caesar novus

Why does this forum assume a weird condensed form when you access it from the Dolphin web browser? It seems to assume you are using a tiny phone where you can't afford space to see folk's postings until wading many levels deep. This is even if you tell Dolphin to not use the mobile web mode. I think this forum software is driving this choice, and in some cases understandable because Dolphin is a premier Android browser. But I am using a big 10 inch tablet with the Gingerbread version of Android. Their default web browser seems crippled on Gingerbread, so it is natural to use Dolphin, which works wonderfully for all pages but here. Oh well...

I think they are onto something about both the Eurocrats and Maocrats being behind the curve, obsessed about inflation, and hurting private sector growth which is needed to increase the tax base. The historical ascendancy of England and the anglo world was their ability to collect a lot of tax relatively painlessly, thru breadth rather than strangulating rates. I hear that's why the Normans invaded England - no special resource, but that is where the easy money and good economy was. Canada, Australia, and the US economies have thrived on this now-threatened heritage, although the US got overall economic ascendancy thru a quirk from it's civil war. The rural hick south stopped attending congress, so the north rammed all kinds of pro-growth modern financial measures into law. With Euroville lacking (or not supporting) a Hank Paulson or the sainted Ben Bernanke, the slow response to Greece is just activating bond vigilantes who raise Greek bond rates unsustainably. And bless the Diogenes-like hearts of those vigilantes, as rare shiners of light. The problem of Greek contagion thru foreign financial connections could be solved easier without such vindictive attitudes towards economic growth. Go ahead with public drawing and quartering of finance wrongdoers - just don't kill the financial institutions that keep the west above a Paraguay or Bolivia level of economy. Anyway I bet the article IS exaggerated and not even aimed at the normal readership, but trying to get a message to policy makers. I see a similar thing as moderator of a tablet forum, where at a certain stage of major product cycles we are bombarded by alarmist posts by very articulate and knowledgable people who seem to be trying to influence final product designs. Maybe they indirectly do a service, but as joe-reader you feel "used" and want to take a shower after the Nth such post. That's the foreseeable problem - the well played game theory of politics is preventing further remedies such as somehow got thru US three years ago. If I correctly understand "The Dictator's Handbook" about modern democracies http://www.booktv.org/Program/12846/After+Words+Bruce+Bueno+de+Mesquita+Alastair+Smith+The+Dictators+Handbook+Why+Bad+Behavior+is+Almost+Always+Good+Politics+hosted+by+Anne+Gearan+Associated+Press+National+Security+Editor.aspx they mostly rely on only about 20% of a nations swing vote for actual support. So instead of "leading" they will "follow" a certain yobbo herd, maybe to prop up dying industries and suffocate vital entrepreneurial sprouts - for instance by counterproductive ways of taxing the "rich" http://www.economist.com/node/21530104 . Maybe the only adult in the room is Ben Bernanke, exempt from "The Dictator's Handbook". I was so happy when I heard of his original appointment (from another hiker encountered in the Aussie bush of all places).

That plane looks absolutely awesome, and it's a shame it needlessly lost it's chance for war production. Maybe it was like the elegant F23 losing in favor of the clunky F22. I believe the F23 won the performance competition, but then the gov't said we don't trust the F23 builder to stay in business or something. Well, why hold the contest then (actually maybe if the F23 was cheaper or even better). I love the counter rotating props, which cancel out prop torque among other things. This could be bad with high power to weight ratio; I recall a German ace telling how they would lose new pilots due to needing almost full rudder for p.torque during takeoff, when you may need even more for crosswind. The P-38 was one of the few planes to use (separated) counter rotating props, which even turned the correct ways to compensate for asymmetric drag if the other engine conked out. Mb5 seems a lot like the Fiat G55/56 which I praised in another topic describing my pilgrimage to the sole Italian museum holding one. They both borrowed heavily from the successful Mustang in wing, mid-body, and rear body design. They put special attention into harmony of controls. Under a Spitfire-like nose, they gave it a capacity for the latest generation of engine which had about gained too much weight/bulk for current fighters (griffon Spitfire, late bf-109).

