The ancient Romans were ridiculous (generational translation: “exceedingly excellent”) at engineering; we already know this. The more you learn about ancient Rome, the less you feel all that advanced living in the 21st Century.
Sure, we have iPhones and satellites, but there are some technologies the Romans had which we’ve only matched within the past hundred years or so. Consider that the Romans figured out the following:

Retractable stadium roofs
Indoor plumbing, including toilets that flushed
Heated baths
Concrete not that different from today’s
500-mile a day mailing, not to mention refreshments along …

“Do you care if it falls?”
“What?”
“The Roman Empire.”
“[Bleep] it.”
-Two Roman Soldiers in Mel Brooks’ “History of the World, Part I”
They say you can learn a lot from history, and as a semi-history buff myself, I tend to agree.  Ancient Rome is one of the most fascinating subjects to read about.  They were so advanced that they had a Senate, indoor plumbing, roads that cut through mountains, and a stadium with a retractable roof.  But despite all of their ingenuity, they didn’t survive.  Here are 10 lessons to learn from the …

It seems a little odd to make fun of Labor Day – after all, who doesn’t like a day off? – but when you really look at it, it’s a sham.  Here’s why.
1.  It came about in a very arbitrary way. Days off are nice and all, but you have to admit that Labor Day is incredibly arbitrary. It came about in the late 1800’s because of labor disputes in Canada and then Grover Cleveland’s desire to make nice with unions and such.
In truth, Labor Day isn’t just arbitrary, …

Now that we know they’re trying to give Obama power to control the Internet, I just realized that they’re trying to give him power over what is essentially an abstraction of a system.  If they feel fine doing that, what’s next?  Funny you should ask.

Happiness. Some people are happier than others, and in order to keep the playing field level, Obama will seek to make happy people less happy, though you could argue that he’s already doing this.
Your thoughts. You know “The Secret,” which talks about your ability to get …

There’s a big hubbub this week about the potential missing link – a lemur-like fossil of some creature that existed some 47 million years ago.
James T. Harris has this to say:
OK, check it out. So according scientists, “Ida is linked to humans by the talus bone in her ankle which is the same shape.” They also said, “her opposable big toes and nails, not claws, confirmed she was a primate.”
Eureka! Cousin Ida! Missing link found. Man evolved from apes around 75 million years ago because it’s really hard to pinpoint …

I guess Michelle Obama is finding out how not-fun it is to be one of the most famous people in the world, considering every little move you make faces so much scrutiny that you get for your bleeping dresses.
The Black Artists Association is chiding FLOTUS for not choosing any African-American designers.
They will send a letter to FLOTUS’s office and appeal to her to include items from black designers in her wardrobe. BAA Cofounder Amnau Eele, who was a former runway model told Women’s Wear Daily:
“It’s fine and good if you …

I’m writing this past midnight, so it’s technically Christmas Eve right now.  It’s funny that even during a long Christmas season and a heavy winter, Christmas still seems to just roll up on you.
I thought I’d just type out a few of my quick Christmas thoughts this year.

Do we need Thanksgiving to give thanks?  Experiencing an awesome Christmas in and of itself feels like enough for me to take a look around and say “wow, I have it pretty dang good.”  Thanksgiving is great and all, but Christmas started by …

I’ve always been on the lookout for a decent political quiz online that shows you how far left/right you lean. It’s a good tool for the less-informed among us; readers of BPN usually know clearly where they stand on this scale, but I’m thinking of posting up some sort of quiz somewhere on the message boards for those novice politics followers.
Here it is.
If you know your stuff, you’ll see that the questions are really leading and it won’t be hard to manipulate your score.
I mean, look at the first …

I don’t think today’s economic crisis will turn much worse (unless, you know, we keep digging ourselves into deeper holes with bailouts that reward failure), but just in case it does, I’ve been thinking about what it would be like to live in a world without government and a reliance on a fiat currency like the dollar.
Without the “trade value” of the dollar – in which dollars can still be traded for other goods and services – in a true economic collapse, the dollar’s value would be downgraded simply to …

If you’ve ever seen “The View” in its current state, you know the cast of characters: Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Sherry Shepherd, and the token conservative, Elisabeth Hasselbeck. They lead off every show with “Hot Topics,” always an entertaining thing to watch because you never know when conversations can go from casual to nasty YouTube fodder.
The different range of opinions and how the show usually runs made me think of how these ladies would treat Winston Churchill if he was a guest circa 1940. Here’s my guess:
[Shot …