caesar novus

Kosmo can correct me, but I think females entirely lack the y-group chromosomes that they use to track the male half of your family tree. Males carry clones of both the fathers y-group and mothers mitochondrial genes. So it may help to get a male relative tested for the y-group. I recall the national geographic tests being done in halves at half price for this. Or pursuade a male relative to get the whole test, or give it as a present (if you are sure they are related). These are not the normal functional genes that are discussed in the blogs, but strange useless ones that are much easier to track heritage from since they don't mix but are cloned. Another issue (if I am correct) is that these totally ignore the vast majority of your family tree... only applying to your fathers-fathers-fathers... or mothers-mothers-mothers individual at each generation. Furthermore they track specific mutations that often happened so many tens of thousands of years ago (they can usually estimate when your markers developed) that these proto groups were hiding behind a glacier in turkey somewhere long before they split up to arrive in Finland, Portugal or whatever. An old marker is disappointing because it tells you so little and for such a vanishing small sample of your family tree. For an old marker they will tell you that groups over half the world have it, yet that migration happened AFTER the mutation and your ancestors never went or came from there. P.S. I expect we all originate not from Africa, but Ile Amsterdam. This is because there are no genetic markers showing aborigines migrating thru Asia to Australia. Therefore, I have made an imperial deduction that mankind started in this island in the southern Indian ocean and caught passing icebergs to Africa and equadistant Australia!

Oh, I should give more benefit of the doubt that jet lag affected the unscripted part of his lecture. Often they announce in the intro to these talks that the guy has flown all night to arrive here for the start of a long weekend. The intro was truncated due to a pre-talk demo which really confused me. I thought I had come at the wrong time because my trusty watch had expired and even my mp3 player couldn't confirm the time.

I went to a gladiator talk by the celebrated Roman scholar Garrett Fagan, author of: http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&field-author=Garrett%20G.%20Fagan&page=1&rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_27%3AGarrett%20G.%20Fagan It was quite entertaining, but that seemed to be the point more than shedding much light. But I will try to share a few points, esp on new unpublished findings. Well, he showed some stone carvings of arena antics freshly unearthed. I forget if old or new, but there was a lot of bear vs man battles. Not lethal, but actual boxing matches or just a guy hiding from a bear behind a screen that rotated on a pivot. Kind of like a bullfighters cloth, but fancier. Anyway, he seemed to drive at the artificial theatricality of the animal and human battles... not so much actual violence. Half way to modern wrestling for TV, it could even approach circus type acts with people or animals suspended in the air with ropes. Gladiator losers seemed to frequently be given mercy, and their costumes were not that of actual foreign fighters. Just fantasy costumes, but they would be highly trained in that role and no other. Showed much rigging for releasing animals, etc, and some strange but common setup for "ramp fighters". Then in the q and a portion, he seemed to lose the plot. Serious issues were raised, like were christians really never executed in colluseum, which he seemed to dodge or give flippant or sensational answers. I think he did know the answers, but wanted to keep the jovial tone. Or his jokes about his water bottle containing gin were really true. He gave the impression of a common phenom of a UK scholar (including Dublin in UK, ha ha) who goes on to higher income in the US with crowd pleasing skills... probably gets perfect approval scores by his amused but not too educated students. He did give some nice "great courses" lecture series on Romans though.

If the forum site is to be eternally awaiting maintenance, maybe I had better correct a wrong impression I posted there. The really appealing Minerva magazine, http://minervamagazine.co.uk/ with a lot of coverage of Roman archeology and history... really is giving Roman coins with some of it's subscriptions (auto renewing or 3 yr minimum). I reported that their website blew up when I attempted my (intnl) subscription, and gave up when no billing appeared. But now I've got my coin, mag, and bill... something to keep that Roman fix coming (altho not cheap). P.S. if someone knows how to contact the admin for this site, they should remind that admin that klingan or whatever Patrick from Sweden goes by made an offer to take over the upkeep of this site. I can probably find how to contact Patrick if you can get the OK from the Austrian admin.

