Hello Cruel World
Friday, October 02, 2009
 
Yes, the world does revolve around me (Nero)

Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus aka Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus Germanicus, born Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, only son of Agrippina the Younger, sister of emperor Caligula and daughter of Germanicus, who was grandson to Augustus's wife, Livia, on one side and to Mark Antony and Octavia on the other. Right in the most prominent aristocratic circles of Imperial Rome.

When Caligula and his family were murdered, Claudius became emperor. After executing his third wife, Messalina, he married Agrippina and adopted the 13-year-old Lucius, renaming him Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus. Claudius only survived a few years, and Nero became emperor at 16, the youngest emperor up to that time.

Nero ruled over "interesting times" from AD 54–68 AD. Although generally popular with the lower Roman classes for a number of measures, including laws favouring them, putting down the Britannic Revolt of 60–61 AD, public aid after the fire of 64AD, and cracking down on terrorist-type groups like 'Chresters', he consolidated much power (and wealth) to the emperor through show trials and arbitrary executions of the upper classes and wealthy 'new men', and slowly usurped most of the authority of the Senate, losing him support in the upper classes.

After Nero's suicide in 68, there was a widespread belief (the Nero Redivivus Legend) especially in the eastern provinces, that he was not dead and somehow would return, like Arthur, the Once and Future King, and others over the centuries. Over the next twenty years at least three Nero imposters emerged leading rebellions. The legend lasted as a popular belief for centuries. He was reviled by Christian writers, however, because of his persecution of the 'Chrestians'.

Nero's rotating dining room uncovered (SMH Pictures? Not a sausage.)

Nero's rotating banquet hall unveiled in Rome (Yahoo, slideshow + video)
news.yahoo.com/ s/ ap/ 20090929/ ap_on_re_eu/ eu_italy_nero_s_dining_room
MARTA FALCONI, Associated Press Writer – Tue Sep 29

Yahoo! links disappear quickly, so here are a selection of others with pictures, videos & background information.

Nero's rotating banquet hall unveiled in Rome (NPR. pix with captions + map)
www.npr.org/ templates/ story/ story.php?storyId=113302798

VIDEO: Emperor Nero's Rotating Dining Room Unearthed (Post Chronicle. a video report and images of the ancient dining area)
www.postchronicle.com/ news/ strange/ article_212259312.shtml

NERO`S ROTATING DINING ROOM FOUND (Italy Online in English, only 1 picture, but more history and background)
www.lifeinitaly.com/ node/ 7955

And a typical Daily Mail treatment (their headline for the new hominid fossil discovery, 'Ardi', is "First ape woman suggests human ancestors may have started walking in pursuit of sex"), slavering at length over Nero's reported sex-and-sadism excesses before concluding with "We can only hope that this time it is not the setting for such unbridled horrors".
Wine, women and slaughter: The truth behind Emperor Nero's pleasure palace
(www.dailymail.co.uk/ news/ article-1217587/ Wine-women-slaughter-The-truth-Emperor-Neros-pleasure-palace.html)

Another Roman excavation - an old port near Rome with some surprising features
Face in the sand: British team unearths Roman amphitheatre at ancient port
(www.dailymail.co.uk/ sciencetech/ article-1217353/ Face-sand-Roman-amphitheatre-unearthed-ancient-port.html
OR
tinyurl.com/y92v37b)

Y'know despite their relentless "UK! UK! UK!, Oi! Oi! Oi!" and tabloid sex, violence & sentiment slant, the Daily Mail at least seems to cover a fair bit of science with reasonable length & depth. By comparison with what I see in Australia & the glimpses of popular press in the USA I get, anyway.


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[permalink][comment] - posted by Mez @ 10/02/2009 11:05:00 am
Thursday, May 21, 2009
 
And we thought they just made those stories up

Art imitates Life imitates Art?
A New Zealand couple from Roturua are reportedly on the run after $NZ10 million – instead of $NZ10,000 – was mistakenly deposited in their Westpac bank account.
(Assorted news stories abound; comments (some context, especially on the comments).)

