On 5/27/2011 3:42 AM, harry wrote:
On May 27, 4:18 am, "Robert wrote:
Slightly off-topic, I was watching leftist PBS last night at two programs,
one about the Parthenon, the other about sunken Roman ships. The second
program turned out to be a lot more about the Roman Empire itself, and how
they made engineering a facet of every part of their lives. What's also
fascinating is how much the US resembles Rome, in both positive and negative
ways.

If there is an afterlife, I hope it involves being able to visit historical
sites like the Pyramids, the Parthenon, the Coliseum when they were brand,
spanking new. It must have been something to see, in a land devoid of large
buildings, a pyramid with its limestone sheathing intact or one of the Greek
temples, painted in riotous colors with huge statutes with enormous amounts
of gold and jewels.

Harry will appreciate how the allegedly morally superior Brits stole the
carvings right off the Parthenon's roof for their museum and to this day
refuse to return their stolen booty to the rightful owners, claiming,
interestingly enough, the same sort of right to them that Israel claims for
its itself, namely "We bought it from the Ottomans, fair and square!" What
the Ottomans are doing selling Greek heritage is less than clear, even to
the experts, but still, the English are hanging on to their stolen
antiquities.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elgin_Marbles

A study by Professor David Rudenstine of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of
Law concluded that the premise that Elgin obtained legal title to the
marbles, which he then transferred to the British government, "is certainly
not established and may well be false"

The Romans pioneered things we use in the home almost every day. They
showed how, on the island of Ventotene*, where Augustus exiled his slut
daughter**, how they built a water collection system using hydraulic cement,
decantation pools and tunnels sloped precisely to cause water to flow fast
enough not to stagnate but slowly enough not to just spill out on the other
end. The system still produces 250K gallons of water per year. How many of
our systems will be working 2,000 years from now? They put the catch field
on the highest part of the island and built cross-shaped cisterns to hold
the water after the debris was decanted. The Romans even invented MSG!
They allowed fish to rot, producing a substance called garum, which
apparently is addictive because of the monosodium glutamate. They put it on
everything, even sweetcakes.

Most fascinating to me was that the amphora design may have caused the ship
to sink. If you've ever seen a Roman amphora . . .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphora

. . . many of them have pointed or very narrow bottoms and can't stand
alone. The Romans designed them to be stackable and interlocking, so the
pointy bottoms became legs for a huge array of bottles. The problem was, if
one of the bottles on the edge of the array cracked, the whole assembly
pitched toward the broken amphora, breaking even more of them and changing
the very balance of the ship, allowing it to be easily swamped and sunk. I
wonder if the Romans had a version of our modern FAA accident investigation
teams? (-: RGB? The Roman Galley Bureau?

The Parthenon ep showed the tools they used to manipulate huge marble blocks
that they mated together within 1/20 of a millimeter. One of the tools was
a flat stone with hands on each end and funnels scattered over the surface
that allowed sand to pour through. These were worked across the top of each
column segment (drum) until they were perfectly flat. They also showed how
they checked for a tight fit, using colored clay the way we, today, might
crayon mark a sticking door to see where it was binding.

Then, as today, the Romans controlled alcohol licensing, and only Roman
merchants could make and sell wine in the provincial areas. I guess their
version of the ATF would be the WGS (Wine, garum and spears!)

Fascinating stuff, and completely apolitical. (0: "Nova" has always, in my
mind, been the flagship of the PBS network and still teach me stuff at this
old age.

--
Bobby G.

* Ven'toe-ten-Ay
** She turned out not to be a slut, but a political conspirator against her
father.
You should remember that you bought Alaska and Louisiana from people
that didn't own it.
It's okay because America did it? That could be an excuse for a lot of
things. Oh yeah! It is.

snip
I hear there exists a replica in Las Vegas, maybe you should go see
that?


You're just jealous. BTW: Been there and done that. Wouldn't do it
again. :-)

Jim