The Italian count, under pressure from Mussolini, did allow the Germans to photocopy it (itself an ancient copy, Tacitus original being lost). Then the issue becomes will it be brought to Germany as an icon, then destroyed or looted. Oh I suppose the same could have happened if the "liberation" of Italy was even more violent... witness the loss of Roman Imperial barges that Mussolini had excavated. Anyway, the story told by the son of the count almost defies belief. The manuscript stayed in the villa and the count's family stayed in another villa that was known and repeatedly ransacked by specially-sent German contingents. They all stayed safely hidden in place, until the Italian gov't required the manuscript to be presented in Florence on the day of the mega flood (1966?). So the narrative was interesting, but how over the top was the "dangerous" quote from Wiki? I suppose Germania's prominence wasn't a so much a cause of ultra-nationalism as an effect. But let's not underestimate it as a reinforcement block or warning sign. I'm reading the free kindle version of 1936 Fodor European guidebook where Brits are reassured how safe it is to go to the olympics in Germany for instance. They say the extreme prevalence of uniforms by men, women, and children is not a sign of old style militarism, but their reveling in military wear is equally matched by their love of peace. Then I switch to accounts 6 years later of British merchantmen and sailors on suicide missions to supply Malta, for instance by a sailor who lost his parents to German bombs and was himself sunk, only to be rescued and sunk again days later. Foreigners were especially welcomed at 1936 olympics not only for propaganda, but for foreign exchange which was desperately needed in order to stockpile modern war supplies. To be fair, although naziism became popular I don't think that implied widespread support of foreign invasions or violent racism. Maybe Germans envisioned at most an economic union with Belorussia, Ukraine, and deporting recent jewish economic immigrants. Hitler's invasions were often met internally with dread until victory reports came back. Public violence against jews were surprisingly controversial even at the leadership level, with Goering and even Himmler livid at the way Goebbels put the SA on a rampage for crystal night. Himmler had ordered a more humane "appearing" event and had demanded his orders be repeated back to him from all locations. I wonder if Germania text had any influence on the composer R. Wagner in the 1800's. Just when I thought nazism could be explained as dysfunctional reactions to marxist revolutions of 1917 in Russia and 1918/9 in Bavaria and economic collapse, I hear some snippets of Wagner's essays in a music lecture series that sound as rabid as Goebbels. On the other hand I am reading a Japanese sub (I-boat) commander that surely read no Tacitus yet stayed unrepentantly fascist postwar. Says they had a right to overlord millions of mainland asia, just as the US occupied spanish Texas-to-California. Sorry, but those spanish territories were nearly abandoned at the time, and the sparse population needed basics of law, order, and defense from somebody. The sub commander says their massive slaughter of Chinese civilians were no worse than that of American Indians, but the latter was not a systematic killing of dense populations but rather a chaotic or mismanaged arrangement of inevitable jump to the much higher carrying capacity of that land.

That quote in my title comes from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germania_(book)#Reception , and most of the text is in http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/tacitus1.html . Idea came from sort of a junky but fascinating documentary on discovery military channel (Myth Hunters). Some Italian count was amazingly successful in keeping "Germania" by Tacitus out of the hands of persistant Nazi intruders, only to have it almost ruined in the flood of Florence. The manuscript was used in medieval times to try to rally Germans to defend against Turks, and again used as a (false) foundation myth in the 1930/40s. Apparently Tacitus was referring to a warlike tribe not actually dna related to modern Germans, and mostly made it up anyway?

. I downloaded it, and spot checks suggest this is a SERIOUSLY good lecture series. "Understanding greek and roman technology" has better graphics, more Roman focus and more enthusiastic presentation than in his "understanding world structures" series. I originally tried to spend my bucks on a subscription to "Minerva" archeo magazine which is giving away free roman coins for the occasion, but their signup website barfed on me. So I realized I had discount codes for similarly priced greatcourses... coupon code w4k4 gave me $10 off thru Dec 30 and priority code 89162 gave me almost the 80% off that the website was offering anyway. The lengthy download barfed in the middle, but let me retry to completion.

