As of Sunday evening, November 1, here is what we know — starting with what we don’t. Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal has two rival claims to its own leadership, and no higher authority has ruled on which is lawful. What follows is the record as the wires have established it. Where the most dramatic details are disputed by the people who were in the building, this post says so.
Continue readingOlder Than We Thought (3): The Neanderthals Built Underground
Three hundred and thirty-six metres inside a cave in southern France — far past the last thread of daylight, in total darkness — there are rings built out of broken stalagmites. Six structures in all: two rings, the larger about 6.7 by 4.5 metres and stacked several layers high with upright pieces propping it, plus four heaps of stone. The builders used roughly 400 stalagmites, snapped off and cut to near-uniform lengths of about 30 centimetres — 112 metres of stone, weighing some 2.2 tonnes. Every structure carries traces of fire: 57 reddened pieces, 66 blackened ones, and fragments of burnt bone.
The rings were built 176,500 years ago. The only humans in Europe then were Neanderthals.
Continue readingPaul Dictated His Letters From a Prison Hole
Episode One of the Conservative Skeptic Podcast
Paul wrote letters from prison — everybody who has read the New Testament knows that much. What I had never thought about is what a Roman prison actually was. Not a cell with bars and a bunk. A hole in the ground, twelve feet down, dark around the clock, with no toilet, no change of clothes, no blanket, and no food unless somebody outside brought it to you. In this episode I talk through what Dr. Matthew Larsen’s research did to the picture I had carried in my head for years — and why the letter to the Philippians reads, once you see the conditions, like a thank-you note from the bottom of that hole to the people whose help kept him alive.
Runtime: 19 minutes, 32 seconds. This episode grows out of my October 27 post, Paul Dictated His Letters From a Prison Hole.
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Where the idea came from (primary credit)
- Video: Dr. Matthew D.C. Larsen, “What No One Understands About the Apostle Paul” — watch on YouTube. Larsen is Professor of New Testament and Early Christian History and Archaeology at the University of Copenhagen.
- Book: Matthew D.C. Larsen & Mark Letteney, Ancient Mediterranean Incarceration (University of California Press, 2025) — the deeper work behind the video.
Roman prison conditions — food, clothing, and outside support
- Article: “What Were Roman Prisons Like in Paul’s Time?” — Olive Tree blog
- Article: “Visiting Prisoners in Jesus’ Day,” Christianity Today — christianitytoday.com
The Tullianum, in an ancient author’s words
- Sallust, War Against Catiline, §55 — the Roman historian’s description of the place: the filth, the darkness, and the stench.
I’m Tired
Why not leave? I ask this question of myself and my friends that have served in the Middle East. What do we gain by being there? In Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan? Nothing. And no one I know that has served there is able to tell me any different. I know that there will be those reading this that will tell me that I’m wrong. Other than telling me the Establishment Warmongers that say, “If we don’t fight them there, we’ll be fighting them here.” Nonsense. Utter, complete, stupidity. There’s no Muslim force that’s going to storm the shores of America. Certainly, they can cause harm as we’ve seen them do in France, Belgium, and England, but our immigration policies are different than theirs.
I’m a conservative and believe that that which is not in the best interest of my country should be avoided. We went into Afghanistan to kill Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. We did that, mostly. The problem is that the administration at the time thought that we could rebuild a 7th century society into a 21st century democracy. Nation building. What we’ve discovered in the proceeding years is that we are unable to make a people that has no interest into a Western democracy.
I wrote that in January of 2020. The draft sat in a folder for almost seven years, unfinished — it literally stops in the middle of a word. I never finished it because I never found the ending. I think I have it now, and it isn’t the one I expected: everything since has proven the first half right, including the one place where events overtook it.
Continue readingGoodbye, Midterms
The midterms are over. Not officially, not everywhere — Arizona and California will still be counting when the rest of the country has moved on, because slow counting is what Arizona and California do — but over. The polls close, the ads stop, and the “most consequential election of our lifetime”, the one they sell us every two years, gets packed away until the next “most consequential election of our lifetime”.
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