to personal income and add percentages with different bases rather than dollars.
I found some more credible sources computing numbers in the 70s by adding payroll taxes (on which Bernie would lift the cap. It's presently $117K) and state income taxes. e.g., california's top marginal rate is 13.1%, and the payroll tax on my imaginary $20M ordinary income earner would be on the whole thing, where today it's only on 5% of it: 51.1+13.1+6.2 = 70.4%. But this is at best an apples to oranges comparison. None of the incomes above include payroll or state (or property) tax. Even if you imagine this to be correct, this person ends up with $6M of after tax income. They should use some of it to hire an accountant who is not as incompetent as they are...
sources:
http://www.moneychimp.com/features/tax_calculator.htm
http://taxfoundation.org/article/details-and-analysis-senator-bernie-sanders-s-tax-plan
https://www.wahealthplanfinder.org/HBEWeb/Annon_DisplayHomePage.action
25 March 2016
18 March 2016
PRT Elevator
PRT Elevator is one name for an advanced elevator concept that might make extremely tall or large buildings much more practical, or might allow higher overall elevator capacity in more moderate buildings while reducing the amount of space consumed by those elevators.
Conventional elevators go up and down in a shaft, one elevator per shaft, stopping at intermediate floors. In the tallest buildings, there are multiple elevators per shaft, each traveling over a limited range. Passengers must transfer from an elevator that travels, for example, from the 1st to 40th floors, to an elevator that travels from the 40th floor to the 80th. This is done to increase capacity: as elevator trips become longer, the time to complete a trip increases. But because the building is very large, demand is also very high, and in order to meet it, the number of shafts required would consume a sizable part of the building.
A different approach might be to allow the elevator vehicles move between shafts in order to bypass each other as they're stopped. People familiar with PRT will recognize this as very similar to an offline station. Such an elevator would allow many vehicles per shaft (as many as .33 per floor: 26 in an 80 story building). This very much higher capacity per shaft would require far fewer shafts and allow far more non-stop trips, providing much better service.
There are many technical issues to be solved before such elevators become practical, including powering the elevators (existing elevators use cables or hydraulic pistons), switching or steering the elevators, providing a similar level of reliability to existing elevators (existing elevators have several extremely reliable safety mechanisms), and control. None of these seem intractable, but a lot of hard work will be required to solve them.
In its most extreme form, these flexibly routed elevators can also be routed horizontally and diagonally. Viewers of the Star Trek television series will recognize this as a TurboLift.
The author is aware of very little actual development that's taken place on either a PRT Elevator or a Turbolift, but doesn't see any fundamental barriers. Some conceptual work has been done on the Spanish ATS PRT system. The author thinks it is workable but it remains a concept only.
This article was originally at http://www.advancedtransit.net/atrawiki/index.php?title=TurboLift but AtraWiki seems to have malfunctioned.
Conventional elevators go up and down in a shaft, one elevator per shaft, stopping at intermediate floors. In the tallest buildings, there are multiple elevators per shaft, each traveling over a limited range. Passengers must transfer from an elevator that travels, for example, from the 1st to 40th floors, to an elevator that travels from the 40th floor to the 80th. This is done to increase capacity: as elevator trips become longer, the time to complete a trip increases. But because the building is very large, demand is also very high, and in order to meet it, the number of shafts required would consume a sizable part of the building.
A different approach might be to allow the elevator vehicles move between shafts in order to bypass each other as they're stopped. People familiar with PRT will recognize this as very similar to an offline station. Such an elevator would allow many vehicles per shaft (as many as .33 per floor: 26 in an 80 story building). This very much higher capacity per shaft would require far fewer shafts and allow far more non-stop trips, providing much better service.
There are many technical issues to be solved before such elevators become practical, including powering the elevators (existing elevators use cables or hydraulic pistons), switching or steering the elevators, providing a similar level of reliability to existing elevators (existing elevators have several extremely reliable safety mechanisms), and control. None of these seem intractable, but a lot of hard work will be required to solve them.
In its most extreme form, these flexibly routed elevators can also be routed horizontally and diagonally. Viewers of the Star Trek television series will recognize this as a TurboLift.
The author is aware of very little actual development that's taken place on either a PRT Elevator or a Turbolift, but doesn't see any fundamental barriers. Some conceptual work has been done on the Spanish ATS PRT system. The author thinks it is workable but it remains a concept only.
This article was originally at http://www.advancedtransit.net/atrawiki/index.php?title=TurboLift but AtraWiki seems to have malfunctioned.
