Virgil61

Thanks for that!

Frankly if they could save my men's lives I'd call it 'cool'. Then again in Iraq I acquired an aversion to seeing medics cover up the bodies of fellow soldiers or Marines after a firefight or IED so perhaps I'm to close to the issue to think about it analytically. For best battle scene maybe the opening of Saving Private Ryan takes the cake both for the sheer holy smokes factor and realism. I went with two female friends of mine who sat on both sides of me and grabbed my arms throughout the first twenty minutes.

Much more of this remarkable book is freely available from the University of California Press website. Excellent find. Even Publius Terentius Varro, who was responsible for one of the most infamous defeats in history at Cannae (against the advice of his co-consul Lucius Aemilius Paulus) was hailed as some sort of savior and held a proconsul job afterwards.

Ah HA! I knew there was something fishy about this test!!!!! They mention smoking but not the true redneck form of tobacco! I must add at least 10% to mine as I used to chew (to the point of being chastized by my dentist for gum line stains on my molars): Red Man, Beechnut & Lancaster chewing tobaccos. Not that little worm dirt stuff... I dipped Copenhagen for a few years while in active duty, more when I was deployed. Nasty habit but damn satisfying.

Ok, I think I should do the same. The theory was just fascinating. It really choked me. Therefore I have felt the need to share it. One would have had to imagine the Italians of the Empire not as an European people as commonly thought, but as a mostly Oriental breed, perpetually on the dole, which was devouring the wealth of conquered territories in an everlasting feast , and guarded on the limes by Gallic, Balkan, and Teutonic legionnaires. Then during the late Empire, this disparate people would have been elimitated from the peninsula in a massive die-off triggered by the collapse. Indeed, the population of Rome went gradually from roughly 1.000.000 to 30.000. Later, the Italians would have been replaced by different waves of invaders, because they do not look Semitic today. Italians, in the case of the Latin tribes and the related 'Italian' tribes were Indo-Europeans who came down from the North, not an oriental or semitic people. I seriously doubt that the whole central portion of Italy was repopulated by non-Italians. The article looks like a load of bunk written in the early 20th century motivated by the then predominate racial outlook popular among even the educated. How would it have looked for European whites to have a once great Roman culture that became in their eyes 'corrupt' and 'decadent', even if those claims is doubtful now?

Maybe I'm missing something here but after reading a synopsis of one of the sources for the list--his own collection of essays--it seems he was simply making a comprehensive list of some of the causes commented on the fall of Rome since before Gibbon that dovetailed with the apparent focus of those essays. Maybe he's presenting it as "Look everybody's in the last 2,000 years has had a theory on the fall, here's some of them..." Without any commentary on the list it's tough to tell what he was doing although I'd guess it's also a bit tongue in cheek. I did find this interesting interview with the Prof from 1999. Worth a read, he's certainly no lightweight.

Take the White Trash Test. My results: I am 26% White Trash. Not Too White Trashy The white trash in our blood will not keep you from becoming a doctor or a lawyer, but it will keep you from a good haircut and any sort of fashion sense. Man, a lot higher than I thought. Blame it on my younger days.

Still scratching my head on this one... LINK

I don't think I was the only non-German speaker who would sing along to the original thusly: 99 Luftbalons da da da da dadada da da da da da Captain Kirk... I'm going to have flashback nightmares over 99 Luftballons! This should cleanse anyone's pallet. Warning very non-PC: Sarah Silverman - I Love You More

I was wondering when you guys were going to make the trek. Check in again before you leave.

The Damned, good band. Well if it's old school you want then let's not beat around the bush: Sex Pistols - Anarchy in the UK The Ramones - Loudmouth (1975 tour video)

This shows 176 university undergrad classical studies departments in the US: http://www.users.drew.edu/jmuccigr/ug.html I'm sure for the most part most of what are considered 'the best' departments generally line up with general rep of that particular school. You can just use the USNEWs rankings site to get that magazines opinion on that.

Should've responded earlier but Homage to Catalonia is one of Orwell's great books and one of the best war memoirs ever written I think. Too bad it gets lost in the shadow of 1984 and Animal Farm like his other writings. Im glad you said that as I think it is superior to both . Are you (I assume) familiar also with this title: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0...5Fencoding=UTF8 by Laurie Lee from the same conflict . I have a copy lying in my storage shed. Great book.

