caesar novus
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Posts posted by caesar novus
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There will be a sunday booktalk broadcast on "rescue and protection of historic pieces of art in Italy during World War II": http://www.booktv.org/Program/14528/Saving+Italy+The+Race+to+Rescue+a+Nations+Treasures+From+the+Nazis.aspx . That link hopefully will include the video after the talk, or you can view live on TV or streaming. It mentions Roman art, but looks to be mostly on later art.
This all brings to mind how some strange events prolonged the war in Italy and threatened more damage to cultural treasures. I may have this muddled, but I believe the general in charge (Clark) was widely considered incompetent. Normally at this stage these underperforming generals were replaced, but supposedly there was some sensitive issue like a marriage related to Eisenhower that made both British and Americans reluctant to criticize Clark to him. Furthermore the most fast acting general (Patton) had been removed from the Italian front due to publicity about him slapping a couple troops. I do hear we should expect a reassessment of Eisenhower due to some colleague supporters dying off.
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I can no longer find any way to display and thus edit any html in a post in it's text form. Is there a way to escape the wysiwyg edit environment that I have missed, or is this a feature?
Examples: I can type in
to bracket pictures (so they don't have to be uploaded), but
will disappear and cannot be changed in the reedit post mode. Or if I use the quote button, I can never adjust it in
form... only in highly unstable wysiwyg form, where you can mangle things irreversibly in a second. -
They characterized samples of Roman concrete taken from a breakwater in Pozzuoli Bay, near Naples, Italy.
Which gave me an idea for an interview:
Lets get a reaction from the most famous person from Pozzuoli.
"Thats crazy!"researchers are now finding ways to apply their discoveries about Roman concrete to the development of more earth-friendly and durable modern concrete
What do you think, Sophia?
"Why do they ignore the expense? Being green is the developed world's new religion, sometimes with irrational drawbacks. High expense solutions can reflect hidden anti-green costs, like making the toxic batteries used for electric cars, or consuming massive oil required to make bio fuels."
Saudi Arabia has
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No, the series debunks christian claims against rome as mainly propaganda... using allegations of victimhood as manipulative branding, just like todays commercial products try to brand themselves. It is surprising because you would think a series by that name would largely attract the faithful, who the advertisers don't want alienated and tuning out.
It wasn't approached thru top down hand-waving, but they delved into specific context of events. Like when christianity was in a lull and needed to rally support, they would bait the romans and write up claims about being persecuted for their beliefs, when it was actually for their behavior or some special circumstances. I'm not sure of where the truth lies, but it did give the impression of a somewhat scholarly approach.
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Victor Hanson gave another interesting book talk on his choice of 5 historical generals who snatched a visionary victory out of an apparently certain (to their demoralized countrymen) defeat. He explains why he didn't include Scipio the Hannibal buster, but rather chooses a lesser known "the last roman". He explains why these sharp elbowed high achievers always seem doomed to be unappreciated later:
While you may want to skip the more contemporary generals he discusses, I would urge you to hear out his coverage of the US Civil War and Korean war. These wars were headed for disaster and lost support by the fickle public, only to be saved with lasting good consequences by generals mostly poorly thought of afterward (less thanks to Grant, Lincoln, or McArthur).
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When you click in a reply textbox anywhere near the top 20%, a couple thick rows of buttons appear under your cursor and instantly activate whatever button was under your cursor. This can lead to a bouncing in and out of modes you don't even comprehend. It may not be a bug, but a "feature" where we must remember to illogically click way below where we want to type.
If it makes any difference, it happens in an unavoidable browser for large win8 touch screen devices... only IE is FULLY adapted to running without a keyboard, even though it is buggy, annoying, and requires running in desktop mode to get anything done. You may not notice this problem with a keyboard, but if you have to click somewhere to bring up virtual keyboard, then you then have to click the textbox to refocus.
The main issue for me occurred from the color change before the downtime, and I posted a screen shot at the time. It is the font found in the new-posts mode and elsewhere, but nobody is troubled by it... yet. The lack of contrast is brutal when brown over dark grey... there is NO intensity contrast. To rely only on color contrast is russian roulette until you move on to a device that folds those colors closer together. Grey isn't even a color, so it isn't a color blindness issue. Someone recently complained about the hover color being black... at least then there is an inherent intensity difference between black and dark grey and I find that at least readible. Changing the soot grey to lighter or the soot brown to brighter would help.
