Are you a domestic terrorist?

[--Pete]

Hi,

If you were born at a random point in history, that's something like a 99% chance of being far worse off, probably to the tune of being a subsistence farmer somewhere or another who pays almost all their surplus production to the classes above them.

Forget peasants, look at kings. One of the (many) memorable scenes in A Lion in Winter is when O'Tool, playing Henry II, breaks the ice in the basin for his morning wash. Sure, the Louis had Versailles, but Versailles had no running water -- and I suspect the basins in the bedrooms froze there, too. The average modern American lives better than the average European monarch ever dreamed of.

Beyond that, this discussion has devolved into an argument about the liquid level in a glass.

--Pete