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Welcome to the changing face of beer: bearded hipsters discussing hop varieties and brewing techniques over a cold one.
There was not a single pair of stubbies in sight when beer lovers of all kinds descended on WIN Entertainment Centre for the city's inaugural Froth and Bubbles beer and cider festival at the weekend.
More than 2000 people turned up to the event, keen to try a new drop or hone their beer-matching skills.
"There has been a huge change in the way people are approaching beer and they're doing things like beer-matching with really gourmet food," event organiser Robert Gunn said.
"There's a whole new movement now of young, sophisticated people who, when they go to a restaurant, won't order a glass of shiraz. Instead they'll see what sort of craft beers they've got on the drink list and they'll match that with what they're eating. It changes the whole landscape of entertainment and hospitality.
"When you go to a pub or hotel you see five or six craft beers there now, which you wouldn't have seen a couple of years ago."
The two-day festival, which showcased 35 brewers, included a "speed dating" room, which allowed budding connoisseurs to sample beers while chatting with their brewers.
Fans of James Squire or Little Creatures beers were able to taste their favourites or try little-known labels like the Central Coast's Six Strings Brewing Company.
A number of cider brewers were also present including Darkes Cider, made in Darkes Forest.


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OverviewThis enjoyable hike provides a nice alternate to the routes from CO 9 on a scenic, gentle ridge.
Difficulty: Trail and off-trail hiking
Overall Distance: 9 Miles round trip
Elevation Gain: Appx. 3400'
Getting ThereDriving directions begin from the intersection of 4th Street and CO 9 on the northern end of the town of Fairplay. Turn east on 4th Street to Beaver Creek Lane and turn left (north). Pass the Fairplay Nordic Center on your left and continue to the junction with FS 413 after approximately 2 miles. Turn right onto FS 413 and pass the winter closure gate after 1/4 mile. Continue past this gate on FS 659 for 2 additional miles to the junction with FS 184. This is the standard trailhead, and is at 10,740'.
Route DescriptionHike (or drive) along FS 184 for a mile to 11,180'. This is also the 4WD trailhead, it is an unmarked pullout on the left side of the road with a road closed sign. If the road starts to descend in elevation, you have gone too far.
From the road closed sign, hike the abandoned road through the forest. The road will merge softly with another abandoned road, the route continues uphill on this second road, this image shows the general character of the first part of the hike. Note the location of this road split for your descent, you will need to descend along the road that forks RIGHT.
Follow the road to 12,000', where the road will start to contour east. Leave the road at this point and continue north on the gentle grassy ridge to PT 12,282. The remaining route is visible from here and ascends tundra and talus. The ridge becomes more defined as it approaches PT 13,004. Climb north on talus from PT 13,004 for approximately 1 mile directly to the summit. This image shows the majority of the route from above.
Essential GearStandard hiking gear and the 10 essentials are all that is needed. Late fall you may encounter some snow. The route photos were taken in October.
Winter adds over 2 miles each way to this route due to road closures, I recommend hiking Silverheels from the west (Beaver Ridge, or Hoosier Pass) in winter.

