caesar novus
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Posts posted by caesar novus
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http://www.technologyreview.com/featured-story/427628/the-library-of-utopia/ describes a new Harvard approach and:
After all, the Web already offers plenty of sources for public-domain books. Google still provides full-text, searchable copies of millions of volumes published before 1923. So do the HathiTrust, a vast book database run by a consortium of libraries, and Brewster Kahle's Internet Archive. Amazon's Kindle Store offers thousands of classic books free. And there's the venerable Project Gutenberg,With very interesting post-1923 comments by jf292, which may possibly apply to movies as well:
The statement, "The upshot is that most books or articles written since 1923 remain off limits for unauthorized copying and distribution." is not quite right. Works published before 1977 but without the proper copyright notice are public domain in the US for failure to comply with the registration process. Works published between 1923 and 1963 might very well be in public domain if their copyrights weren't renewed. I recall a study by the Registrar of Copyrights estimating that something like 90% of these items were never renewed. The problem is you have to be in DC to paw through the copyright office records to find out.Further, the problem isn't just US copyright law, which is thorny in its own right, but for online distribution copyrights in other countries also have to be considered, which typically leads people to say screw it after several martinis. :-)
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Yeah, but climb those buttresses almost all the way up palantine to find newly dug up spot of neros supposed banquet room. It is near church s sabastiano and temple of elagabalus iirc and we have a topic here with pix and maybe video of it. So look from there way down to the valley with the colluseum and back up the distant slope where neros octagon room is and you have not only huge extent but vast changes in altitude, which i dont see represented in the graphics.
In texas someone built a replica of the forbidden city in a cow field. It wasnt full scale and attracts limited tourists. I would really like to see full scale model of neros house, esp since i didnt score a tour of the octagon part before closure. Maybe someone here has pix of octagon rooms etc.
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Nice... yaay darius. But thats not expanding the estimated extent if they still think that round structure recently dug up and displayed way up the pal hill is the rotating roofed banquet room. Anyway to be sure i have enough room for my private lifesize replica of that complex, ill have to warm up some bulldozers and get out the dynamite.
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Much parma cheese was only dented, not lost. News sez they hold a cheap firesale, and i wish i could get a discounted cartload. Cheese makes my sinuses clog, but i found online source of the best antihistimine... chlorphenerimine maleate in slow release tabs allow my only indulgence away from veganism.
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Download free university lecture recordings on rome, like the great yale course on roman architecture... search for oyc. Can load it on a cheap mp3 player that transmits to your car radio, like the archos vision series.
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My bias when young was to despise western culture, and to move mountains to explore far flung cultures and continents. But I did know paris wasnt too bad, then planned a trip to italy. The boss of my boss was italian, knew my plan, and set up an interview. He asked where i was going next and i blurted out nowhere important. Things were icy afterwards, and i didnt fully appreciate italy til years later anyway.
To cut to the gist, my love of romans came in spite of biases, and in spite of the usual phase where you try to survey all cultures and expect to find equally valuable sustanence in all (i picked up a social anthropology degree and dabbled in history). After a while i realized the architecture likeability correlated with the cultures charm and impressiveness to me, based on history or observation.
So this gift of being a human divining rod of cultural measure has finally made a top choice after exploring every blind alley: todays italy, and yesterdays romans. No need to thank me, i am just a conduit from the gods to mankind.
Actually i didnt mean to insult the stricken greater bologna area, but rather overtouristed florence, where i returned to rather than ravenna etc for the first time. The latest bbc pictures show bad aftershock damage... stay safe, folks. -
I wonder if any roman artifacts or structures were damaged in last nights 6.0 quake just north of bologna. It did kill a few and take down some scattered medieval buildings. I suppose some ravenna roman mosaics could have been cracked, but i think the quake was moderate enough to hope for the best.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18135898
I regret cancelling travel thru this area because florence had opened most museums for free that week. I never could understand florence mania and i still dont. For me the magic of italy is in roman sites and the pretty coastal areas.
