caesar novus
-
Posts
750 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
42
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Static Pages
News
Blogs
Gallery
Events
Downloads
Posts posted by caesar novus
-
-
Treat yourself or another to the Oxford Archaeological Guide to Rome:
Since this thread is living on, I can vouch for that Oxford book except for it's exclusion of sites of greater Rome, which are mandatory daytrips today. To include Tivoli, Ostia, etc you can also get "Rome and Environs: An Archaeological Guide" translated from famous scholar Filippo Coarelli http://www.amazon.com/Rome-Environs-Archae...i/dp/0520079612
At first glance it appears even drier with a wall of words and fewer diagrams. But the narrative is quite engaging and makes you feel like on a private tour with a personable expert. Not the typical omnicient pronouncements, but full of "must have been" and "probably" on the one hand and witty Latin quotes for the better known stuff. The archeo diagrams seem very well done except they seem to omit any recent landmarks, so in some cases you can't reference where the old stuff is in todays town (like downtown Tivoli as opposed to the Villa). Caveat: havent gotten past first glances yet.
-
Puzzling to this ignorant observer as well. I wonder if we have any independant confirmation of his repeated claims of fighting against overwhelming odds.
He does seem to be a self-invented ambitious genius, and this came to his detriment in his innovative approaches ignoring/disrespecting traditions, which angered some. But unlike a Napoleon for example, he had a slow start... witness his bemoaning being an unknown at the same age when Alexander had slaughtered far and wide.
I find the recent proposal by one of Italy's top cops intriguing, that Caesar intentionally exposed himself to the daggers of Brutus (sent his guards away when he was warned of the plot), based on his ambition to be remembered heroically rather than for a humiliating fatal illness he had supposedly picked up. Probably not at all accepted by the mainstream tho.
-
Maybe not the ideal topic to plunk this in, but I don't fully understand this announcement about Pompeii and google streets view anyway:
http://www.beniculturali.it/mibac/export/M..._272501365.html
-
It sounded like the Hatian leader peeked into my post pointing out how modern centralization increases vulnerability to earthquakes, and he announced the Hatian capitol should become less dominant. I think it is wise when a country splinters off it's political capitol from it's economic capitol, like Washington DC from New York City, Brasilia from Sao Paulo. Think of the comprehensive catastrophe if a Rome, London, or Paris were hit.
I wonder why so many earthquakes are in the news that are beyond the "Pacific ring of fire", which wikipedia quotes as "About 90% of the world's earthquakes and 80% of the world's largest earthquakes occur along the Ring of Fire. The next most seismic region (5
-
Major roman cities like Antioch and Alexandria had suffered a lot from earthquakes. The losses were high in many cases.
Still I would guess their (civilized yet vulnerable) living situation was more a statistical aberration across ancient space and time, and old fashioned situations were typically more forgiving with quakes. P.S. I hear modern Turkish Antioch is ripping most of their underground ancient ruins apart in particularly reckless development.
IIRC vastly most quakes and vulcanism are around the Pacific rim (California, Alaska, Japan, Indonesia, etc), where ancient peoples typically lived in forgiving structures. The underlying mechanisms have recently been proven by their volcanos emitting vast amounts of a kind of carbon or element that comes from sealife. The spreading basaltic seafloor is dense and heavy so dives under the buoyant granite continents. Oddly the wet bio slurry of seafloor is a catalyst in turning hot underground rock into propulsive magma, and much of the Pacific rim ends up with lookalike volcanos and fault lines from this.
So vulnerability to pacific rim quakes is more a modern curse of making high rises, as well as needlessly bleeding money from upgrade measures by greenhouse loonyness. They worry about tiny amounts of avoidable carbon, while volcanoes (and farm animals for that matter) dump out infinitely more. They look in alarm about sinking volcanic Pacific islands, although that is a known earth crust process thru the ages where basalt must sink vs continental granite must float (submerged dead Hawaiian islands stretch for thousands of miles, millions of years old, not victims of weathering).
