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Ludovicus

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Everything posted by Ludovicus

  1. "After a closer examination of the Antikythera Mechanism, a surviving marvel of ancient Greek technology, scientists have found that the device not only predicted solar eclipses but also organized the calendar in the four-year cycles of the Olympiad, forerunner of the modern Olympic Games. The new findings, reported Wednesday in the journal Nature, also suggested that the mechanism
  2. Just the same as the non-GW agenda politicians are pandering for votes from the discomforted not-so-alarmed/concerned citizens, who doesn't want a better world either. Rings any bell? Yes, point-taken, it goes 360, but referring to Minerva that GW is modestly not a political issue, it has to be since politicians then also are pandering to just everyone else with votes. It wasn't too long ago that politicians were pandering to voters who didn't think GW was a serious issue. Politicians pander. Beyond politicians, US mainstream churches and now more conservative denominations are seeing GW as an issue. Are the churches pandering? Evangelical Leaders See Global Warming as an Issue: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/08/national/08warm.html
  3. And who could ever forget Elvis Elvisorum's "Tu nihil aliud nisi canis venaticus es." ?
  4. Salve, As far as "supranational controls" go, international efforts (The Montreal Protocol, for one) on reducing ozone depleting gases are beginning to have an effect. If there is no backsliding on adherence, ozone levels will return to 1980 levels by the year 2068. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depleti...ozone_depletion We have a responsibility to do all we can to soften the impact of CO2 on the only planet we can survive on. http://www.globalpolicy.org/nations/micro/...4islandlost.htm I was referring specifically to CO2 controls, which are essentially energy controls. Ozone control does not correlate well to the current situation with CO2. The island story is certainly sensational, but river delta areas such as the one referred to in the article are usually right at sea level and can become inundated with the most miniscule rise in river or sea levels. In fact that island has been inundated for 20 years. Sediment that slowly compacts under its own weight tends to do that. No one seemed to make a big deal when it disappeared back then, and its not as if it suddenly disappeared in 2006. That area, like every other major river delta has a long history of disappearing and eroding islands. I consider the article to be completely subjective to the authors agenda and it has no meaningful scientific relevance. Explicitly answer those last 2 question in my quoted post, if you would. I'd really like an answer to those two. What I'm concerned about here, is what will happen when governments and unelected global groups take control of the world's energy. Forget the euphemisms, that is what will happen. Are you comfortable with inevitable corruption and corporatism that will follow? Do you think a system like that will ultimately make the population of the world better off? Will it even begin to make more than a negligible difference in anthropogenic CO2? Even if a worst case scenario were predicted with incontrovertible evidence, I would still think that the worst plan possible would be to put control of energy in the hands of pandering politicians and bureaucrats, regardless of how noble they appear to be on camera. Do you see how biofuels are creating an increased artificial demand on food, which is scarce for many people in the first place? Is it alright that some people in the world will have to go without food and die so that Archer Daniels Midland can thrive on government subsidies? The unintended consequences, along with the supposed benefits, of the fantasyland cure-alls spewing from a thousand different political agendas are what we should really be paying attention to. Take housing, for example. The government tried to make houses more affordable with cheap credit (among many other things). The result was sky-high home prices, a housing bubble, and the inevitable bust. Now Joe Schmoe is wondering why he's out of work, why can't pay his mortgage anymore, why his retirement fund is drying up, and why everything costs more than it did a year ago. High five, Uncle Sam!!! BTW, if you are actually making significant sacrifices in your lifestyle in order to reduce your CO2 usage, then you have my respect. I've seen very few people actually act on their global warming beliefs. Moonlapse, Here's an answer to your first question about "crushing economies worldwide." Do you think our current dependence on very expensive and highly fluctuating in price petroleum isn't crushing the US economy at this moment? This fossil fuel is a major contributor to CO2 emissions. There is a growing future, both for business and labor, in the green energy industry. We don't see much evidence of it here in the US because we are almost 8 years behind other developed nations in this area. Spain is satisfying almost 30% of its electrical needs with green energy. Some regions in that country will go over 50% soon. As to your second question, we don't know how much human suffering any of our efforts will relieve. Does that mean we just sit on our hands and watch CO2 continue to rise? In regard to the dangers of converting agricultural to ethanol production, I share your apprehension. Now on to Mr. (and Ms. Schmoe). They are facing forecloses in the millions because an irresponsible US Congress relaxed federal regulation of banks in the 1990's and an irresponsible President Clinton signed the bill into law after a lot of lobbying by financial interests. Their actions were followed by an even more irresponsible administration who looked the other way while as early as the year 2000 everyone knew that first and second mortgages were being sold to people with no money, no credit, and no jobs.
