caldrail

As to whether the Great War was unnecessary, I can't argue with you. The problem of course was european rivalry as these nations jostled for status. The extent of industrialisation of the great powers had significantly changed strategic possibilities and I don't believe the generals of the time were aware that modern weapons would change the nature of warfare so much, something they only learned by experience and forgot after the armistice. You've asked what was noble about the Great War. This is a subjective question I think, because the Great War meant different things to different people. I can't speak for other nations, but in Britain the Great War was a chance to display national pride, to do ones duty for the crown, and in a strange way became a cultural rite of manhood despite the horrific loss of life. In a way, it was the 'volunteer' aspect of service recruitment that gave it the element of nobility. People were not actually forced to join up and go to war, they chose to do so because they believed the cause was just. My grandfather, on his return from France, ventured out into Newcastle in civvies only to receive a white feather from a woman who clearly saw him as a coward for not 'doing his bit', which naturally angered him given his war experience at Gallipoli and the Western Front. He has signed up underage like a good many young men, anxious to do his bit and prove himself in the world. There was a different mindset back then, a very strong nationalistic pride common to most european nations based on their success in economical, industrial, and colonial growth. How we see the Great War now is very much with the benefit of hindsight. They saw it differently.

So you could expect to travel something like 120 miles a day by sea? Not too bad, though this would have to be an average given the vagaries of the ocean enviroment.

Considering the spam I get, maybe Homeland Security isn't so bad. What exactly is it? It sounds like an american survivalist anti-CIA group hell-bent on wearing camouflage jackets and denuding the woods of bears, not to mention large wooden barns stuffed full of rations and strange metal doors on the side of grassy mounds in their back yards. Or have I been cruelly misled about America?

Which "tv expert psychiatrist" would that be? Dr. Phil? -- Nephele No, he was an asian guy who regularly appeared on 'Richard & Judy' (now relegated to an obscure cable channel). For the life of me I simply cannot remember his name. He was on the news recently if I remember right, on trial for plagiarism in his latest book.

The size of roman towns is somewhat smaller than today, and since people generally had little else to do but gossip about other peoples business, anyone seeking an adress had only to ask around - someone would know where they lived, and a few directions from a landmark within the town would suffice. Rome was of course much larger but the same principle applies, and since that city contained 'ghettoes' of varying nationalities, its a fair bet there were sub-communities that keptt track of goings-on. Given the level of junk mail they received was nothing like today, I doubt the romans had much problem with street names, since major roads were sometimes named and used as landmarks in themselves.

Good afternoon readers, this is Caldrail, live at the grand opening of Swindons new library. I'm going to take you now inside this wonderful edifice and... "Are you with the children?" Huh? What? Do I look five years old? I've got grey hair for crying out loud. "Sorry Sir, library opens at two..." Two o'clock. Humph. Right. Well its back to the studio for news of Caldrails latest phone call with the police. Phone Call of the Week A message left by a policeman who said they'd got a result from the report of damage to my car. Woohoo. So I phoned them back this morning and the result is.... Well they haven't actually found anything, the crime is listed as unsolved, but they've managed to convince another policeman to look for a villain, believed young and irritating. New Library of the Week Hello again. yes its caldrail live at Swindons New Library. The place is heaving with people, most of whom look bemused, and if I can... just... squeeze through the crowd of camera toting journalists... Yeah same to you mate.... a computer, one of many located in and around the building. We understand this is a state of the art system, so lets log in and try my e-mail's.... Aha. My emails are blocked courtesy of Swindon Borough Council. Internet security so tight you can't communicate. Well its back to the studio whilst we get this little glitch sorted....