-
OK, now is around the time Italy announces if and when there will be a spring Culture Week. Usually this extends beyond free admission to museums and archeo sites, but many normally closed sites are open for one day only! If you see any notice of this please post (may need some translation help for the special openings).
P.S. One of the compensations of hot days trudging thru Roman brick and marble (besides gelato) is the super refreshing carbonated fruit juices Italy has. I noticed the US "Safeway" chain actually imports some of this from Italy although not of the best value. I tried to home-make this with CO2 at first, but settled on a simpler approach they use for gourmet ginger ales. Just flick some yeast into a bottle of fruit juice! You recap it instead of venting, so neglible alcohol is made - it just makes bubbles, clouds up a bit with sexy flavors, and stops the reaction when it pressures up (then you refrigerate). Also puts some drama in your life in avoiding creation of a fizz bomb.
-
Wouldn't most ancient folks be relatively safe from earthquakes, without brittle, builtup, and centralized infrastructure? We may stereotype them according to stone structures we find today, but those were simply what survived vs the plethora of simpler flexible biodegradeable structures. (I hate it when folks say a finding was the first so-and-so, when obviously it was miraculous luck that preserved it and gave "survival bias" to something actually invented over and over earlier.)
I have only endured earthquakes on the top of an alarmingly brittle highrise, but hope to encounter any others in a grassy field where I may find it more like a fun jiggle. The worst part comes many hours after the quake, when temporary altruism starts reversing into brutishness. Pity the storeclerks who man their station and put aside their own family needs to provide supplies to patient customers lined up. Ruthless idiots start barging in and getting violent. I'm not talking about any third world place, but the most civilized... especially around nightfall after a quake, it is best to get off the suddenly mean streets.
-
I ask for any source material, insight, anything at all that will help me to begin research on this topic.
An audio course whose name I forget discussed the various Nero pretenders and proposed reasons for them. IIRC it was a result of Neros strong populist side. Much of his antics were considered to thumb his nose at aristocratics and their pretentions. Even his artistic performances were considered slumming it, since artists at that time were not considered at all elite as now (maybe the wiser attitude, based on the lunacy that overnight wonder stars with no knowledge of real life tend to preach). As I understand it, many of the commoners loved this and someone said his returns after death were like latter day Elvis sightings.
-
I thought Hitler had recently virtually disappeared from the History Channel, just as I had tired of him. Also from the "History Intnl" channel, which just went Hi-Def in my area and gives a vivid wide-screen re-showing of documentaries. I do miss one black and white (bbc?) documentary series of WW2 done with great gravitas that now looks too dated for modern TV... if I could just remember the name, maybe it is available on the internet.
These expensive digital HD broadcast standards have been forced on the channels by gov't, so they gotta take advantage of increased visual potential to attract audiences to pay for it. A successful resulting series is "how the earth was made" which is just breathtaking. I think the first capsule summary of earth history show is repeating tomorrow along with a fresh one. And for once it isn't a bunch of pseudo science to promote climate alarmism; for instance they utterly debunk the theory (or mindless hysteria) that severe drops in US great lake levels are related to global warming (the land is rising by an inch per year and draining the lakes by sometimes lots more).
Straightforward historical alternatives DO exist, of either talking heads or audio only. One source is video or audio broadcasts of academic courses, such as Open Yale Courses and others http://academicearth.org/subjects/history although they often are polluted by evangelistic leftism. The Roman course on that page is a jewel (and maybe the Greek one?).
History is very popular outside of academia, and you can poke around nonfiction http://www.booktv.org/Schedule.aspx in the podcast or youtube categories at the top. Also I think you can get to cspan3 video which has recently focused on all American History at least during the weekends.
Oh yes, we didn't call it the Hitler Channel for nothing. I'm looking forward to Hitler's UFO Prophecies.There does seem to be something about TV that just dooms history coverage: is it the need for visuals (if I never see another Viking jumping off a ship it'll be a billion years too soon) or just the medium's association with light entertainment? I'd like to see a return to the pre-"reconstruction" format - just talking heads, maps, contemporary images and original artefacts - with the space to develop a proper analysis rather than spending half the time watching someone with a false nose lancing bubos (ok, serious reconstructions of how things were done, worn etc are sometimes ok, but I've seen enough guys hitting each other's swords in a field to last a lifetime).
