caesar novus

Another bother was their depiction of well off Pompeii folks as condescendingly arrogant and theatrically flaunting their luxuries. How do they know the Romans weren't aspirational and savoring their special foods, etc like folks now at slow food fests for example?

Well, partly the obvious highlight stories are done and avail for repeats (such as on military channel). Also history broadcasts in general seem to be falling off - the history channel is now mostly reality shows, just as the travel channel is now mostly cooking shows. They start with high ideals, then especially with higher HiDef production costs they have to pander to the all too common denominator.

I saw a documentary that spun the battle of Plataea into sort of a gateway to western civilization. Was it one of the Spartans greatest contribution in allowing Athens to flower? Other sources seem to downplay it. They emphasized that the Spartans were technologically outclassed by opposing cavalry and had to develop a crazy jogging tactic for when they couldn't get advantage by terrain. As usual they were way outnumbered. It seemed almost more significant victory than thermop* which had to rely a lot on a sea battle; while Palataea left the Athenians free to shape much of the cultural rewards we know today. Furthermore it taught the west that some elements of the rather weird Spartan warrior culture would be needed to defend itself in future centuries?

The food issue seems so needless - they should have very slowly reduced food subsidies so that local farmers could benefit and ramp up production before city dwellers felt much pain. Export bans raise internationally traded food costs dramatically. The US wastes massive farmland due to irrational but mandated biofuel production. The EU stifles production with genetic modified bans. Well, maybe this will be a painful birth of a more rational world

Before I challenge that by the below quotes, some sentence padding here will make it more readible. So I will add to your anti-western theme in Egypt some internal fractures. There is bitter resentment of a kleptocracy class. The gypsies are treated brutally. Common folks are kept in poverty because they can't get enforceable property rights over their makeshift homes, etc. Hawass should be boycotted by all archeologists, and all escavation funding frozen. What may have started as revenge for a Unesco appointment has turned into an escalating shakedown of western museums because they have been so spinelessly aquiescent. Why? For combating looting?

I liked the other episodes more than Pompeii one. In all cases, it is fun to freeze frame and back up for views of the archeology which somehow seems more clear on HiDef than real life. The best scenes just appear for a second or two - there is some name for that annoying process that makes impressions by bombarding you with machine gun scene changes. Pompeii episode had one interesting insight explaining the poses of the bodies being artificial. The fetal positions were not from gasping for breath, but happened after death as the muscles were cooked before rigor mortis set in. The big muscles contract more than opposing smaller ones, so give a "pugilistic" stance including clenched fists like a boxer. I will have to check that next time I visit a cannibal BBQ. One aspect annoyed me. There was heavy condemnation of it as a slave market, and when finding a skeleton in shackles with no signs of hard labor (joints) they decided he wasn't a murderer but one of hundreds of slaves left cruelly to die in their supposed massive caged building. They did mention one successful ex slave, but not all the nuances about slaves often being more like indentured servants. Basically it echoed a UC Berkeley online course on Romans which implied it was an utterly corrupt diversion on path of civilization because it was non-Marxist.

I could never get the slightest support in this forum for saying Roman sculpture was uniquely visceral vs a kind of mannered stiffness of the Greek. But in a fascinating lecture series "Greece and Rome: An Integrated History of the Ancient Mediterranean" Prof. Robert Garland backs me up in saying Roman portrait sculpture was uniquely based the tradition of death masks rather than idealization. Even if they were done by Greek artists, they had to change to the Roman warts and all depiction. Not just a fashion, but could have real purpose in identifying a VIP when seen live. http://www.teach12.com/tgc/courses/course_detail.aspx?cid=3300 I love Roman sculpture, and almost everything that this course attributes to the Romans, whether it was different from the Greeks or borrowed from them. SPQR

