caesar novus

"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 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...

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.

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).

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

I wouldn't normally prolong topic drift, but here's some hints just in case someone had trouble following up my digressions. If you wanted to peruse other free course notes from Modern Scholar series, or even wanted to buy their lectures, I noticed at least the Safari web browser fails to show these options at the obvious address(!). So point Firefox or something at http://www.recordedbooks.com/index.cfm?fus...st&sub_id=4 for instance, then click the desired course for pdf brief or more (unfortunately firefox seems to save the pdf whether you want to or not). Another option for deep pocketed enthusiasts could be Teaching Company (which doesn't give away course notes, but sometimes free sample lectures) such as http://www.teach12.com/ttcx/coursedesclong2.aspx?cid=8210 for WW1 or http://www.teach12.com/storex/coursesdetai...assical%20World . They gave me priority code 36855 to get 75% discount on anything plus free shipping over next few weeks. But business is bad enough that if you click around enough on their site, you may be able to pay even less than 25% and have another (2fer) title thrown in for free! Well, these may sound silly when so many universities post free podcasts etc for comparable courses. But I posted my miserable experiences with these (full of static, marxism, administrivia) without anyone replying with better site suggestions.

This seems to be a nice textbook; extensive and complete but a bit superficial and entirely one-sided; the issues involved were far more complex. This series tends toward polish and away from edgy-ness because it doesn't cater to teens spending their parents or scholarship money, but to discretionary spending of mature adult customers. You can overtype random numbers in the filename to pick up interesting other course notes (like UT050.pdf for WW1 proper, or UT003, UT125, and UT094 for history of Rome).

She has study notes for the course she teaches about her book at http://www.recordedbooks.com/courses_pdf/UT015.pdf It is interesting to do a repeat-find on "conclusion" to pick up sentences that summarize each lecture and give a starting point for pursueing any points in more depth.

Did I say they were strictly supporting the "illness" option of this poll? That seems to conflict with what I described about them putting him on a 2d graph of (psychopathy X paranoia?) which to me implies a concious choice (but maybe not neccesary). I don't know if they were driving to a conclusion so much as fleshing out claims with show and tell demonstrations. I voted for the seeking gravitas option rather than the illness option anyway. I mainly wanted to raise this show as an entertainment resource rather then something to settle the poll question. It had cartoonish aspects needed to keep paying advertisers in the current downturn I guess. I think the most successful series on the History channel is now the rednecks-on-ice series "ice road truckers". Hopefully with a recovering economy they can get back to the proper balance of Hitler/Napoleon/Roman Empire.

I would never organize any such thing because just getting myself there has some of the most extreme hurdles. But I hoped we could post a clearinghouse of ideas. One approach I had about given up on is getting piles of 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...

OK, so there is enough interest to refresh my memories of "Ancients Behaving Badly" Episode: Caligula http://www.history.com/shows.do?action=det...pisodeId=503012 . It broadcasts on Fridays, and if you can endure spurts of sensationalistic claims by the narrator, there are amazing tours of various sites in hi-def worthy of freeze framing every few moments. You may find the guest experts a little sensationalistic too, but I reckon that helps keep the peanut gallery watching thru the commercials. As for arsenic poisoning, they were going by stated symptoms of mouth foaming and blotchy skin. I think they lost enthusiasm in diagnosing it tho, after finding their favorite theory of syphilus was disproved. As for lead poisoning, I think it wasn't the normal exposure but a hyper exposure based on the method elite classes of wine were boosted by fancy additives (combined with extreme levels of consumption by Caligula). IIRC guest host Darius showed 2 sites he escavated related to Caligula. He's quite a TV character that has started showing up in place of the usual bespeckled academics; I think I lived nearly walking distance from him for several years. The very reason I am fuzzy on their arguments was because the program had such a sensationalist approach that didn't inspire trust (and thus retention). But the site walkthrus and some of the host comments woke up interest. Even when they contradicted; for instance they had new analysis of digs around Holland/Belgium indicating Caligula laid very wise foundations for Claudius having a good jumping off point (logistics and forts) for invasion of Britain. And a detailed walkthru of the same argument in my atrocity thread about the context of violence being far more important than the number of victims. That flag never seems to get saluted here though (victims would back me up if only they weren't dead, sigh) regardless of the orthogonal issue that the related facts have poor degree of certainty.

