caesar novus

I recently came the closest ever to being hit by a car when crossing the street, with the walklight. I remember calculating whether I should jump on the hood or try to bounce off the side. I was too exhausted from a gym session to jump, but was saved by their last minute screech to a stop. Lucky, because the driver was accelerating fast to turn into a gap in traffic. Now I know why pedestrians so often leave their shoes behind when being hit and smash in the windshield. If you don't jump way up, the impact at knee level should shoot your feet out faster than the car in a levered sort of a crack-the-whip fashion; your center of gravity above the impact level should tend to stay still until it is smacked by the windshield which then tosses you in the air. The strange thing was I felt no road rage; even though the drivers behind voiced support for me and anger at the offender, I ambled on with an uplifted feeling. It seemed like an overdue wakeup call in making the consequences of collision concrete in my mind and clearing out laziness in defensive walking or driving. Actually I probably had in mind some concern about a drive I planned to pick up a sofabed from a warehouse. I rarely drive, yet could not bear the delivery fee for a sofabed I scored for half price on a holiday sale. Why does that concern me... well it may be the second time I arrive at a warehouse in a compact hatchback where they won't want to release the oversize furniture, and then I have the trouble dragging it precariously thru traffic. I have to, because it is prepaid with no refunds. My previous upscale sofabed was bought for a song in a store being closed and no longer offered delivery. I was lucky at the warehouse with someone undaunted by my small vehicle and my delusions of being able to disassemble the sofa first. He knew the internal frame would fit in the hatchback even if the foamy parts were way oversize, and picked it up in a forklift and jammed the square peg in a round hole. Well, maybe that damaged the foam, because over the years it broke up into lumps and the fake leather shed. Finally I put it outside the evening before trash pickup, and was pleased to see that someone snatched it overnight... they get a temporary thrill until seeing it in daylight. I next went on a long drive for the replacement, proud of the fact I used no map or gps and even outsmarted the word directions (turn at second light? no way, that looks like a newly added one). The warehouse didn't want to release the box which wouldn't fit in the hatchback. I had them remove the box and it still resisted, but now I am committed. In the tension of the moment, or day, or couple of days I got brain freeze and didn't think of the likely solution of flexing the backrest. We were handling it flat and I just shoved with all my might, which somewhat scuffed the thing but got it in kind of diagonally and tied it down On the drive home with the hatch open and sofa sticking way out, I got stuck in traffic that took maybe an hour to cover a few blocks... nine million degrees of swelter. I noticed being tailgated by an inattentive driver, and realized I had rigged the high side of the sofa against my headrest instead of the empty passenger seat. The slightest tap from behind would lever me into steering column and crush my ribcage, and the stuck sofa would not release pressure afterwards. Oh great, my near death experience served to impress me with dangers when I was already committed, rather than inspiring precautions.

Can you believe I got a sunburn purely in the SHADE!? A slight injury kept me away from outdoor activities except reading in the shade. So for some "light" reading I checked out about 1500 pages worth of Goebbels diaries from 1939-1945. They were kind of yellowed and fine print, so I used bright outdoor light, but kept religiously under shade of concrete overhang. I started to get brown in a strange kind of tanning-bed omnidirectional way, where ever my swimming suit didn't cover. I wondered if this was UV being bent as they passed thru clouds or if it was from reflected UV. But then we had a cloudless day, and I got almost lobster red sitting in clearly defined shadows! It must be from reflection, or the scattering from particles in the air. I don't need any more skin sun damage, after volunteering to crew a sailboat one summer and too cheap to use sunblock lotion. One useful item for this was internet radio with noise cancellation headphones. For a while there were jackhammers running and found I needed music with a hard beat to distract. Cuban music worked best (pandora cuban genre or spotify radio based on cuban masters playlist), but there was useable Goa world beat station possibly under tunin app. If it was quieter, I might play mellow ambient or chill jazz to distract, although if that is too sappy there are quite a few birdsong stations. I suppose it sounds odd that I listen to those next to ultrasound speakers intended to scare away boring local birds and their mess... In one case I was reading about the invasion of Russia while the internet radio played birds and running creeks recorded in the Urals (Russia). You can tune in special Brazilian birds or more temperate ones such as from http://birdsongradio.com/radio-birdsong-listen.php . When having a hard time sleeping (like with a sunburn) I sometimes tune in british comedy internet radio stations, such as found on xiialive app. There seem to be an atlantis.fm station and a ROK station with bbc skits about 50 years old. Today they kicked off a hilarious but unlikely recent comedy "HUT 33" satirizing the WW2 decoding boffins... I love the high strung violent Polish secretary who angrily mistakes brownie girl scouts as possible fascist brownshirts for example (as I read about the Polish invasion). I earlier mentioned (in temp forum?) the very funny Roman satire episode that I have now heard twice on those stations... was it on the Jimmy Edwards show?