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Not disagreeing with such issues, but i want to pass on some stimulating views i recently encountered. The u.s. revolution was originally all about preserving rights from the british glorious revolution a century before. Only after being refused standard british citizen rights did the u.s. attempt a modest leapfrog from there. Now i forget the roots of uk democracy, but i think it came in steps of restricting newly invited "emperor"s when the last one vainly self destructed.
Religion wasnt intended to be banned from early u.s. government... some new england states had official state churches for decades. Just keep the sect from being imposed at a national level. The founders were standard enlightenment deists, who do a lot of god talk but had an amazingly modern way of integrating science and humanism into faith. I wonder why that evolution didnt catch on more, and modern people feel they have to choose between old religion vs atheism vs new age faiths that dont quite fit. Of course most founders were fans of pagan republican romans and referred to them by name.
An austrians book about j goebbles suggested he won over the german left by selling hitler as a christ like version of lenin... a national savior rather than an atheistic technocrat. Sort of filling the void from departing from christian and roman roots. But the nazis went further in not wanting religion to detract from patriotism, such as catholics listening to a pope in rome. Author suggests their complaint against jews was they must seek a disruptive utopia now because their religion uniquely promises no afterlife, and thus cant be pliable citizens or submissive soldiers for nazi causes.
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I never pursued gores works after seeing some of his tv debates seem to degenerate into clever cat fights. He described his little cliff cottage retreat just below ravello as where he wrote or got inspiration over the years. I made a point of exploring that neighborhood recently in a walk from ravello down to amalfi, which combined breathtaking sea vistas with picturesque cottages, olive groves, and the like. The inhabitants would only pop their heads over a stone wall for a second to see if my footsteps were of friend or foe, and i only encountered one fellow tourist. His perch must be almost the mirror of tiberians palace perched high on capri... they almost face eachother, but probably barely obsured by the sorrento penninsula. Actually he sold the place after losing the nimbleness needed to access those hill paths
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Must we hold rome fully accountable for the excess of a wiley ambitious caesar? Expanding frontiers tend to attract those with inner demons, and caesar feared death on the return from gaul and eventually rome meted that righteously out. Think of other border situations, like where the outsiders yearned to trade with rome or sign up for their army. Or when they would join with rome to defend against common enemy invaders.
Maybe rome gets blamed too much for things out of their control. Similar smearing happens today. Some u.s. armed incursions into canada were done by local militias to the horror of the federal govt, which had no troops to stop them yet got the blame. The trail of tears forced march of eastern u.s. indians to the west was forbidden by the supreme court, but president jackson brazenly and illegally did it anyway... he, rather than the country is to blame.
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This article claims looting has entered a new phase, with egyptian middle class folks turning to surreptious digging... and sometimes dying in cave ins. I wonder if something similar might happen in greece, based on reports of new desperation there... maybe midnight raids on delos?
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I thought Romans reserved crucifixion mostly for defiant non-citizens. Of course groups rather than individuals took responsibility, but if your group didn't resist the invading Romans or rebel against them... weren't you safe, unlike the assertion in http://www.nypost.com/p/blogs/capitol/epa_regulator_who_wanted_to_crucify_KaCOfGtSDTi3uhmlVDvTaM
Speaking to colleagues about methods of EPA enforcement, Al Armendariz is recorded saying, -
Adrian Goldsworthy reviews Greg Woolf's Rome: An Empire
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I have a different view of the Roman empire to you. I indeed see it as a early - maybe even the original - fascist dictatorship. It had many of the nasty hallmarks of the 20th century Fascist ideologies that looked back to empires like the Roman one for inspiration.
I called the empire very flawed, yet intuitively cuddly due to what it's art and engineering suggest. I think we were in agreement there. But John Lukacs book "Democracy and Populism - fear and hatred" seems kinda persuasive in contrasting pre-1917 dictatorships as top down in origin, but later ones borne bottom up by a "tyranny of the majority". Sure, eventually a secret police can take away influence of the rabble, but this takes a while to gel. In mid 1930's Hitler and his nicer policies were wildly popular and the teen suicide rate fell by 80% and childbirth rose by 50%. He cultivated support to consolidate power, even becoming a hero to the female and youth demographic. Lukacs goes on to extrapolate to recent US politics where a populist right and left bully in a way that the founders hoped to avoid by emulating Roman republic rather than Greek kinds of democracy.