  5. I've seen reports that the last ice age ended abruptly, possibly in as little time as within a quarter century. My quarrel with the global warming denyers is that they tend to discount humanity's huge footprint on the planet. In their arguments it's as if we're just one other species. Rain forests are disappearing fast. Some mega-cities such as Bejing are over hung continually by dark clouds of contaminated air. One time pasture and farm land from my home state of Ohio are now vast areas of paved streets and driveways. Coal fires have been sending up carbon dioxide for the past 200 years and the denyers claim that none of this has altered the earth's cycle!
  6. Salve, As far as "supranational controls" go, international efforts (The Montreal Protocol, for one) on reducing ozone depleting gases are beginning to have an effect. If there is no backsliding on adherence, ozone levels will return to 1980 levels by the year 2068. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depleti...ozone_depletion We have a responsibility to do all we can to soften the impact of CO2 on the only planet we can survive on. http://www.globalpolicy.org/nations/micro/...4islandlost.htm December 24, 2006, The Independent of the UK: "For the first time, an inhabited island has disappeared beneath rising seas. Rising seas, caused by global warming, have for the first time washed an inhabited island off the face of the Earth. The obliteration of Lohachara island, in India's part of the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, marks the moment when one of the most apocalyptic predictions of environmentalists and climate scientists has started coming true. As the seas continue to swell, they will swallow whole island nations, from the Maldives to the Marshall Islands, inundate vast areas of countries from Bangladesh to Egypt, and submerge parts of scores of coastal cities. Eight years ago, as exclusively reported in The Independent on Sunday, the first uninhabited islands - in the Pacific atoll nation of Kiribati - vanished beneath the waves. The people of low-lying islands in Vanuatu, also in the Pacific, have been evacuated as a precaution, but the land still juts above the sea. The disappearance of Lohachara, once home to 10,000 people, is unprecedented. It has been officially recorded in a six-year study of the Sunderbans by researchers at Calcutta's Jadavpur University. So remote is the island that the researchers first learned of its submergence, and that of an uninhabited neighbouring island, Suparibhanga, when they saw they had vanished from satellite pictures. Two-thirds of nearby populated island Ghoramara has also been permanently inundated. Dr Sugata Hazra, director of the university's School of Oceanographic Studies, says "it is only a matter of some years" before it is swallowed up too. Dr Hazra says there are now a dozen "vanishing islands" in India's part of the delta. The area's 400 tigers are also in danger. Until now the Carteret Islands off Papua New Guinea were expected to be the first populated ones to disappear, in about eight years' time, but Lohachara has beaten them to the dubious distinction. Refugees from the vanished Lohachara island and the disappearing Ghoramara island have fled to Sagar, but this island has already lost 7,500 acres of land to the sea. In all, a dozen islands, home to 70,000 people, are in danger of being submerged by the rising seas. "
  7. One nation's pirates are another nation's heroes. I think the same goes for terrorists and freedom fighters. I think we're looking at the Cicilian pirates from the Roman point of view. I can't remember any history books penned by even a single Cicilian, ancient or modern. By the way, even today nations often reserve the right to employ piracy to further national interests. The term "letters of marque" is used when referring to this right. The US claims this right in its Constitution (Article I, Section 7). I'd be surprised if other nations didn't have the same. http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/co...n.articlei.html Letter of Marque: Archaic. A letter of marque was issued by a nation to a privateer or mercenary to act on the behalf of that nation for the purpose of retaliating against another nation for some wrong, such as a border incursion or seizure.
