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Screen » Film
Marvel's Top Gun
Popcorn movie of the year, with extra corn
If you're anything like me and grew up loving cinema, movie night was the best night of the week. You'd go to the dinky little pre-IMAX theater with sticky floors and weird smells, get your buttery snacks, and for the next two hours you'd be transported to another world. And if it was a good movie, it would be a world where everything made sense, where the good guys beat the bad guys by overcoming impossible odds, becoming their true, heroic selves and saving the day.
That's her about-to-punch-a-space-ship face.
"Captain Marvel" bottles up that '90s movie theater experience and presents it wrapped with a flaming golden ribbon and spritzed with a strong essence of girl power. This is an origin story that starts with Vers the Space Marine (a perfectly cast Brie Larson) in service of the blue-skinned Kree race.
Left without any memories of her past, she's on a quest to master her flaming fist-punch abilities and become her best super-heroic self. When the opposing green-skinned and shape changing Skrull race captures and interrogates her, it jostles loose some very human memories of her time serving in the Air Force in Louisiana, sending her back to Earth and her missing past.
The moment she crash-lands through the roof of a Blockbuster Video, we realize the story takes place in the '90s, changing from a futuristic space movie to a joyously nostalgic romp through rural Louisiana as she reunites with old Air Force buddies, wearing a Nine Inch Nails T-shirt the whole time.
At the center of this sweet blast of '90s nostalgia is a strongly beating moral heart. Vers regains her memories of being Air Force pilot Carol Danvers, and with it comes the realization that she's stronger than she ever knew. A life spent being underestimated for being a woman has left her ready to take on violent alien races. So, when we finally get to see Captain Marvel as a glowing golden goddess punching spaceships in half, it feels like she really earned her heroism.
Like other Marvel movies, you don't have to be a huge comic book nerd, understanding everyone's back stories, to thoroughly enjoy this movie. However, fans of Marvel comic books and movies alike will enjoy seeing familiar faces and clever tie-ins from the rest of the franchise, including a young, fresh-faced Nick Fury rocking two fully functional eyeballs, and fan favorite Agent Coulson still alive and kicking.
Stay after the credits for a present-day stinger tying Captain Marvel in with "Endgame," the coming resolution to the "Avengers" series, in which we finally see the resolution of the cliffhanger we were left with in "Infinity War."
Built on '90s nostalgia, fleshed out by real-world socio-political concepts, and tempered with a secret love letter to test pilots, Captain Marvel is a truly heroic addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as well as a very fun stand-alone story about a girl who's just really, really good at punching things.
Dir. Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck
Old Mill Stadium 16 & IMAX, Sisters Movie House, Redmond Cinema
Thwip!
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President Granger shuns High Court ruling on GECOM Chairman appointment
Posted by: Denis Chabrol in Business, Courts, Politics Wednesday, 19 July 2017, 10:59	6 Comments
Last Updated on Wednesday, 19 July 2017, 10:59 by Denis Chabrol
FLASH BACK: Opposition Leader, Bharrat Jagdeo meeting with President David Granger.
President David Granger on Wednesday appeared to have shunned a High Court interpretation of the Constitution on the appointment of a chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission.
"The Chief Justice gave an interpretation based on her perception of the Law and I will continue to act in accordance with my perception of the Constitution; that is to say I will not appoint somebody who I do not consider fit and proper," he told reporters.
Chief Justice, Roxane George-Wiltshire, in her ruling on Monday, said the President is not required to give reasons for rejecting nominees by the Opposition Leader but in the spirit of good governance and democracy he should do so. She added that would assist the Opposition Leader in determining what are the requirements for selecting suitable candidates.
However, President Granger indicated that he would not be giving any reason. "If you can show me the Article of the Constitution which requires me to give reason, I will comply with the Constitution but I will not do what the Constitution does not require me to do," he said.
On the thorny issue of whether preference should be given to a judge, retired judge or someone eligible to be a judge, the President contradicted the Chief Justice's ruling in which she stated that here is no preference and both the judicial and non-judicial category of "any other fit and proper person" are of equal weight.
"I do not believe that anything the Honourable Chief Justice said has diminished my regard for the word and spirit of the Constitution," he said.
Granger reiterated that for someone to be eligible for appointment as GECOM Chairman that person must be independent, impartial and possesses integrity.
Twelve nominees have so far been submitted by Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo but the two lists of six persons have been rejected by the President.
Jagdeo has since shortlisted 10 other names from which he would select six and submit a third list.
The Chief Justice has said the word "any" broadens the categories of persons and that only one list can be submitted and subsequently amended.
Previous: Breaking: Rupert Roopnaraine resigns; Granger yet to accept
Next: WPA supports Roopnarine's resignation from government; party expects another ministerial appointment

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Film archives are bent on preserving what the film industry is bent on destroying.
The Filmoteca is the main source of documentary reference for film research in Catalonia. In addition to having thousands of documents and audiovisual archives deposited and catalogued, it has the resources to allow researchers and the general public to easily access all the bibliographic, documentary, videography and cinematographic collections.
The Film Library offers free access to books and other documents on the cinema and the audiovisual world. The task of cataloguing is a constant one and every year there are numerous acquisitions which include heritage items and new releases. Some of these documents have special reference conditions, either because of their rarity or due to their state of conservation.
The Preservation and Restoration Centre works to catalogue and document the film collection, taking as a reference the new EN-15907 standard for cinematographic works. The specific database of the film collection can be consulted at the Film Library; in addition, a selection of the most representative titles from the film collection have been digitised and can be consulted in the Library itself. Even so, if you want to view the films in their original medium, there are facilities available to access the audiovisual material in the Preservation and Restoration Centre, provided the requested materials are in good condition and their viewing does not imply any risk of deterioration. For further information, please read the conditions of access to the Preservation and Restoration Centre collections.
A part of these collections can be consulted through the catalogue on this website, where you can visit the databases of the Government of Catalonia Specialist Libraries (BEG), a network to which the Filmoteca belongs, or the databases of the Preservation and Restoration Centre itself, and the exclusive digital repository of the Filmoteca.
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Has taxonomy term - Any -AltresFilmoXarxaCicleConferènciaCursExposicióFilmJornadaPresentacióPublicacionsSeminariTaula rodona


Bringing it Back! Karaoke with Mark the Shark Monday Nights!
Starting May 13th at 8pm Mark the Shark will be back with us and ready to Rock with YOU!!
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"If you don't want to be old, don't live" was the phrase of my son when old age pains were the subject of discussion at home. This made me think that life is a series of adventures, where each of them are part of our life, that's why live with passion is so nice, because every minute is just as important as the other one.
One of my passions curiously these days gained some notoriety in the Bolivian press, the economy of hydrocarbons, in particular, Government Take in oil and gasrevenues. For this reason, I want to share the story of the oil revenues before and after the hydrocarbons "nationalization" in Bolivia. I hope these words can help the debate and the reality abstraction I made will reflect what actually happens in my country.
Well let's start; in the chart below I present the situation without taxes for two types of fields in Bolivia, to the left is the position of small and medium fields on the right the large fields, it is clear that the costs are different in both cases, then the fight is how to divide between government and private the remaining white area.
In an effort to better visualize the situation, let me remove the white area, as I do below.
As is clear, some fields in Bolivia could (and can) support this royalties and production tax, but for others the situation is unprofitable.
In 2006, President Evo Morales Ayma, approved a supreme decree forced oil and gas companies to renegotiate exploration and exploitation contracts. Result of these negotiations, the State (through YPFB the national oil company in Bolivia) achieved an additional revenues, keeping the provisions of Law 3058 Government and oil companies negotiated around a table and agreed tables (different according to each contract) as which then attached as example. According this tables, the Government share is funtion of investment recovery (B parameter) and production level.
Naturally in small and medium fields renegotiating contracts was less aggressive, as you can see in the left part of the previous figure.
That's why for some people the Government Take is 87% and for others is 67%, the funny thing is that when the Government said it would exchange (through the nationalization) the previous division 18% (Goverment)-82% (Private sector) to 82% (Government) - 18% (Private sector) talked of percentage on gross income (on the left), but now seems to be talking of percentages in the right.
Regarding the small and medium fields the IDH (32%) captured almost all of the oil and gas revenues, therefore, the percentages of nationalization were very small. But the percentages are very different, over the net profit the Government Take is 95%, but over the gross revenues is 51%... in fact, in many cases (especially oil fields) the Government takes the 100% of the profit (white area). For this and other reasons, the investment in small to medium sized fields or oil fields is almost nil.
The problem in our country is the lack of progressivity of state participation in oil revenues. As I usually say, thinking that all the hydrocarbons sector can pay 50% of production taxes, it's like wanting all Bolivians have the same size suit (suit jacket and pants) to small people (like me) will be large, but with tall people will be small ... a progressive tax system is like to have a "tailored suit".
My good friends, it has been a pleasure to share these ideas with you; I hope the political discussion of the moment (in Bolivia) can help to resolve the hydrocarbons problems in my country.
We all like to harvest, but today it is time to sow... the challenge is raised and is in your hands. As I heard in a movie: "long life and wisdom for live it."
La Paz, August 17, 2014.
@César, my friend, agreed with you in all your comments. Thanks.
Mauricio,as you clearly state the problem with the Bolivian oil and gas fiscal regime is the lack of progressivity. However the renegotiation of the E&P contracts also know as Nationalization is the only progressive element in the fiscal regime.
Clearly Bolivia needs a new fiscal regime that preserve the royalties but eliminate the IDH. The introduction of a new progressive Resource Rent Tax (RRT) and the elimination of price control trough a policy of direct and focalized subsidies are the main issues that should and must be introduced in the legislation.