Surely John Lukacs proves you slam-dunk wrong about the nature of fascism in the third chapter of "The Hitler of History", although it is an understandable stereotype that had some truth in it. He surveys all biographies and histories of Hitler, and especially primary sources like Speer's memoirs and Borman's "table talk" of Hitler's private comments (which I have read). Chapter 3 shows Hitler as the opposite of a reactionary, who viscerally hated the backward looking conservative elements in Germany which he felt a need to pander to. He stifled himself from the failed putch untll a victory at war, when he had specific plans for a revolution of society such as the civil service, industry, leisure (now partly adopted by EU). He hated the German bourgeoisie worse than the German far left, which he was in for a time. He privately ridiculed Himmler and Goering's old mystical symbolism. Goebbels early on tried to push Hitler out of the Nazi party to turn it leftward but amazingly Hitler just embraced him and convinced him left or right is the same thing - revolution. Mussolini also was extreme left and didn't feel it was a meaningful change when switching to the rightwing demographic to boost his opportunities.
For example, it was led by a big deified personality who weilded absolute power and who used public budgets to build massive buildings and statues everywhere in crude propaganda to his greatness and that of the empire. Have you seen the monuments built celebrating the massacres and the enslavement of conquored peoples?
Out of context it may appear that. An architecture course proposed that in the context of the times, depicting the bashing of enemies advertised a willingness to defend the peoples safety and well being, it's wealth being a magnet to invaders at times. Sometimes rebels need to be put down even for the good of their region. I have heard of the group in the Masada being called fringe terrorists threatening their own people, although now we turn them into noble underdogs. I think the peace in the interior outweighed the jostling at the fringe. Cabeza de Vaca got stranded alone in the US around 1527 and partly made a living as a trader because only an outsider could cross the myriad tiny tribal borders without triggering a war. He depicted it like a thousand countries always standing by for war.
I would suggest that whether being alive in the Roman empire was a great thing depended on who you were in that empire. I'm interested in the status of slaves, but I doubt that being a Roman slave was a lot of fun. I think most people who were not rich land owners probably had quite a tough life, and it would make paying Obama's health reform taxes look like a very reasonable proposition from a quasi paradisical civilisation that one couldn't even dream about under Roman rule.
Mining or galley slaves aside, wasn't the typical Roman slave more like an indentured servant of a couple hundred years ago? Not locked into a role based on race, they could often earn their freedom in about 7 years. Romans even volunteered to be slaves, such as to escape consequences of debt for instance.
O-care is not a reform or a tax, but a populist abomination signaling the end of the enlightment. The fact that the supreme court is only "probably" going to throw it out shows disregard of the constitution and it's protection of state residents from overbearing central gov't. It doesn't tax some proportion of money you have coming in anyway, it mandates pure confiscation of your vital nest-egg property (for example to fund sex change operations and medical pot recoveries for your lazier neighbors). Bring on health reform, breadth of coverage, etc - but certainly not o-care.
Unlike other countries, you cannot escape federal payments when leaving the country and it's benefits - the reach is worldwide http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/16/business/global/for-americans-abroad-taxes-just-got-more-complicated.html?_r=1 . That is why the states originally united only reluctantly, with shields in place that the central gov't would not dominate european style. You can always move to a saner state or US territory, but you cannot escape the fed by moving to Paraguay or Bhutan. Now we all must live in extensions of kook Kalifornia.
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Why does Rome have to evolve to be good, if in fact it was a what mathematicians call a significant "local optimum"? That means across time and space there may exist a better, more global optimum but this one is a towering achievement across a vast sea of mediocrity or even degradation.
Even looking at the arts, I think Roman sculpture has never been equaled, despite it's resemblance to Greeks or even being done by Greeks - there is a cultural reason for that meditative look which I have described before. I recently heard a couple lectures on Roman comedy theater which again was distinguished from the superficially similar Greek by a number of special things, which really come out in a movie version "something happened on the way to the forum".