I don't know if they discovered America but they sure did discover Idaho and Eastern Oregon where there are tons of them today of all places. I'd say 50% of the sheep herd owners there are of Basque descent.

The second show is now online at Google Video entitled Barbarians: The Savage Goths. A lot of talk about Teutoberg Forest, the annihilation of the Dacians and the sack of Rome by Alaric in 410 AD. This one includes a few minutes with Peter Heather who was a guest here on UNRV. Terry Jones continues wearing his anti-Roman feelings on his sleeve but at least makes a few points about barbarians being more civilized then popular culture portrays them. Fair enough I suppose but the anti-Roman bias does irritate.

Please thank Conn Iggulden for an interesting interview. I really like the idea, hopefully this is the first of many.

Should've responded earlier but Homage to Catalonia is one of Orwell's great books and one of the best war memoirs ever written I think. Too bad it gets lost in the shadow of 1984 and Animal Farm like his other writings.

I assume the crazed Admiral is expecting the good citizens of Morocco, Libya, Tunisia and Egypt to suddenly decide that piracy is a good way of making money and that their government's will sit back and watch with smug satisfaction as hordes of badly sunburned north Europeans get their come uppance. ... Honestly, I've not heard anything as silly as this for years. It fair boils my piss when folk persist in representing immigration as the C21st 'Yellow Peril'. ... Well, competition for resources might well end up in warfare. But then again it might well not. ... Cavalry? What is heaven's name as Parry been drinking? I'm positively trembling at the thought of Indian horsemen, presumably with cruise missiles in their saddlebags, sweeping across the Middle East and Europe like latter day Mongols. Or maybe he envisages camel riding Moslems charging gloriously northward (maybe ferried by his imaginary pirates) with chain guns mounted on their camels humps? Really, I'm utterly torn between fury at his bigotry and laughter at his inane imaginings. I think you've taken his comments on cavalry and piracy, filtered through a reporter, a bit too literally. I'd like to see the actual text of the commentary. Characterizing the admiral as 'crazed' isn't necessary, I've followed some of the doctrinal studies he's been in charge of and while they can be subject to criticism they're fairly serious and thought out works: LINK It's Parry's job as chief of Doctrine and Concepts to guess at future national security issues based on current trends. We've got the same office with almost the same name and charged with a similar mission at the Pentagon. The nature of the that beast is you have to make projections and tying the hands of those who make them with politically correct constraints just doesn't make sense. The sub-text to what I read is that there's difference between immigration and assimilation and of immigration and the 'lebanonization' of those immigrants. In the wake of the last 20 years of events, only the most incompetant strategist imaginable would fail to address the topic of Islamic culture and the effects of the immigration of that culture on the issue of national security.

I think if you had to distill the reason for Rome's greatness down to one thing beyond the strength of legions, the spirit of the Republic's citizens, law, etc, then I agree with Ursus. To put it another way magnanimity in victory was Rome's greatest strength.

Thanks Viggen, very cool!

In law school there were two recycle bins in the computer room, one was for white paper and one was for colored paper. Someone with a marker rewrote it to say "paper of color". Everyone--African-Americans, whites and the few asians and indians--thought it was pretty funny, the relationship between races was as good as I've ever seen it, of course one prof was offended and made a big stink over it.

Uros have you done any interesting fieldwork on Byzantine archeological sites?

I agree. I think there's a sense now with the large influx of Muslims to the West, especially Europe, that there was little done to have them assimilate properly. Part of it is being frank about it by telling them to either accept the cultural and more secular values of Western society or go somewhere else. I have little tolerance for our own home-grown fundamentalists and none for an imported militant variety.

I did think it was interesting not just because of the immigration issue but the intertwining of the fall of Rome and those pesky Goths into his argument. I don't know if this is a one-time opinion put forth or the signal that the immigration scare which seems to be rising in the West is reaching the point where defense analysts are now beginning to spout about it as a national and regional security issue. I like the Australian news.com.au re-branding of the same article's title: "Modern-day Goths and Vandals threaten the West via cheap flights and the net." Struck me as funny.

I had no idea on the server load thingy. Too bad, would've been nice to see a global snapshot of where visits were coming from say in a one week period.