Pete The Elder

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August 31, 2005

More Rome

I am currently listening to The History of Rome in the Modern Scholar tape lecture series. I had wanted to try out one of these series for a while and thought this one would be good. It is only about 17 hours worth of lectures which is about half of what you would get in a normal university class, plus you have no homework, although you can take a final if you want to. All the fun and most of the learning of a college course without the work or credit! The professor from this series is a very good lecturer and has focused much of the series on Rome’s culture (as opposed to important battles and dates), which I think is the right way to go since that was the most influential part of Roman society anyways. The first two lectures focused on the Aeneid and the Romulus and Remus founding myths, which she explained quite well.

I just started reading The Elements of Murder: A History of Poison by John Emsley. I was hoping it would be a bit more thorough then it is turning out to be, but it seems to be more entertaining this way. Emsley is focusing on the chemistry involved in poisonings and using many different case studies to make his points. I was hoping for a more linear approach, but this is still interesting and useful if I ever want to become emperor of Rome or something and need to start knocking off rivals without causing too much suspicion.

Posted by Pete at 09:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 25, 2005

First Man in Rome

After finishing A Gladiator Dies Only Once I was in the mood for some good Roman historical fiction and I found it in Colleen McColloughs First Man in Rome, the first book in her Masters of Rome series. First Man follows the rise of Sulla to the Senate in Rome. It also follows the career of Sullas older brother in law, Gaius Marius as he becomes the first man in Rome. Gaius Marius leads armies against kingdoms in North Africa and barbarian tribes in Trans-alpine Gaul, while Sulla lives as a spy among the Germans and acts as a spy in Africa as well. Most of what I have read about Rome starts up around the time of Julius Caesar so this was a fresh change and I may listen to some of her other books in the series later on, but I only have access to abridged versions of the book on tape so I am undecided on how much effort to put into it. I really do not like unabridged versions of most books and in the version I just finished parts of the story and characters seemed to lack a lot of depth and detail.

I think Rome is probably the most interesting ancient culture to read about because it has such contrasting values: elections, trials, order, dignity, and laws along with dictators, slaves, gladiatorial combats, and unprovoked military invasions. It is hard to know who to root for in some of the Roman versus barbarians battles since it is not like Rome was morally superior to all of its enemies, excepting places like Carthage which practiced child sacrifice. Romes subjects were often better off in long run under its rule because culturally and technologically at least Rome often was far superior. As they said in Life of Brian

All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

Of course if the subject happened to be a slave, who made up about a third of Romes subjects at some points in its history, then life could be very unpleasant and short if you ended up working in a mine or as food for an exotic animal from Africa in the arena.

Posted by Pete at 06:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 23, 2005

Everything Bad

I finished reading Everything Bad Is Good For You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter by Steven Johnson last weekend. Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with the author’s arguments in regards to video games, but might not be aware that he also thinks TV is making us smarter. (This is irrespective of all of these mediums' moral content) This does not mean all TV is smarter, but the best TV today is far superior to previous TV in terms of complexity, mainly because TV is now under the control of the viewer in the form of the VCR, Tivo, reruns, etc. He uses Seinfeld and The West Wing as his main examples of shows that deliberately withhold information from the viewer and expect the viewer to pay close attention to very complex and overlapping plot lines to follow what is going on. Shows like the West Wing, 24 and Sopranos are especially different from previous decades’ shows in that you can not just watch one episode and tell what is going on.

The only dramas I watch on TV are the ones I can get on DVD so I can watch each episode on my schedule and in order, like The Sopranos or The Wire. I watched 24 once and have not watched it again even though I suspect I would like it because you have to follow each episode to tell what is going on and even then it can still be hard to follow. Compare that to Dragnet or even some current TV like Law and Order where you can watch one episode and know exactly what is going on. (I gave up on Law and Order years ago after figuring out that every episode has almost the same plotline. I could predict when the plot twists would occur with clocklike precision) The most striking difference with current TV is that shows like The Apprentice now spawn discussions among the poeple who watch it, whether on the internet or around the water cooler, which I think is a big part of their appeal. The Apprentice would not be a very interesting show if you could not talk about it with other people and debate the characters motives and decisions.

Movies have gotten smarter to a lesser degree because unlike TV where plots can unfold and characters can develop over dozens of hours, movies have at max 2-3 hours or so with complex plots like Lord of the Rings or Memento about all you can squeeze out of that format. Lord of the Rings actuall maxed out at 10 hours or so, but that is a rare exception. Unfortunately, as with video games, a substantial portion of movies and TV is still junk and does not challenge its audience. Of course, the same can be said for books, many of which are worse for you than some video games or TV shows.