I was practically hounded out of this forum by daring to suggest Zahi Hawass had no right to bully and manipulate the west in returning large amounts of egyptian artifacts - and that politi-correct appeasers of the west shouldn't allow world treasures to be consolidated to home locations with all the attendant risks. Now that ghastly regular of TV documentaries is bemoaning how, although looters have been driven out of the museum in a trail of destruction, the burning building next door threatens to crush the museum. The mobs may be protective of the museum but they are targeting adjacent areas with collateral damage a possiblity. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/01/29/world/middleeast/AP-ML-Egypt-Protest-Antiquities.html?_r=1&ref=news I have been to a lot of less developed countries, but few seemed such a civil powderkeg as Egypt. They have bottled up resentments that were visceral on the streets even years ago, and seem too pervasive to go away with a simple change of a leader or two. What a place to put all your artifacts in one basket. It isn't just an Egyptian thing. It was looney to place a large proportion of Dali's paintings beachside in hurricane alley. St Petersburg FL has just spent umpteen millions to relocate them to a bunker museum. Yecch what a waste, but at least it's more responsible than consolidating them all in, say a Basque liberation army stronghold closer to the artists home.

First of all, it's the hypocrisy by gov't I point to - switching their story in order to ride the coattails of dufus populism and further inflame the mob. I wasn't promoting de-regulation as an ideology; note I pointed to over regulation as "A" cause. as well as under regulation. As for the oil spill, I haven't followed details too closely since I've been on the road a lot with spotty access to media. So I'll address your bigger picture allusion. Yes, there is dysfunction based on the need for politicians to fund really expensive campaigns. Corporations cynically threw money primarily at their ideological enemies in 2008 because they were ahead in the polls. So now they have leverage over their paid-for politicians. Granted this is way out of control, but it isn't entirely evil. Corporations can be the only advocates for consumer issues that are too small or technical for particular individuals to get excited about, but are important en masse when it can make a wide customer base happier. Under ideal competition corporations bring some balance of power as intermediaries between consumers and suppliers of labor/capital/material. An exception to this is powerful labor unions, which answer to no consumer or provider of capital or managers. The fact that their political contributions could leverage gov't to subvert GM bondholders and centuries of contract law about bondholder rights shows the severe dysfunction and will dampen needed lending going forward. Where I live this is taken even further where management (school principals) are forced to be members of teacher unions, so there is no balance of power or intermediary covering parent requirements at all. The schools are run purely to please complacent workers and are among the worst in the developed world. Unlike corporations, those teacher unions are unaccountable to any consumer of their service since their political contribution power mostly trumps diffuse voter dissatisfication. Now to circle back to my original theme of 2 faced populism, the reason this dysfunction works in the face of supposed democracy isn't entirely the misuse of money... but of the voters letting themselves be taken in by opportunistic populist demogoguery. And that is most notable when politicians switch sides on an issue and feign outrage at what they have supported on record. I guess this thread was meant to alert people to not be taken in, or else the next regulation will be based on the exaggerated populist perception rather than addressing real problems with balance. It was apparent in a small way with the oil spill, but in a huge way with the mortgage crises. All stripes of politicians used to be wildly pushing regulations promoting gov't approved house loans for deadbeats - I think the normally very responsible Barney Frank was the most recent caught pretending he wasn't on the wrong side of the issue http://www.zerohedge.com/article/barney-fr...rrassed-about-f . Also might make a similar case about of the whys of Iraq invasion. All sort of invasion critic politicians voted FOR a multi point reasons for invasion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Resolut...t_Iraq#Contents but later pretended only the troubled "weapons of mass destruction" one really counted.

Germany was highlighted to support my theme of OVER regulation as a cause of the crises as opposed to just UNDER regulation, if I remember an article of Economist magazine correctly. They said the Landesbanks (a special kind of German bank) profits and thus survival were in a death grip from over conservative regulations well before the crisis. They went to AIG out of desperation to survive supposedly, whereas the other banks went to them out of greed. Well I thank you for being supportive in general, but I should admit I pushed the theme a bit far and folks are probably being too polite to point out a few holes in it. Interesting to consider the less reported angles anyway.