Steven H. Rutledge Imperial Inquisitions: Prosecutors and Informants from Tiberius to Domitian This had a sensationalist ring for a nonfiction book on Romans, so I dove in. Read the preface and the author undercuts the title (maybe chosen by marketing dept?) on how the informers and malicious prosecutors were not so much a tool of tyranny but sometimes a counterbalance against corruption and intrigue. OK, still sounds interesting until I hit the introduction and first half of book which turns out to be splitting a lot of scholarly hairs. However the second half of book is worth flipping thru because of the thumbnail sketches of ALL known Roman empire snitches and hostile prosecutors... everything that is known about each individual. Gives interesting snapshot of unexpected things, like a merciful intervention by Tiberius on some trivial case. One person is accused of using a chamberpot while wearing a ring with Tiberian portrait - he he. Holy cow, this book costs over a hundred dollars on kindle! Find other formats or weigh it's value to you with this review http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2001/2001-09-39.html Re: Financial digression on previous post (can exit here) ......................... Beware of authors picking and choosing stories to support a sensational sellable picture. Banks were originally horrified at the politicians battering and bashing them to give mortgages to the insolvent. Obam himself rammed lawsuits with the usual claims of racism to force a no-income group to be given mortgages, with the result that it ruined their financial lives and they are now publicly regretful. Under both Clinton and Bush this bank bashing by the gov't and fannie/freddie just broke the back of responsible bankers. So they just gave up and let a cadre of kook bankers try to make the new irrationality pay it's way somehow. Now gov't punishes a bank (MS?) for the sins of the bank they altruistically took over at gov't request to prevent damage to customers or gov't bailout. They further grossly over-fine them hundreds of millions recently for a mistake overseas that had near zero financial impact. The main problem with US unions is the legal loophole that allows them to become a monopoly force. FDR was totally against gov't unions because it is a monopoly against the taxpayers. Then JFK legalized this nightmare and we are just behind Spain where air traffic controllers get over a million dollars a year and still paralyze the country with strikes http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1244156/Spanish-air-traffic-controllers-earn-800-000--replaced-automatic-systems.html . Where I live, food and supplies mostly depend on unionized unskilled with extortionate six figure incomes to not strike, such as a morse code officer (completely obsolete do-nothing job forced on company). There is a special national law that protects unions from charges of cross company monopolies (against consumers). Do you remember the abysmal quality of US cars in the days before imports broke their monopoly? The recent bailout of GM (costing unrecoverable billions) was naked lawless populism. The bondholders were robbed... against hundreds of years of law saying they were the last to lose out! This is the traditional investment of widows and orphans, or at least pensions which suffer low returns for safety. But they were robbed because the unions were given the stock that is supposed to take the risk. I'm talking about the lawless way of the rescue, not whether there should have been breaks given to them (like the corp tax break they got).

I'm warming up to the Japanese I-boat/sub commander story the most http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/77669087 . I think our view of the Pacific theater is weakened by less dialog with the enemy actors post war. That and a language problem leaves us with one dimensional view vs the Euro get togethers of US/Brit/German for post mortem analyses. This author has got a big ego and he's in the right places at the right times with the best equipment, but accomplishes almost nothing. Besides his direct accounts of key battles, and sharing what almost happened (how we unknowingly dodged bullets) he networked with other commanders and consulted postwar documentation (not translated yet?) to give his spin on the history. He has quite an anti-US and anti-prewar-FDR bias that is stimulating to unpack. Watch as he just misses opportunities to shell SFO and torpedo various carriers. . . My impressions of Russian waste of their own lives was based on anecdotes from early and late periods, such as Zhukov racing peers towards Berlin and spending double the lives if it saves him a day. If he was more careful of lives in the middle periods, that's fine. But if the attrition ratio is comparable to Hitler in retreat, that is no point in Zhukov's favor. Hitler had that crazy scheme of no-retreat fortresses, and liked to starve experienced units of supplies in favor of inexperienced ones to give the opportunity of Darwinian survival of the fittest (punish the experienced troops who may have wasted too much ammo). Also Goebbels arranged to have great numbers of retreating soldiers hung, EVEN when this demonstratedly included innocent and vital couriers. As for Bernanke, I rejoiced when he was appointed... even with no knowledge of what challenges he would face and with what policy bias he would apply. He not only studied the depression in depth (anyone can do that), but moved the state of understanding of it with rare insight. I don't rejoice for the elderly Berkeley professor-ess that will replace him with the same current policy - she seems stuck on that for the wrong reasons and may give us another repeat of the Carter admin inflation. I didn't mean Bernanke had anything to do with populism... he is mostly independant of that, but has to set policy on the basis of counteracting stupid populist elected gov't measures that have strangled growth in the name of employee entitlement or bank bashing etc. It's like being on a boat where the mob has a big rudder pointed in a self destructive direction. Bernanke has only a little steering oar to dip in and counteract it a bit. His policies may look backwards in the abstract, but in the context of what he is dealing with and his small leverage, his most every move has turned out amazing in hindsight.