With no live dead people to watch and little contemporary footage of ancient or medieval life, I think it's a shame more isn't done on the radio. I've heard some excellent programmes on BBC Radio 4. Tound-table discussions of the state of play involving the leading researchers in the field would be fascinating - and doable.
And I want the Open University back on UK TV. It's never been the same without it.
-
They have a lot of short lived series with good scenes of Rome, and sometimes reasonable content. I finally got around to the Hannibal episode of Ancients behaving badly, and for once it had a very provocative story. Portrayed him as way over rated (by Roman propagandists, paid by Scipios family to make Scipio's victory seem more impressive), cruel, and obsessed by crazy gimmicks. Not only elephants but they went in detail to debunk usefulness of his snake weapons.
Wasn't it on history channel where they recently had an Italian Policeman evaluate Caesars death along with doctors over an hour, and judge it probably a death-by-cop version of suicide? All of these conclusions aren't really meant to take super seriously, but the way they get there shed light on various things. Apparently Caesar was losing control of himself (and his bowels) in public, so could have knowingly walked in harms way to invite a heros exit from the stage rather than the embarrasing one approaching him.
-
Pictures of the forum appreciated; they kicked us all out way before closing time when I was there. Can you get to Delos island... fantastic archeology!
Drink sour cherry soda (fancy louix brand), eat sour cherry sorbet, but watch for pickpockets.
-
It was like 2 different styles, spliced together.
I will never be ready for films of this kind.
Some of the same cartoon blood spilling was injected into the History Channel's "Ancients behaving badly". Must be aimed at the male teen demographic that loves violent computer games. I think there is a ruthless struggle for shrinking ad revenues; that is the reason Fox channel is tripling it's charges for CATV to carry them in a very public standoff. For advertisers head count doesn't matter; they only need the demographic that is a loose spender rather than the pennywise.
So I've become accustomed to watching manure to get access to some garden goodies so to speak. Some of the funniest comedies now have cruel cynicism that I learn to tune out. The NERO episode of "Ancients behaving badly" had stereotyped history and violence, but fantastic tours of sites. Must have been in March right after rains had cleared and fresh golden light flooded the marble and wildflowers. I've never seen Rome look so attractive, and they have a funny way of enhancing mood of the story by zooming in on Roman pedestrians in a similar mood (joy, anger, fear, whatever) instead of cheesy music.
I wonder what museums they showed with Roman sculpture - maybe Vatican, but again I have never seen it look so attractive. My recorder cuts off most credits at the end, but I did notice it was yet another Canadian taxpayer subsidized production - maybe this accounts for lookalike cartoon violence (and moody crowds?) showing up here and there. On Hi-def TV I think the fuzzy cartoonish sequences are less revolting than the hosts or experts they used to have. A microscopic view of rotten teeth or even small skin abscesses in greater-than-life-size must be the reason they have swung to more youthful experts, possibly lacking gravitas.
-
I had never heard of the B-19. I may have mentioned here some odd circumstances where the restorers of the Enola Gay B29 had asked me to stroke it with my hand to do a comparison test of different protective coatings. Dunno why they didn't test on scrap metal instead; maybe wanted an excuse to give tour members a thrill. It's now on display at Dullas airport near Baltimore. And as a child I wandered around a shabby pre-restored Bockscar B29 and a dummy H bomb at a Dayton Ohio museum; hope I didn't absorb too much leftover radiation.
I guess Curtis LeMay was a huge innovator not only for B29 but overall ww2 air tactics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Lemay is very favorable anyway, showing him overcoming all kinds of opposition such as for the air mining of Japanese harbors which was later estimated to have been a war winner if started earlier. Known for more ruthless bombing, but he dropped amazing leaflets beforehand begging the civilians to clear the area and defy their crazy leaders http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Firebombing_leaflet.jpg . In further odd circumstances in his last year of service, I was under his jurisdiction (even as a civilian child) and only knew of him as a stuffy old guy putting out weird slogans here and there... about keeping clean and doing careful work to keep the commies away, or some such.