Is the UK Telegraph finance section a respectable source, or just a posher version of a sensationalist rag? Anyway their intnl business editor projects an imminent replay of 1930 themes in http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/8802462/Protectionism-beckons-as-leaders-push-world-into-Depression.html Forsees an alliance of countries driven away from the austerity axis of Germany/Japan/China. Centered in the Americas, but would include at least UK and Korea:

As a tourist it can be confusing, because some of what you see in Greece was actually commissioned by Romans when they were in charge. Some of what you see in Italy was Greek-commissioned due to originally being Greek colonies (Paestum, Agrigento). Or Greek-looking buildings may originate from a tribe that built the town before the Romans siezed it (Pompeii civic center). There is either a difference or I have a mental defect. Otherwise why did I evolve from an indiscriminate multi-ancient-culturalist... to loving only Rome and no longer Greece, Egypt etc? The borrowing question is well covered in 36 lectures of http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/courses/course_detail.aspx?cid=3300 and I have repeatedly bored readers with it's assertion that wonderful Roman sculptures of individuals are utterly un-Greek in style, even if carved by a Greek and lugged into a Roman villa by a Greek. It was commissioned to be lifelike rather than idealistic or stereotypic (based on Roman deathmask tradition). The course goes on to compare and contrast art, philosophy, etc and pleased my narrow mind how often my favorite stuff seemed Roman in origin. In cases where Romans borrowed directly from Greeks, it could be almost out of condecension. They didn't think it was practical or manly to focus effort on certain aspects of life, but if the Greeks had embellished solutions in those areas then they could be picked up as sort of decadent status symbols. Let's see, what areas were these in... I forget, because I listened to this course at bedtime and have just found out I have been nodding off thru some of the sentences and will have to replay:

So were many anti-communists, Henry Ford, JP Morgan's partner Thomas Lament, Calvin Coolidge's old friend and avid supporter Frank Stearn, and on and on. Fortune magazine, owned by an anti-Roosevelt and ardent anti-communist life-long Henry Luce, devoted an issue to Mussolini. There is a chicken and egg circularity at play. Mussolini started at extreme left, but had too strong competition with the bolsheviks. He had to change marketing tactics to appeal to the establishment right in order to find a support demographic desperate for a leader. The horrors of Russia meant some weren't picky even when Mussolini showed impulses of swinging back left or a tyranical third way. He found people were so reassured by lip service to their side that they would ignore his lip service to the other side. Hitler did his famous swing rightwards in order to gain military establishment support in his night of the long knives. This cynical battle for demographics will be discussed by the authors of The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics in http://www.booktv.org/Program/12846/After+Words+Bruce+Bueno+de+Mesquita+Alastair+Smith+The+Dictators+Handbook+Why+Bad+Behavior+is+Almost+Always+Good+Politics+hosted+by+Anne+Gearan+Associated+Press+National+Security+Editor.aspx (weekend on cspan, then video should appear on this link). They appear to generalize from Caesar to Mussolini to the shakedown artist city manager of Bell, California in the dysfunctional principles that both dictators and elected officials are incentivized to follow. I guess they claim Julius was actually killed due to being public spirited instead of protecting the interests of powerful supporters, and so on in the Arab spring, etc. Big subject, but I hardly think the new deal was all about pump priming. That didn't really take until WW2 anyway. Early pump priming effectiveness was offset by witch hunting punishment of business to sate populist yobs, smothering regulation, and bloat of the public sector. Although FDR was against public unions, he layed the groundwork for that being the logical conclusion for the developed world where (as in Greece) the public sector owns the citizens instead of vice versa.

I think it's still saying a slight majority were originally red as opposed to the overwhelming majority. Gosh, I think the red is ugly and should have been reserved for an accent. Yellow seems less gaudy and easier to live with. There is a reason in physics that red interiors should be rare. The rods of the eye cannot see red and the cones cannot see any color in low light. Therefore in dim light, red walls will reflect nothing but a murky grey. That is why darkrooms and submarines use dim red lights - it doesn't kill your night (black and white) vision because it is numb to red anyway. I couldn't find an image to display the above clearly, but did find something to reinforce the use of yellow for candlelit conditions. It is from an article on why you see candlelight as yellow although it is predominantly red. Even with cones and rods together, red is weakly perceived. I think this graph shows "yellow" candlelight (and oil lamps?) will be well reflected by yellow walls. In a comparable graph for just the rods, you would see the graph shifted left and centered on cyan (omitting red). You can't see color with rods, but I think the way they get wildly excited with turquoise may explain why tropical ocean colors seem blissful. I sometimes force LCD background colors to pale cyan, and it seems to make fonts more readible with less eyestrain - your eyes just go "ahhh".