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This TV series http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/jesus-rise-to-power/ has a remarkable point of view about Rome as a benevolent or at least hands off interested bystander in early Christian history. A historian goes point by point thru the supposed clashes with Rome, and finds them overblown for propaganda reasons, or done without higher authority. or just a lust for self sacrifice for instance. Great vi
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the editor can strobe on me between wysiwyg (sp?) and html, and double enters the html. May be a bad interaction with win8 ie, which yahoo tells me to abandon. Possibly when clicking in the edit area, some buttons emerge from under the cursor and get activated by accident. Often get strikeThru font for instance. Hard to unravel... limping thru on firefox a bit better
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I find the new edit environment here very unstable... esp when going beyond the simple post-now mode.
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What an admirable sight is afforded, by contrast, by the rough soldier Gaius Marcius in his camp before Rome, when he renounced vengeance and victory because he could not endure to see a mothers tears!...
Above is from white rose leaflets in 1942.. http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/revolt/wrleaflets.html contains maybe the most high minded and passionate critique ever of totalitarianism. The first 4 leaflets are by a German and a Russian medical student roped into army service on the Russian front. I guess the Russian guy had fled Stalin into Germany only to be drafted there, but anyway these are even more articulate about freedom than US founders documents. The leaflets 5 and 6 are kind of dumbed down as more folks became involved, discovered, and ultimately beheaded (an air raid happened to kill the hanging judge and allowed one condemned rose person to escape).
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A documentary on the Romans in Egypt (discovery military channel, a few years old?) showed amazing Roman archeo finds east of the Nile, and especially around Berenice on the Red Sea. The only emerald mines in the empire, and worked by non-slaves. Trillion$ of trade with the east by Roman ships, such as for pepper and other Indian spices. Not a ragged fringe of empire but a prosperous focal point. I wonder what the digging status is... web news seems to drop off by the time of Egypt's recent uprising.
Here are some related links I found on trade routes, east desert archeology, and berenice:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periplus_of_the_Erythraean_Sea
http://archaeology-easterndesert.com/html/graeco-roman.html#RomanIntro (note extreme posted tax on prostitutes)
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And the very first again by vimeo (really sharp when you click fullscreen icon), and the last bonus unclickable ...
Rome 1 http://vimeo.com/54083907
Interlude
EDIT... HeHe, it's fun to watch the pairs of two videos running at the same time.. i can rotate my convertible laptop screen sideways for good large view of both.
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Ok, here is a try to make those later snippets clickable, this time using vimeo.
Rome 2 http://vimeo.com/54084908
Rome 3 http://vimeo.com/54085755
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You know how cable tv is forced to carry a bunch of amateur local channels at your expense... usually an outlet for cranks and kooks? Well, we have a quite redeeming one that often covers some travel to ancient roman sites, but unfortunately in low def like this one on pompeii . That is a youtube version, but there should be a nicer vimeo version somewhere.
Anyway, I noticed more recent versions are stored online in higher def. Look at this amazing coverage of a tour of much of the archeo part of Rome by segway. My point is NOT to show the novel segway transportation, or the fact that it is a vacation type tour, or even the slightly fractured explanations by the well meaning Italian or US guide. What looks strange? Holy cow, the crowds are sparse enough to see the sights, let alone plow thru them on wheels.
I think the trick is they traveled in the fall/early winter rainy season and chanced upon a clear crisp day. Other parts of that trip were deep into gloom and wetness... but for this we can reap the benefits below.
And as a bonus, I will include one of his Venice clips... not showing the best of venice or music, but the best hair flipping accompaniment of classical music (in the vivaldi chapel I think).
EDIT: WHY CAN'T I MAKE THE LAST 3 LINKS CLICKABLE? I HAVE NO NEED FOR THE VIDEO INSET ANYWAY.
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Hmm... i'm having the most trouble getting the reply box to accept any input. Anyway, i wanted to point out that the london episode also touches on the roman period, although as always in too brief scenes that benefit by freeze framing. They say london was uniquely blessed with brick making material due to the foot of the glaciers dumping just the right kind of rock flour on it. Sort of like the way rome was uniquely blessed with cement deposits from volcanos.
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The whole series of cities is currently rerunning on the discovery science channel. It's a bit weak on logical content but has luscious highdef views once in a while worthy of freeze framing. I wonder if they are correct that 90% of roman aquaducts are underground, especially because they are only now finding the path of some of the tunnels. There seem to be teaser or maybe entire versions on the web, sometimes with lots of commercials. These may behave differently depending on your location.