I hope a distinction is made between price inflation and monetary inflation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_inflation . Monetary inflation is the devaluing of money, but is most definitely not the same as rising prices or wages. Price inflation is influenced by additional things like resource depletion that may be temporary or avoidable by switching to an alternative. The worst policies come from confusing these two... such as workers, pensioners, gov't payments factoring in "price" inflation rather than just "monetary" inflation. Same for the Romans; shed tears mainly for those who can't keep up with monetary inflation but not price. If the price of grapes doubles due to a bad harvest, switch to having servants pop plums in your mouth for heavens sake. Same thing in the modern case; some get undeserved price inflation payouts for items in inflation indices that they don't need, and it simply robs the folks who don't get the undeserved boost (monetary inflation payout boost OK). Edit: for instance, say copper mines are running low and it takes twice as much labor to extract the same amount of copper. This is price inflation, but not at all monetary inflation. No tears or pension boosts should be paid out to cover this increase in cost of living, or the system just goes berserk and consumes itself. Theoretically the whole working class could have to be devoted to supporting pensioners need just for copper (such as in San Francisco who enforces laws preventing substitution of plastic for copper pipes but doesn't enforce laws against copper theft).

Principles of War is downloadable on an army web page of Ft Leavenworth KS pamphlets from Combat Studies Institute. Seems to be a translation (by Joseph West) of a Japanese guidebook only slightly modified beyond ww2 to include one cold war issue. At first glance, looks pretty cool. Brief, eccentric, and to the point. I haven't read much because it is a type of pdf that my ink type kindle is sloooow to render. maybe here http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/cgsc/carl/download/csipubs/PrinciplesOfWar.pdf

(reply to above) "Herodotus"... All previous translations are claimed to be obsolete with the new release by Holland, according to http://www.spectator.co.uk/books/9097452/the-histories-by-herodotus-review/ "Zhukov"... The excessive attrition rate he inflicted on his own army mars his great record, and I hope he had some regrets about this even though virtually mandated by Stalin. "Bernake" [sic]... Bernanke was maybe the only real adult in the room among all leaders of this century so far, with economic lifesaving realism that benefited the globe. His detractors fail to recognize that more ideal reformist solutions were infeasible due to populist politics (Greek rather than Roman style democracy = two wolves and a lamb voting on what's for dinner). Loaded on my new kindle: Now that I no longer even try graphics-rich pdfs that freeze or crash the thing, I am progressing mainly on history titles from the 1930's and 40's, I loaded older books, but it can be so tedious to get past their typically lengthy preliminaries because my kindle is slow to turn pages. One is Mussolini's Rome which claims the present appearance of medieval and ancient Rome is more influenced by his regime than just a few new roads and facades. Also the first 1936 Fodor tourist guide of Europe (free amazon download) gives a prewar view of, say, charming Antwerp just before it was accidentally pulverized by the Luftwaffe. Italy is depicted as being sort of a exasperating banana republic. "Air to Ground Battle for Italy" promises to give a U.S strafing-eye-view of maybe too much collateral cost for the damage they actually did to Kesselring. "Hitler's Hangman" puts a different spin on "plucky Czechs kill a monster". The Czechs overwhelmingly did not want to risk retribution for this assassination, which was pushed by the Brits with suggestions of leaving them Nazi occupied post-war. I guess the respected author promises to show Heydrich was less an inherent monster and more a product of his environment, but we'll see. From the Pacific theatre I have a Japanese principles of war, and a "I-boat Captain" memoir. The latter shows how "peacenik" Yamamato pushed for Pearl Harbor attack against wide opposition, and how the attack almost fell apart due to many last minute challenges. Author is fairly unrepentant and puts various attacks in a defensive spin (what's that term for attacking to prevent their attack?). Well, I've got Roman empire for dummies and idiots... with the auto bookmarking I can sample then flit on elsewhere on a whim. Maybe I should increase the quality of reading by spending on some 99 cent titles that hold my interest longer. I was creeped out by an apple computer highlighting the music I last loaded on my Kindle from an independent Windows system. Who is monitoring this even with 3g off? Anyway, since Kindle doesn't shuffle I have to load music that stands up to heavy repeated playing of the first few titles.

Gentium stock rose over 12% just today. That about equals the entire last 12 months of London stock market return, which highly paid people try to beat by even just a bit. So again Italian knowhow turns pig guts and human urine into gold... I am reminded of the ancient Roman urine collectors (for laundry cleaning ammonia?) and animal guts diviners.