I wonder if Italy's embrace of Mussolini 1922-43 has any reflection or continuity in either todays genteel touristic Italy or the Roman republic/empire. I was surprised to hear classical professors claim continuity in some cultural and physical ways, like how ancient Romans could act like today's supposed "mamma's boys" and how the gladius may favor a short aggressor against a taller victim. I guess Mussolini liked to think he was reviving Roman warrior heritage, but eventually decided the population had excessive elements of either Roman hedonism or Roman slaves. I didn't really get answers after reading one biography that utterly ridiculed every aspect of his rule (I guess it was a counter shot to some favorable Italian biographies) and got stuck in another impenetrable bio that attempted a synthesis. Didn't he at least knock back the mafia, and trailblaze the same techniques used to supress it today? Some example questions follow, not needing specific answers but maybe some perspective: Why did fascism start in Italy during the "good" times in Italy vs later in depression throes elsewhere? I can only guess fascism is based on the grievances of a demobilized army, and although Italy was on the winning side of WW1, it's soldiers had a mismanaged rough time of it. They had been exposed to brutality, discipline, and considered using this toolset to re-enter a civilian life that seemed unwelcoming, decadent and complacent. Why were there so few serious assassination attempts against Mussolini's disruptive, dysfunctional, and somewhat violent rule? This aside from the chance the authorities later had to shoot him or give him to the Allies during his 1943 imprisonment. After being freed he was worse than just Hitlers puppet, but used his local knowledge to viciously target underground partisans. I guess Mussolini could seem charming in a rogue sort of way - certainly Hitler is quoted as being almost in love with him, even as he created war-losing problems. How could the economy function with his contradictive meddling? I don't understand his "corporatism" and wonder if that is something like today's German model where unionists sit on the corporate board. Some say he just gave orders that nobody obeyed... that the theater of orders was enough and were rarely enforced. And it is weird how he kept switching between left and right ("third way"); he is famous for reactionary steps that really seem taken as opportunism vs an almost equal desire to mix in elements of extreme left. Is such rule gone forever, like Frances Fukuyama said about once-widespread fascist parties? I can only guess it was feasible from a leap forward in propaganda technology relative to the people's means of detecting nonsense. Mussolini was once a rabble-rousing newspaper editor, and some say that all he ever aspired to was making provoking headlines rather than a real impact on reality. Hopefully today's still-fragmented Italian political scene is more solid than the ones that allowed sinister "rescues" by Mussolini or Octavian, but maybe today's North Korea is more truely fascist than marxist.

For more suggestions of candidates see "The Oxford Companion to World War II" which is just fabulous in terms of its graphic charts, maps, and concise articles: http://www.oxfordreference.com/pages/Subjects_and_titles__t139 . It has a fighter section with all kinds of comparative statistics and writeups on the relative success of various tech features or tactics such has been brought up here. Not just nerdy stuff, but eye catching charts using a drawing of each aircraft placed relative to each other, etc. I didn't have time to absorb even half of it, and it didn't seem to exactly declare the "bests", but it did break down each year of the war with about 5 the most notable fighters in rank of certain performance criteria. Also broke down by country, etc. For the early part of the war it added a French Dewoitine fighter as a contender, and near the end of the war the Shiden/George from Japan. Otherwise most of the top candidates were much as were posted here, except more love for the Tempest 5 rather than 2, and griffon Spitfire 14 (if I remember correctly).

The great courses lecture series have knocked 70% off their (quite high) prices of many dvds for a few days. For instance here is a search list of the keyword ROME, then you can click the sales box to limit it to the ones on sale. Unfortunately their super excellent "Greece and Rome: An Integrated History of the Ancient Mediterranean" isn't now on sale; maybe your library can order that. Of course, also google "thegreatcourses coupons" http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/search/search.aspx?searchphrase=rome

