Virgil61

I'm a huge Captain Beefheart fan, think I've got every record he's released including a coped cd of "Lick My Decals Off, Baby". Friggin' insane genious. Allmusic says he's now got Multiple Sclerosis. Here's one of the worst videos ever made and it's by Billy Squier. It's been said it single-handedly killed his rising career and he's been quoted as agreeing that it was a huge mistake. You'll see why: Rock Me Tonight Man that was great!

At least it's not this Safety Dance I have to admit this video was a guilty pleasure of mine when it came out. My 'life's theme' is 'Tragedy' by the Bee Gees! I was an confirmed member of the I Hate Disco crowd at the time as well.

This Day in Music UK Elvis Presely - Wooden Heart US Marcels - Blue Moon God I feel old!

Ian McShane--is quite the SOB in the series. Quite a shock since I was a big fan of Lovejoy. I have HBO 'On Demand' and I'm watching some of the first season's episodes.

And it's always the lowest ranking guys throughout any army thoughout history. Latrine detail. During the first Gulf War that involved pulling the barrels out from under make-shift wooden latrines, mixing the 'contents' with diesel and burning them. Until more permanent facilities were built, things didn't change during Iraqi Freedom. And it really didn't matter how far from eveything you had them, the wind always seemed to blow that burning mix smell towards the direction of wherever you were standing. Oh, the memories.

It sounds interesting. I'll be eagerly waiting for the review as well, it's one of the many books on my 'to read' list, which seems to get longer all the time.

I have to agree with you that I've come around to a much more positive view of Suetonius than I had in the past. I'll be up front and admit that a lot of it is due to a very good introductory essay written by Catharine Edwards in the Oxford edition of 'Lives'. She's made some very good points that had me reconsider a lot of what I'd thought of him previously. Criticism of Suetonius is nothing new and has been pretty consistent throughout history, even Francis Bacon takes a swipe at him. His biggest critics seem to have risen in the Victorian era, no big surprise there. I think focusing only on the more lurid excerpts we forget that the private sex lives of Roman figures were fair game for criticism in their world. Suetonius isn't writing history like Tacitus, he's writing biography where an individual's personal details play a role in highlighting their character and in this case how an emperor should conduct himself. Constrast his biographies of Augustus, Vespasian and Titus with those of Caligula, Nero and Domitian. Suetonius is sly or maybe just manipulating, he never really comes out and makes a sweeping judgement instead he just points readers to a conclusion. There's a definite pro-Senatorial slant for the most part in 'Lives'. The worst emperors discount or mistreat Senators while the best co-opt them. In spite of the lurid portions of the text Seutonius does spend a lot of time on how emperors excersized their political and military power. It's interesting to look at how he describes the death of emperors, good ones die and are mourned, bad often die in vividly described cowardly manner like Nero. Otho even redeems himself with a rather touching and noble death. I agree it's maddening to try and figure out if isolated incidents are factually correct or not. But this misses a lot of the insight into the Roman mind which he has to offer. The tabloid portions make it easy to discount much of his story but throwing the whole work out as unreliable is mistaken. He had obvious access to letters by Augustus which he quotes (probably when he was still in service to Hadrian), Tiberius' autobiography and it's tough to discount his first person interviews for example with the boy servant present at Domitian's murder or with his father, who was a tribune in the 13th legion, commenting on Otho. Seutonius is writing for a contemporary audience making subtle and not so sublte points that if we read it as a simple historical document to glean "just the facts ma'am" makes it far less satisfying, though admittedly interesting reading.

If I have to choose from those listed I'd go with a less obvious choice: Napoleon. It can be argued effectively that the dominance and conquest of the French army helped bring down the 'old order' paving the way for a rising middle class role in governments. Not that 'liberty, equality and fraternity' were well practiced by the French towards others but the ideas spread.

When I was a kid if "The Longest Day" was on it meant being zoned in front of the TV set for two and a half hours. "Patton", nothing beats it, ironically it was filmed at the height of the Vietnam War. "Battleground" was a better movie than I imagined. I like how they focused on the soldiers instead of one or two main players. The very last scene is where the sergeant has them tighten up their formation as they move to the rear and they pass fresh reserves come in to relieve them. He starts calling out a "Jody" cadence that's essentially the same one the Army uses today.

For those in the U.S. Turner Classic Movies is showing a war film marathon for this Memorial Day weekend, mostly WWII films like Sands of Iwo Jima, The Longest Day, They Were Expendable and a few I've only heard of. I'm getting sucked into "Battleground" about the 101st ABN division in Bastogne. Decent film, first time I've seen it.

I submit that "No good deed goes unpunished" proves the latter argument. and "Better a dinner of herbs and love therewith , than hatred and a stalled ox" as backup. "Friends help you move, good friends help you move the body." -- New 'Joisey' unofficial state motto True story, I may have repeated here once before. A Reserve Marine infantry battalion (BN) commander in Al Kut, Iraq around summer/fall of 2003 used to spout this quotation off. His troops acted accordingly pretty much alienating the local populace. Once the division commander found out about it he summed the BN commander in and ordered the whole BN to 'stand down' for 24 hours and reflect on how harmful that attitude was to promoting goodwill among the population.