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[permalink][comment] - posted by Mez @ 5/21/2009 03:56:00 pm
Thursday, May 07, 2009
 
Magpie Dishonour

Trying to resist the Pretty, Pretty, Shiny Things!

How cruel is this lioness, tempting, teasing, playing with her prey? Go thou, & save me from temptation. Take them away!

Repeating my earlier entry on the same subject:
Magpie Telegraph Alert
My Tormenting Temptress, Elysian One, has had a bit of an unpleasant time and setback recently. She's started a special sudden June Shiny Sale of her jewellery to help recover. It's fascinating, captivating, intriguing, sometimes glorious, stuff. Or pretty and shiny, if you will. Maybe you'll like it.

The names of the pieces — are there many makers who give such names to their jewels? — can send your imagination spiraling in all sorts of ways. Contemplation has inspired different people to other creative endeavours, and they've put together a chapbook with stories, poems, essays matched with their Muse-in-Artifact: “Glass Bead Games”. You can order that there too. Two of my small obsessions intertwined in a nefarious snare! <makes dramatic 'suffering' gesture>

Go then! Feast your eyes and imagination; remove (curse you; bless you) temptations!

And if you're coming on this entry sometime in futurity when the sale & so forth is past, still go thou, and check out what's happening at 'Honor Your Inner Magpie', or what was happening back in the day …

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[permalink][comment] - posted by Mez @ 5/07/2009 05:39:00 pm
Monday, March 16, 2009
 
Real Estate Ruminations
Real Estate Report: Sydney's cheapest inner city flat? On the 6th floor of an attractive, if slightly seedy, Art Deco building with rather wonky lifts, in a central, if also slightly seedy (sketchy?) precinct where I live (close to shops, transport, my hospital, nightclub strip, courts, homeless shelters, drug, alcohol & mental treatment centres). A single room maybe 10 foot by eight. Not too much to keep clean, I guess. Rolled futon on the floor. Door & swing-space takes most of inner wall. Two nice light windows on the outer wall. Small wardrobe & a desk/dining table with shelves above cover left wall – agent suggests one of those fold-up 'murphy' beds.

Right wall taken up by world's smallest bathroom & kitchen ditto. I could sit on the toilet & turn the taps on the tiny handbasin opposite; a hand-held shower perched between them, with the shower curtain across the door.
In the kitchen, an eensy sink with room for a mini bar-fridge (say 18" square) beneath faced a bench with an electric hotplate/griller for the stove. For a space I could just stand & turn in, it had quite a few shelves & cupboards.

All this for roughly 3x mean male annual earnings — $155,000. Le sigh.

Hearing that it's now rented for $200/week shook me a bit. Makes me appreciate room @ $250/week even more, maybe 2.5–3 times the size. ($AU1.00 = $US0.64 approx.)

I did grab mine fast at the time (being evicted midway through chemotherapy), seeing many smaller, grottier places going at higher rents in my search area — not too hilly, walking distance to hospital, close to public transport.
Looking with mingled feeling at returning home. Friday night on the roof here facing the Southern Cross, with Orion behind my shoulder, I watched the full autumn moon rising while lightning-laced thunderclouds rolled up from the south. Aeroplanes from Kingsford-Smith criss-crossed flight-lines with flying foxes while the next-door pub's beer garden rumbled with Friday night crowd noise. Won't be quite the same there.