I'm writhing thru withdrawal symptoms, because my favorite food is out of stock at the supermarket as well as from the importer http://www.instantthaifood.com/ . Thai food can be so seductive, and this brand more than any other makes it both good AND instant. But every few years their supply is cut off for 6 months or so. So what are the alternatives to their addictive ginger, lemon-grassy curry rice? Well, I could reconsider the starch family and switch back to a potato base. But I noticed big helpings of potatoes can induce drowsyness, and then found it has a glycemic index of up to 111. Thus it can give more of a sugar shock than pure sugar! I think it might nudge a person towards diabetes2 almost like a junk food, so will reserve that for times I am fighting insomnia. Armed with some Thai flavorings, I looked for a rice that reaches the high standards as from my favorite instant Thai packages. Conventional minute rice is ghastly. I tried some healthy types such as converted rice which has some of the husk nutrients baked in, but preferred a new kind of half-milled rice where the brown husk is half removed. Still, that can be like forcing down medicine. From the array of typical white rices, I know I hate the common east Asian varieties. I recall wonderful Indian basmati rice which can be fluffy in a dry kind of way. But basmati rice on the shelves looks way to short and tastes boring, even when imported from India. On the internet I gather much of the Indian rice has been hybridized for more production, and there is some weird Texan variety trying to claim the name Basmati. Finally I find some lonely little bags from Pakistan with the elegant super-long grains, almost like strings or threads. Yum! It cooks fairly fast and and has a great mouth feel. I don't know if this is nowdays a rare heritage type rice, because many of the Basmati bags from India are opaque and don't show if they are old style. So I muddle along, stirring in experimental Thai flavorings for now.

I might look into the apparently rich roman archeology that is just under the sea surface. Not the scuba depth stuff but snorkle, and if that is too cold simply standing on the edge of the water at an ancient harbor. I have seen many shown, but they don't like to advertise since don't want to attract looters. Maybe some of those little coastal overnight excursion boats has a captain who would be able to focus on that. Lots of stuff you can google on Turkey underwater archeology http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=turkey+underwater+archeology&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 but it tends to be scuba. Just as an example, note the (Roman?) harbors marked at http://www.acoustics.org/press/155th/akalfig2.jpg . Here are some interesting Turkey travelogues http://www.intltravelnews.com/search/node/turkey

Old topic, but I couldn't resist posting the fascinating author interview video for new book "The Pirates of Somalia: Inside Their Hidden World" at http://www.booktv.org/Watch/12740/After+Words+Jay+Bahadur+The+Pirates+of+Somalia+Inside+Their+Hidden+World+hosted+by+Clifford+May+Foundation+for+Defense+of+Democracies.aspx . A Canadian journalist saw a pirate hut marked on google maps, and emailed a Somali web address about how to visit. Incredibly this naive and dangerous approach worked out They start by framing the piracy 20 years ago as self defense against French, Spanish, SKorean, and Taiwanese fishing boats poaching Somali lobster grounds. However the foreigners mounted AA guns on their fisherboats and became untouchable. An endless tangle of insurance and union issues prevent this defense on bigger ships (but I think if they tried it a few times the problem would go away). Anyway, the piracy doesn't get started again until Somali expatriates get entrepreneurial. With knowledge and money gained in the west, they started kidnapping the big ships. No westerners involved, just the part time Somali expatriates. Maybe selling crafts to you in a modern city one moment, then calling in to the pirates that they see western news saying ship crews hide in ship safe-rooms and financing them some explosives to blast them out. The author says it should be easy to solve by funding simple land based police posts, with a bounty put on pirates heads. The local people hate them because they constantly spend their time and money on drugs, women, and other non islamic things. Talks about how Somalia isn't really a failed state... I am oversimplifying just to give a concise sampling.