17 March 2016
Shirt Colors
Brownshirts -- Sturmabteilung or SA. A paramilitary army of thugs, consisting largely of unemployed young men, who intimidated opponents of the Nazi rise to power. The real police collaborated or looked the other way until it was too late.
Browncoat -- A fan of the short-lived Firefly TV Science Fiction series. The browncoats in the series were soldiers in the independence army, a little like greycoats in the civil war.
Browncoat -- A fan of the short-lived Firefly TV Science Fiction series. The browncoats in the series were soldiers in the independence army, a little like greycoats in the civil war.
Blackshirt -- The Italian Fascist version of the Brownshirts
Red Shirt -- A character in fiction who is there to be canon fodder. It originated from Star Trek where security personnel wore red uniforms and were often killed in the first few minutes of the episode.
Red Shirt -- in college sports, a player who is attending classes but not competing, in order to extend their allowable eligibility.
Red Shirt -- in American football, a player who is exempted from full contact in full contact scrimmages and drills.
Red Shirt -- A follower of Giuseppe Garibaldi, the Italian military leader and activist.
Red Shirt -- A character in fiction who is there to be canon fodder. It originated from Star Trek where security personnel wore red uniforms and were often killed in the first few minutes of the episode.
Red Shirt -- in college sports, a player who is attending classes but not competing, in order to extend their allowable eligibility.
Red Shirt -- in American football, a player who is exempted from full contact in full contact scrimmages and drills.
Red Shirt -- A follower of Giuseppe Garibaldi, the Italian military leader and activist.
Red Shirts -- A white supremacist terrorist group in the south in from 1875 to the early 1900s.
Redcoat -- a soldier in the British Army or Marines. From the mid 17th century to the late 19th, British soldiers wore red uniform coats. The armies of Prussia wore blue coats during this time (and German dress uniforms are still this color), the French wore grey and blue.
Yellow Jersey -- In bicycle stage racing, the current leader in general classification (accumulated time). Some other races use a different color for this same purpose: the Giro d'Italia uses pink, and the Vuelta a Espania uses Red.
Bluecoat -- a soldier in the Union Army during the civil war. The Prussian army also wore blue coats.
Bluejacket -- an enlisted sailor in the US navy.
Greycoat -- a soldier in the confederate army during the civil war.
Redcoat -- a soldier in the British Army or Marines. From the mid 17th century to the late 19th, British soldiers wore red uniform coats. The armies of Prussia wore blue coats during this time (and German dress uniforms are still this color), the French wore grey and blue.
Yellow Jersey -- In bicycle stage racing, the current leader in general classification (accumulated time). Some other races use a different color for this same purpose: the Giro d'Italia uses pink, and the Vuelta a Espania uses Red.
Bluecoat -- a soldier in the Union Army during the civil war. The Prussian army also wore blue coats.
Bluejacket -- an enlisted sailor in the US navy.
Greycoat -- a soldier in the confederate army during the civil war.
14 March 2016
Aluminum Overcast
Someone--at least as far back as Bismark's general Helmuth von Moltke--said "No plan survives contact with the enemy." It's consistent with the ideas of Sun Tzu although nothing quite like it appears in "The Art of War".
The US prevailed in WWII not by the superiority of its technology, although there was some of that, but by superior numbers. The US industrial base was able to produce more planes, tanks and ships than our enemies. That included producing a lot of them for our allies. The German Panzer tank was significantly superior to the US Sherman, but a plan was quickly devised where three or more Shermans could defeat a single Panzer, essentially by trapping it and forcing it into a crossfire. There were a lot more Shermans than Panzers so this tactic proved effective. Liberty ships were produced in such great numbers for such low cost that they were considered to have paid for their construction cost if they successfully made a single shipment.
Before the war, there was some design work and a little advance production by the US, but the real work didn't start until after Pearl Harbor. There were lots of big surprises. For example, before the war it had been thought that bombers needed to be able to defend themselves, consequently B-17s and B-24s carried a lot of guns. 5 or 6 of the 10 member crew of a B-17 were primarily there to man the guns. But it turned out it didn't work all that well and there were appalling losses of bomber crews, and work was quickly begun on a fighter with sufficient range to travel with them to the target. Once the P-51 came on line, the bomber losses dropped dramatically.