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Q: Motivation behind study of martingales Today I wanted to ask a question which I am sure has been answered in multiple places but for which I do not yet have a very clear understanding.
Though martingales is a very well explored area of probability and I have seen it come up in a course on randomized algorithms, I kept feeling that it required more deeper thinking than most other things in the course. As in, I would time and again have difficulties articulating to myself why is this an interesting mathematical object to look at or maybe more precisely, I was not able to convince myself how martingales will arise in ordinary ruminations of abstract thought. (I know it did arise in "some ruminations", but so far I have been unable to see a clear motivation behind these objects).
I have seen a few applications -- like they can be used to get concentration inequalities even when your random variables are dependent (and the absolute deltas are bounded). I have also seen the gambler motivation; that did not reduce my uneasiness with martingales much :(
I guess what I would like  is the following. I have given a few lectures on (basic) applications of probabilistic method and I have a good feel for this. But I cannot say the same for martingales. As of now, it seems like an alien mathematical object to me and I certainly cannot imagine myself talking about martingales yet. Please let me know if you have some suggestions/reading material which can help with this. Also, I guess I would be perfectly happy with some more approachable/playful applications of martingales.
Thanks!

A: From statistics view point, we also use martingale to show properties of some statistical test. The most important example is to show the optimal property of likelihood ratio test (LR) when given both null and alternative simple hypothesis. By using martingale, one could show that LR is martingale under null hypothesis and sub-martingale under alternative hypothesis. This result shows LR test is optimal which is another way to show Neyman-Pearson theorem. And it is very amazing in cases of simple hypothesis under null hypothesis sample size changes won't affect the test statistics. However under alternative (if null is false) as sample size increases one could always reject null. This result shows properties of simple statistical test. Also martingale is used in survival analysis to show properties of statistical procedures.

A: As an applied probabilist, I've had similar issues with martingales. From my own questions, it seems that they are useful for mostly theoretical reasons to prove that certain properties hold for the process under study. If you can identify a process as a martingale, then you know some rather general things about that process that may lead you to being able to get specific answers to your questions.
The generality and abstractness of martingales means that any process whose mean varies monotonically in time can potentially be converted into a martingale by adding/subtracting the proper conditional expected value. You can then apply martingale theorems (optional stopping, convergence) which, if you are lucky, will lead to explicit answers.
Therefore, if you approach martingales from the point of view of "how can I calculate numbers using these", you may be rather disappointed, as there are only a few such instances I've run across.
However, if you approach it from the point of view "Ah...process $X_t$ is a martingale, hence any non-clarvoyant stopping strategy will NOT affect its expected value". Now, this realization is useful for an applied mathematician/probabilist and could potentially save you a lot of time (not to mention embarrassment) trying clever (but ultimately futile) ways to determine how to optimize the expected value of such a process. That's been my major take-away. If you're a theoretician, then they are just plain awesome due to the great results you can prove for processes that are martingales :-)

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Markus Lonardoni (* 1963) ist ein deutscher Musiker und Filmkomponist und Autor. Der in Aalen lebende Lonardoni schreibt Musik für Kinofilme und Fernsehproduktionen.

Leben

Nach dem Studium an der Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Stuttgart von 1980 bis 1985 ging er als Vollstipendiat ans Berklee College of Music nach Boston. Dort studierte er bis 1989 Komposition und Filmmusik. 1990  war er Mitglied der Meisterklasse des Avantgarde Komponisten Hans Werner Henze an der Musikhochschule Köln.

Nach dem Studium arbeitete Lonardoni zunächst als freier Musiker bei den Stuttgarter Philharmonikern und dem Staatstheater Stuttgart, sowie als Gastdozent an verschiedenen Musikhochschulen.

Seit 1994 ist Lonardoni freischaffender Filmkomponist.

Filmmusik

Lonardoni schrieb 1996–2015 die Filmmusik zu über 40 Fernsehproduktionen aus den TV-Reihen Tatort (ARD), Polizeiruf 110 (ARD), Ein Fall für zwei (ZDF), Alarm für Cobra 11 (RTL), sowie zu den Filmen Happy Birthday, Türke  von Doris Dörrie (zusammen mit Peer Raben) (Kino 1991), Wonded faces (Kino 1991), Die wahre Geschichte von Männern und Frauen (Kino zusammen mit Peer Raben 1992), Friedrich und der verzauberte Einbrecher (Kino 1996), Spiel um dein Leben (ARD 1996), Porträt eines Richters (ARD 1997), Atemlose Liebe (1998), Sweet little sixteen (1999), Alles Samba (2003) und Liebe auf Bewährung (2003).
Außerdem komponierte er 2002–2016 die Musik zu 52 Folgen der  ZDF-Dokumentationsreihe Schliemanns Erben/Terra X, 2008 komponierte er zusammen mit Paul Rabiger die Filmmusik für die zehnteilige ZDF-Fernsehdokumentation Die Deutschen von Guido Knopp. Auch für Stauffenberg – Die wahre Geschichte, (ZDF) ebenfalls von Guido Knopp, die dreiteilige Dokumentation "Mythos Rommel (ARD) " von Maurice Philip Remy komponierte Lonardoni die komplette Filmmusik.

Veröffentlichungen
 Rock Drumming. Voggenreiter, 1994. ISBN 978-3802401916
 Keyboard spielen. Buch und CD. Pop und Rock. Für Anfänger und Wiedereinsteiger. Falken, 1996. ISBN 978-3806814354
 Popularmusiklehre. Pop, Rock, Jazz. Reclam, 1996. ISBN 978-3-15-029604-2
 Applaus, H.12 : Das Drumset in der Klasse. Klett, 2002. ISBN 978-3121778201
 Jazz + Pop Fuer Kleine Haende, Bosworth. ISBN 979-0201630182
 Technik für Kleine Trommel 1. Für Anfänger, Wiedereinsteiger und Fortgeschrittene. Hofmeister, 2005. ISBN 978-3873505070

Filmografie (Auswahl)
 1992: Happy Birthday, Türke!
 1996: Tatort – Perfect Mind: Im Labyrinth
 1996: Tatort – Wer nicht schweigt, muß sterben
 1997–1998 Zwei Brüder (Fernsehserie, 3 Folgen)
 1997–1998: Das Amt (Fernsehserie, 17 Folgen)
 2000: Tatort – Bienzle und der Mann im Dunkeln
 2000–2002 Alarm für Cobra 11 – Die Autobahnpolizei (Fernsehserie, 13 Folgen)
 2002: Tatort – Schrott und Totschlag
 2002: Polizeiruf 110 – Angst um Tessa Bülow
 2003: Polizeiruf 110 – Mama kommt bald wieder
 2003: Alles Samba
 2004: Schliemanns Erben
 2005: Tatort – Ohne Beweise
 2005: Tatort – Der Name der Orchidee
 2006: Tatort – Gebrochene Herzen
 2006: Polizeiruf 110 – Tod im Ballhaus
 2008: Die Deutschen (Fernsehserie, 1 Folge)
 2008: Tatort – Der Kormorankrieg
 2009: Stauffenberg – Die wahre Geschichte
 2010: Polizeiruf 110 – Blutiges Geld
 2012: Tatort – Schmuggler