I just returned to the world of physical books after an eye condition had earlier favored e-books (where font size/type/color can be optimized). Wow, what a primitive technology! The heavy weight and tiny fonts are bad enough, but also I wonder where all those stains came from on library books. Reminds me of the US TV episode of Office where the boss lights up his hotel room for a party with just UV blacklight. It highlighted florescent splotches all over bedspread, furniture etc, which he is told is likely semen or blood. "I hope it's blood" is his feeble conclusion. Well, I hope it's coffee. Anyway I want to highlight "Inside the Third Reich" memoir by Speer. It does have some Roman connections due to the theme of Euro integration, as well as connection to the present crises of disintegration with left vs right remedies. I haven't finished, but sometimes better to discuss during impressionable mid-read rather than the sometimes numbing rush to finish it. Before I forget, I just read how Goering had taken classical pieces (surely Roman sculptures) from Naples museum for his own collection - I hope they were returned OK. The gist of the book is how architect Albert Speer experienced Hitler's inner circle during the 1930's thru mid 40's. Speer and Goebbels stand out as relatively cultured intellectuals in this circle of twisted anti-intellectual thugs and mediocritats, so it can be interesting to how they interpreted the Nazi drama. I may follow up on Goebbels next - although he could be even more evil than Hitler on various issues, he was against the invasion of Poland. He devised revolutionary campaign techniques still used today like bringing candidates to the people by way of airplane and media (then radio). I even detected a revival of some of his other tricks in the 2008 Obama campaign employing planted stories in NPR and NYT (maybe Soros remembered how they impacted WW2 Hungary, and recommended). Speer was a architect, maybe of little artistic talent, but could wow Nazi bigwigs by throwing together vanity projects insanely fast with double construction shifts, etc. He had some interest in Roman revival and got Hitler to approve guidelines to make prestige buildings decay a thousand years hence like Roman ruins (minimize ugly rebar, overdesign walls to survive roof collapse). He both socialized and worked with the most famous Nazi's (he is remorseful and pleads being star-struck) so has endless insider views. Speer's conclusions will be familiar because they are often repeated, but the book puts memorable flesh on the bone. Quirky stuff that is too strange for fiction - like how Hitler banishes deputy Hess from his dinner parties in a rage because Hess is a different kind of vegetarian and brings his own food. Hitler is vegetarian who has no qualms serving meat to "carrion eaters", but woe to any vegetarian rejecting the Hitler approved veggy selections. Hess just couldn't fit in and eventually sat out the war in England. OK, enough of that. Let me make a few honorable mentions. I am following an audio verson of Third Reich at War, which NYTimes describes as "riveting final volume to Richard J. Evans's magisterial trilogy illuminates the endless human capacity for evil and self-justification." It doesn't dwell on the well known themes of troop movements or systematic atrocities, but the lesser known aspects of everything from informal atrocities to financing armaments to being bombed until asphalt streets melt and trap walkers like the mammoths in the La brea tar pits. Very engrossing, but some parts painful enough to tempt a fast forward. Evans got me wondering how such fascist (and bolshevik) awfulness could arise. I realize the middle way was considered a failure, and that left polarized extremes, but such traditional explanations don't quite click or seemed kind of stale. So besides pursuing the high level Nazi angle, I wanted a fresh look at wider Europe. I took a stab at several books titled Mussolini and after some poorly written ones, think I have found an acceptable one (too early to denote). I looked for books on the Spanish Civil War, but at first found only blatant bias. I can groove with being anti-fascist but that does not justify sanctifying opponents who vandalized and terrorized the middle. The first few books seemed to think you just couldn't get enough bayoneting of nuns, until I found a more balanced, award-winning "The Battle for Spain" by Beevor. I guess he is said to be sympathetic to the anarchist element, but for me he lays out an understandable historical vista of Europe's falling empires, economies, and the collapse of moderation in favor of entrenched traditionalists vs bolsheviks. In an oblique form, I think it sheds light on WW2 and even today. Lucky for us the moderate center hasn't collapsed, and thru non-violent means a corrective cycle can proceed. Populist democracy recently brought unsustainable socialist utopianism to peripheral Europe and to the US, but Darwinian reality has been able exert push-back (to some traditional stuff as well).

Apple Foam Apple Sparkle Apple Cake Apple Fizz Apple Dream Apple Cloud Apple Chuckle Apple Garum Calvadocious Pomedocious Pome Slime Saucy Apple Pressurized apple sauce might be a good picnic novelty. Add yeast mixture with little headroom. At your destination find the leather awl foldout on a Swiss knife... and stab the plastic container!. Squirt sauce thru the air into your or a companions mouth, like with a wineskin. (not tested) P.S. if the container gets over pressured against your intentions, there is a way to prevent it from spraying too badly upon opening. You can tap it (slam it?) down on a table and tease the bubbles to consolidate at the top. So you can restore most of the headroom, and briefly vent the top. At that point, it will probably reinflate the sauce with bubbles, so you can close it back and tap down some more.