Yesterday a canadian .ca site seemed to offer the whole film (it's one of those canuck subsidized documentaries) but now I can't find the site. Today I get some clips from http://science.discovery.com/tv-shows/strip-the-city/videos/roman-hill-of-garbage.htm which starts with commercials and a clip that I think was missing from the actual show. Then it appears to go on to the actual show. You can try for other options with something like http://www.bing.com/search?q=strip+the+city+ancient+rome+discovery+science&qs=n&form=QBRE&pq=strip+the+city+ancient+rome+discovery+science&sc=0-27&sp=-1&sk=
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There was a documentary on one of the discovery channels deconstructing parts of ancient rome. I think you can bring it up on the web, if not catching a rebroadcast. I was puzzled by their speculation of why the crater lake overflowed, because the same scenario in modern camaroon lakes killed most folks due to the flow of (heavy) co2 rather than water flow (which the romans recorded).
Ancient City: RomeStrip The City uses stunning CGI animation to strip the Ancient city of Rome naked of its concrete, roads and rock
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Also on a top end Apple Macbook Pro 17, the most useful "new content" way of accessing these forums is still virtually unreadable:
http://www.unrv.com/forum/index.php?app=core&module=search&do=active
Essentially the same as my picture above, with no contrast of font over background.
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Best to visit British Museum a couple or three short times rather than one long time because they chronically close down sections due to staff shortages. Maybe fit in their evening hours for one but that can be the worst for closing juicy roman stuff, maybe in a darkened hall behind a rope.
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EDIT==> NOTE... The problem comes in the new posts mode. Also the font for the post edit button is near invisible light grey.
It's still a brutal lack of contrast of color or intensity, even on my brand new convertible laptop (Lenovo yoga 13, the most cool but buggy morphing tablet). If it just temporary on the way to the example posted earlier, that's fine. But as now if you don't have the most recent or whizzy design, the colors can fold together to look about blank.
And that's not even accounting for vision issues. Good vision is actually a mirage... your eye is actually transmitting a messy image due to many things, like the spaghetti cluster of nerves that connect on the front rather than back side of the sensors. And middle age folks go thru a jelly detachment (PVD) that puts more or less debris floating around. Your brain rebuilds and cleans up the image best it can, but it is a fragile process that can suddenly be overwhelmed. Then you see the real mess, and can benefit by strong font contrast.
I have always hated the black and white extreme contrast, but have rarely encountered the opposite low contrast extreme or support of it.
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the new color gives unreadible topic titles in my tablet... almost zero contrast of dark brown over dark, dark grey
(clic the pic)
Edit... now when i switch to a laptop some contrast can be seen in my pic... but on a pretty powerful large tablet, the text vs background colors show almost no difference
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See http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/ashes-to-ashes-the-latter-day-ruin-of-pompeii/ for inefficient spending, as well as the claim from another source the sites tolerate 70% absentee rate for gov't staff. Europe is using austerity instead of stimulus to solve fiscal problems. Normally you could hope that stimulus builds tax money thru increased economic activity, but i guess they consider the entitlement rot too intractable unless you starve the economic beast. So unless there is some sugar daddy like a billionaire or berlesconi...
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Hmmm, an electoral college isnt needed to implement a little math weighting... and indirect (overridable) voting was in play already for electing congress by state reps back then. But anyway what irks me most about the system is how states are allowed to erase the votes of their minority and vote for president as a block (winner takes all). Its hard to argue with legally tho, because the federal gov't was created to be at the service to the states as entities.
However US state independence can be a protection against mob rule, at least letting you switch to a mob that you hate less. The supreme court is increasingly failing to protect state rights, most recently for the unaffordable healthcare act. Niccolo by the way advocated a ruthless court to keep the politically powerful in line, although maybe from a french rather than roman example.
I would say europe and increasingly the us is falling under mob rule, where you basically vote yourself possessions of your harder working or wiser spending neighbor. The leaders knowingly support failing tax policy, and push it thru demogogery. The tax attack on high incomes brings hardly any revenue at all compared to expenditures, even if it didnt kill their risk-taking creation of new economic activity (and its potential tax revenue). This is proven by the small diversity not yet stamped out, where us states that have or plan smaller or zero income tax are booming, while the ones increasing it are in fiscal death spirals.
Machiavelli advocated a mix of democracy and elites and a figurehead ruler like republican rome or UK monarchy. Actually, the Wiemar republic was originally supposed to be that kind of british model, with maybe a respected but weak Hindenburg at top and some elites like a house of lords all sharing power with the everyman... which might have been more resistant to a populist brownshirt infiltration because they could only legally replace the commoner elements of govt.