Weblinks

Einzelnachweise

Filmkomponist
Deutscher
Geboren 1963
Mann

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MLK saw the problem in 1963
microraptor on His name is Joe
John Morales on Those poor "woke" conservatives
Victory celebration! » « Syracuse, you still there?
You can buy it as a Christmas gift! It's only $70!
There are other versions. There are a whole lot of these things!
In case you're wondering what it is, it's a small Faraday cage for people who are sensitive (they think) to EMF radiation. These are designed for you to place your WiFi router in so that it will stop hosing your house with 2.4-5 gigaherz radiation. Which is the whole point of a WiFi router. So yeah, you go drop $100 on a router so you can browse the internet, and then cage it up in a metal box so you can't browse the internet. Brilliant!
Another amazing thing: those cages have a significant number of 5-star reviews. I guess they work!
zippythepinhead says
4 December 2020 at 12:43 pm
Because you can't spell "radiation" without the letters "I", "D", "I", "O", "T".
drksky says
There was an article a few days back that people who bought these things then started complaining that their WiFi service was bad:
https://bit.ly/3lH3Snv
Oh, wait, I didn't realize it was "upgraded", now I want one.
kingoftown says
https://youtu.be/xSVqLHghLpw
Pierce R. Butler says
It's only $70!
With that, you can buy enough Ethernet cable to connect to your switch in all but the largest of houses.
christoph says
Thanks, but my tinfoil hat works just as well.
For true peace of mind, you need a daily recto-magneto-gram ™(R), now with indisposable probes!
Jaws says
OTOH, a smaller one might not be a bad place to keep your wallet and passport, especially when travelling… if only because the shiny will make them easier to find while their RFI chips can't be interrogated by miscreants.
And it will irritate TSA, which is almost always worthwhile.
Hey, I know: Put your TV remote in it!
Erlend Meyer says
Don't worry, any connectivity problems can be solved with range extenders.
PaulBC says
I seriously thought about buying a metal box for my car keys when I got a new car a few years ago. I had a habit of trying the drivers side door after getting out to make sure it was really locked, and of course this fails if it opens when your key is in proximity. I eventually decided it was an obsessive habit anyway. Sometimes I still check the other doors.
Other than that, I can't think of what I would need a Faraday cage for.
When I saw the picture, I just assumed it was for holding your spiders during transport. It might work if you could get them to go in, but there are probably better ways.
wzrd1 says
Blah, used to run shielded eternity cables through grounded steel conduit, all joints epoxies or welded.
Laughably, we used to test pagers inside of a microwave oven sized Faraday shield, using a precision signal source. It was a final QA proving stage.
We used to be required to place our hell phones into a locking Faraday shield before entry into the SCIF. Predictably, the battery would be depleted when we departed, those depleted in airplane mode were examined…
slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says
Use of this product should not at all affect signal range and internet speed.
I don't understand. —oh I see . it doesn't block internet speed, nor the signal range. It blocks the signal strength it's on the customer to use a device that can deal with nanowatt signals instead of the conventional milliwatts. Amazing how easy it is to prey on lack of understanding how WiFi connects from router to PC, and the fantasy of EMF allergies.
I am a EE with Masters Degree and well versed in wireless signals.
@ PaulBC, # 10: The annoying thing about those kinds of car keys is that the door will unlock for anyone who touches it if you (and the key) are close to the car.
sbh says
If we're going to be pedantic about vote margins, Joe Biden's (7.0 million) is about the same as Warren Harding's in 1920 or FDR's in 1932. Richard Nixon's 1972 vote margin (17.9 million) is largest, followed by Ronald Reagan's 1984 (16.8 million), Lyndon Johnson's 1964 (15.9 million), and FDR's 1936 (11.0 million) vote margins.
Sorry about that. This was a comment on a different thread; I don't know how I managed to post it here as well. Feel free to delete it.
whheydt says
I really prefer to use wired connections, anyway. I'm slowly migrating from CAT-5/5A to CAT-6/6E and have upgraded my own switches to 1Gb/s. (And…someday…those will have to be replaced with 2.4Gb/s, but nothing in the house handles that…yet. The switch side of the ISP supplied router/modem is only 100Mb/s, so the faster gear only applies to transfers on the LAN.) There are others in the household that routinely use WiFi.
What also exists, is readily available, and one can see uses for, are RF shielded slip covers for chipped cards, like ATM or credit cards, to prevent them from being read when you don't want them to. I've also seen references to shielded wallets for the same purpose.
Locally, there are car pool/paid priority freeway lanes. If you have a toll transponder, but you have enough people in the car for the carpool rules to apply, you want to put the transponder in something shielded so you don't get charged for using the lane when it should be free for you. Carrying a big enough piece of aluminum foil to wrap it in works just fine and is vastly cheaper than any purpose-built commercial product.
unclefrogy says
I prefer a wired connection and do not mind funky wiring paths around the house (not hidden in walls or under the floor..)
I have entertained the thought of just such a device but never went through the trouble to make one. looks very well made and at a fare price. I live in a very urban environment and realize there is already so much low level EMF and RFI around that protecting myself would be difficult.
I will add that this old house was covered in asbestos shingle siding long before I bought it it is stable so no problem with it except they installed an aluminum foil backed vapor barrier which has caused some difficulty with RF reception at least that is what I think is the source of the difficulty. Now if I installed grounded copper window screens and metal roof I would be set.
uncle frogy
seachange says
It might be sensible to buy this but not for the reason listed, and not at the cost.
My router is WiFi even though I do not want it to be, it has Ethernet ports in back. An equivalent modem-router which is not WiFI is much more expensive. All my connections are cabled with Ethernet 2. While I have set all of my devices to not use WiFi a lot of them will obnoxiously default to this when reset even though my wired connections along the ceiling are faster and more reliable.
I don't want to broadcast my data, this is an opportunity to hack. I don't want my devices working slowly, and a box like this would instantly alert me to restart fails.
René says
I made it a principle not to LOL. Some wizzard used eternity cables. I chuckled.
KG says
I've thought of buying a Faraday cage to keep my backup hard drive in, in case of an EMF pulse from a high altitude nuke or a Carrington event. Anyone know if it would actually protect the drive in such a case?
That looks like a wire mesh box that holds letter size paper that I used to see in a Storables store (now closed).
I told my electrical engineer spouse about this while he was making lunch. First he tilted his head, looked a but confused, and then just broke out in laughter. He wondered if this was a plan to prevent folks from getting teh internets.
doumakes says
Unlike various other examples of woo, this one at least makes a claim that's testable. Put your cell phone in the box. Have a family member call you. If it rings, the manufacture is full of shit.
I used to have a "Faraday cage" passport pouch, but it failed the test. I'm in the market for one that works.
michaelcrichton says
unclefrogy, seachange: it was no doubt originally designed for users like you, who had a genuine need for it. But then they realized they could make more money marketing it to nitwits who wanted to protect their routers from getting the 5g Covid. :-)
indianajones says
@20 Yeah, a ruined hard drive would be the absolute last straw for me on a day with nuclear weapons in it.
Ahem. Anyway, probably not. A Faraday cage won't knock out all RF signal, just a lot of it. Think of it this way: Trees don't conduct electricity. But if you put 7 million or so volts over it, there's your lightning strike and accompanying wrecked tree.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says
These remind me of the SS cages the quality control department used in the automatic washer (think lab equipment dishwasher) for items like weighing boats, forceps, stir bars, and other non-disposable equipment. The automatic washer was used for quality assurance reasons.
bcw bcw says