-
When did the Secobnd World War end?
If you said August 1945 and muttered about gay slogans on bombers carrying atom bombs, you're completely wrong.
Speaking of historic weapons with swishy names, the Nagasaki bomber may have been more decisive than the Hiroshima one (named after pilots mother of Enola Gay). It's reasonable for an adversary to assume such difficult bomb is a one time thing for quite a while until resources can be built up again. Stalin actually felt extremely vulnerable after detonating his first nuke, because he had revealed his menace but it was all he could produce for a very long time. One hawk US general wanted to take the opportunity to nuke Russia then and prevent a dangerous cold war.
Back to swishy B-29 names. The Nagasaki bomber was first reported to be named "The Great Artiste" because it held their crew and names hadn't been painted on yet. In fact they had switched to "Bockscar" which was named after it's more usual pilot. This was probably poetic justice, because the pilot that sctually flew to Nagasaki was quite irresponsible, and probably should have been court-martialed and shot. Unlike the Enola Gay pilot who was meticulous and professional, the other one broke countless rules and only by chance didn't waste the war-ending bomb into a forest or ocean. For instance he flew in circles waiting so long for a photo aircraft that he hadn't the fuel to bring the bomb back if Japan was socked in (which it essentially was). He managed a near miss of a secondary target, and glided in to an emergency airstrip on fumes.
The B29 story is so unlike it's stereotype of yet another boring weapon with incremental improvement. It's development costs were actually higher than the atom bomb, which was astronomical... like building umpteen pyramids while you are trying to win a war. Most of it's technical improvements didn't pay off. When first used as intended, flights would typically lay one single bomb on target (with stupendous effort, like the B29 would have to do 8 round trips to the rear to build up enough resources to make one bomb run). The Japanese literally found this hilarious - it is in their evaluation records. I personally suspect that a new British bomber designed for the pacific (Avro Lincoln) could have been modified to fill in for the hyper expensive B29.
It was only a few rebels, like Curtis LeMay and the pilot/organizer of the Enola Gay that drastically revamped the B29 to a practical tool. LeMay actually reaped the more destruction with innovative mini firebombs, and yet escaped the criticism of Harris or the nukers. I don't recall the Enola Gay elicited any feelers of surrender, but the bumbling efforts of The Great Artiste crew did seem to convince the emperor. However a subsequent conventional raid by LeMay is credited with disrupting an Army coup against the emperor and his surrender plans. LeMay later went on to organize the postwar Berlin airlift that broke the Soviet cutoff.
-
OK, so there is enough interest to refresh my memories of "Ancients Behaving Badly" Episode: Caligula
Ugh. The latest new episodes are all coming at once in a five hour block tomorrow. Set up your recorders for Nero, Hannibal, Cleopatra, etc etc http://www.history.com/search.do?action=sc...+Behaving+Badly
I hate whatever the marketing reasons why they release these things in a big slug. Later they will show endless repeats with the episode you missed buried, so you have to watch all to find the ONE you want I guess.
Spare the complaints about their attempts to sex up their subject with loose adherance to the facts - they gotta pay for broadcasting those beautiful videos of ancient sites with something that will attract fickle general audience and sell commercials.
-
frequent flyer miles for a free flight. But I did notice one flight on one airline that was being offered for very few miles. I then checked corners of their website for obscure ways of earning miles. The did in fact offer the number of miles I needed for simply testing the services of a company for something I needed anyway. Well, I am pursuing it even though nearly certain the plans will crash to pieces (there is a yearend deadline for the program), but maybe food for thought in your strategies...
Success! At least so far. In case anyone else might pursue a similar cheapskate strategy, I will recount how several obstacles were overcome, since to the inexperienced they can seem practically insurmountable.
I changed service providers and waited for ff mileage award which didn't arrive. Emailed them a reminder. They said sorry we forgot, then assigned me the wrong "reward", for which I about bust my blood vessels getting straightened out. Continued daily checking, and the tiny ff mileage just now arrived before yearend deadline.