When I have been camping, there was not the slightest impulse to get up needlessly in wee hours... especially in the damp cold, the getting up is painful and not to be repeated. But even without lighting equipment, we would stay up well after sunset.

I had downloaded 2 free kindle books (find them on amazon) that touch on this. One, called something like Private lives of the Romans has chapters on the typical roman day, and on the hours scheme. Another's title starts out with Ancient Rome (IIRC). I'm starting to forget which said which, and you had to cross reference stuff in different chapters (with a hotlink that your kindle app or hardware can follow). Basically they suggested they ate the big meal of the day just before sunset, then immediately konked off to sleep. There weren't night events to speak of... you had to socialize during, not after the meal. But then you arose extremely early... breakfast could start at 4am, and by then lawyers and authors may have been working since 3. I'm sure there are a thousand counter examples, but this is what these hundred year old books said. They said most work and public events (we are talking mid/upper class) was finished before noon lunch and then there was an hour siesta after. Afternoon for baths, theater, exercise, socializing, then supper. I fail to see the need for them to rest again after getting up in the wee hours and looking forward to siesta. Some famous Roman author I read wrote to warn husbands from visiting slave quarters at night. He pointed out you would set an example for your wife to do the same during your frequent absences, with obvious consequences about not knowing the paternity of her future children among other things.

I'm listening to Paul Theroux's "Dark Star" travels thru Egypt, etc. His (always) negative impressions echoed my own experience long ago. A big bank had only nonworking ink pens set out, and a teller very sneakily stole my own. Cold blooded gratuitous cruelty to coptic or gypsy trash pickers. Jewish American tourists stopping over on the way to Israel treating the sites with comtempt... we on group tours wasted half our time waiting for them to no-show, and eventually our guide abandoned all of us. Oh, there was the nice time a felucca captain overheard me expounding on sailing and gave me the helm. Then he "fires" me due to not realizing you have to point absurdly high into the wind since they don't have daggerboards or whatever to reduce slippage. Their economy is very unfair because they don't have the basic legal infrastructure for a free market system to function on. Unable to get land titles for their homes and biz for example, corruption, etc.

An update on the chaotic fate of Egyptian antiquities also has some hopeful notes: http://news.yahoo.com/egypt-39-antiquities-fall-victim-political-chaos-073640237.html I'm glad to see they are trying to spread out the Cairo collection to an adjacent building as well as one across the Nile. Precious mementos of the past need dispersion to protect them from disasters, and also to make easier for educational exposure across the globe. Remember how the Cairo museum was damaged due to riots a few years ago. I assume the museums of the world have halted their overeager repatriation activities of sending their Egyptian artifacts back to Egypt. More than just for clearly stolen articles, many curators of the west tried to fly their progressive flags by emptying out their collections to the shaky stewardship of Egypt, Greece, and Italy. I remember the Egyptian archeology official often on documentaries tended to bully foreign museums... was he the one fired in 2011? The root cause of the recent chaos in Egypt isn't fairly covered in the west. As I understand it, it wasn't second thoughts about a fairly elected leader. Rather it was the hijacking of their constitution by a fringe element who had squeeked by an election. I recall being outraged by our president O. throwing his support to the Islamic extremist now overthrown... there was a centrist candidate at the time who actually quoted Thomas Jefferson, and originally had a lot of support, partly because he seemed a safe bet in keeping the $billions of US aid flowing.

Just an observation of something that amazes me... an Italian biotech company stock has been rocketing up about 5 fold in the last few months http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?t=6m&s=GENT&l=off&z=l&q=l&c=efa&ql=1&c=^GSPC . Isn't the business environment hostile and crippled in Italy and Europe? Isn't Europe dead set against meddling with DNA, GMO, etc? Apparently people become less purist and more hypocritical when they are sick and someone else is paying their bills http://www.gentium.it/ . EDIT-> Ahh, I see their euro web page above doesn't highlight how their product is basically jamming pig DNA and human urine into patients (ok with me, if disclosed) http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=GENT . Actually I welcome their success, nestled just on the Milan side of Lake Como. But beware of investing in this ticker=GENT at such a high price because it can crash very suddenly.