During the Cold War, lots of ideas about the enemy promoted lots of ideas about how we should defend ourselves, and this led to an ever escalating rise in complexity and cost. The various skirmishes that did occur: Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Bosnia, showed how completely inappropriate the Cold War ideas about weapons were for the conflicts we actually did have. B-1s, B-2s, F-117s, Nuclear Aircraft Carriers, etc., were all used in the Iraq conflicts, against enemies who were almost completely defenseless against those, and would have been almost equally defenseless against B52s and F4s, designed in the early 1950s. (not completely: surface to air missiles took down a number of planes, including an F-117 during Bosnia.). The most effective planes of the present generation, by far, are the drones, such as the Predator, which has performance not much more impressive than a WWI Sopwith Camel, but carries modern weapons and observation gear and can be flown remotely.
Recently, one of the more effective 1980s generation airplanes, the A-10 "WartHog", was retired in favor of the as yet undebugged F-35. Each F-35 costs more than ten times as much and cannot do any of the missions the Warthog proved so effective at very well. The F-35 program costs roughly the same amount each year as the SNAP "food stamp" program that feeds 5 million people every day.
We need national defense, no doubt, but we need to do it wisely. The over-reliance on extremely complex military systems does not keep us safe; it does the opposite. We are committing large portions of our treasure and talent to producing weapons that are not particularly useful. At the same time, we're offshoring our once formidable industrial base. Should we need to project force the way we did in World War II, we no longer have the industrial base that won WWII. It doesn't appear that we have any enemies who could take us on, but should we be surprised, with our absurd military, we will almost certainly lose.
The US prevailed in WWII not by the superiority of its technology, although there was some of that, but by superior numbers. The US industrial base was able to produce more planes, tanks and ships than our enemies. That included producing a lot of them for our allies. The German Panzer tank was significantly superior to the US Sherman, but a plan was quickly devised where three or more Shermans could defeat a single Panzer, essentially by trapping it and forcing it into a crossfire. There were a lot more Shermans than Panzers so this tactic proved effective. Liberty ships were produced in such great numbers for such low cost that they were considered to have paid for their construction cost if they successfully made a single shipment.
Before the war, there was some design work and a little advance production by the US, but the real work didn't start until after Pearl Harbor. There were lots of big surprises. For example, before the war it had been thought that bombers needed to be able to defend themselves, consequently B-17s and B-24s carried a lot of guns. 5 or 6 of the 10 member crew of a B-17 were primarily there to man the guns. But it turned out it didn't work all that well and there were appalling losses of bomber crews, and work was quickly begun on a fighter with sufficient range to travel with them to the target. Once the P-51 came on line, the bomber losses dropped dramatically.
During the Cold War, lots of ideas about the enemy promoted lots of ideas about how we should defend ourselves, and this led to an ever escalating rise in complexity and cost. The various skirmishes that did occur: Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Bosnia, showed how completely inappropriate the Cold War ideas about weapons were for the conflicts we actually did have. B-1s, B-2s, F-117s, Nuclear Aircraft Carriers, etc., were all used in the Iraq conflicts, against enemies who were almost completely defenseless against those, and would have been almost equally defenseless against B52s and F4s, designed in the early 1950s. (not completely: surface to air missiles took down a number of planes, including an F-117 during Bosnia.). The most effective planes of the present generation, by far, are the drones, such as the Predator, which has performance not much more impressive than a WWI Sopwith Camel, but carries modern weapons and observation gear and can be flown remotely.
Recently, one of the more effective 1980s generation airplanes, the A-10 "WartHog", was retired in favor of the as yet undebugged F-35. Each F-35 costs more than ten times as much and cannot do any of the missions the Warthog proved so effective at very well. The F-35 program costs roughly the same amount each year as the SNAP "food stamp" program that feeds 5 million people every day.
We need national defense, no doubt, but we need to do it wisely. The over-reliance on extremely complex military systems does not keep us safe; it does the opposite. We are committing large portions of our treasure and talent to producing weapons that are not particularly useful. At the same time, we're offshoring our once formidable industrial base. Should we need to project force the way we did in World War II, we no longer have the industrial base that won WWII. It doesn't appear that we have any enemies who could take us on, but should we be surprised, with our absurd military, we will almost certainly lose.
23 January 2016
Presidential Name Frequency
6 James James Madison, James Monroe, James K Polk, James Buchanan, James Garfield, James Earl Carter
5 John John Adams, John Quincy Adams, John Tyler, John Calvin Coolidge, John F Kennedy
4 William William Henry Harrison, William McKinley, William Howard Taft, William Jefferson Clinton
3 George George Washington, George H W Bush, George W Bush
2 Andrew Andrew Jackson, Andrew Johnson
2 Franklin Franklin Pierce, Franklin Delano Roosevelt
2 Thomas Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Woodrow Wilson
1 All Others Martin Van Buren, Zachary Taylor, Millard Filmore, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S Grant, Rutherford B Hayes, Chester A Arthur, Stephen Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, Theodore Roosevelt, Warren G Harding, Herbert Hoover, Harry S Truman, Dwight D Eisenhower, Lyndon B Johnson, Richard M Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama
There are a few funny cases: John Quincy Adams, Stephen Grover Cleveland, Thomas Woodrow Wilson and John Calvin Coolidge tended to go by their middle names. Grant and Ford both changed their name (from Hiram Ulysses Grant and Leslie Lynch King, respectively).