Depends who you're with

Really? Hey, if you want some jpegs of dirty steamers just let me know :D

i get a bit irritated by this sort of stereotyping, but then, human beings do pin labels on things, and if I were honest I'd probably do the same unwittingly. A tv expert psychiatrist reckoned its one of our primeval instincts coming to the fore, the reason why so many men become nerds or incredibly anal about specialist subjects. What happens is that male humans (being the hunters, although some women are afflicted by this phenomenon too) are programmed to recognise signs and tracks. Its a survival trait we no longer use, but one that sits there in the background. So in other words, if someone glances at a steam engine and recalls an incredible amount of dull information about it, what he's actually doing is exactly the same as spotting a pawprint in the sand and recalling the creatures known habits and whereabouts. So this sort of thing bubbles over in modern life and our lecturer is simply classifying managers in the same way he would do for animals if he wore furry swimming trunks in ice age europe. The only difference is these animals are tasty to eat and provide furs and stuff for survival. Killing managers is regarded as a serious crime unfortunately, though I suspect I would sympathise with the culprit

Well... I doubt I'm in danger of receiving a funny handshake... I know what you mean about theft. I had a CD lifted from my home by a visitor (I can't prove it) and I suspect due to the title I'd put on it they though it was a porno disk. Oh boy are they going to be disappointed. It was a backup of my US railroad pics.

According to the DVD, the character was inspired by that 1872 Pollice Verso painting from the Pheonix Art Gallery. Anything else is just journalism.

They've made some startling conclusions already but it never hits the headlines. One theory shows primeval man wandering out of africa during a time of intense pressure which almost saw them extinct. I think its the genetic variation that led to that conclusion, so its an assertion rather than a provable theory, which is probably why such things get mentioned and go no further.

There were three legions initially involved in the Jewish War. Two had gone home by the time Masada was besieged because the war had effectively been won, and Masada no more than a desperate last stand by a group of zealots who couldn't accept it.

The doorbell rang early in the morning, or at least, it was early for me. In true jobless fashion I muttered a few curses and rolled over back to sleep. About an hour or two later I got up, and got ready for a hike in the local area. Down the stairs, pack on my back, out the door, down the alleyway and.... I stopped short when I spotted the door to my car left wide open. The soft top had been cut with knife in three places, not as random vandalism, but with every intention of obtaining access to the vehicle. It was evident the thief had gone through every possible cubbyhole. In actual fact, I wasn't hugely upset by it. The real damage had already been done to my car some time ago. Thats why it was off the road permanently and contained nothing worth stealing. Given what happened with the police the last time, I wondered if it was really worth notifying them this time, but I suppose whoever did this might do the same to someone else, so I guess it was time to take a deep breath and phone them. They arranged to send a forensic investigator. She drove in from Marlborough and looked askance at my somewhat grimy corpse of a car. She sniffed around, shone a torch into dark corners, then told me it was hopeless. The car was wet after the soft-top was cut open, never mind the doors being left open in the rain, and she explained that her powders would only make a mess in the conditions, and that there little likeliehood of obtaining prints from cloth or textured plastic. Is it just me, or have I been cruelly misled by crime thrillers? Had there been a dead body involved, would the car have been hauled away and exposed to every possible scientific test to obtain evidence of the guilty party? Maybe, maybe not, but I guess a dead car doesn't qualify as time well spent. It turns out this time I'm not alone. On her way down into the car park, a garage mechanic stopped her to point out the six other cars that had been broken into equally carelessly recently. My neighbour stepped out of his back gate and sympathetically enquired if I'd lost anything. It was him knocking on my door earlier, and his car - unbeknown to me - had been broken into the week before. A lot of people are having their cars damaged in this area. Irs probably a solitary kid, too high on the excitment of becoming a crook to figure out which cars are actually worth breaking into. I ought to thank my neighbour for trying to let me know it had happened. Perhaps I should have gotten out of bed for all the difference it would have made. I can't help wondering if the police feel the same way. First Impressions of the Week He was a well built guy, in black casual clothes, with a subtle display of gold chains around his neck. I had no reason to talk to him other than I wanted a drink and he was standing in the way of the bar. This guy seemed sociable enough and I cracked some lame joke about nightclub bouncers. "I know bad people" He said. Oh? Really? Is this some sort of gangsta thing? He realised quite quickly I wasn't terrified. Normally with people who know bad people you have a bullet hole inserted somewhere on your person by now, so I figured I wasn't in any danger of that. "See this? know what this means?" He shoved a black and gold ring in my face. "Dis is da Freemasons. You know what the Freemasons are?" Yeah... Yeah I do.... But I totally missed the point of his gesture. He wandered away with his mobile phone. So I guess either he's a fake gangsta trying it on, or there's a contract out on my life. I knew I shouldn't have gotten out of bed.