I'm missing an easy fix? Aren't you supposed to be blocking my posts? Anyway I am wary about conventional lcd screens, because: IBM repairs quoted me $900 to replace a backlight on an old thinkpad. Then they agreed to do it free, but created other problems. A toshiba flickered out and I found an online fix instruction about microscopic resoldiering of a plug behind the screen. I extended the life by periodically opening up and just wiggling the plug until losing patience. My 2 17" apple pro laptops lost their screens and I use TV out instead. Well, one of them had a posted fix where apple kindly replaced some unreliable graphic chip out of warrantee. I described the other problem with the apple genius who kind of hinted it was a messy power supply problem to the screen. As for tablets, I moderate a forum for a tablet brand with particularly troublesome screens. Folks occasionally describe how they replaced them, but it doesn't sound pretty. The problem is inherent with their frugal design anyway. Oh, I just got notified of my Kindle DX shipment, but found my local library mainly supports Kindle Fires (which just went off their cybermonday sale prices).

. I need pretty big fonts and still may have to view pdfs by the half page if the DX sharpness doesn't make up for it. Amzn still haven't shipped or given me a DX delivery date after several days, yet they are now airmailing 3 gallons of something I hardly need at no extra cost! I love big screens... you should see pdf on my 13" laptop folded into tablet mode and rotated to portrait... luxury! But all my laptops have died due to screen failures, and I don't want to burn extra hours e-reading on them. Same for an 11.5 inch android tablet I ordered from China... pdf looks marginally good, but all my bargain tablets develop touch problems in midlife, so I don't want to kill big, more expensive ones early just staring at books. One solution is to convert pdf to epub or whatever (losing a bit in translation) then reading on a smaller device which is cheap enough to bear the earlier screen failure. I don't like it too small so I am paging every few seconds. But the DX has a large-ish screen at a cheap, expendable price. Not only is it extra sharp but can work in bright outside light, which I want. My wifi router security setup is maxed out with device count, but the DX can use free 3G. Ahh, the anticipation is always greater than the reality.

. Maybe this sale indicates they are clearing out stock for an improved DX, although today they have extended the huge price cuts to some fire models. I can't find any academia forum, unless you mean the Brazilian one. Oh goodie, I have lots of .epub and .pdf available. Strange how amazon isn't giving me any delivery date on the DX after a full day, yet they are working on 30 minute deliveries by drone:. .

Ok, sort of a note to myself. I recalled manybooks.net having more free books out of copyright, and indeed it seems to offer .mobi and .azw which apparently is kindle compatible (send to it via usb cable rather than 3g). There are probably other sources too (gutenberg.whatever), all of which I need to experiment on before investing real bucks into newfangled "books in the cloud".

I saw an extremely cheap deal on amazon for their almost 10" non-color kindle so that I can read e-books even in bright daylight. I guess it is cheap due to no touch screen and clunky outdated firmware... perfect for the frugal! Also it runs on free(ish) 3g only, so can still run if no wifi. If I search on amazon for "Roman" kindle books and sort by low price, there is quite a number for free... any recommendations, since they aren't obviously winners? They do have a history->ancent->rome section with good looking mostly 99 cent books. I take it I can also load most any .pdf (or better yet .mobi?) such as from free archive.org and sometimes it will even convert it to spoken word.

My main point is the newly released 3D project for Hadrian's Villa http://vwhl.clas.virginia.edu/villa/ where you can savor this really important Tivoli site in reality or recreated 3D. I hope it makes anyone skipped that sidetrip out of Rome feel BAD :) I took the difficult public bus route there even when I was sick, hacking up blood everywhere. Here is a video on the project which is great for the first 15 minutes, then you may as well bail out of the self congratulating wrapup. Well, I do admit the architecture is a bit Greek and spindly compared to classic Rome, such as in ROME REBORN http://romereborn.frischerconsulting.com/about-current.php . I lost track of that project so much discussed here, and wonder if this is a cut down version of it. Anyway here is the superset of such digital 3d Rome projects from Virginia http://vwhl.clas.virginia.edu/projects.html . It used to be Google earth had an ancient Rome 3d overlay too that you could fly around in, but I cannot find it.

. There is wisdom to be found here. . In this environment of "lite" moderation, there is still a brute force approach (that I assume some folks have been applying to me). You can filter out people's posts by clicking your name (at top) and then on "manage ignore prefs". Just type in the first few letters of the names in question. I tried it, and it's not as extreme as it appears. You still see the headers of everyone's posts, but the targeted ones simply are reduced to a single line that you can click if you wish to see them. Not censoring... it even piques your curiosity to click to see what you're missing.