Health Alert: using the common "active dry yeast" you want to be sure to rehydrate it before mixing with applesauce. Layer juice over the applesauce, then top with yeast to sit a while before shaking up or inverting. Or ferment the juice/water before adding. Otherwise some yeast may not get activated until in your gut and give gas pain. Stomach acid won't kill all of it since it is tougher than "instant yeast" (which is a preferable but more expensive new product). I think I understand this happy process now. The applesauce gets foamed up with CO2, then the uppermost levels drain applejuice down the cell walls formed by the fiber. Thus the top level becomes a rich "sponge cake" with a sort of banana bread flavor. The middle level has an addictive whipped cream consistancy, but is subject to collapse when spooned out because of more juice to pulp ratio. The bottom is a juicy gruel that is maybe best relegated to a fridge overnight to see if it evolves into something interesting. Reminds me of the Seinfeld muffin top episode - what to do with the bottoms after cherry picking the delicious tops. You can control the top thickness by amount of juice - maybe remove 15 or 20% of applesauce for expansion and restore 5% with liquid for best results.

The rest of my saved pompeii travel links: Excavator blog (offering free old guidebooks to scholars) http://bloggingpompeii.blogspot.com/ Reservation site for touring closed villas http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.arethusa.net%2Farethusa%2Fhome.html&sl=it&tl=en Maybe you can just ask for any open slots on arrival to museum? Don't forget the official pompeii museum site for current info on the satellite sites Oplontis (do not miss!), Stabia, and Boscoreale. Maybe they mention various closures due to villas having collapsed in the rain, etc.

This goes in much depth on each neighborhood with individual building visuals (even when damaged since excavation) http://sites.google.com/site/ad79eruption/pompeii/map-of-pompeii This resource list may have more http://www.skidmore.edu/classics/courses/2004spring/cl311/resources.html

Where are peoples proposals for top 5 fighters? Boring to quibble like lawyers back and forth about my initial words - let's see constructive cases made for a p-38 or la-7 or something. I have explained my proposals clearly enough and linked to supporting references for points in controversy. If words fail to get my points across, I give up and can only offer pictures... Below I will depict 1) NASA (naca in 1941) model proving radiator thrust, using electric heating element to simulate radiator 2) successful Tory-IIC nuclear powered ramjet (eg. propulsive duct, thermal jet, stovepipe jet) 3) flat nosed standard p47 (draggy fuel hog replaced ASAP by sleek merlin p-51 for long escort missions) 4) sleek 500+mph xp-47j when they got ducted fan religion (still big turbo scoop) 5) supersleek xp-72 with scoop moved out of nose (xp-47 follow on... these had longer, slimmer radials) 6) slim Corsair with big p47 type engine more tightly cowled, and scoop relocated to wing leading edges 7) stubby late war Bearcat with flat nose 8) sleek post war racing Bearcat (probably internal fan to assist slim duct area) 9) sleek ducted radial Hawker Tempest2... a (US) pilot scored 11.5 kills in one (p47 in background)

