Ca' di Gladiatori Crumbles

A sad day in Pompeii, as the House of the Gladiators collapses. Italy has been suffering heavy autumn rains, and the unearthed ancient ruins of the world's most unique and miraculous archeological site are not up to it.

Italy, like much of the rest of the world, suffers from a crunch in money and its government feels the pinch too. It is obviously not directly essential to the welfare of the Italian people that they keep the ruins at Pompeii in good shape -- although they are a tourist attraction that brings a lot of money in to the Campanian economy so one would think that there is a financial calculus going on somewhere. Private funding or funding from research institutions outside of Italy is also drying up. It's very easy to look at something like this and fault the government for allowing the nation's patrimony to degrade to this point. At the same time, it's easy to anticipate the government's rebuttal -- we only have so much money; how many ambulances and hospitals should we not have bought, how many soldiers should we have not paid, how much election fraud should we have tolerated or crimes left unprosecuted, to free up the money that was needed to preserve la Ca'di Gladiatori?

So the larger issue is that Pompeii is one of the ways that Italy can distinguish itself as a nation -- trading in part on its rich history and in part on its good fortune to have such an asset and in part on its commitment to maintaining, studying, and making available its unique culture. Every nation has such cultural assets, unique to itself. If we take the point of view that culture is not a job for the government, then something like Pompeii has to be handled at least in part by private enterprise (perhaps in the form of a private charity), or vanish entirely. Sometimes that private money is there and sometimes it isn't. And some things are of great cultural value and some are of more moderate importance.

To say that the degree of state involvement and the financial commitment of a community and a government must be addressed on a case-by-case basis is not a very satisfying or principled way of looking at the issue. But it is probably the only realistic result.

O Felice Giorno!

Sometimes, a good beer is just the thing you want.  Libertine Benjamin Franklin once said that "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."  Whether he believed in God or not depended on what point in his life you caught him, but it seems he pretty much always believed in beer.

But if you're in the mood for a tall cold one, and you're in Italy or an Italian restaurant, you're pretty much out of luck.  Just about the only Italian beer you can get anywhere, including in Italy, is Peroni, and Peroni is quite possibly the weakest, most watery barley tea ever put in a bottle and called "beer."  It makes Bud Light seem hearty by comparison.

So it's nice to see the development of Italian craft brews because hey, you can't drink wine all the time.  When the American craft brew movement built up a head twenty or so years ago it did nothing but good to the market and even the majors began to pay attention to the quality of their product again and now all offer craft brew-style upmarket alternatives.  Pay attention, Peroni Sp.A.!  Hopefully under the lead of these small brewers and pubs, Italy will take its place alongside Germany, Belgium, Czech, and England as a producer of quality brew.

Now I Know What It Sounds Like To My Cousins When I Talk To My Wife

Well, maybe not exactly what they think we sound like, but the singer is intentionally trying to sound like an English speaker, I think an American, without actually using any real English. Over at LGM, a commenter correctly identified the artist as Adriano Celentano, who is a huge Elvis fan, and you can kind of hear the influence in the song.  I think it's damn catchy.

Busted! (G-8 Summit Version)

To be fair to the Presidents here, the booties are typically of very high quality in Italy.

Update: ABC News insists that the photo does not show what it appears to show. Oh yeah? You guys are totally in the bag for Obama. Explain this away, I dare you! Look, it's okay, Obama partisans. He's only human, he's a red-blooded American man. It's fine if he at least notices the attractive, well-dressed young Euro-babes floating around a place like the conference in L'Aquila. Or the shapely, if underage, Brazilian talent featured in the first photo.

Italian Atheists!

Translated, it's a "good news-bad news" sort of message:

"The bad news is, God doesn't exist. The good news is, you don't need him to."

Right now, it's only on two busses in Genova. But it will expand from there. I'd predict Milano before Roma but it will get there. Don't look for this message on gondole in Venice, though -- the decorations that can go on a gondola are tightly regulated. (More people take the vaporetti to get around there; the gondole are just for tourists.)

Auguri, humaniste italiane!

Cinque Piedi di Acqua Alta a Venezia

This must have been scary for Venetians. Six hours of water five feet above where it normally is. Walking around sidewalks hip-deep in the lagoon -- yuck! A beautiful city, but that lagoon is nasty. Is it global warming? Well, that's hard to say. There had been a lot of rain the weeks beforehand, so the rivers were high, and there are sometimes naturally-occurring high tides just by way of the force of the gravitational interaction of the moon and the earth. The highest tide ever recorded was seventy-four inches (thirteen more than today's, which was the fourth-highest tide on record) and that was more than a hundred years ago. So I'm not quick to attribute an extraordinary event like this to global warming, although that couldn't have helped.