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[permalink][comment] - posted by Mez @ 3/16/2009 01:04:00 am
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
 
PZ Myers: Darwin Year begins now

Pharyngula The Darwin year begins…NOW!:
It was on 1 July 1858, 150 years ago today, that the idea of natural selection was first presented to the public in a joint reading of Darwin's and Wallace's papers at the Linnean Society of London
Some Darwin-related Links
    Darwin Today - a joint initiative of Research Councils UK aimed at educating the public about evolution
    The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online; free, includes items not in public domain
    Works by Charles Darwin at Project Gutenberg; public domain
    Darwin Correspondence Project: Text and notes for most of his letters
    The Darwin Digital Library of Evolution
    On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Free LibriVox Audiobook
    Digitized titles by Charles Darwin in Botanicus.org
    Works by or about Charles Darwin in libraries (WorldCat catalogue)
    Charles Darwin at the Open Directory Project
    Institut Charles Darwin International
    A Pictorial Biography of Charles Darwin
    Twelve different portraits of Charles Darwin, National Portrait Gallery, U.K.
    Mis-portrayal of Darwin as a Racist

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[permalink][comment] - posted by Mez @ 7/01/2008 10:12:00 pm
Saturday, June 07, 2008
 
Magpie Telegraph Alert System

My Tormenting Temptress, Elysian One, has had a bit of an unpleasant time and setback recently. She's started a special sudden June Shiny Sale of her jewellery to help recover. It's fascinating, captivating, intriguing, sometimes glorious, stuff. Or pretty and shiny, if you will. Maybe you'll like it.

The names of the pieces — are there many makers who give names to their jewels? — can send your imagination spiraling in all sorts of ways. Contemplation has inspired different people to other creative endeavours, and they've put together a chapbook with stories, poems, essays matched with their Muse-in-Artifact: “Glass Bead Games”. That's up for pre-order at the moment too. Two of my small obsessions intertwined in a nefarious snare! <makes dramatic 'suffering' gesture>

Go therefore! Feast your eyes and imagination; remove (curse you; bless you) temptations!

And if you're coming on this entry sometime in futurity when the sale & so forth is past, still go thou, and check out what's happening at 'Honor Your Inner Magpie', or what was happening back in the day …

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[permalink][comment] - posted by Mez @ 6/07/2008 05:12:00 pm
Saturday, April 19, 2008
 
Fun & Fantasy in Bloomington, Minnesota

Just In Case someone is reading this, here's some information about something you might enjoy, if you're able to be there.
Fourth Street Fantasy Convention (see www.4thstreetfantasy.com)
I’ve heard tales, … I know people who traveled to [it] … It is a place where conversations have depth, and plant seeds of thought, sometimes even seeds of creativity. A place with music which opens up vistas that words cannot. A place of companionship, small and comfortable, but varied and lively.
One unique thing about programming at Fourth Street Fantasy Convention is that there’s just a single track of programming, that way we’re all part of the same ongoing conversation.
I’ve gotten together many of the people who made Fourth Street Fantasy Convention happen before, and asked them to help me make it happen again.
From 1986 to 1995, Steven Brust and his friends put on a deep, intelligent, and intimate convention on the literature of the fantastic. In 2008, it will return.
June 20 - 22, 2008 at the Holiday Inn Select Airport Hotel in Bloomington (Minneapolis), Minnesota.

One of the people whose Livejournal I look in on a fair bit is having a party there, with readings and a book launch. Perhaps that will tempt you along, if that's physically possible.

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[permalink][comment] - posted by Mez @ 4/19/2008 07:11:00 pm
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
 
Cackhanded
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-cac1.htm

NY Times - Health
A Disease That Allowed Torrents of Creativity
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/health/08brai.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/health/08brai.html?em&ex=1207886400&en=ea896328b745feea&ei=5087%0A
By SANDRA BLAKESLEE
Published: April 8, 2008

New York Times - Art & Design - PHOTOGRAPHY REVIEW
In Atta Kim’s Long-Exposure Photographs, Real Time Is the Most Surreal of All
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/12/arts/design/12atta.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/12/arts/design/12atta.html?ex=1310356800&en=758dc920ebfd80f1&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
By HOLLAND COTTER
Published: July 12, 2006
“Atta Kim: On-Air” at the International Center of Photography
His view of Times Square leaves all the stationary elements — buildings and such — in crisp focus, but reduces traffic to a shimmering haze, a ghost of motion. Other famous New York intersections get the same treatment...
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2006/07/12/arts/12atta_CA3.html

