the big event

When i was speaking about the progress of rights through the ages, I wasn't thinking about peasants or slaves.  The Romans were bad about slavery,  One thing I read lately is that when they had them on the farms they kept them locked up in barracks, it wasn't until the empire began to crumble that this became economically unfeasible and they allowed them to fend a bit more for themselves and then they at least had some sort of family life.

Well how do you measure human rights?  It depends on which segment of the population you are talking about.  For most of history nobody gave a second thought to the peasants.  Maybe it was the industrial revolution that gave the peasants their break.  Sure they had to spend long hours in awful factories but it gave some of them a chance to get ahead.  Outside of North America and Europe I think there are still a lot of peasants,  Maybe not South America, who knows what goes on in South America?

It's kind of odd how you never hear much about South America.  If you go to the history section of the bookstore there is almost nothing about South America.


Since I don't believe in a creator, I don't think he endowed us with any inalienable rights,  But it does seem intuitive that there are ways that you can and cannot treat people,  I imagine you could offer them a low-paying job and they could take it or leave it, but you couldn't make him work for you for free by the use of force.  There are those republican measures to make it harder for people to vote, but outside of that most everybody gets the right to vote.  We expect all of us to be treated fairly by the law, but of course the richer you are the better lawyer you can hire.  Do we have an equal right to education or to medical care?  Should there be?  How about a right to housing, to own a car?


Beagles is right about Nicki's butt just being another one of those goofy things celebs do, and if my point was that we pay too much attention to them, than it was trivial because don't we all believe that anyway?  I saw her on a tv commercial for internet service and I was thinking she was a hot babe, but then she turned around and there was that huge thing.  Then I went to the google machine, and holy shit.  Oh well, just another thing to divert us from the coming attraction.

Which is tonight of course.  I will be glued to the tube because who knows how it will go.