To Where Will Right Winger Deserters Flee?

"Oh, man, if Bush gets re-elected, I'm going to Canada."

"If McCain gets elected over Obama, man, the fix is in. I'm outta here, I'll go to the Netherlands."

I've heard more of that kind of crap from left-wing kool-aid drinkers over the years than I care to remember. I guess it hearkens back to the glory days of Vietnam War protesters dodging the draft by fleeing to Canada or Switzerland or somewhere like that. As if that were somehow glamorous or righteous.

But now, that worm has turned around completely. Barack Hussein Obama has been elected President. Nancy Pelosi is Speaker of the House of Representatives with a commanding majority. The Democrats have tossed out Ted Stevens from the Senate, for Chrissake, and are a hairs' breath away from a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. There is nothing -- nothing -- to stop the party that harbors and encourages the sort of policies that many on the right once dared call "treason" from having their way with us.

Of course, our children will all now be taught to be gay in second grade, ownership of a firearm will be an imprisonable offense, and we will all need to learn Spanish in order to vote. George Washington's birthday will no longer be a holiday and Cesar Chavez will replace him on the $1.00 bill. Or, rather, the $1.00 coin because the Democrats are going to take our money away.

So it's natural to think that right-wing kool-aid drinkers are going to feel an impulse to leave. For instance, check out comment #5 on this post about a blogbuddy returning to the United States after a sojourn abroad:

Italy will be better off without you.You’re just like all the folks who come here and expect US to accommodate all their needs,speak their language, adjust to their culture. Welcome home…enjoy your success and your new leader and maybe you’ll not get taxed out of existence. I can’t wait to get the hell out of here. Not my America any more. -- cas

Oh, really, cas? So where, exactly, do you intend on going? Where is this right-wing fantasyland where men can be men and own huge arsenals of big, deadly guns and the government will tolerate it? Maybe you're thinking Iraq? No problem owning lots of guns there. But somehow I doubt that an Arabic-speaking country dominated by Muslims and still susceptible to urban terrorism is going to be terribly appealing to cas and others like him who prefer the red kool-aid to the blue, even with the decidedly permissive de facto rules about owning weapons there.

Maybe to that mecca of free-market capitalism, Japan. If he can somehow persuade the government of that famously xenophobic nation into giving a gaijin like him a residency visa. He may have to promise to shower four times a day. And forget about owning any land, even if he could afford it. So, I guess that's out.

Now, you can have some weapons in Russia -- hey, сказать привет моему другу мало! And, for the time being, the Russians are overtly capitalists. But you've pretty much got to have tons of dough if you want to live anywhere decent, like Moscow or Petersburg. And Putin is pretty much turning into the Enemy again, so cas probably isn't thinking real seriously about Russia.

Now, I'm going to hazard a guess here and suggest that cas and his fellow right-wingers are probably not super-fluent in non-English languages and can't be bothered to learn them. It's very likely that cas is an English-is-the-official-language sort of guy. That might be a stretch. But I don't feel like it's a big one. So that limits the choices to only a few options, countries where English is the primary language. Maybe he can go to India or Pakistan and teach English to successive generations of tech support specialists and learn to love ghat and curry.

Canada, of course, is not an option; they're a bunch of peacenik socialists and gun-grabbers, and they have the most open immigration policy of any nation on Earth so the whole place is a gigantic security risk. Of the remaining English-speaking countries, you need to be ultra-loaded to emigrate to the UK, and you can't have a gun there. Or in Ireland. Or in the urban parts of Australia or anywhere in New Zealand. Or (now) Hong Kong -- the PRC is in charge there now, not Her Majesty's Government, and they don't like people they don't know having weapons.

South Africa? English is a secondary language there -- so maybe cas could use his English to get started while he brushes up on his Afrikaans and Swahili. Of course, you've got racial tensions, a seriously declining economy, and restrictions on firearms again, but that's not so different from here, really. And the climate is a lot like Southern California, just upside-down.

Maybe cas is Jewish and can exercise Aliyah. Then, he could go to Israel. There is gun control, but he could have a military-grade weapon in his kibbutz as long as he was part of the IDF Reserves, which I bet cas would think was cool. English isn't the primary language there, but it would be enough to get him started, and if cas is Jewish he may know some Hebrew. Yeah, they're pretty much socialists there but there is private enterprise. So, if you're in the Tribe, cas, massel tov. But if you're not Jewish, I think you're pretty much looking at Jo-burg.