Even though it's the most common presidential name, there were no presidents named James between the death of James Garfield on 19 Sept 1881 and the inauguration of Jimmy Carter on 20 Jan 1977: 95 years, over half the lifetime of the republic at the time. The second most popular name, John, went even longer: 4 Mar 1845 to 20 Jan 1961: 116 years, and George went from 4 Mar 1797 to 20 Jan 1989: 192 years.
addenda 14 Jan 2017: found out that Coolidge and Cleveland also went by their middle names so edited the article. Surprisingly many presidents do not have a middle name given on wikipedia. Here's the list of those that do:
J Quincy Adams, William Henry Harrison, James Knox Polk, Hiram Ulysses Grant, Rutherford Birchard Hayes, James Abram Garfield, Chester Alan Arthur, Stephen Grover Cleveland, William Howard Taft, Thomas Woodrow Wilson, Warren Gamaliel Harding, John Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Clark Hoover, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry S Truman (no middle name, initial only), Dwight David Eisenhower, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Lyndon Bains Johnson, Richard Milhous Nixon, Gerald Rudolph Ford, James Earl Carter, Ronald Wilson Reagan, George Herbert Walker Bush, William Jefferson Clinton, George Walker Bush, Barrack Hussein Obama. 27 of 43.
5 John John Adams, John Quincy Adams, John Tyler, John Calvin Coolidge, John F Kennedy
4 William William Henry Harrison, William McKinley, William Howard Taft, William Jefferson Clinton
3 George George Washington, George H W Bush, George W Bush
2 Andrew Andrew Jackson, Andrew Johnson
2 Franklin Franklin Pierce, Franklin Delano Roosevelt
2 Thomas Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Woodrow Wilson
1 All Others Martin Van Buren, Zachary Taylor, Millard Filmore, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S Grant, Rutherford B Hayes, Chester A Arthur, Stephen Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, Theodore Roosevelt, Warren G Harding, Herbert Hoover, Harry S Truman, Dwight D Eisenhower, Lyndon B Johnson, Richard M Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama
There are a few funny cases: John Quincy Adams, Stephen Grover Cleveland, Thomas Woodrow Wilson and John Calvin Coolidge tended to go by their middle names. Grant and Ford both changed their name (from Hiram Ulysses Grant and Leslie Lynch King, respectively).
Even though it's the most common presidential name, there were no presidents named James between the death of James Garfield on 19 Sept 1881 and the inauguration of Jimmy Carter on 20 Jan 1977: 95 years, over half the lifetime of the republic at the time. The second most popular name, John, went even longer: 4 Mar 1845 to 20 Jan 1961: 116 years, and George went from 4 Mar 1797 to 20 Jan 1989: 192 years.
addenda 14 Jan 2017: found out that Coolidge and Cleveland also went by their middle names so edited the article. Surprisingly many presidents do not have a middle name given on wikipedia. Here's the list of those that do:
J Quincy Adams, William Henry Harrison, James Knox Polk, Hiram Ulysses Grant, Rutherford Birchard Hayes, James Abram Garfield, Chester Alan Arthur, Stephen Grover Cleveland, William Howard Taft, Thomas Woodrow Wilson, Warren Gamaliel Harding, John Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Clark Hoover, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry S Truman (no middle name, initial only), Dwight David Eisenhower, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Lyndon Bains Johnson, Richard Milhous Nixon, Gerald Rudolph Ford, James Earl Carter, Ronald Wilson Reagan, George Herbert Walker Bush, William Jefferson Clinton, George Walker Bush, Barrack Hussein Obama. 27 of 43.
