This started out as an email to Jonathan, but I think morphed into something that is post worthy.
A few days ago Jonathan proposed Angie’s Law, and along with it the Jonathan Corollary. As a reminder, the Jonathan Corollary is put forth thusly:
People who argue a political point by telling me to read an article or book that they link to are generally not worth arguing with.
That is pretty wise. Today I see a related post at Althouse, where a 911 “truther” challenges Ms. Althouse to a debate and she says to get Bill Clinton to debate you instead. Pretty funny.
Even better is a comment in the thread from one Simon, and it could very well be considered the quote of the day:
Lookit, just because someone has a right to believe something unbelievably uneducated that flies in the face of physical laws doesn’t mean that they deserve the dignity of being treated like their loony idea is worth taking seriously enough to debate. That’s something these 9/11 “truth” folks – as, with unbearable arrogance, they term themselves – need to realize. They’re like flat earthers demanding that intelligent people meet them on the field of debate – or the High School football team from nowhere, KS, who demand that the New England Patriots are clearly an inferior football team since they won’t come out to Kansas to prove that they’re better. (bold mine – dfm).
. This book is about how cities that gained large shares of the spice trade were able to turn that trade into bigtime wealth, prestige and power. Firstly, the book dives into the tale of Venice, which is by far the most interesting of the three, imho. The author does a good job of describing just what exactly the old maritime empire of Venice did and how they did it to become one of the most powerful middlemen in history. He also does a fine job of describing how folks way back then used spices in their cooking – not an easy task with a small stack of literature to choose from on this topic that is available.