Normally nearly impossible to actually use, I lowered my hopes and prepared to pound the pc keyboard all night to snag a Rome flight. As usual, only a couple weird, irreconcilable flights avail for the whole springtime period around "culture week". Found one end that was usable, then looked for the other connection out of another Italian airport with open jaw (success). Had to find a buried option on web back pages to avoid having 4(!) flight connections outbound or 3 plus a ground connection. Of course the act of finding it triggers a timeout, which means logging in again possibly to find the option disappeared.
Then, as usual, with the itinerary finalized (in middle of night, when little competition getting flights) the darn thing accepts all my pages and pages of input, but upchucks on the final reservation. As usual for no good reason it simply says cannot complete reservation and to try later. Over and over and over. But I notice a date contradiction among the pages, so try to schedule the same itinerary thru different menus - and it works!
Well, this isn't meant as a blog so much as an example of how you might make something like this happen thru maniacal persistance rather than money...
-
As a holiday gift, I offer you a fine recorded Yale university course on "Roman Architecture" http://oyc.yale.edu/history-of-art/roman-a...ntent/downloads . Available with html course materials, and audio or video. The hi res version of video may have an intimidating size (16ish gb?) but is much better than the lo res for seeing the many slides.
1. Introduction to Roman Architecture
2. It Takes a City: The Founding of Rome and the Beginnings of Urbanism in Italy
3. Technology and Revolution in Roman Architecture
4. Civic Life Interrupted: Nightmare and Destiny on August 24, A.D. 79
5. Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous: Houses and Villas at Pompeii
6. Habitats at Herculaneum and Early Roman Interior Decoration
7. Gilding the Lily: Painting Palaces and Villas in the First Century A.D.
8. Exploring Special Subjects on Pompeian Walls
9. From Brick to Marble: Augustus Assembles Rome
10. Accessing Afterlife: Tombs of Roman Aristocrats, Freedmen, and Slaves
11. Notorious Nero and His Amazing Architectural Legacy
12. The Creation of an Icon: The Colosseum and Contemporary Architecture in Rome
13. The Prince and the Palace: Human Made Divine on the Palatine Hill
Paper Topics: Discovering the Roman Provinces and Designing a Roman City
14. The Mother of All Forums: Civic Architecture in Rome under Trajan
15. Rome and a Villa: Hadrian's Pantheon and Tivoli Retreat
16. The Roman Way of Life and Death at Ostia, the Port of Rome
17. Bigger Is Better: The Baths of Caracalla and Other Second- and Third-Century Buildings in Rome
18. Hometown Boy: Honoring an Emperor's Roots in Roman North Africa
19. Baroque Extravaganzas: Rock Tombs, Fountains, and Sanctuaries in Jordan, Lebanon, and Libya
20. Roman Wine in Greek Bottles: The Rebirth of Athens
21. Making Mini Romes on the Western Frontier
22. Rome Redux: The Tetrarchic Renaissance
23. Rome of Constantine and a New Rome
There will be a pop quiz here next month, and I'm looking to enroll those who fail as galley slaves on my oncoming invasion of the Canary Islands. SPQR
-
(What you try to prove with your posted graphic I simply can't understand, as it shows seasonal variations, not annual net increases)
I respond because you posted before my above post arrived. The graphic shows that the current floods are seasonal phenomena, as are the dryouts later in the year. Not a canary in a coal mine. Get worried from that after the 2014 flood abatement project is supposed to finish.
Edit: Oh, I see... I had assumed you remembered the Split sea level graph I posted on the previous page here. It is also on the Croatian web page posted above. It shows THE CENTRAL ADRIATIC SEALEVEL HAS NOT CHANGED IN PAST HALF CENTURY! They try to point out a slight uptick in last couple of years, but obviously that is in the statistical noise level unless it extends itself. You would go broke believing in such a tiny indication upward in the stock market, for example.
-
In spite of that, I'm sure this will not be "enough" until you say "the last word"; thanks in advance.