Why do styles have to change to be good - read the expert's description of Ella Fitzgerald's voice in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ella_Fitzgerald#Voice ... regardless of whether you like that style or not, just the physics and master craftswomenship can hardly hope to be topped in another 2000 years. Same might be said for impressionist paintings, or maybe Roman wine or life in their villas - that's maybe "good enough" of a lifestyle that beats 98% of alternative human experiences.
Throw a dart at a timeline and choose a continent, and imagine life there compared to Rome How about the Ukraine under Stalin or under Hitler. Anywhere under Mao, who massacred 45 million as recently as around 1960. There weren't freak things pop up now and again - it was quite a close run thing to shut down some of those recent dark empires. Maybe the mauler of Italy, general Kesselring, alone tipped the balance when he earlier cancelled a bomber design capable of deep penetration of Russia into the factory zone.
I believe historian Lukacs proposes these are a natural progression of power being devolved to the "everyman" which has spawned numerous populist revolutions from the left or right. Tyrannies of the majority arose from Lenin to Hitler to Mao, although supporters may not be numerically in the majority their energy made up for it. I might even rather be a typical household slave in Rome, working on buying my freedom in a few years... instead of being under the 2014 US health care mandate which will empty out my savings to give freeloaders luxury care, with a bankrupted me forced back into wage-slave occupations to avoid becoming a welfare case myself.
Well, there is some progress over time that is hard to deny. Steve Pinker documents violence being in huge decline over history, with it being worst with those sentimentalized hunter and gatherers. I wonder if he saw a temporary special reduction with the pax romana. I guess the Guns, Germs, and Steel book shows that more organized societies do win evolution because they are more productive, but not always associated with furtherment of peace.
Some modern civilizations may be fragile flowers that are too darn utopian to survive. The EU is recently being stressed by populist pressures from France and Netherlands. Germany is strangling recoveries of the periphery due to populism wanting to avoid inflation with high bank rates. Only UK and Greece ever remotely paid their dues for defense spending, and all firehosed unsustainable amounts into social freeloading. Even though it temporarily offers the good life, can it sustain that better than Rome?
Actually I think Rome had a flawed republic, and a very flawed empire. I wish they developed a sort of British commonwealth instead, but it was a darn good try for so long ago. And with such good architecture I just can't believe they were as bad as some of their hostile writers said (often getting back at deposed regimes). After all, look at the hideous bolshevik or fascist architecture compared to Rome's...
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"The End of Money: Counterfeiters, Preachers, Techies, Dreamers - and the Coming Cashless Society"
P.S. this author sounds a bit suspect, arguing among other things that a dollar coin or euro is more wasteful than the equivilent paper bill which has to be replaced umpteen times during the life of a coin. And focusing on money thieves as if electronic thieves didn't exist. Has a familiar ideological bias, but interesting nonetheless.
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Recently i quoted viggens old post about archeologist darius arya saying he found conclusive evidence caligua was clinically insane. Less recently i posted a poll here for people to vote on his craziness, for which there were many opinions.
I like the idea of histriography where you survey past notable opinions and start to weigh them explicitly, instead of averaging them together or falling for one for private reasons.
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http://www.lrb.co.uk/v34/n08/mary-beard/it-was-satire has Mary Beard reviewing Caligula: A Biography by Aloys Winterling . In rather complex fashion which may defy Occams razor, I guess Caligula is being depicted as a sane but unsuccessful political satirist.
Maybe the time is ripe to approach Caligula (or the whole empire?) in a historiography... a history of the history of Caligula. A comparison and contrast of past interpretations can help focus on why some points are treated differently, and give at least the illusion of perspective on which sounds best.
I am plowing through such a quest in The Hitler of History: Hitler's Biographers on Trial by John Lukacs http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/jan/28/politics . Incidentally he contends Hitler was the anti-Nero... strong artistic/bohemian impulses which he suppressed in the pursuit of politics. Actually wrote passable poetry in WW1, then became politically radicalized by little known red terror, then the reactionary white terror in 1919 Munich.