Free To Criticize

Continuing in a vein from the past post, here's a reminder to all my American bloggers that they should cherish and be thankful for their freedoms. In Italy, it is a crime to mock the Pope. After warming up with some shots at Italy's Prime Minister, comedian Sabina Guzzanti suggested in one of her bits that Pope Benedict XVI would be rewarded for meddling with Italian elementary school education by enduring demons sodomizing him in hell, "great big poofter devils, and very active ones, not passive ones."

Prosecution for sedition and lese-majeste of this sort requires special authorization from the government and it's not clear if that permission will be granted. Italy would be a more free country if it were denied. Prof. V. accurately points out: "I think suggesting, even humorously, that your ideological enemies ought to be sexually abused is in pretty poor taste. But it seems to me that a democracy should allow even such speech, especially when it comes to important religious and political leaders."

To be sure, Ms. Guzzanti's joke was crude and not particularly insightful into the issue. But political dialogue does not only occur in the intellectual parries, elevated-language ripostes, and occasionally witty feints found in the pages of Atlantic, National Review and The New Republic (or their Italian equivalents). Some of it takes place at a much more base level, and always has. And it should not be for a court to decide whether something is substantive enough to be protected policy debate and when something is a mere insult to the holders of power. Even the crude lampoons of our leaders find that they gain purchase when they touch on an element of truth. The process takes a while and it is not always pretty, but it does eventually help us make up our minds about things.

So just like Sarah Palin needs to put up with Saturday Night Live making fun of her, Pope Benedict, if he wants to be a leader of free people, must endure personal criticism from people who do not like him and his ideas. The Italian government should take its commitment to personal liberties freely and tolerate Ms. Guzzanti's crude (and possibly homophobic) attack on the Pope.

If I praise my leaders, this says nothing about my freedom. North Koreans can praise their Dear Leader all day long if they wish. It is when I criticize my leaders, and am not subsequently punished, that the liberty my society affords is truly proven.

We Really Do This

The United States really detained a nice Italian lawyer – a man not of Arabic descent, not visibly Muslim, and in fact quite innocuous and was guilty only of trying to visit his girlfriend. There is no indication that he overstayed his visa or was in any way disruptive, and in fact Italy is one of the countries that we permit people to visit from for as much as 90 days without a visa.

He was apparently detained because the ICE* officer thought it was strange that he was asking for asylum from Italy under threat of death at the hands of the government. I would have thought such a remark was strange, too, if I believed that it had been made. I don't; I believe the detainee that he never said such a thing because a well-to-do lawyer from Italy with experience visiting the U.S. isn't going to be dropping those kinds of remarks trying to get through Customs. (I might believe that a prosecutor from Italy might legitimately fear being killed by organized crime syndicates, either foreign or domestic, but this guy sounds like he has private clients or the news would undoubtedly have mentioned if he was a prosecutor or otherwise an employee of the Italian government.)

But even if the guy did make such a bizarre request, a ten-day detention in a county jail in rural Virginia is hardly a reasonable way to deny an asylum request. Don’t people who request asylum have to be given a form or something to turn their informal request at the airport gate into a formal request, documented on paper?

Anyway, once again we’ve managed to give ourselves a black eye with respect to the goodwill of one of our very close allies the Italians, because somebody was really stupid. It's bad enough that we kill their skiiers and get their journalists shot. Now this. Soon enough no one will want to be friends with us, not even the Canadians.

* ICE is what used to be called the INS.

Perché questa farvi arrabbiare?

The outgoing government officials in Italy seem to have a penchant for spite. Or an extraordinary lack of common sense, or a warped idea of how to balance individual privacy against openness about government activity. Or maybe it's just an act of sheer Italian randomness. But for whatever the reason, the Italian flair for government once again demonstrated itself this morning as, for about eight hours, the government's website had the reported income and tax contribution figures for every Italian available to the general public.

As one might expect, within hours the amount of traffic on the site overwhelmed it and the government finally had to take the site down. Turns out that everyone in Italy was very curious to find out what their friends and neighbors made. But it also turns out that, as with most gossipy sorts of things, people would rather it had been a one-way street -- I want to know what my neighbor makes, but I don't want my neighbor to know what I make. (That's not a particularly Italian attitude, so much as simple human nature.)