Physician, heal thyself! Only actually annoying when you stray off topic into subjects you only apparently know by google
Do you mean across the Little Ice Age? Can you quote your source(s)?The lowest levels of many Venetian palaces have already been abandoned due to waterlogging even before the so-called warming period,It's a basic thing anyone that has the slightest interest in Venice will encounter either personally or in pictures or print. You aren't a brain in a jar with internet capabilities, are you? (sorry, too cheeky, but you are expounding on the subject)
... especially if any alternative might affect our pockets in the short term, Gods forbid!Life has cycles that come and go - enjoy what they give and don't pointlessly fret if they take away.More like it will loot the world for almost no effect. You later go on about the irrelevance of economists and how Lomborg agrees there is a "menace". The menace he explains is green overreaction. The warming trends can only be imperceptably delayed by brutal and economically crushing steps with the current technology. Added to that is the inherant way gov't responds to lobbies for exceptions and it's rigidity. For example CO2 producers can switch to much worse greenhouse gasses like NOx.
There is a principle of compounding... saving money early will just mushroom your retirement result. The opposite of that occurs with a overreaction to warming... you expend too much with too little result in ignorance of the actual core problem and possible appropriate bullets to address it. I have seen developing countries pull themselves out of grim existance in spite of the threat of anti-globalists and now they have to dodge the green gestapo just to get to a point where they can have the luxury of taking care of environmental things, as the wealthy inevitably do.
I have background of being a green fanatic (still maniacally frugal with energy - do any of you leave vehicles garaged till the battery dies, while backpacking groceries a long way home?), and also long dwelled in scientific and economic fields. The foundations of green populism ranges from baldface lies (Gore) to the new style of innuendo (newspaper articles about melting iceburgs, which provably cannot raise sealevels at all due to Archimedes principle). I have sat in with biologists discussing new findings of vast greenhouse gas output by plants, and how they can't publish it because it would give the politically incorrect some ammunition (and reduce their funds and edgy relevance). I have sat with astronomers who have tried to get climatologists to run newly found planets thru their models based on estimated cloud cover and sun/star light. Climate gurus then admit their models can't cope with the wild contradictory effects of vapor in atmosphere, which is key in their greenhouse projections.
Well this is a few scattershots I reluctantly post because inappropriate digressive charges were made. I'm not going to read thru replies that try to pick them apart - this isn't the place and I haven't time or interest in warming debates. Instead sink your analytical teeth into the video at http://www.booktv.org/Program/10779/Just+F...esponsibly.aspx
Points to consider: The green police will surely attack and penalize distant food transportation, while counterintuitively it has been discovered thru the unregulated market as a huge boon to cutting resource waste, besides being cheaper:
- energy cost is virtually nil as a percentage of food cost.
- much more abundant and cheap water afar typically rather than taking drastic steps to tap locally
- less need for fertilizers (massive greenhouse culprit), pesticides at appropriate growing locations
The green intuitive grasp of science is ignorant and backwards. Not only iceburgwise, but for organic food for example (butcher of land productivity). As the speaker says, the hugest difference by far is going to vegetarianism - the waste and greenhouse gas of cattle production is mega. Naturally as a vegetarian I will suffer from dufus gov't climate regulations which attack the wrong things. Feel lucky that veggies don't form a gestapo and force you into complience like the green idiots
-
... the sea level is already more than 24 inches higher than 100 years ago and by now it climbs by an average of three millimeters per year[/i]."
3mm x 100yr = 6 inches. That indicates a 4 fold slowdown of supposed 24inch per century rate of rise, which "proves" rising CO2 levels are a benefit. Frankly, all of this is nonsense. Last year there were articles bemoaning "Venice sea levels plunge to 14-year low" and how fire and ambulance boats couldn't get about http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/02/20/2167375.htm
Above chart shows the seasonal variation of sea levels in Split Croatia, which is only half way up the Adriatic arm where things only begin to get weird. Venice sees the full effect, and is peaking now and will be near trough at the same month the picture was taken http://www.hhi.hr/mijene/mijene_en/promj_e.htm
Doesn't it bother anyone that Split is seeing no rise of sea levels the last half century, yet any "global" source of sea rise would have to pass by Split to get to Venice? Sounds the same as my local fraudulant gov't employed earth scientists who show and tell to newspapers how atoll islands are sinking and bode badly for the rest of the world. Put aside that atoll sinking is a known and natural phenomena of volcanos sinking by their own weight, but you can't have a rising global sea that affects one place at a time. There is no canary for the coal mine - it would affect everywhere nearly simultaneously.
