Childress

DP

Steven Wilthsire draws a panorama of Istanbul.... from memory. The city comes alive on paper as Stephen makes his first visit to the historic city. Live drawing and an exhibition at the Palladium Tower between the 24th and 28th of September 2014.

Hmmm, that looks like Hollywood Blvd in the background. Maybe that explains it all. And my LA school teacher friend says that her students are a dumb as rocks. They're now legally entitled to shout 'F*** you' to their teachers with no repercussions. And hers is a 'Magnet' school. Go North Korea! Last year I had dinner with her and three of her teacher colleagues. They were deploring the abortive School Choice initiative in SoCal. I can't blame them their pensions- like all gov't pensions in CA- will be ginormous, including free, no co-pay medical for life. But when asked whether they'd send their kids to a private school if they had the means every one said YES.

From Jimmy Kimmel Live. American education gone bad? An advertisement for home schooling?

Doug, you have eclectic tastes.

Football Nightmare from South Park: Courtesy of Tom Brady's Facebook page. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKjc8IfzzMM

Star Wars auditions:

They're not just for kids!

Ach mein Gott! Calling the Coen brothers, another one! And in audio book, too. http://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Daughter-Jackie-French/dp/1486205038

I believe you're referring to Robert Harris' Novel, Pompeii.

It should be noted that three Roman authors in the 1st century who mentioned the Christians- Tacitus, Suetonius and Pliny- knew absolutely nothing about the new religion except as a sect vaguely rooted in Judaism. The destruction of Jerusalem by the legions and the enslavement of the Jews- a turbulent minority- was printed in recent memory. Christians suffered by proximity. All three men were at one time government officials naturally skeptical if not hostile to any unauthorized cults. Ancient religion was a rather sterile affair thus Romans had little experience with proselytism, an unsettling novelty. The great persecutions lay a hundred years in the future.

Yet Suetonius fingered Nero as the arsonist as did many contemporaries. Nero coveted the central part of Rome as a site for his sprawling Golden House so he 'could live as a human being". We'll never know the truth. His dream palace now lies buried under the Coliseum and many artifacts have been retrieved. Nero playing the lyre as the city burned was likely a poetic invention by later Roman historians. But it made for boffo cinema in the 20th century. Nero blamed a nascent sect, the Christians, for the conflagration. Tacitus: Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judæa, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. That was the first mention of Christ by a Roman author. Nero had the city Christians arrested and covered in pitch. Then set ablaze as lampposts to illuminate the night darkened streets of the city.

Suetonius' magnum opus,The Twelve Caesars, has come down to us in a nearly complete state, only missing the portion dealing with Julius Caesar's early years. His life of the 2nd emperor, Tiberius, was a study in depravity. At Capri they still point out the scene of his executions, from which he used to order that those who had been condemned after long and exquisite tortures be cast headlong into the sea before his eyes, while a band of marines waited below for the bodies and broke their bones with boathooks and oars, to prevent any breath of life from remaining in them. Among various forms of torture he had devised this one: he would trick men into loading themselves with copious draughts of wine, and then on a sudden tying up their private parts, would torment them at the same time by the torture of the cords and of the stoppage of their water. This was one of the milder passages. And, no, given the high tone and rectitude of this board, we won't get into the matter of Tiberius' 'minnows' or spintriae. Google is your friend. Mind, Suetonius' assertions remain uncorroborated by contemporaries. Tragically, great chunks of Tacitus' oeuvres are lost. For example, the first half of the Annals survived in a single copy of a manuscript from an abbey, and the second half from a single copy of a manuscript from Monte Cassino, and so it is remarkable that they survived at all. The were great hopes of finding lost Latin masterpieces when the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum was excavated. Archaeologists discovered that it was possible to unroll and read the burned and carbonised papyri using spectral imaging. So far they've decoded much of the works of Philodemus, a gaseous Epicurean philosopher.

That's another Tacitus quotation. Also rendered literally as: 'To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace.' Your version is punchier. More so than English, the Latin language lends itself to aphorisms and parallel constructions. Reading Tacitus can be an unsettling experience. He's without doubt the greatest ancient historian, likely unsurpassed until Gibbon, another astringent observer of human foibles. But for sheer gossipy entertainment Suetonius can't be beat.