The timing of the move is distinctive -- power is to be transferred over the weekend and the outgoing government had made a powerful plank of its platform a reform of the way Italians report and pay taxes so that more people paid their fair share as a way of attacking deficit spending.

Gee, why are people so upset?

Turns Out There's An Ugly Side To Italian Separatism

I'll translate this campaign poster for you non-Italian speakers: "Guess who comes in last? For rights to housing, jobs, and health care. ... [In the] regional elections, vote for the Northern League."

Just take a look at that cartoon! Can you imagine a more gross collection of racial caricatures? We're not so prejudiced against Gypsies here in the States, but believe me, they sure are in Europe. I especially like the Osama-looking dude holding a scimitar.

Oh, how embarrassing. And I have relatives who like the Lega Nord; I'm sure that they voted for it! They say it's because they think politicians in Rome are all corrupt and because the south of Italy is an economic drag on the country as a whole. But I'm mindful that immigration is a powerful issue everywhere and it seems impossible to avoid the tinge of racism while addressing the issue.

Someone please tell me this is a joke. Someone tell me that this is a photoshop of a real Lega Nord campaign poster. Ah, but you probably can't. See, one prominent Lega Nord politician held a "pig day" to protest the building of a mosque in Bologna. Same guy dismissed France's team in the World Cup as a bunch of "negroes, Communists, and Moslems." (Italy won, as you'll recall.) "Italia Per Gli Italiani!" it may as well say. "Italia -- Non Sei Un Turista Ricca? Uscire!"

I can't even begin to imagine the shitstorm that would happen if a similar kind of campaign poster circulated in the States. Yikes.

Towards A Two-Party System

Italy's famous instability in government has been caused, in no small part, by the multiplicity of political parties competing for seats in the Parliament, as well as a Constitution that by design gives parties proportional representation based on their votes. In order to form a government, most political leaders there have been forced to incorporate the platforms of other parties into their own. But elections just wrapped up in Italy yesterday, and the results are remarkable. Silvio Berlusconi will be Prime Minister for a third time, and his new coalition of parties holds commanding leads in both houses of Italy's Parliament. Remarkably, also, the race was largely between two broad coalitions of political parties, and thus more closely resembled an election in the United States than anything else.

Here, of course, we don't have multiple political parties; the two large parties have incorporated interest groups within themselves as part of their coalitions. Italy is still a little bit more loose than that with its internal political alignments. But seeing great political success there may well motivate politicians to try this strategy again in future elections -- it may well be better to be part of a larger, more powerful unit if you're trying to get a specific policy enacted. That, of course, is what democratic politics is all about.

Berlusconi is not without his faults as a leader. He's corrupt and imperious -- and entirely willing to flaunt his use of power to benefit of himself and his friends. He's also more focused on Italy's northern industrial regions than on developing the more rural south. But in so doing, he's also managed to ally himself with the Northern League, the separatist movement. While the Northern League gained in power this election, it may find that most of its policy goals have been triangulated into Berlusconi's platform, and thus in the flower of victory may lie the seeds of the Northern League's ultimate political demise -- why secede from a country that is doing well? Rather, the Northern League is already adapting itself to remain politically relevant; many within its ranks no longer see secession of the Po Valley and surrounding regions as a viable goal but instead promote the idea of federalism within Italy, with regions being given greater autonomy. This is not unlike the "devolution" movement that has led to the re-establishment of the Scottish and Welsh Parliaments in the UK.

I have to remember to suppress my own prejudices in reading news of this nature. I live in a country dominated by center-right thinkers and I am such a thinker myself. I live in a country where I can see a two-party federal democratic system working reasonably well, and it's natural to think that such a system, if exported elsewhere, would produce similar results. This may not be true for all circumstances and when you consider entire nations, we need to remember that these are indeed complex things. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to the problems of how government should best be structured, or even the goal of creating a government in the first place. We are trying to create a government in Iraq, for instance, and it is far from clear that a system of government like that of the United States would be the sort of thing that either we or the Iraqis would find desirable.

But the thing of it is, the way we do things in America does work. There are problems -- we face issues of partisan gridlock and oversimplification of complex issues; many are frustrated with the system of checks and balances impeding change or preventing corrections of changes they dislike to our policies. Perhaps we've allowed too much power to accrete in the hands of the executive over the past generation. Perhaps we are not as vigilant as we should be about protecting our individual rights against the government, so quick are some of us to identify with the government itself as the embodiment of good. But on the whole, federal democracy with a two-party system for debate does seem to work. On balance, our leaders make more or less centrist decisions on most major issues, reflecting the general consensus of the public. On balance, our welfare and our rights are protected. It's easy to see other nations take steps towards being more like us in those respects as a positive step, and it's easy to applaud them for it.