Some new CATV series popped up last week about ancient notorious figures. Can't remember the name, but it spent an hour on Caligula. Gathered a bunch of "experts" who claimed to prove that Tiberious was killed by arsenic poisoning (by Caligula?). And that Caligula's sickness was caused by lead poisoning from his overindulgence in wine (they tested the method they used to boost the sugar content in wine which gave extreme lead levels). There was coverage of "new" caligula related archeo dig information from the last few years, esp by Darius Arya who is popping up all over in Roman documentaries as a swashbuckling expert. Kind of suspiciously young and model-like to be heading the institute he does, and there is gossip on the internet of an attempted coup that tried to remove him but resulted in mass resignations instead. More camera friendly tho. Well, they rated Caligula as over the top cruel, sort of from the gratuitous angle I brought up in the "atrocity" thread. I forget the details but on a 2 dimensional psychopathy grid he came near Himmler and the polar opposite of Gengis Khan, who was a darling in comparison despite mass killings. NOTE: none of the above is claimed to accurately represent the facts from the documentary or even the historical facts. It is simply a lazy pointer to media activity that you can catch in reruns if it sounds interesting...

That seems to be an anachronic statement; arguably, for the people of the time (from any side) that's exactly what it was. Obviously I meant WW1 didn't have such clear ethical polarization as WW2, that could motivate remote global players such as the US to put aside it's mixed allegiances and inhibitions to play war. 1930's Japan invasion of China, and Hitlers invasion of Poland etc was so over-the-top brutal and uncalled for. WW1 had more balanced moves, a little rough on Belgium and the Balkans perhaps, but more often in a tit-for-tat fashion. Meanwhile countries like Italy bargained with each side to see what rewards would come with an alliance (chunk of Austria eventually awarded to Italy). WW1 seems to fiercely have that quality of how a butterfly's random movements has an expanding domino effect on bigger things. I thought this obscure book emphasized that, since it almost put Wilson out of the picture who like FDR campaigned for peace, but did all kinds of sneaky things to get into war. In hindsight, maybe it would have been best if only a very weak US participation was deployed, so that a more balanced Armistice came about. Could have easily happened, apparently.

Of course, but my point wasn't sympathies so much as acting on them... such as from a neutral or pro German US president. WW1 wasn't a battle of good vs evil with natural villains (although I gather it started mainly due to the German negotiator being sloppier and less war-averse than his counterparts in the initial diplomatic crises). However as a stalemate WW1 was a powderkeg of possibilities for a fresh player such as US to make a splash on 20th century history. If it remained neutral, the US probably would have remained weak and uninfluential in the globe because gearling up for WW1 was a big learning process. Not sure about the fate of Europe... weren't many French troops in mutiny just before the Americans came? It's probably unlikely that even a pro German president could have asisted the Axis side, because the British ruled/blocaded the seas. But a neutral or even weak pro Allies policy by a president other than Wilson would seem to exert a lot of leverage to change history, esp if you think of WW2 as cleaning up loose ends of WW1.

I caught bits of a talk that seemed to have weighty claims about the near-alternate-history of US involvement with Germany in the last century: http://www.booktv.org/Program/10805/The+Ha...+Great+War.aspx has the video and future TV schedule. Apparently it is based on a bootleg copy of presidential correspondance whose official copy is withheld and was almost destroyed. I will mention some half remembered themes to encourage some interested person to pursue it. If I have it wrong, remember that at least I have led you to the source. I am not going to pursue this because I don't yet have enough WW1 background info to sort out conflicting claims. -Wilson was only president by a fluke when he declared war on Germany in WW1. He had almost lost to a nobody for his second term, and the popular Harding could have had the presidency then for the asking but for some reason bowed out. -Harding was long term soul-mate to a rabidly pro German mistress (who spent part time in Berlin, tried to blackmail him into not voting for war, and joined a bunch of German mata-hari type spies outside US military camps). There was a lot of pro-German sentiment in the US, although not necessarily in Hardings case. -The spying in US focused on ascertaining when the trainees would be ready to ship over, so that Germany could use all the time it could to build up the greatest possible assault and end the war before US could tip the stalemate the other way. This played out in the massive Leutendorf(sp?) attack which was almost successful if it hadn't exhausted troops from it's very progress, and left Hitler and the German populace unconvinced they had been properly beaten after their show of strength.