I, Corpuscle
Every once in a while, I encounter an image that precisely expresses something of the way I feel about life. This morning was one of those "once in a whiles". This image, from "On-Air", an exhibition of Korean photographer Atta Kim's work currently at the International Center of Photography, is one of those images:

That's a photograph, an eight-hour exposure, of the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Fifty-seventh Street, looking south, here in New York City. I've walked through that intersection I don't know how many times on my way to my dentist's office. I've stood on that very corner at the right of the frame. I may even be in that picture. I could be — no way to know unless and until I find out the date and time on which the picture was taken.

But whether I'm technically in that particular photo, I'm certainly in it spiritually.

Granted, this is not the first time we've seen this type of photograph -- a long exposure wherein all that is alive is smeared into irrelevance, and all that is not alive remains clear and solid. Naturally, if we increased the exposure time -- to 800 years, say, instead of a mere eight hours — what seems clear and solid in this photo would smear into irrelevance just like the car and foot traffic above. Which is pretty much the essence of my response to this image.

As I said, I could be part of that smear in the lower right hand corner of the image. I certainly see myself there. My life, looked at one way, is an irrelevant smear — and yet it never feels that way to me. I look at that corner and I recall all the times I've stood there, lost in thought, ear buds in my ears, listening to one of my (liberal) talk shows, waiting for the light to change so I can cross.

The irony is that the irrelevant smear of life in that image is the very thing that reminds me I am here, and that I am as clear and as solid as all that is clear and solid in that image. But I know that I'm only clear and solid in my own time scale. My time scale is as justifiable as any other, but that does not make it the only time scale there is.

I'm haunted by time. I know that I was burped up by time and that I will — too soon for my tastes — be swallowed by it again. That fact is right there in that image above. But what's also there is this: Being reminded I am merely a part of the bloodstream reminds me of my own, um... corpuscularity.
July 12, 2006 at 07:19 AM

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[permalink][comment] - posted by Mez @ 4/09/2008 09:45:00 pm
Saturday, March 15, 2008
 
The Brain Rummager
The Brain Rummager – Brian Barratt's page(s)
Herein find: "... word puzzles; quizzes; creative thinking; creative writing; anagrams; homophones & homonyms; crossword puzzles; weird pictures; Aesop's Fables; fractal thinking; an ET hamburger; weird creatures; the amazing Mandelbrot fractal; proverbs and sayings; dragons; the Unpeople behind the dark; curious words and spellings; 17th century books; The First Folio of Shakespeare; letters of the alphabet; potions and spells; written expression; the Seven Wonders of the World; thinking skills; nonsense verse; and much more."
From Brian Barratt, who also advises: "Persons not wishing to see worlds outside or inside themselves are gently advised to close their minds whilst in this place"

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[permalink][comment] - posted by Mez @ 3/15/2008 01:07:00 pm
Sunday, May 18, 2003
 
Changing Climate FAQ
A quick FAQ on the 'myths' propagated to make people feel better about the dangers of changing climate.

UPDATE: Link changed with time.

www.environmentaldefense.org/campaign/gw/article.cfm?article=gwmythvsfact

I've heard people say that 'climate change' is being used as a euphemism (an euphemism?) for 'global warming' because it's more generalised and anodyne. They say that global warming sounds scarier.

I disagree. For a start, when there's floods and blizzards and record low temperatures, you hear people say that that disproves the idea of global warming, when it may be evidence for it.

I think calling it 'global warming' is a mistake, people in cooler climates just think, 'hey, that'd be nice'. It's increasing the energy put into the system:
the Highs get higher,
the Lows get lower,
the Drys get drier,
the Winds get blowier,
and whole systems that are balanced get tipped, and who knows which way they'll go?