The Roman historian Tacitus (56-117AD) who chronicled some of Rome’s most notorious emperors, including Nero and Caligula, and whose portrayal of Roman decadence influences the way we see Rome today. His observations- some penetrating, some wise, some cynical- remain relevant. These quotations are culled from The Annals, Agricola and The Histories- lively reading all. Some find an echo in the aphorisms of Eric Hoffer. If you would know who controls you see who you may not criticize. Men are more ready to repay an injury than a benefit, because gratitude is a burden and revenge a pleasure. To show resentment at a reproach is to acknowledge that one may have deserved it. It is a principle of nature to hate those whom you have injured. (Hoffer: 'We cannot pity those we have wronged, nor can we be indifferent toward them. We must hate and persecute them or else leave the door open to self-contempt.') Crime, once exposed, has no refuge but in audacity. There was more courage in bearing trouble than in escaping from it; the brave and the energetic cling to hope, even in spite of fortune; the cowardly and the indolent are hurried by their fears,' said Plotius Firmus, Roman Praetorian Guard. Greater things are believed of those who are absent. All ancient history was written with a moral object; the ethical interest predominates almost to the exclusion of all others. Step by step they were led to things which dispose to vice, the lounge, the bath, the elegant banquet. All this in their ignorance they called civilisation, when it was but a part of their servitude. The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.

Here's Johnny! Jack Nicholson ad-libbed the line. In some ways his shallow and self-deluded wife(Shelly Duval) is even more terrifying than him. Stanley Kubrick mad some changes to the story that infuriated author Stephen King.

Six minutes is nothing. Something to keep in mind: compared to an actual engagement a battle in any CM game proceeds at supersonic speed. Spotting is much faster and more efficient, troops are not detached to POW herding and rattled soldiers recover from suppression rapidly unlike RL. BF has admitted as such.

A change of pace, courtesy of SNL. Things we cherish: family, connections, a sense of purpose. From our first love to new beginnings. The joys we share...

Bil, I can't think of a better background source for your project than this one: Legionary: The Roman Soldier's (Unofficial) Manualhttp://www.amazon.com/Legionary-Roman-Soldiers-Unofficial-Manual/dp/0500251517 The author has loaded his book with useful details on every aspect of the Roman legion- recruitment, weapons, foraging, pensions, etc and made it entertaining to boot. Sometimes laugh out loud funny despite the erudition on display. Good luck.

Resolved: tastes in music are so personal and generationally rooted that striving to convert another to your favorite song/performer/genre is hopeless. You may as well attempt to convert a Sikh to militant vegetarianism. Debate.

Your're right, sburke.

'The Night they Drove Old Dixie Down', by the Band. The Band's (inadvertent?) nostalgic tribute to the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. The composer and lead-singer Robbie Robertson, a half-Jewish, half Cherokee Canadian was an unlikely contributor the to old Myth. But if the South ever rises again this hymn will serve as a resonant background score. Joan Baez, a 60's icon, also recorded a very fine and moving version: "'Til so much cavalry came and tore up the tracks again'.

New book: Children of Monsters: An Inquiry into the Sons and Daughters of Dictators by Jay Nordlinger That's Svetlana Alliluyeva in the middle, an accomplished memoirist in her own right.. Excerpt from a review: In Jay Nordlinger’s new book, Children of Monsters, we meet Jean-Marie Loret, a Frenchman who believed his mother and Hitler had a brief, yet productive, affair during World War I. Loret had an unhappy life. He was tormented by the burden of what he believed to be his ancestry. Oddly, the torment did not prevent him from growing a Hitler-style mustache. Lol.

Knock yourself out, John: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Marie_Loret A few details: Loret joined the Resistance. He had nine children. His attorney weighed the option of claiming royalties on the sale of Mein Kampf. An excerpt: During World War II Loret worked as chargé de mission with the French police in Saint-Quentin, Aisne. He claimed he got the job by Hitler's order, though there is nothing concrete to support this. Charges that he had collaborated with Gestapounits in France are also unproven. There were no charges of collaboration against him after the war, which makes it appear most unlikely. Loret has said that Hitler ordered all material on Loret to be destroyed. However, Loret was considered only an average individual and not overly diligent. It would have been unusual for him to have gained such a high post on his own merit when still in his early twenties.

That gives of the whiff of Area 51-ish nuttiness, JK. If not one would like to shake the hand of the patriotic agent who agreed to such a procedure. Was this you? Anyway back on topic: Hitler arcana. Did the Fuhrer, as a corporal in France during the Great War father an illegitimate child? It's alleged that he had a son, Jean-Marie Loret, with a Frenchwoman named Charlotte Lobjoie. Loret was born in 1918 and died in 1985. In the 1950s, just before her death Lobjoie told her son that at 16 she had a brief affair with Hitler. He was conceived during a 'typsy' evening in June, 1917. In his book With Hitler to the End: The Memoirs of Adolf Hitler's Valet (1980), Heinz Linge states that Hitler had stated to a number of people "his belief that he had a son, born in 1918 as the result of a relationship Hitler had had with a French girl as a soldier in 1916-1917 in northern France and Belgium....". A genetic certification of his biological inheritance, done at the University of Heidelberg, resulted in the findings that "at best, Loret could be Hitler's son", but that he need not be such. Myth or reality? Hitler did send Lobjoie money after he became chancellor. You make the call: screen shot on windows