That's a tough era to cover since the Venetian Republic's high point, which gets most of the coverage, was around 1250 or so until a few centuries later. You might try John Julius Norwich who I've never read but many people speak very highly of. His works are popular enough to make it into the average well-stocked bookstore like Barnes and Noble here in the US and I'd guess maybe the equivalent in Australia. I think he's written a couple of books on Venice covering it's complete history. If you plug in History and Venice together into Amazon.com's search engine you'll get a few ideas, but admittedly not many.

Here is the performance from the actual show that was up yesterday... not sure why Vig replaced it with the video. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=85...Eurovision+2006 I'm with Moonlapse, it truly is embarrassing to watch. I feel bad for metalheads everywhere, lol. I had to listen to Motorhead with a Dio chaser just to get over that video, and I'm no metalhead. Gotta go find my Iron Maiden...

Well at least Europe appreciates rock music. Here the American Idol rage tends towards watered down ballads. A bit like Kiss but Lordi seems to have listened to and imitated Gwar. Gwar: "War Party" Video Link.

Just found another slightly more in-depth article by Stanford's news service. This caught my eye: The findings suggest that something either suddenly wiped out the Etruscans or the group represented a social elite that had little in common with the people who became the true ancestors of Tuscans, said Joanna Mountain, assistant professor of anthropological sciences. Presumably a conquering and ruling elite so small it's DNA left only slight, if any, traces seems plausible enough.

Good lord what a nitwit. Anyone argue the point back? On the other side of the coin here in the US it would have made Fox News as a lead story.

Polybius was said to have made a journey along the coast of Africa on a trip possibly funded by Scipio. I've seen the reference but can't remember where.

My guess--and it's just that--is a number of Italians in the cental-southern regions retain a large amount of the DNA of latin tribes simply because of the number of isolated or difficult to access cities and villages in the mountains. Unfortunately for a large part of Tuscany it's sits at the foot of the spine of mountains the Appenines make up for Italy and they're right on the avenue of approach to Rome for any invaders. A number of areas in the very southern portion of Italy still speak Greek and or keep some Greek traditions. Doesn't necessarily mean their DNA is all Greek of course but it does hint that whatever intermixing took place the original Maegna Gracia culture took hundreds of years to dwindle to it's present state. This old BBC article covers some research on the southern Italian population's link to the original greek inhabitants. I'm wondering if it was related to the Tuscan study in some way and what if any outcome there's been. What's funny is every third North Carolinian I've ever met claims to be part-Cherokee. You'd think they were the most DNA spreading bunch of people that ever lived. Surprisingly no one wants to admit being a Lumbee though.

The first thing that pops to mind is that perhaps the majority of those were called "Etruscans" were originally indigenous to Italy and the elites, as mentioned, were the members and descendents of an Etruscan conquering ruling class who'd spread their language and culture. Similar to and on a smaller scale than the Norman conquest maybe.

Hilarious. or maybe I should use this smiley

My father is from Giulianova! They speak 'Giuliese'. It's so strange...when I go to Italy, I hope to improve my Italian, but I hardly ever hear it! I almost always only here Giulese....I understand it relatively well, but there are only a few people that still speak the true dialect, mostly the older people, the younger generation speak a toned-down version that's basically half-dialect and half-Italian. The people there always joke that I must learn Giulese and not Italian! My grandmother used to speak to me in the pure dialect and I was able to understand her, since she couldn't really speak Italian. My dad mostly also just mostly speaks Giulese....it's strange but I feel my heritage is more Giulese than Italian! Though my Italian grammer is now really really *bad*, since I haven't really spoken it for the last few years. What a small world it's become because of the internet. This is an incredible coincidence, Giulianova has only about 20,000 people in it. My cousins live there and in Roseto degli Abruzzi just south of Giulianova where I should be visiting within the year. Nice to meet you!

Thanks for that. I've since googled the term "heritage speaker", interesting stuff. I learned Russian later in life attending an Army language program for a year then living and working in Ukraine and St Petersburg. Russian acquisition was a distinctly different experience. Oddly, and maybe surprisingly, I've walked away with a sense of just how similar the structures of Italian, English and Russian are in spite of the differences.

Thanks, but no need to worry about it Viggen. I have the money but could never justify in my mind spending this much on a book. I can always walk over to the Georgetown University library across the river (my move to Seattle was postponed until next month) and browse for free. Heck, for $300 I could build up a fine library of Penguin classics.

Very interesting docoflove. My mother was born and raised in Giulianova, Abruzzo just south of Marche and speaks with my aunt on a monthly basis in Italian that even I can tell is a bit of a dialect. I spent most of first ten years in Italy in and around Vicenza and Pisa/Livorno and combined a bit of those with the Abuzzese variant of my family's kitchen table and living room. I speak a childlike version of the language, but when given any sort of lessons, read aloud or am coached on more complex words and phrases I'm told my pronounciation is excellent by Italians. Perhaps I'm 'hardwired' for adopting correct pronouciation by virtue of the fact it was my first language. Do you know anything of the Abruzzo dialect, assuming there is one?

Dr. Keaveney, welcome and thanks for coming to our forum. We hope you