@20. To get a big EMF pulse on a device it needs something acting as an antenna. A sky pulse mostly destroys things by being picked up by the miles of power lines to your house which then blows up devices that are plugged in (use surge protectors.) A car is big enough that it has pretty good pickup but can act as a Faraday cage itself. A disk drive not plugged into anything should be OK – the data itself, totally, but the electronics in the drive could get damaged if there is a big enough voltage spike, but this is unlikely.
The reviews are scary "I'm really sensitive to EMF and my Mac-mini makes my head hurt even if I use a really long cable so the display is in the next room."
I can understand, in my case loud colors make my ears hurt. jez kidding.
I would love to unlove to unplug that Mac on this guy without telling him.
R. L. Foster says
Or you could just move to the United States National Radio Quiet Zone if you think EMF radiation makes you ill. Only problem with that is that it's mostly in West Virginia.
No matter what kind of Faraday cage I buy, my Maxwell's Demon keeps figuring out how to escape.
@KG, # 20: Your drive might be okay, but you'd need to be wearing about 2,000,000 SPF sunblock.
The Vicar (via Freethoughtblogs) says
@#20, KG:
The pulse might or might not harm the drive directly. What's far more likely is a massive power surge coming in through the power lines, overwhelming your surge protector and the guts of your computer and hitting the drive by the ground in the cable. (All the major connection schemes have a ground pin or use the plug itself.)
If you want to be paranoid about this kind of scenario, get a cheap SDXC drive (if you don't have one built in) and make regular backups to cheap SDXC cards, using two in alternation. They're fast, small, basically immune to radiation, and increasingly cheap.
John Morales says
@20, put it into a DVD, or some other form of optical storage.
(Why ameliorate when you can avoid?)
leerudolph says
DAMNIT. Sorry for the premature "Post Comment".
I was just going to add "and then weld it shut."
microraptor says
5 December 2020 at 12:53 am
I wonder how many of the five star votes on the home Faraday cage are from trolls trying to get stupid people into actually buying one?
5 December 2020 at 1:40 am
@#32, John Morales:
Meh. DVDs are awkward to use, relatively low-capacity, and the media often isn't rated to be used with drives fast enough to beat SD cards. (A Class 10/UC 1 SD card, which is the typical speed now, guarantees a minimum of 10 MB/sec sequential write speed; DVDs have to be at least 7.22x speed to match that and a lot of the media is only officially rated for 2x or 4x.) And the price/capacity ratio isn't really all that good — Walmart will sell you a spindle of 100 DVD-R or DVD+R media (of who knows what quality) for $24, which is theoretically 470 GB, but they'll sell you two 256 GB micro SD cards for $22 — and the SD cards will be reusable, while you have to pay a lot more for DVD-RW. Then, in addition, the DVD drive will have moving parts, and will therefore be fragile, while the SD drive is solid-state. And the cards will fit in your wallet, while storing the DVDs properly will eat a bunch of space.
Thanks for all the advice!
indianajones@20,
What I'm thinking of in terms of a nuke is, as I said, a high altitude explosion – of course not likely to happen unless there's a pretty nasty international contretemps in progress, but not necessarily life- or civilization-ending. And there's enough of my life and work now in computer files (totalling around a terabyte) that it would be a serious personal blow to lose it. I backup regularly, and keep one copy in the garden shed in case of a fire at home that I survive but nothing inanimate in the home does, I guess I could copy everything into the "Cloud", but I prefer not to be more at the mercy of Big Tech companies than necessary.
KG@37 You could back it up on the highest capacity non-volatile memory you can come up with. I'm not sure what there is beyond DVDs at this point. While backing up a 1TB hard drive with hundreds of DVDs sounds like a pain, there is probably a lot less that you really care about keeping. Right now I'm in the tenuous position of having most of my old stuff on an external drive, though I do have DVD backups from years ago.
DVDs may not last either. I wonder what kind of work has done on long-lasting archives, ones that would not degrade over thousands of years. They don't have to be especially compact or fast to read back. It could be very low tech and even macroscopic: Drill holes a 1mm apart on a 1 square meter slab and you have a megabit already. Suppose it's 1mm thick. These can be stacked compactly in large numbers (1G per cubic meter). You probably want higher density, but my point is that you can have extremely durable media and still be able to fit massive archives (terabytes in a warehouse-size building).
I have archives going way back, but they're organized very loosely. When switching from my undergrad to grad school and moving on from there, I remember the kinds of backups I used to make on tape media that got progressively smaller physically and larger in storage space. Everything from that period (up to 1995) could probably fit in under 250M with room to spare.
Actually, what I really miss are the cassette tapes I made as a teen containing TRS-80 assembly language programs. I think I eventually told my family in Pennsylvania they could throw them out if they wanted. That was foolish. It hadn't occurred to me that they would be pretty easy to recover and digitize in another form. I would be curious to see them now.
But it's mostly idle curiosity and if it was all lost, I suppose it wouldn't matter. That includes personal items too, photos of my kids growing up. Obviously I would hate to lose this. I do have a lot in the cloud (as well as computer hobby work). So I think I'd be OK just having that. Work I do for an employer stays there. And that's totally fine with me.
… I guess flash drives would be a great improvement on DVD both in convenience and capacity, but my hunch is that a DVD would be more likely to survive EMP. I don't know if that's even true. Would a metal safe also function as a Faraday cage? Or even a gym locker? Maybe it would be effective (and very traditional) to put backups on a flashdrive and just leave that in a safe deposit box at a bank (for electronic and physical security). I've never gone to such effort with anything, but it's an option.
dudev says
The Amazon listing says it measures 12″ x 9″ x 3″. It's a file box for papers and folders with a grommet hole installed for router cables. And it costs $69. That's probably a 200% markup from what it cost to make. Michael Faraday is rolling over in his grave, knowing he's missing out on unbridled capitalism targeting the uneducated.
@PaulBC, #38/39:
Hah, I actually took a class on preservation and there was a segment on digital stuff, so I can partially answer your question on that subject!
Even professionally-pressed CDs, which last much longer than burned ones, have relatively poor maximum expected shelf life. No discs at all are expected to last as long as 500 years; IIRC the maximum is estimated at 300, assuming everything is perfect. This is still better than magnetic tape, which goes bad after a few decades. (And all of this is assuming best-practices storage — if you keep them in a damp basement and/or at human-comfortable temperature, they will degrade faster than that. Magnetic tape can go bad ridiculously fast.)
If you really want to preserve digital data for the extreme long haul, what you need to do is encode it visually, print it on polyester microfilm, and keep it in a low-humidity (not 0, but somewhere around 20%, IIRC), low-temperature (again IIRC, around 10°C) darkened facility. That form is estimated to last up to 1500 years according to current materials science. (Of course, it's less physical-space-efficient than an actual electronic medium, but at the moment we don't have any electronic media which are estimated to last anywhere near that long.) Of course, if you write stuff out on parchment and store it properly, that has an extremely long life as well.
SD cards (and other flash media) degrade after a decade or so if I am informed correctly, and were not covered in my course (because at the time they weren't high-enough capacity to be interesting), but like magnetic tape can be "refreshed" a bit by actually being hooked up and read. On the other hand, if it's a disaster recovery backup, rather than an archival backup, you don't need long-term storage because you'll be making new backups regularly.
You don't want to use flash drives in general for paranoia backups, you want specifically SD cards. Thumb drives add an extra couple of points of failure which are not easily separable from the storage itself, or easily reparable, and which receive physical stress from the act of plugging and unplugging. SD cards separate almost everything from the storage itself, so if the USB interface fails you can replace the drive but still have access to the storage. (And, incidentally, most flash thumb drives generate a vast amount of heat — for whatever reason, even external SD drives don't seem to have such a bad problem with that.)