Posted by Pete at 05:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Climate of Fear Part 27

How do Cindy Sheehan's supporters show how much they are dedicated to peace? Maybe by making bomb threats to a Bush supporter's business in Crawford, Texas. Powerline has the details:

Our correspondent Gene Allen reports that just a few minutes ago, an unidentified man telephoned the Yellow Rose Gift Shop in Crawford, Texas and said, "Your shop is going up in smoke, you better get out now." Law enforcement is on the scene.

Gene describes the Yellow Rose as "a pro-Bush gift shop with a Ten Commandments monument out front. It is located across the street from the Coffee Station, down the street from the Crawford Peace House."

Previous Climate of Fear post.

Posted by Pete at 05:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 18, 2005

When Animals Attack

There seems to be a run of people recently in the news who do not understand how wild animals work. First there were the people attacked by chimpanzees. On Drudge today there was a link to this story today about a kid who was killed by a tiger while posing for a picture with it. Then there was the whole Tiger attacking Roy of Siegfried and Roy fame. And finally as IMAO and Dangerous Dan point out, there are environmentalists who want to introduce wild animals like elephants and lions to the US countryside to add to our biodiversity. At least the environmentalists realize that this will get people killed, they just do not care about the potential human victims. Even I was the victim of a penguin attack a while back, although I am sure I could have bested the little beastie in unarmed combat if I had felt like killing it. That was one gladiatorial combat the Romans never thought of!

For those who do not understand how animals work, let me explain: if given the opportunity and desire they will try to kill you. I do not know if the media is merely a reflection of the lack of understanding among the population of how animals work or if is the cause of it, but unlike on Disney cartoons with tamed Tigers and friendly, talking Gorillas, real life wild animals will try to kill you if they want to. Even domesticated animals like cows and dogs will try to kill you if they feel like it. It is not a moral or rational decision on their part or a reflection on you, it is just how they are and what they do. This is true even for cute looking animals like bears or monkeys. They all have wills of their own and a natural affinity for violence. It is their nature. Do not be surprised when they act on it.

Posted by Pete at 07:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 16, 2005

Zimmerman

I finished The Zimmerman Telegram by Barbara Tuchman last weekend. I find real life spy books more interesting than most of the fictional spy stuff that is out there. I read Charlie Wilsons War which is about the CIA's actions in Afganistan in the 1980'a a few years ago and another book about WWII espionage tricks and incidents around the same time and found those to be more interesting than any James Bond movie or Tom Clancy novel. I think this is mainly because people do stuff in real life that is so stupid, dangerous, bold, or crazy that it is hard to believe these actions occurred if you read them in a fictional novel.

The Zimmerman Telegram was interesting because it focused on all of the intrigue that succeeded in getting the US to enter World War I. It is easy to forget that the US had invaded Mexico a few years before the telegram (with the permission of Mexicos government at the time) in pursuit of Pancho Villa who had invaded the US and killed Americans in Mexico so the idea of a Mexican invasion was not far fetched. Also, the Germans and Japanese had made many attempts to purchase ports and other facilities in Mexico. Many Americans were more worried about a possible Red Dawn style Japanese invasion up through Mexico than an invasion by Mexico itself before the telegram appeared.

The most surprising thing about Germany in all of this is that many Germans were not very worried about the US entering the war in spite of our industrial capacity and finances. Also, even after the Germans knew we had gotten the telegram they continued to use the same methods and codes to transmit other confidential messages because they thought the US and British peoples were to stupid to crack their code. This is one of those things that would be hard to believe if it was fiction.

I respect Wilson even less now than before I read this book. Partly because Wilson allowed his racism to influence his decision making in matters of national security and partly because he seemed to have so little desire to work with what was possible and thought too highly of other countries motives. I am sure today he would be a big believer in the UN. No other world leader was interested in peace without victory, but Wilson was willing to risk his own countrys security to chase a goal that can not be achieved. Countries and institutions, like people, can not be perfected. You can improve (not perfect) the situation in the world, but you have to live in the world of the possible if you want to make a difference for the better. Wilson did not learn that lesson until it was too late.

Posted by Pete at 05:46 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Pitt The Younger

Max Boot has an article on Pitt The Younger in the Weekly Standard. Pitt The Elder, of course, was the inspiration for the name of this blog.

William Pitt, father and son, were no LBJ or Lord North. (In fact, both of them were at political loggerheads with North.) They were more in the Churchill mold. Pitt the Elder (later the Earl of Chatham) guided Britain to victory over France, Austria, Russia, Saxony, and Sweden in the Seven Years' war (1756-1763). His son, Pitt the Younger, was not so fortunate, dying in 1806, nine years before Napoleon was finally vanquished. But he nevertheless provided indomitable and indispensable leadership during the darkest days of the struggle against revolutionary France.