EXAMPLE: There's some thought that if certain changes happen in the temperature of the atmosphere & water, that the Gulf Stream which carries warm water & air from the tropical part of the western side of the Atlantic to the cool-temperate part of the eastern side will no longer operate. The climate of the British Isles would revert back to that of, say, Norway, instead of being kept closer to that of, say, France.
Whereas a lot of Brits think: 'Warming? Mmmm, nice.'

A few of the other sites discussing this,which give different examples, other aspects & viewpoints:

home.earthlink.net/~brucensara/NonlinearChange.html

Sudden Climate Change?
"When 'climate change' is referred to in the press, it normally means greenhouse warming, which, it is predicted, will cause flooding, severe windstorms, and killer heat waves. But warming could also lead, paradoxically, to abrupt and drastic cooling:

home.earthlink.net/~brucensara/NonlinearChange.html

The New Scientist
Global Environment Report: All you ever wanted to know about climate change

www.newscientist.com/hottopics/climate/climatefaq.jsp

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute
Ocean & Climate Change Institute: Abrupt Climate Change
Most of the studies and debates on potential climate change have focused on the ongoing buildup of industrial greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and a gradual increase in global temperatures. But recent and rapidly advancing evidence demonstrates that Earth’s climate repeatedly has shifted dramatically and in time spans as short as a decade. And abrupt climate change may be more likely in the future.

www.whoi.edu/institutes/occi/currenttopics/ct_abruptclimate.htm
(This lists links to articles of interest, including a FAQ: Common Misconceptions about Abrupt Climate Change.)

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[permalink][comment] - posted by Mez @ 5/18/2003 01:31:00 pm
Thursday, October 10, 2002
 
While checking for a source for Slavenka Drakulic's beautiful/tragic/thoughtful piece about the destruction of the Bridge over the Neretva River at Mostar, originally in The Observer in 1997(?)
(quoted at users.tyenet.com/kozlich/workshop.htm), I found this interview, entitled The Normalcy of War Criminals
www.motherjones.com/web_exclusives/features/news/drakulic_qa.html
It deals with subjects my friends & I have been considering.
(I remember Clive James writing in one of his essays that he feared if he had been a German in the 1930s & 1940s, that he may have ended up being a camp guard. We nearly all have the capacity for extraordinary things, both good & bad.)

Meanwhile, another place to find some interesting discussions (apart from my favourite, Margot Kingston's Webdiary [NEW SITE webdiary.smh.com.au]) on the Sydney Morning Herald site)
is on the United Kingdom's "The Independent" newspaper site:
argument.independent.co.uk
which includes one of the people who know the Middle Eastern situation, Robert Fisk, e.g. his piece on the first Anniversary of the September 11th 2001 terrorist attacks in the USA at One year on: A view from the Middle East - part of their general coverage of that anniversary, which is at Reflections on September 11.
Oddly, he doesn't seem to appear in their list of regular columnists or commentators, tho' if you use their "Search this site" box with his name, he obviously writes fairly regularly for them.

* A bunch of possible links:
www.un.org/ Pubs/ chronicle/ 2004/ issue3/ 0304p77.asp
www.haverford.edu/relg/ sells/ mostar/ mostar.html
A list of references to the story of the Mostar bridge
www.geocities.com/ Heartland/ 1935/ bridge.html
www.archaeology.org/ 9801/ abstracts/ bosnia.html
Against anthropocentrism: the destruction of the built environment as a distinct form of political violence (urbicide)
www.theage.com.au/ articles/ 2006/ 03/ 23/ 1143083899330.html

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[permalink][comment] - posted by Mez @ 10/10/2002 11:34:00 pm

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/ . Lives in Australia/New South Wales/Sydney, speaks English. Eye color is hazel. I am what my mother calls unique. My interests are photography, reading, natural history/land use, town planning, sustainability.

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Australia, New South Wales, Sydney, English, photography, reading, natural history, land use, town planning, sustainability.