  8. In other words they provided the political, legal and physical infrastructure by which the Mediterranean and its hinterlands were furnished with a common meta-culture, bringing both subjectively good and bad elements, and laying the groundwork for the very idea of a universal empire that would inspire future generations? Yeah, I'll go with that. I'd only add "economic" to the list of infrastructures. Wherever the Romans went in the West, they founded cities and an urban economies linked to the greater Mediterranean.
  9. Augusta, thanks. I'll refer back to that thread. Don't you think that one of the challenges in making a movie set in a period long ago is the wardrobe...and how it's worn. Authentic threads and colors are a must as well as non-machine stitching. But the real hurdle is to make the actors comport themselves naturally in their period costumes.
  10. Caldrail, I agree with you entirely. While HBO's "Rome" made some great strides in accurately depicting the architecture and grittiness of ancient Rome (loved the grafitti) , many of the actors had a modern day gait and comportment. With regard to social differences in the ancient city, in my opinion, the British-made "I, Claudius" has achieved the most success with showing class distinctions.
  11. Over a very long period the Romans were prime examples of how to do things very well and very badly. The world has been forever changed since.
  12. I'm thinking of the architecture of the home in southern Europe and in many places in Latin America. Just like the Roman house layout, the homes there turn their backs to the street. Behind private walls you find gardens and places for the family to gather. The idea of a large picture window and wide open space between homes, features in many US homes since the 1950's, seems like the antithesis of the Roman/Mediterranean/Latin American home. P.S. One of my Latin professors compared Roman household furnishings to "US patio furniture," no stuffed sofas or cushioned chairs, all metal.
  13. Several contemporary biblical scholars believe that the Book of Revelation was written in part as an anti-Roman tract. It's true, you don't that feeling from any of the Gospels. From a BBC article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/ch...evelation.shtml "The word Armageddon is taken from al-Megiddo, a place on the Jazreel Plain in modern-day Israel. By John's time many famous battles had been fought there and in the first century it was the site of the camp of the brutal Roman Ironsides. To John's (author of Revelation) mind this would have been the perfect place for the final battle between good and evil. So it seems that the Book of Revelation is not prophesising the end of the world but is a polemic against the Roman Empire. John frames his attack in a way that parallels other religious writings of the time and which would have made sense to early Christians. John was telling first century Christians to galvanise themselves against compromising with Rome, and that their faithfulness would be rewarded.
  14. Northern Neil, Yes, I agree with you that as the centuries wore on, and especially as the Church gained power wtih Constantine and his successors, many Christians began to ape the Empire they had earlier associated with evil incarnate. On the other hand, given that the patron/client relaionship was a key feature of Roman society, it seems that the early Christian belief and practice of equality would have been seen as very counter cultural if not seditious.
  15. In addition to the early Christians' refusal to worship the gods and the person of the emperor, could it be that the Roman authorities persecuted the Christians because of their behaviour: better treatment for women, blurring of social and class distinctions, and aid to the poor and destitute?
  16. Sometimes there is a problem with terminology. Napolitano, Abruzzese, etc. are called Italian dialects. This leads one to think that evolved from Italian when, really, it was Latin. I've found these books on the history of the Italian language to be of value to the layperson, like me: The Languages of Italy, Giacomo Devoto The Italian Language, Mario Pei The Story of Latin and the Romance Languages, Mario Pei All of the above are out of print but available from used book dealers.