We seem in the third phase of anthropological agendas. Somewhere in academia there may be unbiased seekers of truth but especially at the entry level, participants underlying drive seems polluted by fashionable narratives about unfamiliar cultures: 1) Early "patronizing" phase - Cultures studied as curious stepping stones to the western ultimate. 2) Recent "Rousseau" phase - Cultures as romanticized ideals that show the west as wayward (eg Margeret Mead's disputed findings of supposedly uninhibited, pacifist cultures) 3) Current "Jim Jones" phase - Cultures demonized along with the west as examples of being on the road to ruin. Either nature is the ultimate good, and societies are better off dead like the Jim Jones mass suicide, or societies must be policed simply for their own survival by green-gestapo nut cases whose fractured knowledge of physics/chemistry springs more from puffing weed rather than textbooks. I've been more guilty than most of #2 in my life and study. Now I realize all 3 are crap. Don't underestimate bias-by-implication rather than explicit bias. It's like the New York Times; it's not the wording of articles that exhibit bias (often they are written by other outsiders anyway). It's the editorial selection of stories chosen, and what narrative is implied by that pattern. Surely similar for what studies are done or published in anthro/archeology - if no energizer motive like 1, 2, or 3... the rewards for authors time may be pretty austerely intellectual (admirable but rare).

Ours is going to be the first civilization that destroys itself due to environmental hypochondria, after regressing from the heights of scientific agnosticism down to timid new-age nature worship. All kinds of needless costs and restrictions are already kicking in, strictly based on junk science. Environmental stress of the ice age helped turn a bunch of scruffy mango pluckers into mighty toga wearing Roman wheat farmers - embrace the stress! P.S. no need to quote all of a post and cause needless scrolling and eyeball scrambling for your buried reply.

What a delectable movie, although a bit rough around the edges! I propose any true Romanophile use it's "Bring me my Bride" song as a wedding march or even vows: [MILES] Stand aside everyone! I take really large steps.

Its shewtime! HMGM high def channel will be showing "a funny thing" starting 8.5 hours from this posting (at least in my area).

Do you mean decades-old reconstruction maps of ancient Rome like http://catholic-resources.org/AncientRome/Platner.htm ? From fuzzy memory of watching a DVD course in a distracting environment, I gather many such layouts have recently been flipped around on very latest maps. "Experiencing Rome: A Visual Exploration of Antiquity's Greatest Empire" keeps apologizing for showing showing 3D layouts in conflicting ways - some apparently based on that old model in EUR that we always see in TV documentaries, and some corrected diagrams by the course artist. I believe most changes are a reversal of forum orientations, putting the temples and entrances(?) on opposite sides than previously thought. http://www.teach12.com/ttcx/coursedesclong2.aspx?cid=3430