Renaissance Bleg

I'm listening to a very interesting set of lectures on CD about the Italian Renaissance. The lecturer is taking a topical approach -- one lecture is about the perfidy of Cesare Borgia (and the inevitable apology for his much-maligned sister Lucrezia), the next is about the government and economic structure of the Republic of Venice, then there's a discussion of Imperial and French dynastic ambitions to Milan and Naples, and so on. The topical approach, however, sacrifices chronological continuity for focus on the various subjects. This is overall a good approach, because the politics, military activities, exchange and development of ideas, and economic developments of the era were so very complex.

But with that said, I would be interested in seeing a comprehensive, maybe year-by-year approach to the subject. Does anyone know of a book or other resource that tackles the Renaissance on a faithfully chronological era -- so I'm not learning about the exploits of Lorenzo de' Medici and then having to leap back in time a generation to learn about Francesco Sforza? It's important, I think, to realize that Francesco was a contemporary of Lorenzo's accomplished grandfather Cosimo, and therefore that Lorenzo and Francesco were not contemporaries, but it can be a bit confusing because both have similar kinds of heroic stories to tell.

A Buck Fiddy

Today marks the first time that the Euro has traded for $1.50 in U.S. money. That's right, a buck fifty buys you only a single Euro. This is not good news for Americans planning to live abroad right at this exact moment. It also means that the dollar will need to strength significantly, or I will have to win the Lotto, before I can go visit my cousins in Italy again.

They, on the other hand, might be able to afford a trip here if they can only scrape together enough money for the airfare. After all, the exchange ratio works two ways, and to them, a dollar would only cost seventy-five cents. It would be fun to show the suddenly-rich Italians around Los Angeles, and good language practice for me. "Sì, questo è il luogo dove ha ottenuto un travestito en l'auto de Eddie Murphy." "Te piace il cane de Dodger?" "No, sarebbe scortese chiedere Signora Hilton per il suo sopra del' bikini. Non importa che lei è ubriaco. Dobbiamo invece avere alcune sushi."

Conosce Che Cosa Gradisce (She Knows What She Likes)

Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan.

The Italians Are Better At Government Than Anyone Else

From time to time, because I do things like talk with students about political theory, I hear arguments that a parliamentary system is better than what we have in the U.S.A. Italy, for instance, has a parliamentary system, and there is news from there today. Now sure, to us in the United States, it appears that the center-left coalition of Prime Minister Romano Prodi is on the verge of collapse because a small party with a few seats in Italy's upper house of parliament decided to pull their support of the government. Sure, that looks like a tiny splinter group with the support of only a tiny fraction of the Italian electorate is capable of bringing the government there to a screeching halt; it looks like that tiny minority can therefore make demands and get what it wants despite the large majority of Italians not being in favor of their proposal. That's what it looks like. But appearances can be deceiving. We need to remember, the Italians have been in the business of governance for three thousand years. They excel at government. Why, since the end of World War II, they've had thirty-nine governments.

Damanhur

Damanhur is a complex of "temples" built in secret over the past thirty years, undernearth a hill near Turin, Italy. The artwork in them is extraordinary. It seems a little garish, at first, but a closer look also suggests some real talent and a wide variety of techniques.

The artist behind their creation seems a little bit eccentric, seem to follow some sort of New Age type of metaphysical pursuits which seem like so much nonsense to me. But all the same, it's an extraordinary work and I would no more suggest disregarding it than I would suggest disregarding the stunning artwork of a Gothic cathedral or any other kind of religiously-motivated art. And although there is a charismatic leader and some kind of spirituality involved, the proprietors don't seem to be a cult.

Take a moment to browse through the temples' website with illustrations of the temples; it's breathtaking. I was glad to find the link from FARK to the UK Daily Mail article about them; I'd had no idea they were there. Mainly, it's nice to see that this sort of cathedral-building is still going on and the modern world has not ground out the artistic impulse from people.

Proof Of The Legend

Okay, Loyal Readers, it's story time.

Once upon a time, Aeneas of Troy escaped from the city during its sack by the Greeks, and eventually settled with his son Julius in Italy. Julius allied with some locals, and they founded the city of Alba Longa in a place today known as Castel Gandolfo, a resort city so nice that's where the Pope spends his summers and, let's face it, he has a choice. Julius' grandson was Numitor, and of course he was king of Alba Longa. Sadly, Numitor was deposed by his brother Amulius; Numitor barely escaped with his life and had to hide for many years.

