caesar novus

Now I ran across a SECOND brain-science lecture series with a similar neurological hypothesis for such dreams. It's not an interest area of mine; I just put them on my ipod to distract me from boring walks. Both suggest we are testing out scenarios and their implications, and hardwiring brain cell connections so that we can quickly respond to real life situations to either pursue or avoid memorized results. They can wire up people learning new stuff, and find subjects sort new knowledge out with extended REM phase (dreaming) sleep. Contrast that with the oblivious expressions of a child in danger, or a new student in an extreme sport - not that instant recognition of unfolding problems. Not that this neuro explanation denies any symbolic interpretations, but it can give comfort to some of us who find our dreams weird or irrelevant. Hmm, this dialog is remarkably close to the satire video by an Italian pop star posted here in Et Cetera some months ago on what english sounds like to non-english speakers. Maybe the toddler simply understood by gestures that she was supposed to say something. IIRC the video subtitles repeatedly said: "Prisincolinensinainciusol - Oll Raight!" I found it can be interesting to read the version relating to your home country as well. It's surprising how there are conventions and rituals that not only outsiders find strange, but the native borne find annoying as well. I mean things that natives quietly endure because to defy them is such an insult. I expect such things in Japan, but not so many in Italy, or especially the US. Italians accept many obligations to family and their bureaucracy that outsiders and even some Italians may chafe under. I even found the Culture Shock USA book supporting my pet peeves about certain annoying partying conventions, which they claimed everyone silently hates as well.

A 1992 one has cleaner, less archaic phrasing than the free 1800's transations: http://www.amazon.com/The-Worldly-Wisdom-Baltasar-Gracian/dp/0385421311 . The rave customer reviews there should come with a caveat - reading this can make you feel sick about times you fell afoul from those real-world guidelines, thinking it was enough to simply be thoughtful and goodhearted in life. You may wish you read it earlier in life.

Wow, it was with frequent documentary celebrity Darius Arya, whose discoveries have been well discussed in this forum, like It seemed an unusually well done episode of House Hunters Intnl ("modern living in central Rome") and well worth watching for reruns. Not the usual whining that they demand space for their furniture and visitors. Less grandiose than in the documentaries, they give great vignettes of his kids among the ruins. Daughter: "How big is this guy?" Darius: "He wasn't a big guy per se, he just wanted to say 'I'm important'". Younger daughter when asked to say grazie (thank you) to gelato vendor: "Mineidiswatapaneeddowahad" (it was subtitled). Supportive Darius: "All right!". Younger daughter is seen hugging a plastic bag of pretty market food - I know just how she feels.

Must be the Rome archeologist one, which I recorded but first must build up courage to watch. Maybe if I wear a hernia belt or something I won't writhe with jealousy so much. They have had several episodes in Naples and lesser known Italian villages. There is a book called something like Culture Shock Italy aimed at new residents which gives a darker side of a lot of annoying complications. Another way to live second hand thru a move to Rome is to follow Klingan's old blog http://ancientandold.blogspot.com/2009/03/day-one_4668.html (keep hitting the "newer post" button).

I daydream a lot of walking or flying over the Appian way or obscure parts of the Roman wall. But you remind me of when US credit card companies started freezing accounts after your first European charge, assuming that if you hadn't warned them of your trip it must be fraudulent use. Quite embarrassing on your second Italian hotel checkout, especially after a long friendly stay and rush to make a plane. I've been listening to a lecture course on memory and it had amazing connections with dreams and that other mode of deeper sleep. I guess dreams are key to you working thru physical tasks and making them able to happen subconsiously with you just focusing on refining them while awake. Your body secretes chemicals to try to freeze your movement immediately before dreams. Histimine is involved, so anti histimine cold pills may alter this. The other mode of sleep helps integrate/store memories for nonphysical things. Somehow it all makes sense when they review how infants are always sleeping, elders not needing much sleep (no longer learning), and unusual people not needing much of one or the other kind of sleep (Napoleon, etc). But I forget...

Well, some top German aces called the P-51 the best of all. But I think we just missed having a good fly off test in a recent hour documentary on the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine where Spifire owner Alain de Cadenet (also race car celebrity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_de_Cadenet ) had a P-51 ride in his "Renaissance Man" series. I noticed such pain and regret in his normally teflon aristocratic face, and I believe he had just lost the chance to take over the controls for a bit. A microphone glitch during a brief break in the weather seemed to force him into just riding it like a sack of potatoes rather than back-seat piloting under supervision of the museum rep. The Merlin was portrayed as the engine that won the (European) war, with it being used by Spitfire, P-51, British bombers, etc. They said what made that engine great was an excellant supercharger, although it couldn't reach potential until America supplied high octane fuel. Germany used lower octane fuel due to being often synthesized from coal. They gave a subtle jab at Henry Ford who reneged on building Merlins when he found some would be used by Britain (IIRC he had some Nazi sympathies early on, which might have had real consequences). P.S. I think the US made fine superchargers and turbos, but they rationed them mostly to radial engines for some reason.