01 January 2016
The Jesus Religion
Jesus (nobody knows his family name--he probably didn't have one), son of Joseph and Mary, possibly of Nazareth, started a Jewish cult during the Roman occupation of Judea. There were a great many such cults, each with a charismatic leader. The historian Josephus lists dozens of them, including several that strongly resemble the Jesus cult, but the one following Jesus is conspicuously absent1. So surely there were many more that were not listed. Many of these leaders were declared Messiahs, most often by themselves. "Christ" is a Greek word which means the same thing as Messiah--"Jesus Christ" simply means "Jesus the Messiah". Apart from the Gospel, there is no primary source that refers to the Jesus cult or Christianity. The earliest that's given any credence is from the historian Tacitus, writing in 116AD, who says that Nero tried to blame the great fire of Rome in 64AD on Christians, who were much hated and whose founder had been crucified by Pontius Pilate. We can't tell if this is based on real involvement by Christians or a revisionist attempt to pin it on them 52 years later, either by Tacitus himself or by later copyists looking for reflected glory. All four Gospels were written between 70 and 110AD, so it's entirely possible that Tacitus got everything he knew about Christianity from such later sources as these. It's also entirely possible that the cultists Tacitus claimed were blamed for the fire had nothing to do with Christianity and subsequent copyists have enhanced Christianity's involvement.
The Romans were very accepting of the Religions of those they conquered. As long as the Emperor joined your Pantheon and received due worship with its other members, your religion was welcome in the Roman family. The only monotheistic religion in the region, Judaism, got into a little trouble over this--the Jewish king at the time of their conquest, Herod the Great, was perfectly willing to put a bust of Caesar into all local synagogues, which satisfied the Romans. Where this ran into trouble was that a group called the Zealots felt that this relatively minor imposition was a slight to God2 and became terrorists, killing Romans and any Jewish leaders that were willing to work with them. This terrorism worked as well as terrorism ever has: it provoked the Romans to destroy the Jewish homeland completely and carry a large fraction of the population off in slavery.
Jesus may have been one of these terrorists. The gospels do not tell us why the Romans wanted him dead, only that they did. His crime and punishment, sedition and crucifixion, were pretty much reserved for traitors against the state, such as these terrorists, so whatever the crime was, it has apparently been purged from the story for the benefit of the (largely Roman) audience. Nothing survives of this in the gospel apart from a bit of inter-factional rivalry. The Romans wouldn't have killed a faction leader unless they they thought he might be provoking violence. That Jesus doesn't make it, at all, into Roman records or the quite complete stories of Josephus, and that what little is known about him so flatly contradicts such a crime, suggests that the true story was either so inconsequential at the time to have not been noticed, or was somehow so embarrassing to later Christians that an unprecedentedly successful and complete revisionist purge was effected, or was entirely fictitious and made up by later people for some reason.
The completely fictitious version and the inconsequential version amount to the same thing. Whatever it was, the promulgators picked a completely inconsequential cult and elevated it. Most likely they did this to serve as a foil against some turmoil of the day. There were many issues that such a cult could be used to calm: Women had very few rights and Slaves had even less. Rome had been very accepting of residents of any of the colonies; it was traditional for free food to be provided to any Roman resident. All of these groups and more had banded together to demand more rights at one time or other. The Roman system of private armies was a complication too. Many, especially those from the colonies, would fight for whoever would pay them best. Rome was a constant, seething battleground of peoples feeling oppressed, and lots of them had weapons.
The philospher and statesman Lucius Annaeus Seneca (5BC-65AD) once said "Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful." The invention of Christianity may have been the ultimate expression of that idea. Christianity is perfectly devised to appeal to all the disenfranchised groups: Women, Slaves, colonists, especially Jews and the followers of the Greek "Mystery" religions3. All are equal in the sight of God, Jew or Greek, free or slave, man or woman (Gal 3:28 and many others). Jesus tells us to ignore insults and even violence, and love your neighbor and even your enemy. To honor your debts and your leaders, and not try to scam folks. Just exactly what a religion aimed at quelling rebellions needs to be.
Nothing gets people to band together quite so effectively as persecution and the many persecutions of Jews and Christians probably created more converts than they killed. That may have been the intent. The reason for the persecutions is obscure and the evidence of most of them, such as that of Eusebius of Caesaria, has largely been debunked. The strongest problem seems to be that Christians were often more tied to their church than to their families or the national interest. They were accused of all sorts of wicked deeds from devil worship to cannibalism and human sacrifice...and rumor mills will be rumor mills, and lynchings and stonings did occur. It seems to have reached a peak around 299AD.
