Newsish stuff
Feb. 20th, 2004 01:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsWell, it's actually an interesting day. All of the gay marriages, if they stick, will be interesting from a federal law perspective. I saw the photos and they're very touching, although I've already seen one caustic right-wing pedant refer to the rose-petals photos as "the bloody tears of a nation in mourning." Whatever. Edwin Decker has his own take on what it all means in the absolutely hilarious Apocalypse Queer. And Greg Fiore gives us his (flash animated) Gay Agenda.
Here's something to stick in the craw of every Republican. Under Clinton, abortion and pregnancy rates fell steadily, only beginning a slow rise with the introduction of abstinence-only education.
Another cartoon, this time, Tom Toles shows us clearly how the Bush Administration buys the science results its wants
And here's one for the bonehead file. Man Arrested for Watching Porn while Driving. Hmm.
I finished the book Pompeii, by Robert Harris, and liked it enough to talk about it.
The basics of Pompeii are pretty straightforward: our hero, Marcus Atillus, a newly minted engineer is shipped down from Rome to maintain the 60-mile Aqua Augusta, the longest aqueduct in the Roman Empire. He's 27, a bit young, but he comes from the family that helped build half of Rome's own aqueducts so he has the trust of the Imperial Aquaria as he takes his assignment. The former engineer has disappeared. The aqueduct at Misenum, at the end, suddenly stops one day, and our hero is dispatched to Pompeii by fast boat to find the breakage and fix it. The aqueduct supplies water to one of the driest beachfronts in all of Italy, and without it eight cities face dehydration and rioting within two days. Along the way he becomes embroiled in the politics of water-- including its theft-- and many conflicts ensue.
Harris obviously did a lot of research for the book. He gives you a good, solid lesson in water engineering, Roman style, and provides a fascinating account of the Roman Imperium. Where we have electricity, they had slaves. And slaves were just that: animals to be exploited without pity or care, a source of energy. For the intellectual, life was a daily struggle to fill the aching void-- Pliny describes this poignantly. The Romans otherwise had every luxury-- by the fifth time Harris has highlighted the notion that middle-class Romans had swimming pools, refreshed regularly from the aqueducts, you're ready to say "I get the point!" Their cruelty towards slaves is highlighted by the citizen's attitudes towards the brothels. One of Attilus's plebian co-workers, hearing that they're going to Pompeii, mentions "There's a young Greek girl there; her mother's barely twenty, if you like that sort of thing." Attilus finds the comment cruel but unremarkable and definitely not worthy of rebuke.
All of the crises end with a bang: Vesuvius goes up. Here, another moment of research shines. Harris builds anticipation by quoting from scholarly texts on vulcanology at the beginning of each chapter, each illuminating a stage in the evolution of Vesuvius's last big eruption. When it goes off, Pompeii becomes a disaster novel, and a damned fine one. Atillus makes it back to Misenium at the end of the aqueduct just in time to accompany Pliny by boat back to Pompeii (to rescue the *library*, naturally), and we're giving front-row seats to the rain of pumic ash and the final pyroclastic devastation of Vesiuvius's famous victim.
Harris has a scholar's eye for the territory and a workman's hands for the language. He does sometimes repeat details to make his point. There are no clever, Clute-like turns of language, no Banksian plot points, no deep, Dillo-like plumbing of the human condition. The villians lie about in baths, coat themselves in expensive oils and are massaged a bit too intimately by slim Greek and Nubian catamites, so the human story is as predictable as a 1950's Hollywood historical. But the details are amazing and accurate, and Harris was clearly in awe of the scale of Roman engineering made with raw human power. I think you would be, too.
Here's something to stick in the craw of every Republican. Under Clinton, abortion and pregnancy rates fell steadily, only beginning a slow rise with the introduction of abstinence-only education.
Another cartoon, this time, Tom Toles shows us clearly how the Bush Administration buys the science results its wants
And here's one for the bonehead file. Man Arrested for Watching Porn while Driving. Hmm.
I finished the book Pompeii, by Robert Harris, and liked it enough to talk about it.
The basics of Pompeii are pretty straightforward: our hero, Marcus Atillus, a newly minted engineer is shipped down from Rome to maintain the 60-mile Aqua Augusta, the longest aqueduct in the Roman Empire. He's 27, a bit young, but he comes from the family that helped build half of Rome's own aqueducts so he has the trust of the Imperial Aquaria as he takes his assignment. The former engineer has disappeared. The aqueduct at Misenum, at the end, suddenly stops one day, and our hero is dispatched to Pompeii by fast boat to find the breakage and fix it. The aqueduct supplies water to one of the driest beachfronts in all of Italy, and without it eight cities face dehydration and rioting within two days. Along the way he becomes embroiled in the politics of water-- including its theft-- and many conflicts ensue.
Harris obviously did a lot of research for the book. He gives you a good, solid lesson in water engineering, Roman style, and provides a fascinating account of the Roman Imperium. Where we have electricity, they had slaves. And slaves were just that: animals to be exploited without pity or care, a source of energy. For the intellectual, life was a daily struggle to fill the aching void-- Pliny describes this poignantly. The Romans otherwise had every luxury-- by the fifth time Harris has highlighted the notion that middle-class Romans had swimming pools, refreshed regularly from the aqueducts, you're ready to say "I get the point!" Their cruelty towards slaves is highlighted by the citizen's attitudes towards the brothels. One of Attilus's plebian co-workers, hearing that they're going to Pompeii, mentions "There's a young Greek girl there; her mother's barely twenty, if you like that sort of thing." Attilus finds the comment cruel but unremarkable and definitely not worthy of rebuke.
All of the crises end with a bang: Vesuvius goes up. Here, another moment of research shines. Harris builds anticipation by quoting from scholarly texts on vulcanology at the beginning of each chapter, each illuminating a stage in the evolution of Vesuvius's last big eruption. When it goes off, Pompeii becomes a disaster novel, and a damned fine one. Atillus makes it back to Misenium at the end of the aqueduct just in time to accompany Pliny by boat back to Pompeii (to rescue the *library*, naturally), and we're giving front-row seats to the rain of pumic ash and the final pyroclastic devastation of Vesiuvius's famous victim.
Harris has a scholar's eye for the territory and a workman's hands for the language. He does sometimes repeat details to make his point. There are no clever, Clute-like turns of language, no Banksian plot points, no deep, Dillo-like plumbing of the human condition. The villians lie about in baths, coat themselves in expensive oils and are massaged a bit too intimately by slim Greek and Nubian catamites, so the human story is as predictable as a 1950's Hollywood historical. But the details are amazing and accurate, and Harris was clearly in awe of the scale of Roman engineering made with raw human power. I think you would be, too.