Sounds like all is forgiven, and probes into a wall may have found the "best Leonardo" painting? http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2012/03/12/world/europe/AP-EU-Italy-Da-Vinci.html?_r=1&ref=news

Oops, if I had waited I could have added the interesting angle to "Berlin Diary" where Nazis tour correspondents thru recently occupied benelux and french territories. Interesting to see tension of German troops torn between befriending at least gentile populations vs looting and scaring them from resistance. Only Belgium (and Dunkirk) showed signs of organized defensive battles. And I am guessing bomber Harris read his diary accounts of how early British bombing of Berlin etc shocked the population and cracked morale that had been based on false propaganda. Later I guess they got hardened to it just when the allies turned up the heat. The Emperor's Handbook by Marcus Aurelius http://alumni.eecs.berkeley.edu/~rayning/Marcus-Aurelius-Hicks-excerpts.html I don't know if it is my Hicks's translation but I see this as not strictly stoic but kind of wimpy/passive stoic. The perfect guide to letting your son grow up to be a monster emperor, as did happen. Isn't there a tough minded stoicism, like the amazing way Rome fought Hannibal when all appeared lost? Interesting to hear an emperors voice though. The Art of Worldly Wisdom by Balthasar Gracian 1637 http://www.sacred-texts.com/eso/aww/ I have much better more recent translation than that link, and it is a great collection of maxims on how to thrive in a world of mischief that tries to grind down the good and the smart. More readable than Machiavelli. Funny, pithy, and timeless.

Well, on the individual level I think that movie at least shows how you might use Gandhi's bag of "shaming" tricks to your advantage in a Machiavellian way once in a while. Especially with a bad neighbor - you tend to shy away from direct confrontation anyway because it can turn into a poisonous feud, and now you are stuck in each others face all the time. At the mass historical level, Gandhi is taken as the inspiration to Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, and various democracy protests like China 1989. I suspect that MLK did engender restraint and genuine shame to defuse a LOT of potential violence in bringing on US civil rights. Not sure about the South African/Zimbabwe changeover - there were some distasteful flavors of substituting one gang of overlords to another abusive one. China case didn't actually accomplish shame I think, but I heard the perception of shame from world spectators actually affected the rulers to do certain economic if not democratic reforms.

I was just knocked out by the interweaving of Gandhi principles into a Bollywood romantic/comedy/musical/crime film, and wondered how much "Gandhi-ing" (their phrase) lives on in India or abroad, or was he just a passing eccentric put into prominence from the backdrop of events? We have probably all seen pious films about his stoic goodness, and maybe even some reality checks like hypocrisy in his family life. But this entertaining movie seemed a moving and inspiring presentation of certain Gandhi ideals, and introspection rather than usual demonizing of Britain: Lage Raho Munna Bhai (2006) reviewed at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0456144/ It's playing free at my nearby university; but can we assume the poor quality but free free version on video.google.com is pirated? Favorite scenes: Speech at 40 minute mark declaring India is wasting it's independence and freedom by allowing corruption and inefficiency that Gandhi would abhor (although not sure he disliked bureaucracy and it's consequences). Around 1:53 in a great Gandhi inspired agony-aunt sequence some chronic vandalism by a neighbor is stopped by a kindness offensive. The wonderful thing was seeing a (sometimes violent) gangster start to use Gandhi principles to clash with (sometimes violent) rivals and win. Not because he melted into sentimental mush, but because it could work. Inflict the rival with kindness, show you suffer their acts with stoicism, and they break down in shame. Note this works when the rival knows he is morally in the wrong, so I would deny that the recent "occupy" protests or older "globalization" protests use these principles since they confront false populist scapegoats. Also I don't see kindness to victims (very Christian focus upon Gandhi) as a key principle - it's the difficult process of repeated kindness towards a brazen wrongdoer and restraint from violence against them. This is what characters of the film are pushed to attempt, and I would like to see a sequel working thru more of this applied-philosophy. Of course the goal is to get results from the offenders, so I personally see no need to forego a plan B as prison or execution! Actually this movie is a sequel and has another planned, but not Gandhi-related I believe.

I could only stand about 2 seconds of the promo for the Smithsonian show just on entertainment value alone, so expect that will just run a few shows and die a natural death. Reality shows are spreading like cancer due to ratings, but that one looked like one of the frequent reject experiments. And almost nobody watches the over-the-top Spike network. There isn't much of monetary value buried in US except for Spanish treasure ships sunken off Florida, and for reasons I don't understand the silver and gold seems to all get reclaimed by Spain without even paying a removal fee. Oh, confederate artifacts from the Civil war can be valuable, but not without provenance. A digger can't provide provenance to distinguish his item from the vast majority of faked confederate items (even the originals often crudely made so cannot be distinguished by inspection). The Naked Archeologist did a show claiming the great majority of important archeo finds in Israel were done illegally by amateurs. They tried to show the loss of context info was overridden by the benefits. The approved diggers were way too slow and didn't know where to look except when following the amateurs. They acknowledged the highly professional theft rings were a problem, and even that their whole thesis was debatable. I think the worst part is diggers targeting just outside the boundary of historical parks. Recent finds have shown history taking place a bit offset from the preserved park, and the periphery is open to digging up stuff that is of great historical but not monetary value. Maybe American archeologists need a kick like this into a preservaton mindset. In my region, a museum was berated into returning artifacts to supposed native descendants who then secretly reburied it. The museum director who tried to sue for return was fired. Not an isolated case.

Ancient China was famous for it's tough civil service exams and they are still in use today. The author of http://www.booktv.org/Watch/13167/What+the+US+Can+Learn+from+China+An+OpenMinded+Guide+to+Treating+Our+Greatest+Competitor+as+Our+Greatest+Teacher.aspx further states that high national officials not only have to be the 1 in 5 that could pass that test, but additionally have to first prove merit in real world administration in terms of measurable results. This is proposed as a successful model, in contrast with corrupt and incompetant government at the LOCAL Chinese level. So how do other governments thru history match up? For instance ancient Rome - was the most preparation you could expect was to have a Greek tutor, or sort of apprenticeship from your father? Besides many obviously unprepared emperors, was there a more organized tier below that?

44 Arrested in Greece for Antiquities Trafficking http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2012/03/04/world/europe/AP-EU-Greece-Stolen-Antiquities.html?_r=1&ref=news Police said they confiscated 9,200 silver and bronze coins dating from the 6th century B.C. to Byzantine times

Can anyone vouch for the quality of this, like by choosing a bit of history you are familiar with and see how true his story is? Probably this is fine, but I remember downloading all kinds of Roman history in the early days of podcasts and gradually realized they were often questionable accounts by enthusiasts just skimming thru a book and stereotyping at will. Sure, that is what I do in this very forum, but at least here it is exposed for people to dispute and correct.

I mentioned this elsewhere, but it is a reference I return to from time to time: Rome and Environs, an archeological guide, by Fillipo Coarelli http://moreintelligentlife.com/node/450 Notable by being a translation from the Italian so you can tap in to that knowledge base, or at least a spin that english readers may have been missing. What I really like is the disclosure of what is known vs guesswork. Not the usual omnicient pronouncements that "this is the house of Titus" but rather this is thought to be x or possibly y, only due to a pot shard marking of z. Also I like the way the coverage isn't ruthlessly cut off at Rome city boundaries, but fuzzed out to include notable outlying sites. Do I have to have finished these books - my enthusiasm gets numbed when dashing to the finish line, esp to meet a library deadline: Berlin diary: the journal of a foreign correspondent, 1934-1941 William Shirer http://books.google.com/books/about/Berlin_diary.html?id=ExOVUEzmCo8C Wow, an almost lmost un-put-downable memoir that anticipates everything from Hitler but was published quite early - a couple days before the invasion of Russia. I was hesitating to read his tome of rise and fall of 3rd reich, and tried this more personal story of him scrambling around Berlin, Vienna, Paris, and London to cover events as they were interpreted at the time. I wondered what the allies knew and when they knew it, but the problem was the correspondents knew all and Britain and France wouldn't listen. He meets German generals that are appalled by Hitler, and crowds of women in hysterical excitement over him. He is quick to assess various figures as dupes, clowns, and so on... but seems to marvel at Hitlers ability to seduce both western diplomats and non-nazi Germans.

Oh, I'm sorry - my article is over a year old. I just read the hardcopy at a university library that normally sends year old mags for binding, so assumed it was from THIS January. I guess that magazine isn't very leading edge anyway.

I thought executions of Christians by pagan Romans typically had mitigating circumstances. Didn't they simply ask the Christians to show respect to pagan gods so the gods didn't take revenge on the community? Not to believe in them, just avoid jinxing everyone by not attending to superstitious ritual. Sort of like someone today asking you to not walk under a ladder and bring bad luck. Or not to "diss" a gangster - you don't have to actually have respect or change your beliefs. Romans could apparently hate and curse a pagan god privately, but must be manipulatively complient in public ritual. So maybe the Christian refusal to go thru empty motions wasn't really required due to incompatibly with their faith, but almost a suicidal choice to attain some religious transcendance (like some suicide bombers of today?). Or are these delusions of a Roman lover (pax romana and all that)?

Really good pictures, although google+/picassa puts up (soft) obstacles for nonmembers to view or comment. Can we vote on your next destination? Besides something Roman, how about warming up in Sicily next month? Get the grey skies out of those archeo photos. Nice to view places I missed, unless they break my heart. Bergamo pains me because I wasn't able to visit it with Ryanair or whatever. I think that tank picture you have there is the same model as in the giant Bovington Tank museum in UK (Wool train station, then walk bikepath 2km northwest) posted as an Italian flamethrower. They said if you drive at full speed, it catches up with flames and self-immolates (African campaign).

Not sure how much of this is news: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Secrets-of-the-Colosseum.html

The Walls_of Rome by Nic Fields http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Walls_of_Rome.html?id=SDxrLQymWWwC My ebook version is on my tablet currently in for repairs and I haven't even finished it, but waiting won't lead to a more critical review anyway because I am crazy about the subject. I became fascinated by the wall and it's sprawling and varied juxtaposition into modern Rome on my last (ever?) visit to Rome. So the subject is amazing, and this book at least gives morsels of text and photos on it. Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant by Ulysses Grant http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4367/4367-h/4367-h.htm or audio http://www.archive.org/details/memoirs_grant_1105_librivox Note: I only advocate chapters 2-16, which excludes boyhood and US civil war, where he felt obligated to provide more details than modern readers may enjoy. This leaves his reluctant entry into the military, Mexican war and observations of what was really leading to the US civil war. This part is surprising and refreshing - at least it seemed so as I listened to audio version in a noisey distracting environment (I have new DIGITAL noise-cancelling earbuds on order to improve that http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2360185,00.asp ). You may know this was an immense best seller published by Mark Twain, who surprisingly had a friendship with this general/president who shaped the course of US military techniques for a century to come. But his early narrative is so unexpected and picturesque of the young country. He reluctantly goes to West Point military academy just to get some free teaching credentials. He is sent to Texas and Mexico with an antiwar attitude... as did most of the generals! One general, (later president Zachary Taylor) is like a peacenik hippie - riding into war in civilian clothes (sidesaddle!) but always winning battles when vastly outnumbered. They use charm offensives when possible with Mexican villagers, and wring their hands about needless casualties. Grant makes sly observations of his superiors and his peers who he will eventually dominate in the civil war. It gave colorful background of the region, such as various leave-of-absences. They can take weeks or months to go anywhere by all means of rustic transportation - it kind of reminded me of a diary from the Mexican army point of view http://www.tamu.edu/faculty/ccbn/dewitt/adp/central/books/reviews/delapena.html where an impressionable observer relates the things that amaze them on their journey. Also, the observations of pre-civil war tensions (beginning of part 2) bring to life issues which we tend to overlook or stereotype. He points out how new states have been paid or fought for by northern taxpayers, only to have them turned into slave states by a minority of tricky politicians for example. And somehow there is an old fashioned Roman epic flavor to book. EDIT: Whew, I have a bad case of the "I should have said"'s after attending a talk by a Civil War scholar from Friedrich Schiller University of Jena! They are having multiple conferences in Germany on the global significance of this US war, with lots of quoting of Karl Marx. Somebody please tell them to read chapter 16 of Grant on the attitudes engendering the war.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2012/02/20/world/europe/AP-EU-Greece-Museum-Robbery.html?ref=news

Wouldn't they start with political integration to match the currency integration? Then they can either impose money transfers from strong to weak regions. Or better yet impose structural labor reforms which would let the weak regions grow their way out of trouble. But I wonder if that is too brute force. Maybe it is right that west Germany suffers anything to integrate east Germany, yet not so much for Greece. And north Italy will suffer to carry along south Italy, but not so much for Portugal. Maybe US states shouldn't all carry their weakest peers along. There is maybe a subtle hierarchy that might work best (zone, country, subregion, municipality) which I don't think Rome would use for taxes or whatever.

This is the premise of a multi billion penalty applied to a major US bank yesterday I believe. But the background story is that was mainly in response to extreme threats and intimidation to lenders from regulators trying to push low income folks into home ownership (bipartisan effort). I think most banks responded with their heads in their hands knowing they would have to throw away money. A few reckless cowboys (B players, shunted to this doomed sideshow) thought they could make the best of an unavoidable situation, and decided little real harm would be done because the unaffordable houses would continue gaining value like it had for decades and leave a profit in the change in ownership. Capitalist darwinism doesn't become that desperate on it's own, or we would have restaurants sneaking poison into their competitors dishes, like they have historically done in China. Maybe, like democracy, free markets are the worst solution except everything else that has been tried. Have you some suggested curbs that wouldn't be worse than the disease? I think financial regulators should have the doctors oath of "first, do no harm" and avoid crippling unintended consequences. One last anecdote that proves I don't know what. I believe a German Landesbank was so conservatively regulated that it couldn't survive according to Economist magazine. Instead of asking for relief it went to a satellite office of US AIG for their high yield mortgage repackages, because they were too new to regulate against. When these went bad, a modest haircut was being negotiated. But the US decided for some reason to fully bail out AIG and sent a staggering amount of cash to overregulated Germans who were berating the US for underregulation.

This reality check approach should not go excessively astray to grand philosophical generalizations. Competitive capitalism will automatically adjust and correct compensations based on how pleased the paying customers are, unless there is something sticky and flawed. Many sticky parts are well known, long decried by capitalists themselves, but nobody wants to address the boring root causes. Huge incomes can be very worthwhile. For instance there are maybe 4 people on earth who have a track record restoring utterly broken big companies to health. After the financial crash, populist pressures prevented paying premium salaries to them to save jobs and companies (you pay them a lot because tough decisions make enemies and get them fired soon). It should be like hiring a plumber - it's your own business if you choose to pay a lot for a high value service, and not society's business. For examples of flaws, the majority of businesses incorporate in Delaware state. Carl Icahn portrays this like the way ships used to all be registered in Liberia - sort a way to escape responsible laws. This shields high executives from being responsible to the shareholders who pay them, due to sweetheart state law. There is no reason gov't should mandate income caps - just get out of the way so the payers can use their natural frugality to do this. Another flaw is letting people to use high financial leverage, but that was allowed for investment bankers as well as everyday homebuyers with low down payment (US politicians caused much of the problem pushing gov't backed mortgages to favored deadbeat demographics). This top down populist outrage is so mistaken when you look at the details. Take the example of the day "occupiers" advocated everybody switch from banks to credit unions due to "greedy" bank fees. Well, those fees were just caused by irresponsible populist regulators. They recently forced the banks to not charge fees for dumb things like overdrafts or whatever - I could hardly believe it at the time. Of course, then banks had to stick the fees to everyone for services previously free to anyone with reasonable track records. I think the structural problem is not with the rich as in Roman times, but the freeloaders who actually hold disproportionate voting power thru perverse common interests. Especially by 2014 over half US voters will pay no income tax, and actually reap tax credits for pleasantries I would never dream of buying for myself. They have no voting incentive at all to wisely conserve or allocate gov't expenditures. Similarly the huge gov't employee sector is a voting block for squandering expenditures and benefits (think of the famous Spanish air controllers earning over a million). Same for state level - I have posted articles about the widespread police "chief's disease" where they can double and triple dip in a pension very young. This imbalance is mostly what is behind Europe's (sovereign) debt problem, but the populist bandwagon beats on the banks. Banks are on on the mend (when not forced to hold "piig" debt) and financial salaries are dropping to earth to the point where NY, CA, and London have to worry about gaps in tax revenue. The real problems seems to be how public workers or non-taxpayers gain subversive voting power due to the intensity of their special interest which overwhelms the diffuse citizen interest which is really more important. As for the power of the rich, the 1% highest incomers pay 40% of the income tax and have been spending their political contributions on the party which least represents their interests (to hope for favors from winners).

They sent me a priority code of 63703 for up to 80% off courses this month, and another 20% off orders over $100 at http://www.thegreatcourses.com/nam If classical history lectures make too stuffy xmas gifts, may I suggest vintage movies from your favorite sources: Up Pompeii, 1971 zany British comedy http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067916/ Caligula, 1979 handbook for orgies, esp in 160 min version http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080491/