A few years later, Constantine, inspired by his mother Helena, who had previously converted to "The Women's Religion", included a banner with a cross on it in his retinue at the battle of the Milvian Bridge. This battle won him the Emperorship and in gratitude he legalized Christianity. Told that it was a religion of the book, he asked for a copy. This was a problem. Every group had its own book, and they often conflicted4. Constantine, now Emperor, ordered them to get together and work it out. On his orders, the conference of Nicea was convened in 325. The two leading factions were led by Athanasius and Arius. The Athanasians believed that Jesus was immaculately conceived and had been resurrected after his crucifixion. The Arians believed that Jesus was a divinely inspired mortal man who had died on the cross and remained dead. The leading Arian faction was mysteriously detained on the road from Alexandria and missed the conference, deciding its outcome. Arianism remained popular for about a century but Nicea gave the Athanasians the upper hand. By the time of Augustine, writing around 425, Arianism was too weak to survive and what little was left was killed off by the Augustinian Heresy. Like many religious fanatics5, later Christians set about purging the historic record of anything that doesn't fit their own ideas of religious purity. They didn't quite completely succeed but mostly.
1There was an attempt, apparently made by a German copyist at some point during the Dark Ages, to edit such a description in. But the style of the language is conspicuously different and copies lacking these suspicious extra passages have survived.
2The Roman demand that Caesar be treated as a God is entirely consistent with Jewish theology, so what the Zealots were angry about was much ado about not very much, and the Jewish leadership, Herod the Great in particular, understood that. There are lots of entities recognizable as demigods--Archangels, such as as Gabriel and Michael, for example.
3The Greek Mystery Religions are interesting. Paul seems to have embraced them and integrated their important ideas into Christianity. Later Christians actively suppressed them and most of what we know is indirect. The mystery God (each of dozens of sects had their own) is immaculately conceived and interacts with people as if one of them. He is later killed and seen by everybody to be dead, but miraculously comes back to life to continue his worldly mission. The Lazarus story may be a nod to this notion, but Paul wanted more. He seems to have had a dispute with Jesus' brother James, who insists that Jesus was a divinely inspired mortal man. This dispute was ultimately decided, under suspicious circumstances, in Paul (and Athanasius') favor at Nicea. I've always suspected that James might have been the older brother although I have no evidence of this.
4Each of these books was individually hand-made. Wood-block printing existed but wasn't used for text until 500 years later, in China. Movable type for printing was devised by Gutenberg 1127 years after Milvia. Some of the purged texts survive as "apocrypha" and a few of the purged groups do too, such as the Gnostics in Egypt. Most are probably lost.
5The most tragic example of this are the repeated sackings of the Library of Alexandria, twice by Romans, in 48BC and 273AD, at least partly by accident, once on purpose by Christians in 391, and again on purpose by Muslims in 642. Ironically, the 273 battle was against Palmyra, some of the ruins of which have been recently destroyed by ISIS/DAESH for exactly the same reason. The suppression of Paganism, the mystery religions, Arianism, Pelagianism, the fates of Hus, Bruno, Galileo and countless rural healers as "Witches". It goes on and on.
Further Reading
http://www.amazon.com/Unriddling-Christian-Origins-Joel-Carmichael/dp/0879759526
http://www.amazon.com/Zealot-Life-Times-Jesus-Nazareth/dp/0812981480
http://www.amazon.com/Jewish-War-Revised-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140444203
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_myth_theory
http://www.salon.com/2015/05/14/the_right_gets_jesus_all_wrong_9_reasons_why_everything_you_know_about_jesus_is_a_myth/
The Romans were very accepting of the Religions of those they conquered. As long as the Emperor joined your Pantheon and received due worship with its other members, your religion was welcome in the Roman family. The only monotheistic religion in the region, Judaism, got into a little trouble over this--the Jewish king at the time of their conquest, Herod the Great, was perfectly willing to put a bust of Caesar into all local synagogues, which satisfied the Romans. Where this ran into trouble was that a group called the Zealots felt that this relatively minor imposition was a slight to God2 and became terrorists, killing Romans and any Jewish leaders that were willing to work with them. This terrorism worked as well as terrorism ever has: it provoked the Romans to destroy the Jewish homeland completely and carry a large fraction of the population off in slavery.
Jesus may have been one of these terrorists. The gospels do not tell us why the Romans wanted him dead, only that they did. His crime and punishment, sedition and crucifixion, were pretty much reserved for traitors against the state, such as these terrorists, so whatever the crime was, it has apparently been purged from the story for the benefit of the (largely Roman) audience. Nothing survives of this in the gospel apart from a bit of inter-factional rivalry. The Romans wouldn't have killed a faction leader unless they they thought he might be provoking violence. That Jesus doesn't make it, at all, into Roman records or the quite complete stories of Josephus, and that what little is known about him so flatly contradicts such a crime, suggests that the true story was either so inconsequential at the time to have not been noticed, or was somehow so embarrassing to later Christians that an unprecedentedly successful and complete revisionist purge was effected, or was entirely fictitious and made up by later people for some reason.
