The Puritan devil passed away: "Mr. Lautenberg's first major victory came in 1984. A freshman senator in the minority party, he pushed through a provision to establish a national drinking age of 21, a measure that threatened to cut 10 percent of a state's federal highway money if it did not comply. . . . Mr. Lautenberg followed that move 16 years later with another condition on highway spending: States must designate 0.08 percent blood alcohol as the level that would constitute being drunk." Link. * * * * * * * That national age has proven a smashing success: “The estimates are that the cumulative lives saved are in excess of 25,000.” Okay, I call "bs." First, how do you estimate something like that? Second, 25,000 lives saved over the course of nearly 30 years? That ain't impressive. Third, you could estimate even more lives saved if you raised the national drinking age to 35. * * * * * * * Lautenberg, incidentally, was a hard core leftist. * * * * * * * But I shouldn't speak poorly of the dead. * * * * * * * Newly-discovered podcast: The History of Byzantium. I have listened to the Introduction and the first episode. It's modeled on Duncan's History of Rome. I'm only mildly impressed so far and the podcaster ascribes to the largely-erroneous view that Rome fell in 476, but I'm happy to find any history of Byzantium. It's not one of the strongest parts of my historical knowledge, though I thought its history basically boiled down to this: Glory under Justinian, a bit of a decline, then an exhausting war with the Persians, then, left in a weakened state, barely surviving Islam's seventh-eighty century onslaught, then slowly declining until its fall in 1453. But hey, there's probably more to it than that. I plan to find out. * * * * * * * If it really wants to be interesting, it should concentrate on theological issues in Byzantium. The University of Michigan offered an entire three credit history course on it, which I took. Good class, though I limped out of it with a B+.