SD cards might or might not survive an EMP. I can't find any definitive answer with a quick, lazy search because most answers focus on SSDs instead and the drive mechanisms, not the storage, would definitely be toast… but of course an SD card doesn't have those. But if you're using them to make a regular backup because you're being paranoid about Major Electromagnetic Events, then presumably you are already planning to alternate between two sets of backups, one of which is in a Faraday cage while the other is being created/altered anyway. (You could even put each set of backups in a small Faraday cage inside a larger Faraday cage for Extra Paranoia.)
Vicar (The):
SD cards might or might not survive an EMP. I can't find any definitive answer with a quick, lazy search
Seriously? They're electronic, for all that they're non-volatile. Mostly MOSFETs — transistors.
Anyway, DVDs do survive. As do microfiche. And paper.
(You could even put each set of backups in a small Faraday cage inside a larger Faraday cage for Extra Paranoia.)
You do realise if the surfaces are in contact they become essentially one surface, no?
John Morales@42
I suppose you could suspend a conductive cage inside a conductive cage using an insulator. I am not sure what the point would be. The outer cage should already distribute charge so there is no electromagnetic field inside. So the inner cage doesn't have any field left to cancel (unless there is some residual field). Maybe it would be a little different, e.g. eliminating eddy currents or something (just guessing here). It seems like a lot of trouble to go to for purposes that are unclear.
Cargo-cult science, Paul.
@44 Well, a Faraday cage does work if the intent is to eliminate the electric field inside. There's nothing cargo-cult about it. It's very basic electrostatics, and the subject of demonstrations way back when in which a person inside a cage was protected from a high voltage electrical discharge. It's also the reason people are advised to stay inside cars in a lightning storm (at least as I understand).
It won't protect the outside from an electrical field inside, though, which kind of debunks the tin-foil hat idea. If your brain is emitting EM signals that can be read, they will still be transmitted.
It does take time for the electrons in the cage to regroup, so the field won't be perfectly zero if the outside field is changing (beyond that it gets into specifics that I don't know). I can sort of imagine the effect of nested cages being different from a single cage, given that the cage is not fully enclosed and the field inside will not be perfectly zero. It's something that can be measured.
Tangent: here's some nifty electrostatics I noticed when showing my son (then 6 or 7) a simple "gold leaf electroscope". You can make one very cheaply using aluminum foil for the gold leaf in a plastic bottle, such as for bottled water. It works great for even a small charge, e.g. like rubbing a balloon on your head. You can use a wire to transfer the charge and do a lot of cool tricks with very easily available throwaway parts.
But it did not work at all for me when I "upgraded" to a glass bottle. Here's what I think is happening. The aluminum foil strips are very thick compared to gold leaf and it takes a bigger charge to push them apart. It is far more likely that they were attracted to the sides of the plastic bottle, which probably had some polar molecules or what not that could align with the field. The glass bottle, being merely an insulator had no effect, so the aluminum strips were left to push each other apart the way it is supposed to work for gold leaf. They may have moved a little, but not as dramatically. It'd be interesting to revisit all this and check if my explanation is correct.
Sorry, brain fart. Yes, of course they would melt down. I posted that right before going to bed. That's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it. :P
Microfiche and paper and DVDs will survive an EMP, but DVDs in particular are a bad choice overall for almost any purpose — they aren't really long-lived enough for really long-term storage*, they have a lousy capacity-to-physical-space ratio, you have to handle them carefully to avoid scratching or smearing the surface, and they're cumbersome for short-term backups of anything really large. You get the worst of both worlds, and spend a lot of time fiddling with their physical, uh, forms.
*Note, however, that current best practice for most digital archivists is not "try to find a permanent medium so you can make one copy and forget about it" but "keep copying things to new media", so in a certain sense all of this is moot.** This is more a hypothetical "if you could only make one copy to be locked away for future generations" thing.
**This policy is also motivated by the fact that there are problems other than media degradation to be dealt with — you could pretty certainly read a CD pressed in 1995 with no problem today, but you would pretty certainly have to do some extra work to use a drive from 1995, even if it were working flawlessly after 25 years. We have no way of being sure how storage will change over the next decade, let alone over centuries. And then there are filesystems and formats — imagine trying to read a Zip disk formatted to HFS, ten years from now. And yet there were hundreds of thousands of them, possibly millions, at one time. CDs and DVDs seem safe… but who would have predicted in 1990 that in 2020 VHS would be basically unusable?
As for surfaces of faraday cages touching: I was thinking about the truly paranoid "this must survive the end of the world" kind of thing that emergency equipment engineers and doomsday preppers go in for, because this is a hypothetical thought experiment and therefore money and trouble are not considerations. In such a case, storing all your backups in one box would be pointless, because the Death Pulse™ might show up when you have the box open to add or remove something. (After all, you would presumably need to keep making backups, right? Therefore you would need to keep accessing the safe storage to put them inside, and eventually you would run out of space and have to remove some, too.) So you would at the very least need two sets of media in two boxes… but why not have a big one that you can walk into, and then keep all the computer stuff (or whatever) in smaller ones, using shelves or cabinets to insulate them? (If nothing else, if you had some advance notice of impending doom, you could toss extra stuff into the big cage.)
Hey, as long as this is around, I'm putting everything on 5.25″ floppies!
https://siarchives.si.edu/blog/floppies-all-not-lost
Now what do I do with my box of paper tape for the PDP-11? No worries about EMP.
Though I suppose I could write some code to decode it optically using a camera…
BTW, lightning storms are really the only reason to worry about EMP's.
If you added some padding and a chin-strap, it'd make a so-so helmet. You're welcome, conspiracy buffs!
Re: The Vicar @ #46…
A chemical company I worked for had a project to accumulate data on employees for term of employment plus 50 years so that they could do epidemiological studies. At one point I asked what medium was going to be used to store that data on, as (at that time) 50 years was about twice as long as commercial computers had been in existence.
Ray, rude-ass yankee - One inseparable gemisch says
whheydt @ 49: Punch cards?
Ray, I spent a summer with a temp job digitising tidal readings in an university.
I got pretty fast with a keypunch, after 6 months. The ones with cylindrical keys.
Motivating factor: there is no 'erase' function.
I also got to learn how to program the keypunch. Yay?
80 rows of 12 columns per card. Not the most information-dense medium.
Also, spilling a deck. Laborious.
steve1 says
I will buy this for my "in box" it has a lid so no one can put anything in my inbox. Brilliant. My work is done.
JustaTech says
Several years ago I was having trouble with a blood cell counting instrument at work. And by trouble I mean that all four of the local service techs basically moved in. They replaced this piece and that, and still couldn't get this one thing to register correctly. It was obviously an electrical problem.
So first they ask me to clear every other device off that circuit. Still broken.
Then they asked me to get a UPS to "clean" the power coming in from the wall. Still broken.
Then a tech notices that there are wires outside the window. "The interference is from those wires!" (The wires were internet, and at least 20 feet away.) "But that's just cable?" "No, those wires!" ("Those" wires were high voltage power lines, but they were more than a block away.) I expressed doubt, but he insisted, and said I needed to get a Faraday cage for the instrument.
I laughed and laughed. "If I put it in a Faraday cage and it's still broken can I have a new one already?" "Nope, it's too old."
I did not build a Faraday cage.