  17. Faustus, In an earlier post you mention that the US cause in invading Iraq was a "noble effort." It's widely recognized that the invasion of Iraq was planned before 9/11 and that a stack of lies (smoking gun will become a mushroom cloud; that Saddam was in league with Al Qaeda; yellow cake from Niger, etc.) was sold to the US populace to justify a pre-emptive strike. Then, after the invasion, with no evidence of weapons of mass destruction found, a new excuse for the occupation of the country was revealed: the democratization of the Iraq. To get back to the Articles of Impeachment, in my opinion, the pre and post war lies of the Bush Administration alone justify the call to impeachment. Over 4,000 US troops are dead, tens of thousands US wounded, 150,000 dead Iraqi's, and four million Iraqi refugees. And no end in sight. Where's the nobility? To boot, the government of Iraq is in the hands of religious fundamentalists. In 2007, over 130 women were murdered in Basra alone for "violations of Islamic Law." The "effort" seems more like an international tragedy, really. http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/02/08/...omen/index.html
  18. Moonlapse, this is a very useful resource. Thanks!
  19. I don't have an answer for you, but the website below has loads of info on the Vindolanda tablets. You might find what your looking for there. Also, Archaeology Magazine did a lengthy article on the letters within the past 10 years. http://vindolanda.csad.ox.ac.uk/exhibition/paleo-2.shtml
  20. Here are the first 10 Articles of Impeachment from Kucinich's resolution of June 9 in the US House of Representatives. See link for a list of all of them: http://kucinich.house.gov/News/DocumentSin...ocumentID=93581 Article I Creating a Secret Propaganda Campaign to Manufacture a False Case for War Against Iraq. Article II Falsely, Systematically, and with Criminal Intent Conflating the Attacks of September 11, 2001, With Misrepresentation of Iraq as a Security Threat as Part of Fraudulent Justification for a War of Aggression. Article III Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe Iraq Possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction, to Manufacture a False Case for War. Article IV Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe Iraq Posed an Imminent Threat to the United States. Article V Illegally Misspending Funds to Secretly Begin a War of Aggression. Article VI Invading Iraq in Violation of the Requirements of H. J. Res114. Article VII Invading Iraq Absent a Declaration of War. Article VIII Invading Iraq, A Sovereign Nation, in Violation of the UN Charter. Article IX Failing to Provide Troops With Body Armor and Vehicle Armor. Article X Falsifying Accounts of US Troop Deaths and Injuries for Political Purposes.
  21. The US Constitution created three separate branches of government: the legislative, the executive, and the judicial. This concept is the foundation of the country's governing system. It is not only the right, but the duty of it each branch of government to critique and rein in the excesses of the other two. A resolution calling for the impeachment of the President is well within the rights and duties of the legislative branch of the USA. Whether it will receive the support of the rest of Congress is another matter.
  22. Perhaps, but since he's on the way out anyway, it's just election year political BS by our fine representatives. Our "fine representatives" are never far removed from making political hay from current events. Given that the Democratic party bosses do not favor Bush's impeachment at this moment, I view Kininch's resolution in a different way. His is a move with a view toward history. It will be recorded that at least a few lawmakers, two at this point, did the right thing during a presidency whose goal was to dismember the US Constitution.
  23. Democratic Representative from Ohio Dennis Kucinich introduced 35 articles of impeachment today against President George W. Bush. Among them was: "Article 1 - Creating a secret propaganda campaign to manufacture a false case for war against Iraq." Additionally, Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL) became the first member of Congress to co-sponsor Rep. Dennis Kucinich's resolution calling for President Bush's impeachment. http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2008/...crat-files.html http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/11/kuc...=rss_topstories In the opinion of many Americans, the representative's resolution was long overdue.
  24. Salve, L This link goes to a brief Abruzzi : Italian Lexicon (Vocabolario Abruzzese). I hope we're talking about the same language/dialect here. Thanks so much for the brief Abruzzese lexicon. I recognized several words from this dialect that conserves many Latin words that didn't survive in Italian. Here are two examples: "lloche" for in quel posto, from Latin "locus" "is" for egli or lui The fact that I didn't recognize a lot of the words underscores another problem with dialects: neighboring villages had their own lexicons all under the name of Abruzzese.
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