In the pantheon of wartime greats, Pitt the Younger was one of the odder ducks. A political prodigy, he entered Cambridge at 14 and Parliament at 21, where he immediately established a reputation as one of the greatest orators in an age of great oratory. (After his maiden speech, Edmund Burke proclaimed that Pitt "was not merely a chip off the old 'block' but the old block itself.") By 23, having audaciously rejected offers of lesser office, he was chancellor of the exchequer and, a year later, the youngest prime minister in British history.

Posted by Pete at 05:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 12, 2005

The Corner

I finished two more books this week and started a third. I finished David Simon's The Corner this afternoon and finshed The Zinmerman Telegram by Barbara W. Tuchman on tape yesterday. I also started Stephen Johnson's Everything Bad is Good for You. I really liked Simon's earlier Homicide and have been watching his TV show The Wire on DVD for the past few weeks as well. The Corner tells the story of a Baltimore drug dealing corner and the intricacies of life that go with it. Simon is even more pessimistic about the drug war than I am, although my pessimism is mostly philosophical, while his is mostly pragmatic. There is simply no way to stop substance abuse as long as there are people who want to use drugs. And after doubling the size of our prison population over the past decade or so we would have to double it again to hold all the users and dealers. After people are addicted to drugs like heroin or cocaine almost nothing, including the risk of death, prison, shame, hunger, disease, or extreme pain will stop them from getting what their bodies want. And if they do want to kick the habit and are able to get help and someone out there is willing to give them a job even with a history of drug use and jail time, they still have the spiritual and emotional hunger that caused them to start using drugs in the first place.

The Corner follows the lives of a group of drug users and sellers along with a few assorted community types. The woman who runs the local rec center and one of the tough local cops officer Brown (my personal favorite person from the book who even the dealers admit isn’t racist - he equally hates drug dealers and users of all races, creeds, and colors) are about the only non-drug using major figures in the book. By the end of the book one user has kicked his habit through years of effort, another drug dealer type has joined the merchant marines and is ok as long as he is out to sea, and another woman was close to two years sober after a series of relapses. In all of these cases they wanted to be sober and had outside help in getting sober and finding relatively normal jobs. Pretty much everyone else is either still selling and using drugs or dead or in prison.

The saddest part of the whole thing was the petty theft that ruined normal life. Metal theft was the worse since it meant that no one could have copper plumbing or other metal home parts, which makes improving the neighborhood almost impossible. The drive from the desire for drugs and money to buy drugs meant family members and best friends were constantly stealing from each other. This even meant for the one woman who was eventually two years sober stealing from and not feeding her own children. The chances for a normal life for kids growing up in these situations are miniscule.

Posted by Pete at 05:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 10, 2005

Climate of Fear Part 26

What is the best way for someone to show there displeasure with president Bush? Rampant vandalism of Bush supporters cars of course. News9 Reports:

DENVER - Denver police say a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force has admitted to vandalizing cars bearing pro-President Bush bumper stickers at Denver International Airport.

Police say he's responsible for thousands of dollars in damage on at least 12 cars. Lt. Colonel Alexis Fecteau, 42, of Colorado Springs, turned himself in to Denver police Friday.

I am wondering what his commanding officer thinks about all this. Dangerous Dan thinks he will do great on the Democratc lecture circuit once his time in prison is through:

What will be fun to watch is what the anti-Bush crowd do with this. He is a high-ranking officer, after all, who is, clearly, virulently against Bush. If they can get their hands on him for some quotes, they’ll do it. You can look at the DU forums now and get an idea of their reaction.

Previous climate of fear posting.

Posted by Pete at 11:14 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 09, 2005

I Say We Call It New Texas Part 2

Western Canadians are not too happy with being part of Canada:

More than one-third of western Canadians surveyed this summer thought it was time to consider separation from Canada, a poll suggests.

In the survey, 35.6 per cent of respondents from Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia agreed with the statement: Western Canadians should begin to explore the idea of forming their own country.

I say why be part of some new country, when there is a perfectly good country already willing to take you in. I say come and join the United States. We have not added any new states in my lifetime and I am itching to do so. Maybe after this is done we could again start talking about making Cuba a state, which was one of the pressing political issues in this country about a hundred years ago.

Previous I Say We Call It New Texas post.