The completely fictitious version and the inconsequential version amount to the same thing. Whatever it was, the promulgators picked a completely inconsequential cult and elevated it. Most likely they did this to serve as a foil against some turmoil of the day. There were many issues that such a cult could be used to calm: Women had very few rights and Slaves had even less. Rome had been very accepting of residents of any of the colonies; it was traditional for free food to be provided to any Roman resident. All of these groups and more had banded together to demand more rights at one time or other. The Roman system of private armies was a complication too. Many, especially those from the colonies, would fight for whoever would pay them best. Rome was a constant, seething battleground of peoples feeling oppressed, and lots of them had weapons.
The philospher and statesman Lucius Annaeus Seneca (5BC-65AD) once said "Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful." The invention of Christianity may have been the ultimate expression of that idea. Christianity is perfectly devised to appeal to all the disenfranchised groups: Women, Slaves, colonists, especially Jews and the followers of the Greek "Mystery" religions3. All are equal in the sight of God, Jew or Greek, free or slave, man or woman (Gal 3:28 and many others). Jesus tells us to ignore insults and even violence, and love your neighbor and even your enemy. To honor your debts and your leaders, and not try to scam folks. Just exactly what a religion aimed at quelling rebellions needs to be.
Nothing gets people to band together quite so effectively as persecution and the many persecutions of Jews and Christians probably created more converts than they killed. That may have been the intent. The reason for the persecutions is obscure and the evidence of most of them, such as that of Eusebius of Caesaria, has largely been debunked. The strongest problem seems to be that Christians were often more tied to their church than to their families or the national interest. They were accused of all sorts of wicked deeds from devil worship to cannibalism and human sacrifice...and rumor mills will be rumor mills, and lynchings and stonings did occur. It seems to have reached a peak around 299AD.
A few years later, Constantine, inspired by his mother Helena, who had previously converted to "The Women's Religion", included a banner with a cross on it in his retinue at the battle of the Milvian Bridge. This battle won him the Emperorship and in gratitude he legalized Christianity. Told that it was a religion of the book, he asked for a copy. This was a problem. Every group had its own book, and they often conflicted4. Constantine, now Emperor, ordered them to get together and work it out. On his orders, the conference of Nicea was convened in 325. The two leading factions were led by Athanasius and Arius. The Athanasians believed that Jesus was immaculately conceived and had been resurrected after his crucifixion. The Arians believed that Jesus was a divinely inspired mortal man who had died on the cross and remained dead. The leading Arian faction was mysteriously detained on the road from Alexandria and missed the conference, deciding its outcome. Arianism remained popular for about a century but Nicea gave the Athanasians the upper hand. By the time of Augustine, writing around 425, Arianism was too weak to survive and what little was left was killed off by the Augustinian Heresy. Like many religious fanatics5, later Christians set about purging the historic record of anything that doesn't fit their own ideas of religious purity. They didn't quite completely succeed but mostly.
1There was an attempt, apparently made by a German copyist at some point during the Dark Ages, to edit such a description in. But the style of the language is conspicuously different and copies lacking these suspicious extra passages have survived.
2The Roman demand that Caesar be treated as a God is entirely consistent with Jewish theology, so what the Zealots were angry about was much ado about not very much, and the Jewish leadership, Herod the Great in particular, understood that. There are lots of entities recognizable as demigods--Archangels, such as as Gabriel and Michael, for example.
3The Greek Mystery Religions are interesting. Paul seems to have embraced them and integrated their important ideas into Christianity. Later Christians actively suppressed them and most of what we know is indirect. The mystery God (each of dozens of sects had their own) is immaculately conceived and interacts with people as if one of them. He is later killed and seen by everybody to be dead, but miraculously comes back to life to continue his worldly mission. The Lazarus story may be a nod to this notion, but Paul wanted more. He seems to have had a dispute with Jesus' brother James, who insists that Jesus was a divinely inspired mortal man. This dispute was ultimately decided, under suspicious circumstances, in Paul (and Athanasius') favor at Nicea. I've always suspected that James might have been the older brother although I have no evidence of this.
4Each of these books was individually hand-made. Wood-block printing existed but wasn't used for text until 500 years later, in China. Movable type for printing was devised by Gutenberg 1127 years after Milvia. Some of the purged texts survive as "apocrypha" and a few of the purged groups do too, such as the Gnostics in Egypt. Most are probably lost.