Another example of mob rule is when leaders knowingly kowtow to and push populist green measures that actually sabotage green-ness. Block and harass the changeover to abundant and clean natural gas... let it just flare off wastefully and promote impractical expensive subsidized alternatives. Pretend you do green work by banning pipelines, and force more dangerous, spillable, expensive transport by road or rail. Just a few years ago, the people in power would temper populism with sane judgement from knowing more facts about the issue than joe sixpack.
Niccolo looked to periods of Rome and elsewhere to systematically solve or at least refine such problems of a republic. Maybe i havent done it justice, but readers here should find his Livy discourses easy to scan over. I like the way he breaks down issues into multiple possible approaches, and says for instance approach c has often been disasterous (like hiring mercenaries) which Rome avoided.
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It used to be common to relate Roman history to pivotal issues of the day. I ran across a couple examples I will share. First is a speech from U.S. ambassador to Germany 1933 on Economic Nationalism http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/psf/box32/t299b09.html
Half-educated statesmen today swing violently away from the ideal purpose of the first Gracchus and think they find salvation for their troubled fellows in the arbitrary modes of the man who fell an easy victim to the cheap devices of the lewd Cleopatra.And it goes on and on about how the example of Rome disproves the viability of national socialism. I looked it up since the new book "In the Garden of Beasts" mostly ridicules that ambassador except for the good reception of that speech, even by the targets of it in the audience. He was said to be an ineffective academic type who was sabotaged by his (married) daughter sleeping with many German adversaries... therefore his German confidants didn't dare give him valuable information which might be leaked back by his daughter.
Another example is Machiavelli's "Discourses Upon The First Ten (Books) of Titus Livy" http://www.constitution.org/mac/disclivy_.htm . Did you know that Niccolo's work http://www.constitution.org/mac/niccolo.htm is generally a love poem to ancient Rome and it's happy republican ways? Did you know Niccolo is not "Machiavellian" in the sense that he never intended "The Prince" to be published or applied to any but very rare and dysfunctional situations that were facing the Medici's or certain failing Italian city states? Well, that's what I gather from the course http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/courses/Course_Detail.aspx?cid=4311 (now under $30).
Once we recover the context of the writing of The Prince, and analyze it along with the Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy, it will be clear how The Prince can be read as a book designed to guide leaders in the creation
Fate of Italian Art WWII
in Historia in Universum
Posted · Edited by caesar novus
OK, the video showed up at the above site and is pretty darn good. Showed quite good graphics (photos/film clips) in contrast to the usual cspan bias of sticking to the talking head. Since it is kind of long, I will map out roughly what to expect.
10 min: Intro to the ww2 allied invasion of Italy, with unprecedented inclusion of art monument rescue officers
30 min: The dramatic give and take of war damage and looting at various sites, with protection efforts by both sides.
20 min: Tribute to the US officers involved (and 1 Brit)
20 min: How we lacked this effort in recent conflicts, how we are reviving it, and how we can help ID looted items.
The portion on Roman monuments was quite brief (probably more in his book). The Italians had moved Pompeii and Herc. exhibits from Museum of Naples to the famous Monte Cassino abbey. Before it was bombed, the Germans actually relocated them to Rome with great fanfare. But the Italians found the crates had been somewhat cherry-picked. Not sure how much was eventually repatriated... is this why that museum still seems somewhat bare?
They flashed a slide showing an inventory by the German director of looting, Alfred Rosenberg. I had just today noticed his diary was recovered after being stolen by a rogue prosecutor (shame on him) http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/long-lost-diary-adolf-hitler-confidant-found-article-1.1367908 . I furthermore just read Rosenberg's short discussions with the psychologist before being hung at Nuremburg... it wasn't the usual claims of innocence, but a chilling riff about us being no less evil than them. I am about to read Kesselring's longer talk with the psychologist, who also seems brazen. He must have inflicted the most damage to Italy, with even HItler and the SS trying to reduce his vandalizing of Tuscany.
There is a website for getting more involved (even now Syrian tanks are grinding down Roman buildings and shooting down columns in order to deny cover to rebels) at http://www.monumentsmenfoundation.org/ . I wish the current Italian monuments department could take a lesson from the damage of Pisa frescos by a shell falling short. On a shoestring of resources during wartime, US army engineers mobilized ways of protecting them from rain and housing/feeding a team of restorers who labor to this day. The old photos of war damage look very like the neglected areas of Pompeii, Herculeum, and Tivoli today... with staff having a reported 70% absentee rate.