text:
Rome on Rome
Lazio-Rome
Forti dei Marmi and Carrara
Modena-Parma
Pompeii and Herculanium
Capri and Ischia
Cinque Terre, Sestre Levante and Portovenere
Sanremo and Albenga
Trieste, Udine, Aquileia
Trapani and Erice
Selinunte, Segesta and Agrigento
Palermo and Monreale
Noto and Ragusa
Mt Etna and Catania
Dalmatian Coast
Istrian Peninsula
Castille-La Mancha
Thessoloniki
Peloponesse
Cyclade Islands
Ephesus, Bodrum and Aegean Coast
Provence-Alps Maritime
Dordogne-Perigord
Northern UK
Tunis, Carthage, Cap Bon
Kairouan, El Djem
Sbeitla (Sufetula)
Aukland and the north island
Traveling with one carry on bag
Lazio – Rome
Venice and the Veneto
Emila-Romagna: Bologna, Modena, Parma, Ferrara, Ravenna, Rimini
Campania: Naples, Pompeii and the Amalfi Coast
Liguria and the Cinque Terre
Piedmont (Piemonte) and Turin (Torino)
Lombardy: Milan and the Lakes
Friuli: Trieste, Udine, Acquileia
Thessolaniki
Catalonia: Barcelona, Costa Brava, Tarragona
Balearic Islands: Majorca
Cantabria: Altamira and the prehistoric caves
Basque: San Sebastian and Bilbao
Castile-La Mancha: Toledo, La Mancha, Cuenca
Andalusia: Granada, Cordoba, Ronda, Seville, Costa del Sol
Rhone and Burgundy
Central/Eastern Europe
Rajastan and Agra
Australia-New Zealand
North Island – New Zealand
The Coliseum – Fact and Fiction
Posted on April 1, 2015 August 22, 2018 by jrome
We rent an apartment that (literally) overlooks the Coliseum, the ancient Flavian Amphitheater that first opened in 80 AD.
We sit on the terrace every evening and watch 'closing time' in the Piazza del Colosseo. A voice comes over the public address system and informs the tourists, the great Amphitheatre is about to close. The last tours of the day exit the great Arena arches and head off to their tour buses. Street vendors attack them with last chance opportunities to buy selfie sticks or splatty balls. Costumed Gladiators try to get into the final photo memories of the day. Crowds disperse in every direction. Depending on the time of the year, the announcement can come anytime between 4:30pm and 7:00pm. I can't think of a better way to end the day.
The Coliseum, Colosseum or Colosseo is, and has been, the ancient centerpiece of Rome for over 1,935 years. It was the greatest entertainment building in the known world, seating over 50,000 people.
Over 4 million people each year still visit this great Arena, and even though less than half the structure is original, it is still the largest amphitheater in the world and the greatest piece of western antiquity still standing.
The name alone has become synonymous with arenas and entertainment complexes all over the world; The Oakland Coliseum, The London Coliseum, The Los Angeles Coliseum and the Toronto Coliseum are just a few. I'm pretty sure a Coliseum of some sort is very close to your neighborhood.
It was first known as the Flavian Amphitheatre (Amphitheatrum Flavium) after the Flavian family who commissioned the project. Emperors Vespasian, Titus and Domitian were all Flavians. The word Amphitheater comes from the Greek 'amphi' (both sides) and theatron (semi-circle theater). The concept was two theaters facing each other.
Coliseum – Martin Van Heemskerck, 1509
In it's first few hundred years, The Flavian Amphitheatre was destroyed a few times by lighting and fire. Reparations and alterations were made until 523. After that it just got too expensive to maintain.
It's been looted and pillaged since the 6th century. Over 300 tons of iron clamps were stolen. The clamps once held the travertine blocks together, yet, even without the support clamps, the structure has survived.
It was a Medieval Feudal Fortress in the 13th and 14th centuries.
The Earthquakes of 1349, 1720 and 1806 knocked down the southern outer ring wall. The brick abutment walls currently holding the outer walls in check were built in the mid 19th century. It's actually easy to see the old from the restored.
It was mined for stone used to build St Peter's and renovate St John Lateran as well as other building projects from the 14th – 17th centuries.
It was a Glue Factory, a manure dump for the manufacturing of saltpeter (the main ingredient of gunpowder), a shelter for the homeless and a Nazi munitions dump.
It has entertained the masses with animal hunts, battle re-enactments, Gladiator combat, public executions, bullfights, Passion Play commemorations, pep rallies for Fascists and a Paul McCartney Concert in 2003. In his long career, Sir Paul has played in at least 10 Coliseums throughout the world.
A lot of history can happen in 1,935 years. The only problem with history is that it is always revised. In the words attributed to Napoleon, "History is the lie commonly agreed upon".
We know a lot about ancient Rome because the Romans were dedicated writers of histories, even though many of these authors seem to write conflicting details of what happened. History always seems to be politically motivated and those who control the pen are always able to change the course of past history.
It's easy to understand how fact and fiction can be confused.
It's the Christians vs. the Lions
'Damnatio ad bestias (death by damnation of the beasts) was indeed a form of capital punishment practiced in the Flavian Amphitheater (the Coliseum) of Rome.
Animal hunts were a big part of the public games. Exotic creatures were brought back from every corner of the vast Empire; lions, tigers, bears, panthers, rhinos, elephants, giraffes, hippos, crocodiles and exotic birds.
For the inaugural games of the Amphitheater in 80AD, it was written that 9,000 beasts were slaughtered, although that's probably a huge overstatement. The accepted number these days is 5,000. The inaugural games last 100 days which, on average, would be about 50 animals per day.
Although most of the animals were slaughtered in the hunt, some of them became the executioners of condemned prisoners. Some of these condemned prisoners were undoubtedly Christian.
They were tied to poles, torn apart and devoured by lions, tigers and bears. However, not all prisoners suffered damnatio ad bestias. Some of them were crucified (a common form of execution) or, they were imprisoned.
Romans were a no nonsense kind of people when it came to punishing and subjugating their enemies. However, Romans were also known to be very tolerant and respectful of other religions, admiring some of them so much, they assimilated many of the foreign gods into the Roman pantheon. They adopted gods from the Etruscan, Sabine, Greek, Phoenician, Persian and eventually the concept of monotheism (also from the east).
The only thing Rome demanded of these foreign religions was respect of the Roman gods. It was no bother for Egyptians or Jews or Persians living in the Roman Empire to visit a Roman temple on a feast day and offer a bouquet of flowers or pay one's respects.
This concept seem to work well for everyone except the Christians who felt it was their mortal cause to convert everyone on the earth to their way of thinking.
At first they did it in small groups but when they took it to the streets and began a public rebellion against the Roman way of life, it was considered treasonous.
The Christians knew what they were doing. They knew they were breaking the Roman laws but they didn't care. They knew many of them would die but they felt in their deaths they would be able to inspire others to convert. It was the basic form of Religious fundamentalism.
Christians were found guilty, and occasionally condemned to death for inciting mobs, unlawful assembly, instigating and escalating confrontation against the Roman people, unlawful magic, illegally influencing Senators and disrespecting Roman Gods.
They were persecuted for acts of treason for over 260 years until the Emperor Constantine made Christianity the approved religion of the Empire in the year 325.
Romans were blessed by hundreds of gods; household gods, gods of love, fertility, war, courage, music, harvest, etc.
If Christian Monotheism was going to replace Roman Polytheism, the Christians needed to create a similar culture of deities. The concept of Saints worked perfectly.
Today Christians might have more Saints than Romans had gods.
The Coliseum gave the Church the opportunity of hundreds of martyred Saints, maybe even thousands.
Coliseum with the Stations of the Cross
In the 16th century, Pope Pius V gave away relics of the sand of the Coliseum to pilgrims visiting Rome, telling them the sand was impregnated with the blood of the Christian Martyrs.
In the 18th century, Stations of the Cross were erected inside the Coliseum when it was sanctified as a Church in Memory of the Martyrs who died in the Arena. The crosses remained till 1874.
Although the sanctification of the Coliseum as a Church might have been a stretch of the imagination, it did stop the pillage and dismantle of the ancient monument. Basically, the theory of Christian Martyrs saved the Coliseum from complete destruction.
It is hard to find evidence of Christians killed in the Coliseum. Records of executions have never been found.
Tertullian, the 3rd century Christian writer from the Roman Provinces of North Africa claims Romans sent Christians to the lions but no one even knows if Tertullian ever went to Rome.
The only possibility for a tie in to a Christian Martyr story is with the death of Saint Ignatius, the2nd Century Bishop of Antioch (Syria) sentenced to die in the Coliseum.
On his way to Rome, Ignatius wrote a series of letters about his fear of being killed by wild animals and his strength in his beliefs.
Although Saint Ignatius is the only plausible candidate for Coliseum martyrdom, Christianity still tries to get another one in there.
Around 394, Emperor Theodosius banned paganism in the Roman Empire and began prosecuting anyone practicing the old religions.
