The New Romans. Guess who...

[Bereta_Eder]

bull the thing will crumble in 30 years but then everyone will like them.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by paiktis22
no since romans borrowed many things from us and in the end we became one and latter we became the only (byzantium)

Oh please. You have no more right to claim that Rome was a Greek empire than you do to claim credit for Hollywood.

bull the thing will crumble in 30 years but then everyone will like them.

Doubtful. I'd say that you are looking at another American Century at least.

[Bereta_Eder]

why not?

the eastern empire was definitely greek.

and you will fall cause like the english you're dumb

[Bereta_Eder]

besides, you have not an impact on how people live their lives.

it will be tha black parenthesis of modern history : the US

[Adalbertus]

[troll, but quite my view of the Romans]Hm. The Romans were the big civilized nation which in its heart still was barbarian. Great technology, marginal culture. For education, they imported Greeks. Succumbed to steady slow milling by the real barbarians.[/troll]

[Datajack Franit]

Btw Mc Donald's around Italy are much more than 20-30 (there are 4 in my town, which is just a suburb of the big city) and filled by teenagers. Obese teenagers, of course

[Capt Dizle]

rubbish. all rubbish.

[Adalbertus]

rubbish. all rubbish.

Where can I nominate this as "the most enlightening post of the month, err, week, err, day"?

[Capt Dizle]

Rats.

[BustaMike]

Well, I skimmed the article. It seems a little far fetched in places and in others totally uninformed.

The article actually said the internet was invented by the defense department. That's news to me. I've always heard it was invented as a tool for universities to communicate with one another. In fact, I can remember when my dad (a college professor) first started using the internet years before anyone had ever heard of the thing and I'm sure it had zero to do with the defense department.

One thing I will agree with though. American culture is becoming ubiquitous. Just look at how messed up Japanese culture is now (well I dunno if messed up is the right term, maybe neopolitan). Either way it's freakin' weird over there. Harikiri and CocaCola mixed... nuff said.

[Adalbertus]

"...err, 15 minute period".

[Sandman]

Rome did not 'dominate' the world. It dominated the Mediterrean.

This is mystical nonsense.

[Lincoln]

History of the Internet (Where is Al Gore??):

1962
RAND Paul Baran, of the RAND Corporation (a government agency), was commissioned by the U.S. Air Force to do a study on how it could maintain its command and control over its missiles and bombers, after a nuclear attack. This was to be a military research network that could survive a nuclear strike, decentralized so that if any locations (cities) in the U.S. were attacked, the military could still have control of nuclear arms for a counter-attack.

Baran's finished document described several ways to accomplish this. His final proposal was a packet switched network.

"Packet switching is the breaking down of data into datagrams or packets that are labeled to indicate the origin and the destination of the information and the forwarding of these packets from one computer to another computer until the information arrives at its final destination computer. This was crucial to the realization of a computer network. If packets are lost at any given point, the message can be resent by the originator."
Backbones: None - Hosts: None
1968
ARPA awarded the ARPANET contract to BBN. BBN had selected a Honeywell minicomputer as the base on which they would build the switch. The physical network was constructed in 1969, linking four nodes: University of California at Los Angeles, SRI (in Stanford), University of California at Santa Barbara, and University of Utah. The network was wired together via 50 Kbps circuits.
Backbones: 50Kbps ARPANET - Hosts: 4
1972
The first e-mail program was created by Ray Tomlinson of BBN.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) was renamed The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (or DARPA)

ARPANET was currently using the Network Control Protocol or NCP to transfer data. This allowed communications between hosts running on the same network.


Backbones: 50Kbps ARPANET - Hosts: 23
1973
Development began on the protocol later to be called TCP/IP, it was developed by a group headed by Vinton Cerf from Stanford and Bob Kahn from DARPA. This new protocol was to allow diverse computer networks to interconnect and communicate with each other.

[Traianvs]

yup buastamike, i believe the internet in its earliest form was a way of communication between 4 universities.. small network but you could call it internet...