Originally the temperate US government response to the oil spill gave hope that due process could identify the root of the problem, and that innovation could march on using those lessons. But now the populist mob has forced them into a frenzy of duplicitous self righteous rhetoric and threats of irrational damaging legislation. Is it any surprise that the high risk drilling was promoted by subsidies? The Clinton administration passed the "Deep Water Royalty Relief Act" and failed to deactivate it when scheduled. Congress sweetened it up during Bush administration according to http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Why-Was-BP-D...813326.html?x=0 . How does the mainstream press let the lawmakers get away with this hypocrisy, even back on the financial crisis? The Clinton administration decided that gov't backed mortgages were being refused due to predjuice rather than the facts that show individuals had hopeless credit histories. So they force loans to be made to every victimology category that predictably blow up en mass later. http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/fanni...ftt_503592.html Same case internationally. Germany gov't wears the mask of regulated responsibility, but their overregulation of landesbanks (sp?) left them suicidally unprofitable. For survival they tapped into looney schemes from US AIG, which blew up with the US mortgage market (caused by not only US but Chinese gov't which flooded US with lending rather than spending). What bugs me is the US gov't bailed out AIG and thus Germany (85 billiion IIRC) rather than a scheme already on the table that shared the pain at least a bit with the greedy customers (like German banks). Lost the link on this, but the hypocrisy just goes on and voters and press let gov't get away with it.

That's exactly the attitude that can stifle enlightment on the issue, and the reason for this thread. People have been afraid to describe advances of civilization in those cases where a reprehensible person was responsible, and the story becomes lost. Freeways were just an obvious thing that came from the sky. Every major Christian domed church looks like Nero's octagon room throughout 2000 years only due to habit... and just forget Nero's brilliant architects Severus and Celer because a bad person happened to approve of their work. It would be a shame to tiptoe around and be hesitant to describe real history as it was due to self censorship. This thread has maintained the contempt for the bad guys with adjectives like demonic, notorious, tyrants, and so on. The bad can do many good things which don't at all lessen the seriousness of their crimes or depravity.

I remember a lecture about the 5 good emperors where excuses were made for their bad behavior, and how "good" was used in very narrow realpolitik terms of the time. Except for Marcus Aurelius, maybe their goodness was partly just an inability to father a son and having to name a successor based on merit rather than their demon seed. Actually I wasn't thinking about whether behavior was mixed good and bad. I was thinking the birth of lasting cultural icons that were steppingstones to where we are today... but coming from an unsavory source. I forget the details, but I believe Nero's palace octagon room was a huge step towards later domed civic and church buildings. Caligula is sometimes credited with laying the engineering groundworks for the integration of Britain into Roman civilization. Hitler's freeways amazed Eisenhower who pushed for them in the US and they later transformed the world for better or worse. Hitler's unprecedented campaigning by air travel during his brief democratic phase allowed voters in vast countries (later elsewhere) live exposure to candidates.

I remember being confused about some advances of architecture and painting style happening under Nero's direction, then realized being a tyrant doesn't mean you say no to every good idea. History forgets, for instance, that Hitler brought about innovative freeway systems, political campaigning by airplane visits, and green-ness in the form of his vegetarianism. I suspect that even Caligula did some good, but can't remember. Would anyone care to list some good contributions whose origin is forgotten due to the monstrous reputation of the emperor?

Well, your itinerary is so jammed, maybe skip Burano in favor of Roman Sirmione and Venice Navy: . .

Also see supercute Burano, a sort of colorful toy Venice, on the same vaporetti route (don't use the expensive excursion boats near St. Marks, but the regular vaporetti from the backside of Castello). Maybe do this on a day pass, and do other scenic routes the same day around the imain island and main canal. The price of vaporetti has gone up so much I might just walk on other days, which is easy if you avoid the crunch between train station - rialto - San Marco (use the academia bridge and pleasant connecting backstreets instead). Visit fishtail beyond St Marco (has spacious parks and a wide boulevard where Napoleon filled in a canal). The gateway to this has the must-see NAVAL MUSEUM which documents the Roman pleasure barges of Lake Nemi and their excavation and demise. You should get in at 9am opening time, because you may not get thru it's 5 stories by the mid day closing time otherwise. Fascinating displays, such as the Viking incursions of Italy (sacked the wrong city they thought was Rome), ancient cannons, WW2 almost-suicide boats (had ejection seats for just before collision), ship artillery computers as big as a room, the surprising secrets of asymmetrical gondola design, seashells etc etc. Skip Milano.

I should thank you for your Pozzuoli report. I was taking a rest day on Ischia, then realized I was a short ferry hop from Pozzuoli. I didn't have maps or anything more than memories of your photo journal, but managed to savor the arena and seripede roman remains just fine. You are going to only pass by the sprawling Roman ruins at Sirmione on stunning Lake Garda? Well, maybe you have already been there. But I wouldn't miss an opportunity of stopping off the B. to V. train at Desenzano and ferry or bus to Sirmione. Or even savor the lake a bit more with the express bus from Brescia to Salo or Gardone Riviera, then ferry to Garda, then you can walk the shoreline thru Bardolino and Lazise, then ferry hop to Sirmone (can bus to Verona from most of these last places). All doable even with your luggage in a backpack.

One advantage to PDF is it scales properly when you use "magnify" buttons (something like cntl+ or cntl-). Browser screens tend to scale html in distorted ways. But for just sentence length, html viewers can normally pinch their browser window into a narrow column by sliding the lower right corner of frame to the left, and sentences will reflow (maybe have to exit out of full screen mode). I keep several browsers overlapping like shingles side by side, but each at full height of the screen. It somehow seems very natural to keep a couple side by side browsers running in parallel - better than just tabs in each one. Reminds me of the seductive editing of 2 parallel threads in the reality TV series http://www.aetv.com/the_first_48/ where the slightest pause in action of one story lets you find instant gratification in the alternate story, and vice versa.

On one hand, your pdf looks so similar to the gutenburg original on my screen, that I wonder if you have some unfortunate settings on your browser that should be fine tuned. I have an eye affliction (hopefully temporary but quite long lasting) that makes me aggressively reset all the browser preferences. The defaults tend to be terrible; now I have them set up so online reading is better than the printed paper experience. Actually I keep 4 browsers set up for different tradeoffs (none of them IE, which I hate with a fury). One brand is set up with display options perfect for printing. Another brand is set up with all default options for the native experience. I almost never invoke those 2. I keep a 3rd and 4th browser active at all times. One is radically optimized for online readability comfort and bliss. But it looks so unlike the authors intentions (sometimes actually omits or distorts things), that I have another browser with a balance giving proper parsing and such, but with very significant alterations for readability. Of course font types and sizes are important. Not just aesthetics of a font type, but check the way they scale to various sizes which unfortunately varies. They make some preferences harder to discover with each generation of browser, but it can be benificial to really track them down. For instance, the typical convention of black fonts on white background is barbaric on a backlit screen. It makes sense on the printed (reflective) page, because then black blooms upon white. But when backlit, the white is so harsh and dominent that white blooms upon black and makes the font shapes harder to discern. On my super readable browser, I take advantage of the eyes inability to focus blue sharply and use pale blue for background instead of white. De-emphasizing the background makes the foreground appear sharper. etc etc etc

You might also like an Italian POW escape book "No Picnic on Mount Kenya: A Daring Escape, A Perilous Climb" which also covers lengthy preparation of ice climbing equipment, etc in secrecy from the Brit jailers. Freedom was too far away to strive for, so they just wanted a several day climb and return to camp. More understandable if you have been there and stared at the big ice cream cone of an isolated Mt Kenya or Kilimanjaro defying the warm equatorial plain.