This decree of Theodosius was finally completed in Rome on January 1st, 404, when his son, then 20 years old Emperor Honorius, destroyed the Temple of the Vestal Virgins, banned pagan Holidays and ended the Gladiatorial games.
By the way, Honorius, considered one of the worst Emperors in the history of the Empire, was the Emperor of Record when Rome fell in 410.
Christianity seized this opportunity to create the story of Saint Telemachus, a (possibly) Syrian monk, who during a gladiatorial combat on the 1st of January 404, jumped into the arena and tried to stop the fight. He was killed by one of the gladiators. The crowd was so moved by his death, they changed their view on blood sport and all converted to Christianity.
No one knows if the story is really true or if in fact it even took place in the Coliseum. The story of Telemachus has been repeated many times over the years and, of course, the details always change.
In 394, when Emperor Theodosius made it illegal to worship the pagan gods, the political landscape changed and the Christians became the Lions.
Eventually, it was the Romans who were persecuted by the Christians. Thousands of Polytheistic believers were killed. Priests were murdered and temples were destroyed. Hypatia, the Egyptian/Greek mathematician and philosopher was one of the more famous of the Christian mob killings of the 5th century.
In 782, Charlemagne killed 4500 Saxons who would not convert to Christianity.
Jewish Synagogues were destroyed and Jews were terrorized, killed and enslaved. Muslims were slaughtered in the Crusades and Religious Wars.
Eventually Christians began devouring their own over different interpretations of the religion. There were wars between Eastern Orthodox and Western Latin Churches, Inquisitions and witch hunts, the 13th century massacre of over 20,000 Christian Cathars and the wars against the Protestants that lasted for hundreds of years.
Poor Christians unable to pay the heavy taxes to support the Church were killed. Indigenous people were enslaved and killed, their wealth stolen and given to the Christian powers of the West.
Although the moral conscience of the Church has recently adopted a policy of love, tolerance and understanding for all people, it hasn't stopped hate crimes, racial prejudice, religious intolerance and whacko Christian Fundamentalists.
If Christians did die in the Coliseum, after all these years, it's difficult to understand what they actually died for.
Nero did not build the Coliseum
Nero shows a model of Rome – from the film Quo Vadis
In the 1951 Hollywood film 'Quo Vadis', the Emperor Nero (excellently interpreted by Peter Ustinov) blames the Christians for the great fire of Rome in 64AD and condemns them all to dies in the Coliseum. Here's the movie clip.
In the photo above, Nero is showing how he'll build his new city with a model of Rome, similar to the famous 'Il Plastico', a scale model of Rome started in 1935.
It's great Hollywood style propaganda, right down to the Romans laughing as the Christians are devoured by lions, who are about as ferocious as household tabby cats.
The Amphitheater began construction in 71 AD. It wasn't completed until 80 AD. Nero died in 68 AD. That's right, Nero died before the Coliseum was built.
In one of the most ironic of historical twists, the Flavian Amphitheater was actually built to remove the memory of the Emperor Nero from the minds of the Roman citizens.
The Colossus Nerone
Nero had greatly depleted the treasuries to build his Golden Pleasure Palace.
When Titus Flavius Vespasian became Emperor, the treasure from his victory in the Judean War of 66-71 AD paid for his new Temple of Peace and the new Flavian Amphitheater erected over the artificial lake built for Nero's Palace.
Among the amazing treasures of Nero's extravagance was a +100' tall bronze statue made in the likeness of the Emperor Nero that would greet the guests as they entered his Palace.
After Nero's death, the statue head was replaced with one to resemble the god Sol Invictus with a headdress of sunrays extending over 23'.
Around 128 AD, the Emperor Hadrian moved the Sol Invictus statue to a platform outside the Flavian amphitheater.
The platform is still there. There is plaque commemorating the statue.
During the Middle Ages the statue became known as the Colossus, at least until it was dismantled and sold off for scrap. Even with the colossal statue gone, the amphitheater was tagged with the name for all eternity.
In the modern world, Nero is still much more popular than Vespatian or any of the Flavian Emperors that followed him.
In Rome, Vespasian is more famous as the Emperor who first brought pay toilets to the Empire. Pay toilets are still called vespasiano.
The Coliseum was built by Jewish Slaves
As a conquering nation, Rome adhered to the political norms of the day. The defeated paid tribute to the victor in the form of wealth and slaves or the defeated was wiped off the face of the earth. Much of Rome or any other great ancient Empire was built by slave labor.
Yes, slaves from the Judean Revolt of 66-71AD were brought back to Rome and used to build the Coliseum.
Judea was conquered by the Babylonian Empire in the 6th century BC. After a brief independence, Judea fell to Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC and then to the Seleucid Empire until 160 BC when the Maccabean revolt gave Judea back to the Jews.
Unfortunately, in order to win the war against the Seleucids, Judas Maccabee made an alliance with Rome. It proved to be a better deal for Rome than Judea.
Around 67 BC, Gnaeus Pompey Magnus (Pompey the Great) came to Judea to squash a civil war and decided the best solution (for the glory of Pompey) was to make Judea a Roman territory.
Judea became a jewel in the crown of the Roman Empire. Rome installed puppet Kings and governments and soaked the people with high taxes and tributes. Around 64AD, a Judean rebel group known as the Zealots kicked up some dust and by 66AD, the country was in a full-out war with Rome.
By 71AD, the revolt was crushed. The Roman General, Vespasian marched back to Rome and took the title of Emperor. He left his son, Titus in Judea to finish the job and bring back the loot and slaves.
Some 70,000 Judean slaves were brought back to Rome to work on the new building projects. 20,000 of them worked on the construction of the Flavian Amphitheater in Rome. Another 50,000 mined the travertine stone from the mines in Tivoli about 20km away. It has been estimated that over 100,000 cubic meters of travertine were used just for the outer ring wall.
The descendants of the Jewish slaves were given Roman citizenship in 212 during the reign of the Emperor Caracalla.
Many of Rome's Jewish families trace their lineage back to the Judean slaves.
The relief (shown above) on the inside panel of the Arch of Titus in the Ancient Roman Forum details Titus removing the Golden Menorah from the Temple of Solomon and leading a group of conquered Judeans in a triumphal parade.
In the 16th century, Pope Paul IV created the Jewish Ghetto in Rome, a walled in community built to keep the Jews separated from the rest of Rome. According to the Papal Bull, once a year, all Jewish citizens of Rome had to stand under the Arch of Titus and swear allegiance to the Pope. It was a double insult.
Even after the walls of the Ghetto were torn down, Roman Jews refused to walk under the Arch of Titus.
According to some Jewish scholars, the Talmud still forbids Jews to walk under the Arch of Titus.
Hail Caesar. We who about to die salute you.
Jean Leon Gerome, 1859 – 'We who are about to die salute you'
Ave Caesar. Morituri te salutant (Hail Caesar, those about to die salute you) is one of the most famous expressions of Gladiatorial combat.
However, the legend of the expression originates from the 1859 painting by French artist Jean-Léon Gérôme entitled Ave Caesar, Morituri te salutant.
The painter/sculptor, Jean-Léon Gérôme was passionate about classical history and apparently did extensive research in Pompeii for background to some of his most famous paintings. What he didn't know, he just made up. These days we call it 'Artistic License'.
The expression however, does stem from Suetonious, the 2nd century gossip/historian and author of the 12 Caesars. The reference from Suetonius, however, comes from an event that took place in 52 AD, 28 years before the Coliseum ever had a Gladiatorial fight.
Suetonius recounts an event during the time of Emperor Claudius. A mock naval battle was staged on Lake Fucinus, a large lake in central Italy that was drained in 1875. The prisoner/captives scheduled to die in the defeated naval ship shouted Ave Caesar. Morituri te salutant to the Emperor Claudius. According to Suetonius, Claudius replied 'Aut non' (or not).
Supposedly the criminals heard the Emperor (from a long distance away) and thought he was pardoning them and they all left their posts in the mock battle. Claudius had to abruptly get up and convince the criminals back into their positions or die a worse death.
The phrase was never uttered again in Roman historical records.
The only time it was mentioned in the Coliseum was in the 2000 Ridley Scott film 'Gladiator'.
Ridley Scott was a big fan of the Jean-Léon Gérôme paintings.
Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down
Jean Leon Gerome, 1872 – Thumbs up, Thumbs down (Police Verso)
Once again, the legend comes from the French artist, Jean-Léon Gérôme. This time from his 1872 painting entitled 'Pollice verso'.
The fate of a fallen gladiator was definitely influenced by the crowd who used the gesture known as the 'pollice verso' (turned thumb). Jean-Léon Gérôme found the gesture name from the gladiator games from Pompeii.
However, 'pollice verso' (as Gérôme interpreted) was not a turn of the thumb up or down.
The turn of the thumb to gesture death was actually an upturned thumb, moving in a slicing manner under one's chin, representing a blade slicing the throat of the condemned fighter.