The Venice Lagoon is a shallow lake with very confined outlet. Have you ever motored around, such as to Burano? Silt is clogging up almost everywhere preventing rainwater from even draining from one side of the lagoon to the other. My earlier post linked up to steps that were being made for better drainage. Weather hypochondria has been a mainstay for centuries, don't exaggerate global vs local drainage effects as you can visualize from the depiction below
-
I'm curious about the patterns of one's existence in such a unique place.
"The world of Venice" By Jan/Jim Morris is the classic memoir of an adoring expat resident of Venice, although it meanders a bit much: http://books.google.com/books?id=HtE13QFND...;q=&f=false
Sinking city of VeniceThe operative section is in the second section 'a city awash' which states:
Many scientists believe that global warming driven by the burning of fossil fuels is primarily responsible for the rise in global sea level, which at Venice has resulted in higher and more frequent instances of acqua alta. To make matters worse, Venice has been sinking over the centuries, due to the natural settling of lagoon sediments and the indiscriminate pumping of freshwater from a deep aquifer beneath the city.Sixteen hundred years ago, around the time of Venice's founding, the Adriatic's standard sea level was almost six feet below what it is today. For a millennium and a half, Venetians were able to cope with the problems associated with living in a water-dominated environment. As late as 1900, for example, water at extreme high tide covered St. Mark's Square only seven times a year.
Poppycock; I resent the frequent fund collecting I did for that public radio and TV broadcasting, often submitting paperwork for double matching grants from corporations. They spew a constant barrage of selective reporting of supposed victim situations... that all imply the need for gov't social engineering (which is what they want in the first place). Every imposed solution ends up with worse side effects than the original problem, like the dysfuctional ethanol fuel fiasco that pillages foodstocks and land to produce no more energy than is input.
Here is recent, non changing sealevel history of nearby Split during the heart of CO2 buildup period:
Here is the real problem, where atmospheric conditions drive sea levels of Venice (in the upper left) up to a meter higher than max tide ( http://www.hhi.hr/mijene/mijene_en/uspori_e.htm )
Here is the responsible, multifacited solution for the immediate threat to Venice now being implemented by the few adults not under the mystical spell of climate-neurosis. Note it was back in 1966 when 2 meter floods occured, and this will protect from higher ones... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOSE_Project#Context
Here is an example of the gross mis appropriation of resources that will be applied with almost no impact for the cult religion of climatology, at the expense of numerous solvable real problems...
-
Here's a terrific video of John Julius Norwich, famed historian, discussing how Venice is rapidly becoming a rich man's Disneyland.
I first visited umpteen years ago, and it was equally overcrowded to the point you had to exhale to squeeze forward. Instead of the cruise passenger daytrippers, it was the railpass backpackers who just stopped for the day and used nighttrains as hotels coming and going. And like Lord N. said it is only selectively crowded - only S. Marco Square and the route to Rialto bridge and the dual routes from there to the train station on either side of the canal. That can be literally gridlocked, with police watching for walkers being crushed, and even the canal boat alternative can be overcrowded and overpriced (partly because it is widely ridden by freeloaders, as you can see by traveler forums encouraging ticket dodging).
If you want a pleasant way of getting between east and west, walk the route from the bus terminal (Pz Roma, S of train station) to the Academia bridge and onward. This is what all the Italian workers and university attendees seem to take during "rush hours", and what an elegant well dressed parade it is... thru some of the most serendipitous parts of Venice.
