24 Replies to “Honey, I Finished The Internet”

  2. Going on about lead in Roman piping is fine. That’s backed up by solid scientific evidence of the dangers of lead poisoning.

    But the article falls down when it makes comparisons to modern life. Making blind accusations without specifics doesn’t impress. Tell us what you think the modern equivalent to lead is. It’s not like the medical community ignores toxicity in daily living.

    2. KM, the article is mostly BS. No data, no evidence. It ignores the fact that most of the Empire’s population was rural and had no piping whatsoever. The use of lead piping was confined only to small parts of the water systems of very large cities like Rome.

      There was no lead in a Roman aqueduct. It was only stone and masonry.

      1. The Twiiter post is BS. The PNAS article it links to seems pretty solid at first glance, but it also contains this conclusion:

        It can therefore be deduced that fistulæ increased Pb in the water distributed in Rome over the natural level by a factor of about 40, 14, and 105 for the Early Empire, Late Empire, and High Middle Ages, respectively

        So at the time lead in the pipes was supposedly causing the brains of the elite to rot and make bad decisions, the amount of lead contamination had been decreasing for centuries. Skeletal lead concentration in Roman-era corpses peaks in the 7th century, and is still less than half that of modern Europeans.

        The “OMG lead poisoning caused the fall of Rome” thesis has never had much support, and has been pretty much discarded thanks to modern forensic anthropology.

    1. Khadaffi died in a “Lybian crossfire” according to the news. It’s an expression, like “Mexican standoff”. A Lybian crossfire is when a bullet crosses from your left temple to your right temple.

  5. Sperm counts are falling if you can believe researchers, but the evidence of stupidity is overwhelming.

    I blame television.

  6. Romans quit defending themselves. They hired Germans to protect them. Maybe it wasn’t the smartest move. The Germans liked their gold more than they did

  7. We are actively poisoned. I reviewed the ingredients on a multiple vitamin today, and it contained two synthetic chemical colorants. It’s not lead, but its certainly analogous.

  8. “Crisis of the Third Century”

    And the coinage being less than 10% of the good metals… giving the same affect as what gov’t after gov’t has done here while debasing the currency, and having conquered distant lands with military that needed to be paid with their devalued currency.

    And the water pipes made from lead made them stupid
    marc in calgary, “plumber gasfitter”

    I think it’s important to study the fall of the Roman Empire, as just a simple lesson in “what not to do”
    As well, teach in high school some of the dynastic downfalls which took place in China for as long as the schools teach how a man can be a woman by saying so, or vice versa and the other 120 combos

    1. My son just got over 80% on a high school social(ist)s paper talking about ESL and society. He brought up mining reclamation and the level of work and cost that goes into planning a mine closure, as a way of making the extreme impacts of mining on the local environment (very local – think the unreclaimed pit area) more acceptable to society. His (idiot) teacher apparently didn’t know about reclamation planning as part of the initial permitting process, and thought it was a brand new development.

      1. There are a few photos I’ve seen of mined out oil sands area in the north which after reclamation look a lot like normal parkland to me.

        For whatever reason, these photos never make it outside of AB

        1. Reclaimed coal mines in the western US generally look much better, and are more productive after reclamation than they were prior to mining.

          Now if they would just remove some of these damn wind farms that have reached end-of-life.

  9. So that leaves out that the lead was not actually leeching into the water, this is an old myth based on lead pipes in the 19th century in Northern Europe, the same conditions were not present.

  11. Lead?
    Or Lead to believe?
    Maybe countries/empires just get too big to manage?
    The lead poisoning trope is nice and convenient,yet leaves way too much unexplained.
    Bureaucracy has always seemed to offer a better explanation for the rise and fall of civilization.
    The parasites crush the joy out of life and cripple all initiative.
    Just following Orders..
    That and people stop playing,long before such structures fade away.

    A simple example.
    Who would volunteer to “Fight for Canada” as it exists today?
    A Statists Dream,in which the citizen has no rights nor freedoms free of government (bureaucratic control).
    We all saw the Trucker Protest,the State of Thuggery is naked.
    Their badges turned in,their masks turned out..Serve and Protect.
    Right.
    The “Canadian Charter” is a lie.
    Canada is fading away.
    Have we the will or desire to save it?
    Did the Romans?

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