I have made several postings here about that course and others in the series. The original source of them is at http://oyc.yale.edu/courselist and gives you various format choices for loading on ipods or pc's. Unfortunately there appears to be no recent courses added when I last checked. Maybe someone can review the Greek History one; I know it has been mentioned here. I took the Roman one just before going to see some of the same monuments in person (also took some other Roman architecture video courses). I am thankful it was made available, and it did deepen my understanding - but mostly in some indirect way that I can't put my finger on. Since it's a huge time commitment to view the whole course, I will nitpick a few things to show it's not entirely a free banquet. There is an absurd emphasis on esoteric terminology. I don't argue with learning terms that you might need twice in your life, but she hammers in terms with no practical use for even specialists. Things that could be clearly communicated with 2 sensible words have to be compressed into one word nobody uses except on school tests. She apologizes for it. I don't like her choice of monuments to cover. In person they seem runts of the litter, standing by more interesting things. In more than one case she seems to pick them because they were associated with a women, or some such thing other than it's own merit. I guess it's forgivable in cases where she had research experience at the monument. BTW: I can't help commenting on digressions she chooses to inject into the subject, which can reveal what stuff she is made of in terms of smarts and biases. She makes a big deal of 4 gelato spots in Rome and Florence. I would say 90% of American visitors to Italy are devoid of taste and cannot appreciate "good" gelato. Sure, they LOVE it, but are equally happy with crap flavors and crap vendors, just because they are all better than "vomit cream" from home. To respect her I hoped she would be within the 10% category of discerning taste. I visited those places and cannot vouch for her taste. Borderline, unless they were just above the 90% level then fell in the year or so since her recommendation. Well, maybe this doesn't negate her scholarship since scholars may be nerds that develop other parts of their brains beside taste. Actually one place in Rome was acceptable, but already well known, and one flavor in a Florence place WAS remarkable. The other kind of digression was predictable but annoying. The loony left political jabs weren't as flagrant as in a Berkeley Roman course (I don't knee-jerk criticize Berkeley, because I used to work with awesome engineering graduates from there). But the kind of patronizing left-is-good, right-is-bad came out in goofy ways like celebrating modern politician's physical likeness to a corresponding good or notorious emperor. In another Yale course on Classical Music I got an insight into the eternal academic leftyness. It was done so ineptly and unconvincingly that it was revealed to be simple case of trying to appear relevant and edgy to the students rather than at all heartfelt! The professor is of impeccable qualifications (writing the textbooks, etc) but didn't want to appear haughty. He constantly tries to patronize the students with examples of pop culture, but from before they were born. He was so old that they sit uncomprehending when he tries to be a "hep cat" like he imagines youth admire. Also he gets his facts wrong when making comparisons in areas I know, from diseases to dates of impressionist paintings. I wish these professors would stick to what they know, but I guess they have to pander to the audience for their "ratings".

I have also run across sympathetic Nero trivia like the items you mention, but I don't know what to make of it all. He did seem irresponsible too. I can't understand why they mostly destroyed his palace instead of recycling, given the staggering investment. Of course there is a rationale, but it must have been very heartfelt for such destruction. I recently viewed a dozen or so busts of Nero (and similar numbers for other emperors) in museums of Rome and Naples. I have got to say that the Nero ones seem to reek of immaturity, flakiness, and a sort of careless arrogance. They sometimes showed him so young that he wasn't yet in the top office. Sometimes busts seem cookie cutter, like the Caracalla scowl. Even Hadrian always has the same inscrutable pose. Those I don't take seriously since they seem to be products of a publicity campaign. But when they vary I start to suspect I can rely on common denominators, like M. Aurelius being an absent minded professor or C. Augustus being a steely mind within a frail body. Nero was shown unflattering in so many ways, that I can't believe there isn't a hint of truth there. Of course I am talking about expressions, etc, not features you happen to be born with.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/04/arts/des...?pagewanted=all Well, maybe the hype for Cleo is needed to cover exhibit expenses, rather than being mindless new age ideology. It does seem a flip-flop in the usual victimology rant... support annointed "minority" member who gained power rather than the Egyptian people withstanding such an imposed dictator family of foreign origin. Just how isolated she was from Egyptian culture is suggested by a Wikipedia paragraph (possibly disputed in this forum earlier):

Wow, I'll take that with a dose of sodium chloride but I'll still look into it with an open mind. Well, if you find a citation you could correct http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Alesia#Aftermath which agrees with the no-strangulation theory. Actually the professor said there was LITTLE evidence (not none) for a ritual choking and Wiki suggests there was only gossip about it. He did take a ride in the triumph cage, but then went to prison with no further word on his fate, they say.

I would like to be included in the lucky draw!!!