Like lots of ancient usurpers, Amulius had a big family to deal with. Numitor's daughter, Rhea Silvia, he figured he could get rid of by making her a Vestal Virgin, because the Vestal Virgins were forbidden to marry, so that would mean she wouldn't have any pesky offspring to be rival claimants to his throne. Unfortunately, Mars (the war god) took a liking to Rhea, and you know what happens when gods start flirting with pretty human women, being all handsome and masculine. Yadda yadda yadda, and next thing you know, Rhea is pregnant. With twins. She has the boys, and names them Romulus and Remus.

Well, this is just what Amulius had feared. So while he couldn't bring himself to kill his niece, he apparently didn't possess similar compunctions about infanticide, and he ordered the babies put in a basket and floated down the river, where presumably they would die of exposure. They washed up on a hill well downstream, where a she-wolf finds them and brings them into the grotto where she lives.

Eventually, a shepherd named Faustulus finds the boys, and he and his wife raise them. They organize the shepherds of the area, and quickly come to the attention of evil old King Numitor. His men capture Remus, but Romulus led a rescue party and freed him, and from there the brothers led the locals against the usurper Amulius, and restored the throne to their grandfather.

They decided that this running-a-kingdom business looked like it had some advantages, so they figured they'd start a kingdom of their own. They went back to the place where the she-wolf had cared for them, and built some huts and set up a toll booth for the river crossing. They had many other adventures, which ultimately didn't work out so good for Remus, and we'll talk about that some other time. Point is, the town got named for Romulus, and it's still there to this day, filled with delightful seafood restaurants and a network of absolutely terrifying taxicab drivers.

A cool old legend? Sure. But now we know exactly where it (supposedly) happened. Archaeologists have recently found the grotto, with the original first-century frescoes, where Romulus and Remus and the she-wolf were worshiped by the Romans and where legend says that the she-wolf suckled and cared for the twins. They can't go in themselves, yet, because that would probably destroy the place. Fortunately, modern technology lets them send in boroscopes, lasers, and probably robots pretty soon.

The Right Ruling In A Sad Case

My heart goes out to the journalist who died, but I have to agree with the Italian court here -- it has no jurisdiction to try a U.S. soldier for a killing in Baghdad. The journalist was shot by the U.S. solider as his vehicle approached a security checkpoint on the way to the airport, and while it is unclear exactly why the soldier fired, a U.S. military investigation cleared him of wrongdoing. The Italian civilian court today found that it lacked jurisdiction and it appears the decision will not be appealed.

The incident has caused substantial tensions between the U.S. and Italy like nothing since the Cavalese ski lift tragedy, which is particularly painful to me. It's not like the U.S. and Italy stopped being allies and strong trade partners, but it's particularly upsetting when the cause of tensions between nations involves accidental bloodshed. But hopefully this ruling will help facilitate acceptance and our nations can mend fences.

The Dry Po

Imagine if the Ohio River ran dry. Or some other major river like the Arkansas, Missouri, or the upper Mississippi. In fact, the Colorado River does run dry, or very close to it, by the end of its course at the head of the Gulf of California. But that's because it is so heavily-exploited by agriculture, from Utah to Mexico.

Well, in Italy, the Po River is the largest river in the country, and it's dry today. You could walk across the riverbed in your good shoes. (Well, maybe not, they'd get dusty.) Apparently there are heavy storms this week, which is good, but a drought like this is a big deal for our friends in Italy.

It does seem like there's been a lot of extreme weather conditions in the past several years. Environmentalists would say it's the result of global warming, or some kind of global climate change. That's likely true, although there seems to be less scientific consensus than some would have us believe about the impact of industrialism on that phenomenon.

One of the things I study in legal history is the effect of global climate change in the thirteenth century -- what is now called the "Little Ice Age" cause large agricultural failures in northern Europe, and combined with the decimating effect of Bubonic Plague, this resulted in a change in social and economic structures that urbanized places like England and France, and placed more bargaining power in the hands of suddenly-scarce laborers as against the agricultural landowners who had formerly enslaved them.

But really, all that proves is that 1) there are winners as well as losers when things change, and 2) global environmental change is caused by things other than industrialization. That doesn't mean much when considering what's happening now; scientists are sounding alarm bells all over the place and a few other scientists are suggesting restraint. More study is necessary, and protecting the environment is necessary, no matter what.