[troll, but quite my view of the Romans]Hm. The Romans were the big civilized nation which in its heart still was barbarian. Great technology, marginal culture. For education, they imported Greeks. Succumbed to steady slow milling by the real barbarians.[/troll]

that is incorrect! They were not barbarian, they were peasants, at least they felt like peasants... The purpose of the roman empire (read Tacitus' "Annales", his explanation is typical) was to civilize the world, they wanted the barbarians to be civilized, and if they failed they left them alone, for example the masses of germanic tribes over the danube were left alone because they believed it was hopeless, there were just too many of them...and they didn't have enough manpower to control the area. In fact, Tacitus says it was the duty pf the romans to civilize the barbarians... of course humans remain human and certain roman emperors drained their provinces of their natural riches to improve Rome's grandeur (i mean their personal wallet ). But in the end they still felt like peasants, because that's what they were originally...

no since romans borrowed many things from us and in the end we became one and latter we became the only (byzantium)

true paiktis, but it's Turkey, not Greece
but you're right though, the Romans depended heavily on greeks for education because the romans usually didn't value teacher as a well paid job, in fact teachers normally had to do extra administritive work for the government in order to earn enough denarii

Greece has indeed had a lot of influence, even today many of our words come from Greek (my language is dutch ) and we were never conquered by greeks or so..

another important aspect is that the romans took over the greek gods, and after that the romans spread it everywhere in Europe...

rubbish. all rubbish.

I don't think so, he might have been wrong at some points, he put forward some nice thoughts...

You could indeed compare the US with the roman empire
the romans weren't really at the top of their strength during the republic (that was under Nerva, Traianus (voila, my name!!) Hadrianus and Antoninus Pius) and even though society was more harsh (women had very few rights during the repiblic, whereas the position of women during the later empire was much much better) and so on, it could be regarded as their cultural best, later their theaters, their arena fights, their gambling, their orgies, their treachery, their greed had become so much bigger, they were quite decadent compared to just a few hundred years earlier...

WELL that is what i see in the US as well, take porn on the internet for example, it gets dirtier and filthier everyday (okay it's not US only, but it usually is), take hollywood whose movies get shittier and shittier everyday, take Bush, who's just a puppet placed there (though there's no doubt that he's a powerful man!) just like the later roman emperors were useless faggots

i clearly see life is more decadent than before in the US...

though that's not always bad, i mean 'Jackass' is a great programme, among other trash, such as south park and the simpsons

homer rules!!!

[Lincoln]

Dont talk about decadence as a sign of decline. People here think that is an indication of progress...

[BustaMike]

The Simpson's is not trash. My favorite Simpson's clip...

Fat Asian in Hottub - Herro, American Investor. We see you are interested in distributing Mr. Spakle in you home prefature. You have chosen wisely, but don't breave me. Pease view this informative commersheral.

AAAAAAEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAA!
I am disrespectful to dirt. Can you see that I am serious!
Out of the way! This is no place for loafers. Join me or die! Can you do any less?
::giggles:: What a brave corporate logo, we accept the challenge of Mr. Sparkle.
Awsomer Power!
...
So what are your plans for the summer?
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAA
::cow disintegrates::

For Lucky Best wash everytime use Mr. Sparkle!


That, my friend, is the true beauty of America. The ability to create useless yet absolutely hysterical crap like that.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by paiktis22
bull the thing will crumble in 30 years but then everyone will like them.

Maybe not 30...but in 100 years the signs of the fall will be there for all who care to look.

Direct military interventionism started in the early 1900s and gained ground through the 20th century. This is the new "direct rule"; the world no longer stands for concrete empires, and has begun to take a serious disliking to American-style hegemony as well. The barbarians won't sack Rome (as they didn't sack Rome during the British Empire) but the peak of American global dominance is past. 1991 seemed like a high point...but was already part of the decline. While military adventurism will continue to increase, real strength will decrease in a very real viscious circle. I just hope the US lets go as (relatively) gently as the British did when it becomes impossible to deny that the end has come.

[DaShi]

Originally posted by paiktis22
why not?

the eastern empire was definitely greek.

and you will fall cause like the english you're dumb

Evil will always triumph, because good is dumb.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Frogger


Maybe not 30...but in 100 years the signs of the fall will be there for all who care to look.

Direct military interventionism started in the early 1900s and gained ground through the 20th century. This is the new "direct rule"; the world no longer stands for concrete empires, and has begun to take a serious disliking to American-style hegemony as well. The barbarians won't sack Rome (as they didn't sack Rome during the British Empire) but the peak of American global dominance is past. 1991 seemed like a high point...but was already part of the decline. While military adventurism will continue to increase, real strength will decrease in a very real viscious circle. I just hope the US lets go as (relatively) gently as the British did when it becomes impossible to deny that the end has come.