5The most tragic example of this are the repeated sackings of the Library of Alexandria, twice by Romans, in 48BC and 273AD, at least partly by accident, once on purpose by Christians in 391, and again on purpose by Muslims in 642. Ironically, the 273 battle was against Palmyra, some of the ruins of which have been recently destroyed by ISIS/DAESH for exactly the same reason. The suppression of Paganism, the mystery religions, Arianism, Pelagianism, the fates of Hus, Bruno, Galileo and countless rural healers as "Witches". It goes on and on.
Further Reading
http://www.amazon.com/Unriddling-Christian-Origins-Joel-Carmichael/dp/0879759526
http://www.amazon.com/Zealot-Life-Times-Jesus-Nazareth/dp/0812981480
http://www.amazon.com/Jewish-War-Revised-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140444203
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_myth_theory
http://www.salon.com/2015/05/14/the_right_gets_jesus_all_wrong_9_reasons_why_everything_you_know_about_jesus_is_a_myth/
Pseudoscience Ascendant
I just returned from 8 days in my hometown, Cupertino, California. Cell phone and cellular data reception there continues to be terrible, and if I use my phone much, the battery dies in a fraction of the time it does in more sensible places. The home of Apple, HP and countless other high tech innovators, has very few cell towers, and these companies have been forced to implement their own private cell networks. Here's the reason. They have it exactly backwards.
The WHO report cited is essentially a sop, admitting that it's remotely possible that this could be a problem, just to get these nincompoops off their back. There is no credible evidence that low level gigahertz radio causes cancer. None. Very high power, tuned and focused radiation can cook things though. Microwave ovens are tuned to the frequency of water. They're shielded, but by staying a few feet away, even if there's a breakdown, you can stay safe. Powerful radars have been known to kill bugs and birds that flew too close. Not by cancer though, by boiling the water in them.
But let's pretend that there was a problem. Digital cell phones adjust their power output based on how far they are from the cell tower. If they're far, they increase power, if they're near, they reduce it. This has a bunch of advantages. First of all, it saves a lot of battery power if they don't have to use it. More significantly, it increases network capacity. Each logical channel is only used up for as big an area as the power being used can reach. The same channel can be used by another tower/phone pair if they're out of range.
But the notowerinschoools folks have this exactly backwards. By keeping the towers far from the students, they are FORCING all cell communications to occur at high power. The transmitter that matters is not the one in the tower. The inverse square law makes it of little consequence to anyone more than a few dozen feet away. The transmitter that matters is the one the kid is holding up to their ear. If the tower 5 miles away, it's transmitting at high power. It's unlikely to cause cancer, but it might be boiling the kids brains a little bit. From less than an inch away. The closer the cell tower is, the less power the mobile phone needs to use to transmit. Unless you ban the cell phones completely, you are achieving exactly the thing you were trying to prevent. I wonder how a cell phone ban would go down in the schools of Cupertino...not.
Idiots.
Addenda 3 Jan 2017
There's a new cell tower in Cupertino near city hall that went on line in the spring. Cellular is now /much/ better there.
The WHO report cited is essentially a sop, admitting that it's remotely possible that this could be a problem, just to get these nincompoops off their back. There is no credible evidence that low level gigahertz radio causes cancer. None. Very high power, tuned and focused radiation can cook things though. Microwave ovens are tuned to the frequency of water. They're shielded, but by staying a few feet away, even if there's a breakdown, you can stay safe. Powerful radars have been known to kill bugs and birds that flew too close. Not by cancer though, by boiling the water in them.
But let's pretend that there was a problem. Digital cell phones adjust their power output based on how far they are from the cell tower. If they're far, they increase power, if they're near, they reduce it. This has a bunch of advantages. First of all, it saves a lot of battery power if they don't have to use it. More significantly, it increases network capacity. Each logical channel is only used up for as big an area as the power being used can reach. The same channel can be used by another tower/phone pair if they're out of range.
But the notowerinschoools folks have this exactly backwards. By keeping the towers far from the students, they are FORCING all cell communications to occur at high power. The transmitter that matters is not the one in the tower. The inverse square law makes it of little consequence to anyone more than a few dozen feet away. The transmitter that matters is the one the kid is holding up to their ear. If the tower 5 miles away, it's transmitting at high power. It's unlikely to cause cancer, but it might be boiling the kids brains a little bit. From less than an inch away. The closer the cell tower is, the less power the mobile phone needs to use to transmit. Unless you ban the cell phones completely, you are achieving exactly the thing you were trying to prevent. I wonder how a cell phone ban would go down in the schools of Cupertino...not.
Idiots.
Addenda 3 Jan 2017
There's a new cell tower in Cupertino near city hall that went on line in the spring. Cellular is now /much/ better there.
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