If the crowd wanted to spare the life of the fighter they would conceal the thumb inside a fist, a gesture known as 'pollice compresso' or compressed thumb.
In many parts of the world these days, thumbs up means everything's good or AOK. It's not certain, but most likely the gesture originated from Jean-Léon Gérôme's pollice verso painting.
The origin of the outstretched thumb used for hitching is unknown except that it came in with the automobile in the 1920's. Thumbing even became an accepted verb form. In the movie "It happened one night", Clark Gable gives a thumbing lesson to Claudette Colbert.
However, there are parts of the world where 'thumb up' gesture actually means (vulgar) 'up yours'.
The Gladiator Emperors
Emperor Commodus as Hercules
In Ridley Scott's 2000 film 'Gladiator', the unhinged Emperor Commodus was obsessed with fighting in the arena.
Edwin Blashfield – Commodus in the Coliseum
The painting by Edwin Blashfield (below) depicts him dressed as Hercules, holding the a small statue of the Winged Goddess of Victory.
He is given a palm leaf (a trophy of victory) as he exits through the Porta Triumphalis of the Coliseum.
Historically, this is correct.
He actually styled himself as Hercules Reborn.
Commodus did fight a few man-to-man combats although they were not to the death. They were armed with wooden swords.
Most of his contests of strength were in animal hunts. He would be propped up on a platform and shoot arrows into a crowd of wild beasts, literally shooting fish in a barrel.
According to the 2nd century historian, Cassius Dio, on one occasion, Commodus opened up the games by killing 100 bears with spears thrown from specially designed walkways around the Amphitheater. Dio implies the slaughter was more of a demonstration of skill than a demonstration of courage.
Emperors Titus, Hadrian and Caracalla were also known to show off in the animal kills but there was never any threat of danger to the Emperor.
In one great story from Pliny the Elder, a whale got caught in the harbor at Ostia. Emperor Claudius ordered nets to trap the whale while he and the Praetorian Guard threw lances at it until they killed it.
Emperor animal hunts were more like executions.
Is the Coliseum haunted?
Although Julius Caesar was killed in 44 BC and construction on the Coliseum didn't even begin until 70AD (114 years later) his ghost has nonetheless been sighted haunting the Coliseum.
Ghosts have no boundaries. There are legends that a ghostly spirit will always remain in the location where it died but why? If spirits can cross from one dimension to another, why can't they cross a few blocks.
If the ghost of Julius Caesar is haunting Rome, why not at the Coliseum? Why not haunt the Vatican for that matter, the MAXXI, Rome's modern art museum of the 21st century.
There are reports of paranormal hauntings all the time in the Coliseum. People have reported cold spots or ghostly whispers or phantom hands pushing them when no one was near.
People working in the Coliseum have said they heard noises and screams both human and animal. Some have even seen figures in the seating area.
In the right atmosphere and setting, you could be convinced of many paranormal activities.
It is always a few degrees colder inside the Coliseum. Some say it's all the stone. Other will tell you it's all the ghosts.
Were Naval battles (Naumachiae) staged in the Coliseum?
The Nautical Battles staged by the Emperor Domitia
According to the Roman historian, Cassius Dio, the Emperor Titus filled the Amphitheater with water and created an artificial lake and staged naval battles. Dio also mentions Titus filled the lake with animals he taught to swim.
The poet, Martial also claimed to have witness naval battles in the Flavian Amphitheater.
The idea of flooding the Arena for naval battles (Naumachiae) has been debated for centuries.
Nero's artificial lake was dug out and filled in by water from a nearby river. The river (known as the San Gregorio River) is now buried under the area surrounding the Coliseum.
After Vespasian had Nero's lake drained, he filled it in with dirt, concrete and brick for a strong foundation. Still, the low valley location flooded during the rainy seasons.
We know that water drains were installed in the original design, but until recently, there were no reliable evidence for a way to efficiently and quickly flood the great arena for a naval battle.
Recently, Dr. Martin Crapper, an expert in Hydraulic Engineering at Edinburgh University came up with a plausible explanation.
According to Dr. Crapper the water could have come from the Aqua Claudia that flowed down the Caelian Hill less than 500 yds. from the Amphitheater.
In 79 AD, Emperor Titus did commission repairs to the aqueduct that could have included a spur to fill the Flavian Amphitheater with water.
Aqua Claudia brought over 50.5 million gallons a day into Rome, over 2 million gallons per hour.
Crapper estimated that the spur from the Aqua could easily fill the arena with over 4 million gallons of water in less than 7 hours. That would be enough water to create a depth of over 5 feet inside the amphitheater.
Hypogeum of the Coliseum
Further investigation has proven that the lower levels of the Coliseum, known as the Hypogeum, were partially constructed with a waterproof type of pozzolanic cement. There are also artifacts to reinforce the theory that the system of water coming into the hypogeum had sluice gates to regulate the level of water.
The arena floor could have been constructed with interlinking beams that could be removed and re-installed in a few hours.
The inauguration games in 80 AD lasted 100 days. It is conceivable that one of the first days was given over to a Naval Battle.
Suetonius also writes he witnessed a Naval battle during the reign of Domitian, the younger brother of Emperor Titus.
When Titus died in 81 AD, Domitian became the next Emperor.
Domitian commissioned several renovations to the amphitheater, mostly in the underground Hypogeum. He added winches and counterweight lifts and trap doors into the arena floor. He might have also added more waterproofing to the walls and improved the drainage.
The only two mentions of naval battles are from Titus and Domitian. These might have been the only two times this amazing feat was ever staged in the Coliseum.
To celebrate his victory in the war with Dacians, Emperor Trajan gave Rome 123 days of games in the Amphitheater. There are records of 11,000 animals killed and 10,000 gladiators but no mention of a naval battle.
The Discovery Channel produced this interesting documentary on the Coliseum.
The most beautiful Piazza in Rome
Nero's Golden Palace is Open (Again)
September in Rome – 2015
Ancient water and the Park of the Aqueducts
2013-Rome; Everything Old is New Again
Posted in Italy, RomeTagged Cassius Dio, Christian Martyrs, Claudius, Coliseum, colosseum, Commodus, Domitian, FEATURED, Flavian Amphitheater, Il Colosseo, Jewish Ghetto, Judean Revolt, naval battles in the Coliseum, nero, Piazza del Colosseo, Saint Ignatius, Saint Telemachus, Suetonius, Theodosius, Thumbs down, Thumbs up, Titus, Vespasian, We who about to die salute you
This site is filled with historical anecdotes, observations and photos. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do.
Jonathan Rome & Gretchen Van Horne
Ancient Monuments of Rome
Roman Portraits
April in Rome
Pausylipon: Imperial Villa, ancient tunnels and eels
A great day in the ancient city – 2016
The Walls and Gates of Rome
Finding Pompey's Theater in the Campo Marzio
Saving the Mausoleum of Augustus
Nero's Golden Palace is Open (Again) – 2014
The Pantheon and Piazza della Rotondo
The curious tale of the Laocoön and his sons
Secrets of the Castel Sant'Angelo
Churches and Architecture of Christian Rome
Vicus Scelerata and the Evil Steps
Mussolini's Architectural Legacy in Rome
Christmas in Rome
2006 – Rome; Christmas, Zampognari and Santo Bambino
"Saints be Praised" – The Relics of Rome
Byzantine treasures of Rome
Modern Rome
The (not so Spanish) Spanish Steps
The Life and Death of Via dei Fori Imperiali: 1932-2015
Take the A train to Cinecittà
Protect yourselves against Con Artists, Pickpockets and Thieves of Rome
Eating well in Italy (the more you know, the less you pay)
Attack on Rome!
2013-Rome; A day in the life of a great city
Cucina Romana – the tradition of eating in Rome
'Sampietrini' – The streets of Rome
Mysteries and Legends of Rome
Great Caesar's Ghost, Rome is Haunted
Satire, Graffiti and Talking Statues
Legends of the Trevi Fountain
Following the Roman Empire
Greece and the Roman Empire
Athens in the Roman Empire
Ancient Greece in Sicily – Akragas (Agrigento)
Ancient Greece in Sicily – Segesta vs. Selinunte
Ancient Greece in Sicily – The rise of Syracuse
Provence – The Roman Province along the via Domitia
Provence – The Roman Province along the via Agrippa
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Emerita Augusta – Mérida, Spain
Verona: Ancient Rome, Medieval Warlords and Romeo and Juliet tourism
Istanbul and Ancient Constantinople
2013-Thessaloniki, Byzantine city on the Gulf of Salonica
Croatia; Split and Trogir
2010 – Rome, Tivoli, Tarquinia and Centrale Montemartini
2007 – Ephesus and the Aegean Coast of Turkey
2006 – Western Sicily; Palermo and the ruins of Magna Grecia
2003 – Sicily; Mt Etna, i Ciclopi, Piazza Armerina, Enna, Siracusa, Taormina
2000 – Pompeii and Sorrento on the Amalfi Coast
Museums and Monuments of Rome
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We do the Romans a disservice if we heroize them, as much as if we demonise them. But we do ourselves a disservice if we fail to take them seriously – and if we close our long and complicated conversation with them. ---Mary Beard--
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