Recently I bumped into a lady I've known distantly for a long time. To be honest, I've never really spoken to her much, but on this occaision we got talking. She began by enquiring about my historical research, something she'd noticed me doing at the library. The reason for her interest had nothing to do with my natural charm, physical assets, or bank balance, but rather my soul. It turns out she's a keen member of one of those odd christian sects that you see from time to time. Hers is a door leading to a church over the top of a popular pub in town, in an old refurbished cinema. Seems an ironic place to hold prayer meetings doesn't it? I was politely invited to attend a meeting. No thanks. Especially after she innocently told me that a 'Great change was afoot'. She tried to stop me in mid-guffaw and explain why all these miracles were coming to pass. Sorry, but I still guffawed. Then we got down to business and spent an hour engaged in a religious debate that certainly made a change from the usual football and nightclub scores. I don't she realised we had an audience! Like most of these cults, hers has filled her head with talk of miracles and typical end-timer prophecies. Hers is a world filled with miracles. Unfortunately, I think it would take one to get me through her door. Nightclubber of the Week Walking home through a side street at night, I spotted a young black woman waiting for someone. Usually this sort of encounter is with a woman of the night, something I don't bother with and couldn't afford even if I was interested. This lady was different. Her clothes were way upmarket to what I usually see in Swindon, more like the sort of thing you see in expensive london clubs. She noticed me looking as I passed by and stopped swigging champagne from the bottle. Oh, sorry dear, do carry on. She did.

Arabic? You mean you might want to stop and ask someone the way? I know what you mean, but I do happen to know a little more about this job than the advert suggests. Drivers were travelling along main roads from site to site in convoys, and some did get shot at. Talking to the locals was not encouraged. To be honest, the only benefit to work like this is the amount you get paid.

Agreed, but then careless talk costs lives to borrow a catchphrase, and events show that a persons conversations (or those purported to have taken place) were enough to have him hauled away to some nasty fate. The personality cult of emperors, and their own self-importance, wasn't going to sit well with criticism, never mind outright dissent. There's a totalitarian edge to roman society emerging in the late republic and certainly something we see going on in Tiberius' reign. That seems to be balanced before imperial times by a certain amount of commonsense and love of free speech, in that a free man should be able to speak his mind and that criticism was nothing unusual nor grounds for harsh punishment. This sense of freedom erodes in the late republic with Sulla using any excuse to enforce his 'new order', but interestingly, I don't read of Caesar being overly prone to this sort of activity, or have I missed something?

There was a film on release some years ago called Ronin, a tale of skulduggery as mercenaries are hired to retrieve a package. In one memorable scene, Robert De Niro finally loses his patience with Sean Bean whose character had made a big deal of having been an SAS soldier. "What colour is the boat-house at Hereford?" He yells at him. Sean Bean becomes flustered and cannot answer, exposed as an imposter. De Niro later admits to a witness that he doesn't know anything about a 'boat-house at Hereford'. Many years ago I was working diligently in a warehouse which regularly employed temporary staff. One young man was on my section and I noticed a certain wildness about him. Plenty of energy, cheerful personality, and, dare I say it, somewhat full of himself. Some time later we got talking and I asked what he'd done before he came here. "Oh... I was a mercenary" That raised my eyebrows. It wasn't just the uniqueness of his past experience (we didn't get many mercenaries working for us) but also his demeanour, which just wasn't military in any way. Now I'm no expert in that field but I simply could not see him in some foreign country earning his paycheck fighting private wars or guarding principals. So I asked a few questions and he sort of gave the right answers. Still not convinced. It so happens that last night I bumped into a guy I knew at school thirty years ago. It transpires he'd gone into the services and now worked as a bodyguard for celebrities and such, and was due to return to Iraq shortly. I mentioned that youngster I'd met back then and he shook his head, dismissing him as a fraud with typical military bluntness. Too young in his opinion. So we carried on talking and I enquired about his military career, and sure enough, he mentioned his association with 'that bunch at Hereford'. I groaned inwardly. This was hardly the first time an ex-squaddie had claimed affiliation with british special forces to me. Why do soldiers always claim to have been in the SAS? For all I know, he might have been, but it seems 'the regiment' is a necessary qualification these days. Whether you have the certificate or not. Expose of the Week Swindon is hardly a hotbed of mercenary activity. Its actually hard to think of Swindon as a hotbed at all. But even here the all-pervasive world of privatised military commerce reared its ugly head. On a door of an upstairs office located in our local high street (and above a bank) was an advertisement for tank transporter drivers, foreign contracts, good rates of pay. Forget your Rambo's or Arnie's, this was the real deal. No questions about boat-houses asked.