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interesting discussion of the stunts in http://www.snopes.com/movies/films/benhur.asp even aside from the issue of deaths that they deny
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Thanks; very impressive! The Empire chart displays a little more structural eyecandy that lets you focus on interest areas, whereas especially the grey areas of Republic chart are a little more intimidating as a soup of text. I wonder if a couple of new background colors or delineation lines would help.
P.S. one of the great unfulfilled needs of chartology (as far as I know) is to update something like the last global map page on http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/journey/ where all DNA-suggested paths of migrations are projected on a world map. Or on both a mitochondrial and y-type map, in case it comes out differently based on which DNA they tracked.
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I sure wish the Romans or Italians established an early presence in the Americas. Besides that culture being more pleasing to me, the Spanish feudal heritage seems to be holding back central/latin America. Meanwhile isn't Italy demographically about to implode?
Anyway, to account for one white individual does not require an unprecedented mid atlantic passage. Besides the albino possibility, there could have been frequent visits from Europe via occasional ice bridges. All you would need during cold climate spells are some kayaks and the ability to live off seals or whatever, and work your way along the ice edge connecting the continents.
There are hints of evidence of European visits long before Vikings. Besides the clovis style points appearing in France and then in Americas, there are other clues which I forget. Some evidence is being destroyed due to political correctness - truely old skeletons with euro-caucasion features have been taken away from archeologists by courts, who say they are automatically property of Indians who then rebury them.
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Hmm, just outside Sweden I took the coastal steamer up Norway's most famous fjord (Geir.) and they announced an end to electronic card payments for a while - the fjord walls were steep enough to cut off their signal. No buying boarding tix or meals onboard without cash...
Thoughts on cash (in US}
- Needed for emergencies which can take down electricity and communications for days at a time. Especially if you don't find yourself in a well stocked home, you may really really need access to taxi or groceries. I know from experience how law and order starts to break down by darkness in these situations, and cash is your lifeline to get help from the few who can still offer services. I rarely let my cash fall below a certain amount, and maintain a breakdown of small bills that can make most any exact change.
- Needed for example at my local Gelato/Sorbetto factory, since they are geared to credit accounts by other businesses. Selling to individuals is a privilege you pay for in cash. This is my main use for cash at the moment - big wholesale tubs intended for gourmet restaurants. The mark of Italian authenticity is they make even the cantalope flavor exciting, never mind blackberry and dragonfruit.
- For small purchases electronic card fees can exceed the purchase amount or at least be an painful proportion. Some machines only take coins or cash, or customers may have no cell phone. Cash gets a bad rap in Europe because they have unwise denomination breakdowns that lead to a huge sack of coins or bills (explanation on request). Thieves can take some of your cash, but identity thieves can take bigger chunks from electronic accounts (or freeze them due to fraud alerts).
Thoughts on checks and electronic xfers
- Normally one has a free checking account which also can do free e-xfers. I realize this is becoming less available due to recent loony populist laws that prevent penalty fees on irresponsible customer acts, so they have to spread that cost to responsible ones too. Although electronic cards may be free to the user, they invoke fees which may be boomeranged back to you by government tax collectors for example. I mainly use checks for tax entities that charge extra for electronic xfers or cards.
Thoughts on credit and debit/atm cards
- For decades I have mainly used no-fee credit cards that partially rebate merchandiser fees. This can add up to a lot, because that inflow isn't taxed by fed, state, and muni. I used to have 1% rebate, and now 1.5%. I am too lazy to switch to a 2% rebate card, and there are some that occasionally give 5% back. I only use it when there is no fee to me, and I pay their bills electronically before they even notify me.
- I rarely use debit cards because the rules are less consumer friendly. I use (free) credit cards exactly like debit cards even though that is more costly to banks and merchants. Priorities are upside down from gov't pandering to credit (ab)users as victims where everyone else have to pay for their problems. So in terms of fees or cancelling bad transactions, ID theft or whatever it seems credit cards are best. ATM or debit cards are the way to go just for cash withdrawal - only an idiot would incur the fees for credit card cash withdrawals, especially out of your country with extortionate forex fees as well.
