Crowning the dragon: Chinese GDP PPP will exceed America's by year's end.

[DGuller]

How ironic that grumbler would tackle a story about aging. 

[grumbler]

How ironic that grumbler would tackle a story about aging. 

How ironic that DG discuss the irony contained in a post that he clearly didn't bother to read very carefully.

[The Minsky Moment]

Some real person or persons wrote Luke and they used real Greek words to do so.  Those real words have some real meaning.
IMO it is pretty clear that the Bethlehem story is fictitious but still one can talk meaningfully about the content of that story.  If one is going to recreate a scene from that story, then one must have some idea of what is being said.  Whether is based on real events or not is irrelevant.

[Malthus]

A common practice in the ancient world and well after was that animals would be left outside in the day and brought indoors at night inside the lodging. (this also served the purpose of providing heat). The feeding trough would be in the lodging.  The provision for an entirely separate structure just for housing animals would imply fairly high levels of wealth probably not typical for a small backwater settlement like Bethlehem.

Animals were typically stored in one of two ways - either in seperate outbuildings (if this was in fact an "inn") or on a lower floor of the same structure the people themselves lived in. Either could be logically described as a "stable", though admittedly, in the latter case it is simply the ground floor of the same building. The meaning does not change though - the family, having been unable to find available space in a place where people typically slept (either the upper floor, or in the case of an "inn", a seperate structure), had to bed down - and here that reasonable assumption comes into play - in a place where the animals are usually kept, whether that was a seperate structure or the ground floor of the same building.

The meaning isn't really any different - bedding down, never mind giving birth, in the place one generally uses to store animals is unfortunate and icky. Unless you are the Brain - in which case, giving birth isn't an issue. 

[Admiral Yi]

This thread is supposed to be about the Potato Famine. 

[Valmy]

This thread is supposed to be about the Potato Famine. 

WTF?  I am pretty sure it is about the Indian cloth industry during the British Raj.

[DGuller]

How ironic that grumbler would tackle a story about aging. 

How ironic that DG discuss the irony contained in a post that he clearly didn't bother to read very carefully.

I'm a writer, not a reader.

[Malthus]

How ironic that grumbler would tackle a story about aging. 

Really, we should be asking Grumbler about animal storage in 0 AD. After all, he probably witnessed it personally. 

[Ideologue]

If one is going to recreate a scene from that story, then one must have some idea of what is being said.  Whether is based on real events or not is irrelevant.

It's a little late to embrace the art of production design now.

[Sheilbh]

Any of you read Benedict's Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives on this?

[Razgovory]

I'm pretty confident that if Ireland wasn't part of Britain the potatoe famine would have been much much worse.
Yep, the government were a bunch of ideologically focused numpties, but most of the aid that did come to Ireland was from the UK; this wouldn't be totally removed with an I deodorant Ireland but I would imagine it would be sharply lessened.
The uk also offered a convenient place to move to, again not impossible with the two being separate countries but more difficult.
And though the Uk government did a crap job of helping in Ireland at least they saw that as a desirable thing to do. Would the ascendancy have been so concerned about a bunch of freeloading Catholics dying?  they could even see it as a positive step, nature/god doing clearances for them.

[Gups]

I'm pretty confident that if Ireland wasn't part of Britain the potatoe famine would have been much much worse.
Yep, the government were a bunch of ideologically focused numpties, but most of the aid that did come to Ireland was from the UK; this wouldn't be totally removed with an I deodorant Ireland but I would imagine it would be sharply lessened.
The uk also offered a convenient place to move to, again not impossible with the two being separate countries but more difficult.
And though the Uk government did a crap job of helping in Ireland at least they saw that as a desirable thing to do. Would the ascendancy have been so concerned about a bunch of freeloading Catholics dying?  they could even see it as a positive step, nature/god doing clearances for them.

Hey you'd say stupid shit too if you were channelling Dan Quale.

[Eddie Teach]

The man who inspired Tim to enter politics.

[derspiess]

[Capetan Mihali]

The man who inspired Tim to enter politics.