Its almost impossible to escape the news that the global banking system is wobbling. Governments are stepping in and in some cases, falling out (I refer to Britain freezing Icelandic assets over concerns about the amount of british money held there). One chap contacted the news team and said that forty years ago he needed an interview with his bank manager for a loan of

I seem to remember somewhere that a letter from one family member to another travelled across the mediterranean by the hand of a courier paid to deliver it. Given the romans had no sytem of adresses his task wasn't as easy as might be imagined, since he might only know the general area where they lived.

Tiberius was something of a misanthrope - he just didn't like people, and being somewhat disgruntled by undertaking public duty when he really wasn't that keen to do so, he was only too glad of the opportunity to retire in comfort and let someone he trusted take the strain of daily administration. Thats the key. Tiberius had come to trust Sejanus, and for that matter, Sejanus had gone to some trouble to earn it. What this means is that Sejanus wanted personal power and prestige. Whether or not he actually intended taking the throne is one thing, but while Tiberius was lolling on a couch in Capri, Sejanus could pretty well do as he liked and with a crowd of loyal heavies behind him, who could argue? Any dissent was silenced, and since Sejanus had the ear of Tiberius, he could tell the old man anything. Sejanus was therefore licking his rear for all he was worth.

Interesting view of a persian chariot there....

It had to happen. I've watched news reports and read the papers about how one company after another has raised energy prices enormously, and felt very smug that mine hadn't. Until now.... Usually I get pamphlets from them telling me about various offers and schemes (which cost money of course) but this time I got the letter that said sorry, but you're going to have to pay more. They're raising my electricity and gas prices by a third. Ouch! But then the prices they pay are nearly 200% higher, so can I complain? Well... Yes. Because I'm currently on benefits and I doubt they'll give me any more to cover the costs. The government have said they want to help those struggling to meet bills. Go on then. Or shall I vote for someone else? Tell you what, a few less holidays, plush apartments, and kitchen upgrades at the tax-payers expense might help me through the winter this year. Interview of the Week My quarterly benefits interview took place yesterday, and the young lady did her best to come across as professional and knowledgable. She told me with some bureaucratic enthusiasm about a scheme to get people to interviews at long distances. Great I said. But once I get the job, who pays for the travel? You won't. She didn't like that. I spoiled her moment of glory there with a dose of practicality, something these job agency people really don't consider since they never have to deal with it. They talk about public transport as if its a free service door to door. It isn't. So I'll stick to local employers thank you, and save some money by making a few less journeys like that.

What we have here are two different mindsets. On the one hand, a woman from alaska who thinks nothing of a dead bear, since the things are everywhere in that country and no small risk to communities - and they are expanding into human settlements as scavengers, so the risk is increasing. Its also little removed from frontier country thus the shooting of animals means little to them. On the other hand we have the modern western view that any intereference in fluffy bears lives is an offence en par with serial killing. Here in comfortable WIltshire we don't get bears nosing through our rubbish. (We only have one poisonous snake - and its a shy little thing I've only seen in the wild once). Cruelty for the sake of it I disagree with, but life and death is a natural part of our world. You see, if someone soots a bear because its dangerous to people around, I can understand it. If they shoot it to survive, for meat or furs, I can accept that. If its shot to advertise the shooters body parts, then I would have to say thats wrong. The fact there's a bearskin behind Ms Palin is inconsequential in my view, since I doubt the bear was killed to provide a backdrop in this pic, and she comes from a part of the world where they have a more practical view of these things. In any case, however stupid her views about the enviroment might be, there's plenty of idiots spouting there opinions of it on tv these days, so I guess its only a matter of which idiot you want to believe.

Pardon? I was genuinely curious about your perception of classical culture given you live in a nation whose constitution is based on their ideals. Posturing wasn't my intent, I do apologise if you thought so.