Pantheon is an obligatory 10 min stop any time you are in the tourist center of Rome. It is central, free, and lineless. I find the proportions and interior "upgrades" kind of awkward, but maybe take it too much for granted. Castel didn't leave much of an impression during a quick visit during the "free" week. Diocletians baths look better than I have experienced in http://www.flickr.com/search/show/?q=terme+Diocletian (turn on the "show info" button, and maybe pause the show and click forward at your own speed). It has a jumble of churches and a museum embedded in a confusing maze of pedestrian hostile streets and eternally abandoned construction barricades, so I don't think of it as "an attraction" so much as a variety pack you nibble at occasionally. Major parts seem off limits. It isn't directly across from the Termini; the epic Massimo sculpture museum slightly to the south is closer, although also surrounded by abandoned scaffolding blocking everything but an obscure side entrance. If you cross the sprawl of outdoor bus terminal from the Termini, and somehow survive the endless wide roads where exiting busses try to mow you down... you then have to cross a garbagy sun baked wasteland where out of work immigrants have drunken fights (maybe attracted by the watermelon kiosks where you should rehydrate too). From there, you can plan your assault on the fortress of the baths which gives every indication of not wanting anyone to enter. Just about the closest entrance is obscure, but turns out to be a dazzling church (the one with an endless name) fitted into the baths by Michelangelo in a way that celebrates the original architecture. Now I see from the slideshow there is another nice church in there I missed. There is a museum that bored me at the time, maybe due to jet lag and it's focus on Latin inscriptions. Clearly I haven't done this site justice, but I think it's hard to. The Massimo museum surely challenges it in importance, since like the Naples one it cherry picks items from archeo sites all over Rome and Italy (ground floor a bit eccentric, so elevator yourself to the top, then work downwards).

I think a key factor making Pompeii impressive is not only the horizontal sprawl, but the height. It isn't like most ruins with just some stubby blocks above foundations, but gives you the feeling of the original enclosed space. I think many Roman ruins in Africa and mid east are low (some used mud brick?). That is nice if Sagalassos is rising again. For a person not used to mentally translating low ruins to the original, Pompeii is mind blowing because it gives such 3D presence. The height is sort of a triumph against the ravages of time, and gives a boost to not only Pompeii but the Colosseum and Caracalla's baths (which you can also appreciate even outside the entrance gate). Maybe lack of height it is why Ostia Antica and Herculaneum leave me a bit cold. In the latter case the buildings are as high as Pompeii but you only perceive that by walking in the narrow trench nearby; mostly you view it from above at modern ground level as almost a maze of basements. With all the praise of sites outside Italy, it would still help to rate them relative to well known Italian ones. Exploratory travel can be expensive, wearing, and time consuming. I have little idea how to rate, say, Italica vs various sites in Turkey or Tunisia except for a few nonflattering photos. Need to be guided by prioritizing that stands up under scrutiny rather than just islolated report from an enthusiast. Personally I have already used up my 9 lives in adventure travel, for instance stranded in southern Algeria without money or plane tickets.

Maybe so, but I was of course considering day tripping logistics (with my own biases). Pompeii is the superstar, but a bit wearing to spend every hour of a day there. What aching void most needs to be filled with your remaining shreds of strength? See yet more ramshackle dwellings in Herculaneum, or the gems of artifacts that were cherry picked out of Pompeii into the museum? I would say add Naples museum. Of course if you don't know to request permission for the "sexy" room when you buy your ticket, your percentage of Pompeii related stuff will fall and it can almost seem like a stand alone museum to judge on it's own merits. On the other hand, don't some archeo sites have their own little museum, which muddies the distinctions? Basically the list was inspired by my regret at discovering quite late how important some of the lesser known items were, like Palazzo Massimo. But that point is made, and I guess a reformatted list could benefit from not assuming how you travel and for how long.

Right, that seems to be Seutonious talking about Caligula. I think the prof did throw in a few kudos for Nero, but since there is no exam I never activated my photographic memory.

One should never miss the outside of the Colosseum, but that comes automatically when touring around Palatine. I agree Colosseum INSIDE the entry gate tends toward the unrewarding and unpleasant - I even saw a tourism article advocate just seeing it from the outside as well. Thinking of yanking Colosseum from list and pulling in http://www.flickr.com/search/show/?q=ephesus last (due to logistics to get there). Vatican logistics are truely awful, although there are rumours of times of the week or year that are more bearable. A tourism article recently called on the church to pull this museum out of it's shameful state. But in comfort take look at the Vatican slideshow link I posted (or your own pictures?)... wow, what a Roman treasure trove!.

Like Caligula or Henry VIII, he started out really well. I heard he had some redeeming features even later, but one sticks in my mind from a lecture that said he was the last emperor who proposed a return to partial democracy. It wasn't put into effect, and the professor thought Nero might have been up to no good somehow. Anyway it would have allowed voting only for some something relatively minor, like city councils or the like.