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Reno 911 - This unpolished satire/comedy series had both sublime and ridiculous moments, unlike the movie which was awful. It's easy to satirize authority figures, but they also hit the nail on the head on satirizing some of the dummies police have to babysit everyday (their workmates, the offenders, and especially halfwitted 911 callers). I hope this was seen and could be appreciated in Europe - I saw a German promo for it, but I think it made bad news in the UK where some young folks would dial 911 for help rather than 999 or whatever is used there.
The First 48 - Homicide investigation reality show with clever dual interwoven thread format, well suited to an attention span that benefits from refreshing more than once an hour. However over the years it has become a grind within just the most dysfunctional neighborhoods where the same swaggering teenage boys gun down each other. They are too-sentimentally depicted as "trying to get their life together" as a dope-dealing absentee father to numerous welfare mothers. I have visited some of these neighborhoods decades ago and found their parents and grandparents living lots more responsibly under harder economic conditions and less opportunities.
For a change of pace from subcultures extolling self destruction, I sample Alaskan State Troopers where at least the tattoos and thug regalia are covered by down jackets. Drugs, alcohol, and violence (at least against wild animals) seems common there too, but overall must be the exception because statistics show violence downtrending in the US and world.
Perry Mason the original 9 seasons of black and white series from 50+ years ago is back on ME and Hallmark cable channels. I watch it for the lost world of my parents it depicts - the way people strived to act as (or at least appear as) respectable with upward aspirations. It seems there was a lot of blackmail on those falling short, on issues we would laugh about today. Interesting court tactics and situations from a not altogether worse era. Series actually benefits from crude editing to allow more commercials - the chopped versions have more mystery than the full length ones which can seem hokey when you know too much.
Backpack Travels This South Korean travelogue show with subtitles seems the last hurrah of conventional travel series. Alternatives seem jaded and gimmicky, such as dwelling on the novelty of eating unfamiliar animal body parts. For an hour an amateur cameraman blunders into a usually exotic locale. You may cringe to see what a polite yet assertive Asian can get away with ("I from Korea, let me film life in your harem"). Recaptures old fashioned travelers thrill of discovery, but can really garble up historical and political facts.
House Hunters Intnl - on every weekday on HGTV channel so it must be popular. The good part is the couple minutes where they show settings of the move destination - tourist and lesser known sights. The bad part is these 2 minutes are broken into about 200 split second vignettes which you have to fight your recorder to freeze frame, in order to recall if you have been there or should have. Also the blather by lucky idiots making the move, which you just hope is fake for dramatic effect because of so much whining about the destination not offering what they are used to at home.
Strangely addictive reality shows, maybe due to the actual cast because each of these shows have multiple clones that stink: Wheeler Dealers, Chasing Classic Cars, Pawn Stars, Auction Hunters, Storage Wars, Swamp People, Swamp Loggers. I don't sit like a potato and watch these live, but efficiently slurp new episodes into a digital recorder for viewinhg pretty quickly, usually skipping commercials. I was TV/cable free a decade ago but now watch too much, maybe to justify spiraling cable costs. I've heard cableTV is getting undercut by internet streaming alternatives, so I may be able to say goodbye this racket in time (unless they go back to providing Roman documentaries).
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Oops, it appears the nice android TV streamers have abandoned BBC2 for BBC4. Maybe this does the trick on a laptop http://nowwatchtvlive.com/2011/07/watch-bbc-two-uk-live-bbc-two-online-channel/ . Or google for it yourself and practice hitting the right timezone offset before the Beard broadcast. I guess BBC2 is only relayed by grey-market sites which throw their own commercials at you... or viruses. I wonder if the below is the documentary list I was thinking of:
Here's a rather extensive list of documentaries available online. (Thanks CanadianEH for the link):
theory
in Historia in Universum
Posted · Edited by caesar novus
A roman oil lamp from gaul 100ad was discovered in jamestown virginia usa a few years ago in soil context definately dating its placement there to 1607. So shall we assume thats when that roman colony expired or was killed off? Unfortunately that was also the place and time of britains first colonial landing... something this forums readers must know in their hearts was purely coincidental...
http://www.dailypress.com/features/family/dp-61191sy0jun19,0,6998506.story