Anyway, how about I pull together MY BEST FIGHTER CANDIDATES in an ordered list with consistant template of issues. And they don't all have to be pretty-boys like the Spitfire. Spitfire beauty does reflect good design principles, but would you believe the above asymmetrical BV-141 is a successful too - it balances out the tendancy of propeller torque to turn left. I won't fact check everything on this list and will let eccentricity run rampant, so feel free to put up alternatives. Knock out two (first and last?) and you have 5. Tempest2 KILL RATE: significant, but mainly it's own pilots when passed on unperfected to postwar India WING EFFICIENCY: good BODY DRAG: great for a radial engine, with a tight ducted fan cowling POWER: lightweight robust radial QUIRKS: not debugged or battle tested enough by war end, and an unfair preference by me [*]Corsair KILL RATE: hurt it's own pilots until perfected kind of late in the war to find many targets WING EFFICIENCY: poor; draggy inverse gull wing; was optimized for sturdy stance on carrier. BODY DRAG: fairly tight cowl (no duct fan though) and clever cooling vents in wing leading edge. POWER: massive double radial with battle damage robustness QUIRKS: I think it had amazing potential not fully proven due to Pacific war wind down [*]P-51 KILL RATE: great WING EFFICIENCY: excellant laminar flow design with room for storage. BODY DRAG: pretty sleek, with oil cooler somewhat obtrusive POWER: great engine but with water cooled vulnerability QUIRKS: amazing range [*]Fw-190 KILL RATE: great WING EFFICIENCY: criticized as too short (high wing load) but fine to chase bombers BODY DRAG: efficient with innovative tight ducted fan cowl over radial POWER: great robust radial (sometimes replaced with inline) QUIRKS: propeller torque yawed it a lot to the left due to lightweight + radial [*]P-47 KILL RATE: good WING EFFICIENCY: good BODY DRAG: nasty; wide cowl for radial plus turbo which was bigger than bomber equivilents POWER: massive robust radial QUIRKS: heavy and sluggish until big paddle prop was introduced. 8 machine guns. [*]Spitfire KILL RATE: good WING EFFICIENCY: excellant but expensive unroomy eliptical, later replaced by laminar flow BODY DRAG: excellant POWER: very good, but vulnerable water cooling QUIRKS: sleekness meant short range, and big engine upgrades hurt handling [*]Bf-109, Hurricane, Hellcat, Zero KILL RATE: great QUIRKS: ageing technology, eg. light Zero could barely dive or turn right (major prop torque) I doubt they go faster than gravitational pull. The below suggests to me that weight is always helping push you into a faster dive. But GRANTED the effect will be small and sometimes washed out by factors of a low drag design or powerful engine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_%28physics%29 sez "Note that the power needed to push an object through a fluid increases as the cube of the velocity." and "velocity asymptotically approaches a maximum value". With grav pull adding 22mph every second, you'd redline at 500mph in 23 seconds of freefall. If diving at an angle maintaining freefall you would tear off your wings sooner than that due to covering more diagonal distance per second. I believe this would happen in less than 15+K feet shown in the P51 dive diagrams. If furthermore a WW2 propeller can thrust almost it's own aircraft's weight in a climb, then it could accumulate 2G going down in a drag free world. That would halve the numbers above, leading to wings off on a dive of as little as 10 seconds. Net thrust means the vent thrust exceeds the vent drag (sort of like a net profit), which I was denying. The Spitfire article on wiki says what I was affirming by reversing the phraseology "this used the cooling air to generate thrust, greatly reducing the NET DRAG produced by the radiators". That should clarify the meaning, regardless of factual disagreements (I don't like their word "greatly").

Wow, you don't accept that actual p51 manual link as a good source. Pretty serious p47 book too in my link. These and the documentary reference aren't the source of my knowledge, but an attempt to point to shared or verifiable sources. So you didn't see or believe the Dogfights documentary - they often had the actual pilots giving accounts which I have read before, so can filter out the bombast. I used to check out 5 ww2 books a week from an air force library in the 1960's but I can't now reference page numbers for you out of Robert Johnsons "Thunderbolt", whozits "Stuka", or whoevers "Hurricane" for example. Also I flew in that air base's aero club 42 years ago, even as a civilian kid too young to legally drive cars. It was crazy - There could be a military scramble at any moment, and I almost sheared off the landing gear on an arrester cable at the beginning of the runway (didn't know B-52's used them for overrun protection). They did make me solo offbase however, and I really learned more since then on gliders where engines can't pull you out of a jam. Now I remember the club had a ww2 trainer plane that I was too timid to sign up for time on, although I did have a ww2 pilot for ground school class. Most of the questions I missed on the pilots lic written test were about obsolete symbols only used on ww2 era training bases. Anyway back to the fighter comparison. Here is a source of some juicy comparison teasers http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/ . Oh, mercy... it probably has some flaws! But it is handy in a quick search vs the famous hardcover books we may have seen of UK, US, and German comparison tests or vs oral or newsgroup or ipod accounts. That reminds me... there are a lot of good ww2 aircraft lecture recordings on military museum sites, and I have listened to umpteen hours (maybe with fuzzy recall though).

Must mean the hippodrome high up on the hill http://romeitaly.ca/attractions/stadiumofdomitian.html I wonder if you can descend inside now - I always have been able to peer in. Don't forget the upper (NE?) corner overlooking the Colosseum where an unobtrusive hole is now signposted as the probable location of Nero's famous dining room with rotating roof. Can see how the mechanism might work, although it looks a bit small. Also the lower level area opposite the Colosseum has huge temples opening just after my last visit.