Out Of Retirement

Mark is now blogging at All Things Expounded. I know, it was a really short retirement.

Thank You and Good Night

At the end of this month, it will be 3 years since I founded this blog and 5 years of blogging in general. I think I can say that Codex Markianus has been a good, rewarding experience. However, after nearly 3 years and nearly 400 posts, I am now ready to move on. This post officially turns this blog into a historical thing (although I do plan to keep in on-line indefinitely).

In this fast-paced age, 3 years is actually quite a long time. To put this into perspective, Codex Markianus is older than Youtube.com, the .eu top-level domain, the Kyoto Treaty, and Suffrage in Kuwait!

I thank you for reading this blog, your helpful comments, and also your encouragement. I'm glad I've had this opportunity.

I do not plan to seize writing completely, nor am I fading away from the net. I'm just stepping out of the blogosphere so to speak. If you want to update your links or keep in touch, the site to use now is http://www.marknenadov.com/. All the best and God bless you all!

The Klein Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Polemics

Some time ago I read Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. I found it an interesting read, but I disagreed with it on a number of counts and wrote a review. I found Naomi's attacks on Miltron Friedman particularly vicious.

Now I am pleased to see that Johan Norberg of the Cato Institute has written a briefing paper responding to Naomi's work. I look forward to reading it, and I'm quite sure it's worth a gander if you've read or heard about The Shock Doctrine.

The State of the GOP (The Jelly-Publicans)?

Ron Paul has really hit the nail on the head with this commentary.

In short, the Republicans have recently had control of the Presidency, House, and Senate, and they have managed to blow it. Paul correctly calls the Republican congress to task for their activities.

In essence, they have been the veritable jellyfish. They've stood back and watched while Bush/Rove demanded support for unconstitutional wars, attacked civil liberties at home, and put forward an economic policy based on more spending, debt, deficits, and inflation.

He further comments that "After eight years of perpetual (and unnecessary and unconstitutional) war, persistent and expanded attacks on our privacy, runaway deficits, and now nationalization of the financial system, Republicans are going to have a tough time regaining the confidence of the American people".

Due to the actions of BOTH the Republicans and the Democrats, America is, as Ron Paul states marching towards a powerful dictorial state.

I think many Americans can relate to the words of John Perry Barlow: "So I'm just waiting until one party or the other actually gets a moral compass and a backbone".

Puritans Like A Good Drink Now And Then

"One of the more enduring misconceptions concerning the Puritans in America is that they adjured alcohol. In fact, they liked a good drink, or even a not so good one." - Bill Bryson, Made in America

God and Grammar

"I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar" - Nietzsche in 'Twilight of the Idols'

Sartre-ific

Jean-Paul Sartre is sitting at a French cafe, revising his draft of
Being and Nothingness.

He says to the waitress, "I'd like a cup of coffee, please, with no cream."

The waitress replies, "I'm sorry, monsieur, but we're out of cream. How about with no milk?"

Who Would Have Thought?

Apparently, George Wallace's daughter voted for Obama.

(For those who don't know, George Wallace was the pro-segregationist governor and presidential candidate of the 60s and 70s, who once said: "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever")

Jack London: Socialist and Friend of Prohibition

"John Barleycorn" is a character from an English folk song. In essence, it is alcohol personified. When Jack London wrote a memoir about his struggles with alcohol, he picked that as its name. It is a vivid portrayal of the struggle and denial associated with alcoholism, although Jack firmly denies that he had any inherent inclination to abuse alcohol, whether through the biology of addiction or genetic disposition. He saw addiction more as a function of social pressure.

In his memoir, Jack shows himself to be a strong supporter of prohibition. He even goes so far to reveal that he supported suffrage (the women's right to vote), because he believed that women voters would be the key to enacting prohibition.

Jack showed a degree of naivety in assuming that it would be easy to stop abusing alcohol once prohibition was enacted, since he assumed the period of prohibition would be an era when no one else drinks and no drink would be obtainable. Of course, we have the advantage of hindsight and we can reject that notion as foolish. After seeing years of prohibition (both of alcohol and other substances), we now know that prohibition removes neither supply nor demand.

Jack London envisioned a time when the use of alcohol would be relegated to the status of other defunct activities such as witch burning. Thankfully he was wrong.

Douglas Wilson on Christopher Hitchens

In "Is Christianity Good For The World?", Christian Douglas Wilson made a memorable quip when he said the following to Atheist Christopher Hitchens: "You write like a witty but acerbic tenth-century archbishop with a bad case of the gout". I'll have to put that into my "great put-downs" file.