For nice places to "hang out", go north, east, or south of the aforementioned spine of tourist migration. BTW they are justifiably condemned to that nightmare spine because they didn't judge Venice worth the cost of a good, tablecloth sized map of Venice, and thus when they get lost they only have the signs directing them to the human freeways between train station / rialto bridge / pigeon poop square (oh have they started enforcing the no feeding rule so I can think of it as S. Marco again?). If you can stand it, please hang out to the northwest in Cannaregio. This is an awful area of bland architecture much gushed over by tourist articles, and if happy there you won't be in the way of tourists with taste.
Otherwise, hang out to the south in Dosoduro (all these spellings probably wrong, but google should guess right anyway), to the northeast in Castello, or the "fishtail" in the east where Napoleon cleared out big areas for boulevards and parks (and the amazing Naval museum including coverage of Roman emperor pleasure yachts). The supercute island of Burano is free on your ferry daypass, but don't waste time on similarly sounding bland Murano.
One problem that I offer no solution for is the difficulty of finding the usual high standards of Italian food. Someone commented on the apparent numbers of residents, but I think you will find many are short time apartment renters speaking French or German. There isn't a critical mass of residents that keep at least the lower price eateries honest, and that whole dimension of Italian serendipity falls pretty flat there.
Funny how Venice becomes a target for the climate-neurotics when it is just about to be protected better than most coastal cities with the multi billion tide surge protector. Being at the end of a funnel formed by the Adriatic, it is most susceptible to temporary combinations of tide and wind surge (pressure systems actually tilt the seas) which rose to insane levels in 1966, but even higher levels should soon be safe. The lowest levels of many Venetian palaces have already been abandoned due to waterlogging even before the so-called warming period, just as the ancient ports of Rome and Pisa have receded from the seashore and dried out. Life has cycles that come and go - enjoy what they give and don't pointlessly fret if they take away.
-
Why? For combating looting?
Fine to combat contemporary examples of looting, when both sides are agreed it was "looting".
Not fine when Egypt or some other place unilaterally stretches the definition, then intimidates museums to accept it's terms or else face a cutoff of cherished activities. For a counter example, there is a reason for the legal concept of statute of limitation time periods. Things happened before under different mutual assumptions and with legal entities that don't exist anymore and can't be reconstructed correctly by contemporaries.
Western guardians of museum collections may be too happy to give lots away anyway, for that halo of political correctness. What suffers are museum goers (and taxpayers who probably fund their museums and have contributed to recent 28 billion $ foreign aid to Egypt).
-
As a side note, I posted yesterday that Hawass has not given permission to the two Italian brothers who claim to have discovered the Lost Army in the Egyptian desert.
Hawass should be boycotted by all archeologists, and all escavation funding frozen. What may have started as revenge for a Unesco appointment has turned into an escalating shakedown of western museums because they have been so spinelessly aquiescent. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/science/17tier.html?_r=1
but it can also be risky to leave everything in one place, particularly if the country is in turmoil or can
Whither the History Channel
in Colosseum
Posted
Aha! It looks like the disappearing military side of the History Channel has re-emerged in a Military History channel http://military.history.com/global/listing...sp?NetwCode=MHC
The good news is that Rome appears well represented, as well as other conflicts outside the 1900s. The bad news is the channel seems to specialize in quirky reruns in dated styles. I get it only in low def, and at weird times relative to the hour (they don't even keep to their posted tiimes). I think this is a way to recycle stuff that attracts few advertisers, who now flock to History documentaries about lumberjack or trucker rednecks. They just charge it to your cable bill, so be on the lookout for Rome stuff you might be paying for anyway.
Advertising keeps TV accountable, I suppose. Now the free spending demographic apparently isn't interested in History any older than a few months ago ice-road or tree harvesting season. Similarly, the Travel channel has almost entirely excluded any travel content except for (on-the-road) Food. Imagine if they would spend one show a week on Roman archeology, but no... their demographic wants what goes in the mouth rather than the brain.
Accountability leading to mediocrity isn't all bad; it also prevents excesses. I heard a good case made about why oil states like Russia, Venezuela, etc tend to have such bellicose gov'ts... with oil money gov'ts don't depend on taxation of their middle class, and therefore aren't accountable to the moderating influence of that population's interests.