Posted by Pete at 06:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

MADD Gone Wacko

Mothers Against Drunk Driving seems to have forgotten what its name stands for. Radley Balko writes:

That's exactly what a Rhode Island couple did in 2004. When they learned that their son planned to celebrate the prom with a booze bash at a beach 40 miles away, William and Patricia Anderson instead threw a supervised party for him and his friends at their home. They served alcohol, but William Anderson stationed himself at the party's entrance and collected keys from every teen who showed. No one who came to the party could leave until the next morning.

For this the Andersons found themselves arrested and charged with supplying alcohol to minors. The case ignited a fiery debate that eventually spilled onto the front page of the Wall Street Journal. The local chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving oddly decided to make an example of William Anderson, a man who probably did more to keep drunk teens off the road that night than most Providence-area parents.
I had a total of one beer in high school, but knew lots of people who would drink much more than that and many of them would drive afterwards.

It seems more and more like MADD has followed the pattern of the temperance groups at the beginning of the 20th century. Both started out against alcohol abuse and gradually moved towards total alcohol prohibition. When you can not make a distinction between responsible, temperate alcohol drinking and problem drinking, then you start to treat all drinkers the same no matter the actual harm (or in some cases benefits) caused by their alcohol use. Its hard to take MADD seriously anymore and conbsidering the reduction in drunk driving rates and the increased criminal treatment of drunk drivers that has occurred since MADD's creation, MADD may be best off declaring victory and closing up shop.

Posted by Pete at 06:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 05, 2005

Voting Rights

Here is a link to the American Center for Voter Rights report on voting problems for the last election. It notes a lot of the incidents that I recorded in the climate of fear and voting sections of this blog, like the Republican campaign worker who had their arm broken by trespassers and the Republican rented vehicles that had their tires slashed on election day by Democrats, but there are a couple of incidents against Democrats as well. It seems that it is a non-partisan group and I hope that it is because all people should be able to vote without having to suffer intimidation or violence because of their party affiliation. There is a need for groups like this that try to make sure this sort of intimidation and violence is monitered and prevented in as non-partisan way as possible.

Posted by Pete at 07:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 02, 2005

Those Who Are About To Die

I am about finished reading Steven Saylor's A Gladiator Dies Only Once, a collection of short mysteries that revolve around the Roman Citizen Gordianus the Finder. The setting is very well done with a good mix of different roman activities and places like arenas, villas, and forums and most of the mysteries are believable. Saylor uses historical figures in interesting ways, with Cicero being a regular source of clients in several stories. The only major flaw in the book was how easily I figured out the mysteries. I solved almost each one halfway through its telling. There have been several other Gordianus the Finder books, but I am not sure if I will read them.

I am also halfway through Gladiator: The Secret History of Rome's Warrior Slaves by Alan Baker, which has good details, but is fairly repetitive and tried to compensate for its brevity with lots of filler pages. One of the main focuses of this book (and to a lesser extent the Saylor book) was the religious nature of the games. Many were put on after the death of an important person and served as a public display of death. Baker wonders if the violence of the games substituted for the desire for violence that is part of the human condition and that Roman society often lacked for the average person.

As much as we might not like to admit it, if given the chance many of us would go to modern gladiatorial games. Some early Christians would even go to the games straight after church. I know I would be tempted to go, though much like Cicero in A Gladiator Dies Only Once, I might claim I was only there out of obligation or as a dispassionate observer. That is until the first gladiator took a trident to his abdomen and then all bets are off.

Posted by Pete at 05:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 01, 2005

Ric Flair On North Korea

Apparantly professional wrestler and former WCW world champion Ric Flair once went to North Korea to do some wrestling event. Right Wing News has posted an excerpt from Flair's book To Be The Man about this trip. On a side side note Ric Flair happened to introduce one of my friend's parents to each other several decades ago at a party, which most of my friends agreed was the coolest story of how any of our parents had met:

The event itself was unlike anything I ever witnessed. A total of 380,000 spectators attended over two nights....During the show...(t)he fans held up different colored placards to create incredible mosaic images. It was beautiful, but also creepy. The first couple of sections were occupied exclusively by guys in military uniforms. The spectators cheered on cue. I almost got the feeling that they had been ordered to attend.

Muhammad Ali was also there and although I am not a fan of Ali he was pretty astute here:

Because of the ravages of Parkinson's disease, it was difficult to understand Muhammad Ali when he spoke. But at one function, we were sitting at a big, round table with a group of North Korean luminaries when one of the guys started rambling on about the moral superiority of North Korea, and how they could take out the United States or Japan any time they wanted. Suddenly, Ali piped up, clear as a bell, "No wonder we hate these motherf*ckers."

Posted by Pete at 08:55 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack