ASCLEPIADES

Jul 16 11:06 AM US/Eastern Iran on Monday launched a computer game with a strong political message that mixes the standoff over its nuclear programme, the mystery of missing diplomats in Lebanon and its hatred of Israel. Players of the game "Special Operation 85: Hostage Rescue" play the part of a special agent battling to release captured Iranian diplomats and nuclear scientists from the clutches of his US and Israeli foes. The game has been produced by the Union of the Islamic Students, which was behind the infamous "World Without Zionism" conference in 2005 where President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for Israel to be "wiped from the map". "In this game we are not promoting terrorism and violence. By freeing Iranian hostages we are promoting selflessness, devotion and defence of our country," said the group's secretary general Mohammad Taghi Fakhrian. The eight-level game starts in Iraq, where a young married couple who are Iranian nuclear scientists have been captured by US forces while making a pilgrimage to the Shiite holy shrine in Karbala. Enter Iranian special operations officer Bahman Nasseri, whose mission it is to save the couple, named Saeed and Maryam, who have now been spirited away to a prison in Iran's arch-foe Israel. He slips into Israel and locates their prison. In a twist, here he finds locked away not only the young scientists but also four other Iranians who in real life have been missing since disappearing in northern Lebanon at the height of the civil war in 1982. COMPLETE STORY

Salve, BH. Yes, it is, you're right. Congratulations! Your turn.

Salve, Lady N. Let my try a blanagram for you, pleeease. You

Salve, guys! This is what the superb website of the Friesian sachool has to said about the Angel(o)i: The worst dynasty in Roman history. Alexius IV brings in the Fourth Crusade, with impossible promises, to restore his incompetent father, and only succeeds in losing Constantinople to a foreign enemy for the first time ever. This may qualify as the true "Fall of Rome." The damage was bad enough, with many treasures and archives destroyed or carted off to Venice. Unlike the Goths at Rome in 410, the Crusaders stuck around for 60 years, with steadily decreasing success.

Salve, guys and Ladies. I think that for newbies, this migth be a good LIST. (Un)fortunately, the site's language is German. Excuse me, but I would prefer not to add the translation. Anyway, I hope you find it useful.

Salve, guys and Ladies! Hmmm... COME ON! Let's hear some educated guesses before we come to the clues/additional images section. Good luck!

Salve , guys! About THIS LINK; if you can't follow it, you can paste directly the URL: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender...mp;blobtype=pdf Anyway , here is the methodology section (how they did it): The ancient population was obtained from the Oxford Classical Dictionary4 and consisted initially of every male entered in the Dictionary who has been accorded either firm dates of birth and death or circa dates. When a date was quoted as a range (usually consecutive years), the mean was calculated. The total number of individuals in the resulting sample was 397. Of these, 99 met violent ends by assassination, forced suicide or death in battle. They were rejected from the series, leaving a final total of 298. Firm dates had been accorded to 70 of these; the remaining 228 were in the circa group. Females were not included on the grounds that the sexes might differ in life expectancy. Modern male populations for comparison with the ancient group were obtained from Chambers Biographical Dictionary5. Thus, both ancient and modern samples were comparable with respect to males who survived into adulthood and who achieved notability (or notoriety). Three modern groups were examined. One group consisted of males who died in or after 1950 AD. The two other groups died between 1850-1899 and between 1900-1949, respectively. In each group, every third appropriate entry was taken in order to eliminate possible familial influences, i.e.if father and son had both been included. The groups were compared statistically by means of the nonparametric Mann-Whitney U-test6. TO BE CONTINUED ...

Salve, H. HERE is a very cool depiction of this dynasty and its main characters. Unfortunately, its language is German. I hope you find it useful. Good luck!

Here is the introduction of this study: It is axiomatic that the inhabitants of the ancient world did not live as long as we do today. For example, Deevey(1) reported that the average length of life in ancient Greece was 35 years whereas in classicalRome it was even shorter at 32 years. Dorn (2) revised these figures downwards to less than 30 years and contrasted them with the average of 70 years in North America and Western Europe in 1959-1960. In a more recent survey Garland3 concludes that life expectancy for both men and women in ancient Greece was 'well below fifty'. The figures quoted by Deevey and Dorn are estimates of the average length of life of every member of the sample population. This includes those who succumbed in infancy and early childhood, thevictims of fatal accidents, and those who met violent deaths. However, did the survivors of these perils live for a shorter time than those of today? A study of these survivors would supply more information about genetic and constitutional influences on health than the mortality of the total population. A murdered man has nothing to say on this score. To test the hypothesis that the survivors ofyore did live as long as their counterparts of today, a study has been made of the lengths of life of ancient Greeks and Romans whose dates of birth and death are known to us either firmly or with a close degree of approximation. These have then been compared statistically with similar population samples from recent times.

Interesting article indeed, MPC. I think you can expect similar measures restricting archeological trade all over the region. These are apparently sad news for collectors, but probably very good news for the preservation of heritage sites and, therefore, to the study of Classical Antiquity.

I think I even have that - try either La rete stradale romana fra Brescia, Bergamo e Milano. Vecchie e nuove prospettive (Coradazzi, 1974). or if it was not there, its the even more chunky Strade romane: Percorsi e infrastrutture: Rome, Bretschneider 1993 (Gigli Quilici) sicuramente, nell Italiano, invece ... in my Bibliography suggestions I have also Ray Laurence, ,The Roads of Roman Italy Routledge 1999 E. Ruoff-V

Salve, guys! Since I have a tendency to pessimism (or to well informed optimism), whatever were my position at the army, I suppose I would have ended as a slave (excuse me: "war prisoner").

Salve, V! THIS LINK gives some historical data about dreadlocks, including what I consider a valid point; Caesar probably never said the "hair like snakes" quote, as it is commonly claimed. I hope you find this stuff useful.

Nope, not Plautus. For that, you may read Columella.

I think we are talking here about the same Georgi Kitov that had some problems with the Bulgarian police concerning looting. Does anybody know more about this matter?

Salve,guys! HERE links to an recent article of National Geographic News about Robin Crompton's team work that suggests bipedalism can be adaptive in the trees, predating hominids. What do you think about it?

Salve, guys! Honestly, this stuff is an IMPRESSIVE PIECE OF WORK by any standard; I became exhausted with less than half of the reading, so I'm sorry but I will need more than a moment just to check it out. Congratulations!

Despite repeated attempts to teach them to do so, non-human primates have never been shown to spontaneously invent rules for grammatically marking number and aspect, or to engage in ternary relational reasoning with perceptual distractors, which are tasks that young human children can learn almost effortlessly and often with no (effective) direct instruction. Thank you for that explanation, MPC. I have now officially labeled myself a non-human primate! Salve, guys! That makes two of us, and counting, TA.

Not sure I agree with you there. America may have attempted to absorb different cultures with complete toleration, but I don't believe that that will continue much longer, mainly because, being so large, different areas of the states have different cultural leanings. The question now, as for the Romans, is whether or not the geographical and cultural diversity will lead to a decline in unity should pressure be put upon the whole country. We'll have to wait and see! Salve, S! OK, until now, ALMOST perfect (emphasis in almost) as far as I know.

Salve, guys! Cal... WOWWW. What an ordered and thorough commentary! BTW, I am one of those mewbies. The issue of hte height could have been biased (vg, because of the sample size). Maybe tall barbarians with linguistic problems would have been bad candidates for training. Whatever it means, I am sure a violent lifestyle has nothing to do with your growing potential. Contrary to common belief, vegetarian diets could be very high in protein.

The phrase that you underline is not from me, but from the author (Dr. MR Nelson). His e-mail is posted at the heading of the article, so you can make this question directly to him. Please be patient, I will post soon the remaining of the article. Good luck!

Salve, guys. America, the great melting pot, would be in fact a counter-example for this thesis , as it has tolerated perfectly well (emphasis in perfectly) the "inmigation pressures" of Irish, Jews, Italians, Japanese, Chinese, German and a lot, lot, lot more.

Salve,M! Gratiam habeo. IOU another one. And yes, I this place should be familiar to a lot of us. Good luck.

Salve, guys! I suppose that means this is my turn. As usual, I will have to ask for the help of friends or strangers to do the uploading of this picture. The best I can do is to leave THIS LINK. I think this is an easy one. Good luck!

Salve, guys! I will post a little later the remaining of this article. MC, as you can see, it has nothing to do with molds. Read it, don't be lazy.