Here is a writeup about British English borrowing from Hindi, which I guess didn't affect American english as much http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/blog/hobson-jobson-henry-yule-kate-teltscher/#.UdB5YrB6fm6

Above art program is being repeated on cspan tv this weekend http://www.booktv.org/Schedule.aspx . I partly mention it because another Roman related book talk by an author is being rebroadcast several times this weekend: Victor Davis Hanson, "The Savior Generals: How Five Commanders Saved Wars that Were Lost - From Ancient Greece to Iraq," . I think I mentioned the latter on the temporary version of this forum, but I noticed that one doesn't seem to have an online video... so it has to be seen in real time. I guess you can stream it if you convert the EDT timezone. It briefly covers a very late general of the east to represent the most notable of Rome, rather than more familiar ones. Also worthwhile to see his surprising and well argued heros proposed for US civil war and Korean war.

It's strange how some british words sound hillbilly-ish in the US, like "reckon", or "got" (as in "you have got overweight"). Reckon is sad loss, because "I guess" or "I estimate" can be too weak or too exact. Maybe it is associated with appalachian scots/irish, but even the technical "dead reckoning" gives a whiff of slumming it. "Got" seems a role reversal with the Brits for once streamlining things and the USians clinging to awkward familiar complexity. But I think a functional argument supports the US form. Gotten sets up your expectations to interpret the next sounds in a more specific way, avoiding misunderstandings in a noisy environment. "You have got fat" would not be an obvious insult in the US... it could mean "is that a can of lard in your hand?". "You have gotten fat" is needed for a true insult, sort of like having to flip a safety off to arm your gun. Also is there danger of ambiguity in british "got" followed by a verb? If there is an infinitive that doesn't need "to" as in "You've got (to) go" and the go term has ambigous forms... well, some of us need multiple cues to not jump to wrong conclusions. If you think cues aren't needed, try to make sense of a rural New Zealand dialect... just their bizarre "e" sound makes it hard for me to even parse where words start or end. Actually I perceive a simpler english on the rise, practiced by non-native english speakers with other non-native english speakers that have lost interest in either the British or US exactness. It's just pragmatic and maybe leans toward simplified constructs of the US, but more continental (latin?) vowel sounds of the UK. It tends to abandon rare words in favor of pairs of common descriptive words for example, and I think is on the road to becoming the dominant favored english.

I know I am beating this to death, but ran across Goering's response to that charge to the same psychologist. He said he did pay (a nominal fee) for the art taken by Rosenberg's or Goering's representatives. It was intended to be protected from opposing armies, and donated to a museum after his death. Well, he just liked the stuff too. He said he liked to mentally review his art collections and favorite parties when in long court sessions behind dark glasses. This backfired when was criticized for having blissful expressions when they were reviewing atrocities. By the way, he mentioned he personally halted plans to invade Sweden due to his ties of marriage to a Swedish baroness. We can suspect this is self serving, but it was spoken after his defense had formally ended and when he already expected the death penalty. It is from the notes of a doctor who died before publishing them and only recently went into book form.

Well, they did show a slide with a tank grinding over what appeared to be something like Palmyra. I assume it was on the side of the once great liberal hope, the euro-educated dentist who was supposed to transform the tyranny after replacing his father. A modern Caligula? Anyway, I did review the psychologist discussion with Kesselring... quite unenlightening, as is the whole book of "Nuremburg Interviews"... full of self-proclaimed eagle scouts. He said he tried to avoid towns with art treasures, and had no knowledge of looting except one statue by Goering. Anything bad he did was justified by the terrible circumstances... oh, wait a minute, now he says he did nothing bad. He wasn't actually on trial there, but was a witness. I have a selfish wish that mainland Italy was bypassed in the war. Not so unlikely... when they said the monuments officers were prevented from looking up Sicily in the library, it was for a justified security reason. The attack was pretending to be a pincer on either side of Italy... thru Sardinia and Croatia. A body was floated out with fake battle plans to that effect, which was plausible enough to be believed. Then the allies would have gotten strategic air bases, with only Diocletians palace at risk for Romanophiles. As it was, I wonder what was lost in Sicily only because the monuments men had no clue what was there.

cannot re-edit a topic title, which by the way gets truncated without warning.

http://www.spiked-online.com/site/article/13681/

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.

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.

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

Which gave me an idea for an interview: Lets get a reaction from the most famous person from Pozzuoli. "Thats crazy!" 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."

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.

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: http://www.booktv.org/Watch/14554/The+Savior+Generals+How+Five+Great+Commanders+Saved+Wars+That+Were+Lost+From+Ancient+Greece+to+Iraq.aspx 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).

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.

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

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

I find the new edit environment here very unstable... esp when going beyond the simple post-now mode.

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).

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) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berenice_Troglodytica

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.

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

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.

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.