Frogger, If you compare the demoralized America of the '70s with today's America, you will see that we are infinitely more powerful and confident than then. Our Amry of Vietnam had become a joke - and officer-shooting, pot-smoking, ill-disciplined rabble. We are definitely not in decline.

[Giovanni Wine]

Originally posted by Datajack Franit
Btw Mc Donald's around Italy are much more than 20-30 (there are 4 in my town, which is just a suburb of the big city) and filled by teenagers. Obese teenagers, of course

Uhmmm
I don't know about Milano.
But in Torino, which is a 1 milion people size city, there are 2 Mc donald's, one in the city centrum, and one close to the Stadium.

And since In Italy there something like 10-15 big cities, I just multiplied Torino's number with the cities 2+(10-15)= 20-30

BTW:
The Torino's McDonald's addicts are mostly immigrants from Marocco or Asia. (no they are not obese...... yet )

Saluti

[DaShi]

obese

[DinoDoc]

If we are the new Rome, I want to burn a random country's capital to the ground and then salt the earth where the city once stood.

[Adalbertus]

that is incorrect! They were not barbarian, they were peasants, at least they felt like peasants...

I didn't talk about what they felt but what I think they were. And if you asked the anthropoi, all non-Greeks were barbarians.

EDIT: Barbarian means bearded, and thus hairy.

[Traianvs]

Well from the point of view of the Greeks yes, but the persians and the romans also had 'barbarians', it's all a matter of perspective, besides a barbarian didn't have a negative meaning (in the beginning), it just meant non-greek that's all, not that the people in question was not civilized and so on... later the word got that particular connotation, and we adopted the word as well an example of greek words in our modern germanic languages , Greeks have had an incredible influence like i said before

[Giovanni Wine]

Yup... Greeks and Latin words are largerly used in Germanic languages as well (In this very same post there are at least 6 word with Latin origins).

Not to mention that the Latin alphabet is the very same alphabet used by the Germanic laguages... with the addiction of the "w".

Saluti

[Ned]

Although one could argue that Imperial Rome in the Trajan era was Rome at the height of its power, I beg to differ. Rome seem to accomplish an incredible amount during 1st Century BC during the closing years of the Republic, even while fighting civil wars. I believe the reason for this is that the system encouraged great generals like Pompey and Ceasar to emerge who then competed with one another in extending the empire's frontiers.

The failure to conquer the Germans under Augustus was a failure of leadership, not power. Had Rome then had a field commander like Pompey or Ceasar, Germany would have been toast.

[Arrian]

While I do think the Rome -> America comparison can be made, I think the article stretches the similarities.

Frankly, I think the British Empire was more "Roman" than the US is today. Having been a Roman province themselves, that's not surprising. We are a former colony of a former province of the Roman Empire. It's one more degree of separation.

I don't really buy the whole cultural/economic imperialism argument. Starbucks, McDonalds, etc. are not run by the US government. That just doesn't compare with Roman rule.

The military bases and base rights part was interesting, as I had no idea we had troops in that many countries (though I suspect many of them are small groups of "advisors").

The article is dead-on-balls-accurate with regard to our mythology (Founding Fathers, yadda, yadda).

All in all, a fun read, even if some of it was bollocks.

-Arrian

[Adalbertus]

Giovanni "W"ine, it is addiction to the "w". And it is sometimes difficult to tell which words are taken from latin and which have a common origin. And sometimes words took the other way ...

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Arrian
Frankly, I think the British Empire was more "Roman" than the US is today. Having been a Roman province themselves, that's not surprising.

Only a Roman province geographically. I would hesitate to say that England and more widely Britain is formerly Roman any more than I would say that the US is formerly Iroquois, Cherokee or Sioux.

There is linkage, but not that pervasive.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Sagacious Dolphin


Only a Roman province geographically. I would hesitate to say that England and more widely Britain is formerly Roman any more than I would say that the US is formerly Iroquois, Cherokee or Sioux.

There is linkage, but not that pervasive.

I don't remember the Kings, name, but he was the first to unify England in a common defense against the Vikings. He was educated in Rome. At least, according to British historian on the History Channel, this King was intent on Romanizing England - to essentially restore Roman civiliization in Britain.

The point is that England became re-Romanized to a degree after the Saxon conquests - at least in terms of culture, particularly, religion.

America does have strong links to ancient Rome through England.