subset: commoncrawl


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TUNE IT UP! (Formally GLEE by the Bay Classes)
*THIS PROGRAM IS LOCATED IN OUR AFTER SCHOOL LOCATIONS ONLY. For future classes that may open up to the
public, click on Contact US and request to be added to the Newsletter. The Newsletter will contain announcements of upcoming programs and more*
Inspired by GLEE, VICTORIOUS and many of today's hit musically inspired movies and shows. This program is fun for everyone. Participants will participate in singing, dancing, some acting and script writing.
Invitations to perform at a variety of events (invitations vary but are typical for our GLEE group during the spring/summer sessions) throughout California. Open to students K-12. The program incldes coaching
in: Stage Performing, Vocal Instruction, A & R, Talent Development
*Additional Home-schooling/Independant Studies Student programs available on weekdays between the hours of 11am-2:30pm. Classes are formed based on class demand.
Participants have performed at a variety of events included the Special Cast of GLEE by the BAY, featuring singing sensation
Pre-registration is required, no on-site registration will be available.
RAW Talents is proud of our industry professionals and their Students. Our students can be seen on television/Film (Disney, Contagion, I
Almost Got Away With It, etc), commercials (Yahoo, Washington, Intel, etc) , and leads in stage performances like Oliver & Annie
Join us for fun or join us to start exploring work in the industry. Regardless of your path, your knowledge of the industry when expand when you chose RAW!
This program specializes in helping youth prepare for the competitive world of the entertainment industry. Lights, Camera,
Acting is a program that introduces youth to a variety of industry occupations through our online show. The 2014-2015
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Ever flip through your favorite magazine and wonder how you can work in the fun but challenging world of publishing and journalism. Then
this program is for you. Participants will learn the magazine industry; including but not limited to magazine layout, photography, movie/music
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Work on a REAL Youth/Teen Magazine! Participants will learn the in's and out's of magazine production. Participants will be assigned a
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Learn how to:
Interview Entertainers from shows like Shake It Up,
Magazine/Newspaper Layout
Yearbook Production
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*Additional Home-schooling/Independant Studies Student programs available on Wednesday's.
Program is done in 5 week session with rolling enrollment program which allows you to enroll at anytime during the year (as long as space
is available).
Click here to register online.
Welcome to the Performing Arts
Division of the GM Services
AUDITIONS 101 *This is for anyone interested in Getting Into the Film & Television Industry*
Our students, teachers and guest instructors have worked on a variety of projects for Disney, Yahoo!, Kaboom, Warner
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Participants will focus on resumes, reels and headshots marketing & public relations. This is STRICTLY the business
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This is not only a great introduction to show production from on camera to off camera, but also builds self-confidence, creativity and more. *Schedule subject to change based on
teacher availability and class sizes*
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Critics and supporters of a proposed mixed-use development near downtown Athens can agree on one thing: It won't be built unless it meets Athens-Clarke County's zoning standards.
A panel discussed Selig Enterprise's proposed Oconee Street project Monday night at a meeting of the Federation of Neighborhoods, a homeowners' group.
Tony Eubanks of Protect Downtown Athens, a group working to improve the development's design, argued that the renderings Selig has released won't pass muster with the county planning department. They violate a law requiring downtown parking decks' ground floors to be 70 percent commercial or residential space, he said.
If Selig doesn't build or leave right-of-way for a Hickory Street extension from the Multimodal Transportation Center to the University of Georgia campus, it will also have to get commission approval, said Melissa Link of the anti-Walmart group People for a Better Athens.
"This thing is not a done deal," Eubanks said. "It's coming up for a (commission) vote."
Eubanks criticized Mayor Nancy Denson for saying the development is a done deal and that it meets zoning guidelines.
"As your mayor, if they don't meet zoning regulations, they won't have my support," Denson responded.
The pro-development panelists, Charlie Maddox and James Garland, didn't argue that the current design is completely legal, but said Selig will tweak it or they won't be able to move forward.
"I don't think anybody has any idea what the final design will look like," said Maddox, a former mayoral candidate who is involved in numerous community groups.
Selig has said it is redesigning the project to address criticisms and will not file plans or a traffic study for several months.
Garland, a libertarian blogger and columnist, said he thinks the mixed-use development — retail stores, restaurants, offices and apartments — meets the zoning code "in broad strokes," but he doubts planners and commissioners will approve it unless it meets the letter of the law.
"That plan's not going to happen unless it either meets existing ordinances or gets variances," he said.
Lila Grisar, an activist in the Chicopee-Dudley neighborhood near the development site, had less confidence. Standards often haven't been enforced on new infill houses in that area, she said.
"Sometimes our zoning does fail us," she said.
Even in broad strokes, Link and Eubanks said they think the development is inappropriate. It's turned in on itself rather than connected to downtown, it's designed primarily for cars and it ignores the North Oconee River and $13 million greenway that run along the property, they said.
"To abandon our principles, the way we said that we want to grow, for 300 jobs is ludicrous," Eubanks said.
Much of the discussion involved Walmart, the likely anchor tenant, and the quality of jobs the development would create.
Studies show that Walmart destroys three jobs for every two people it employs, Link said. Athens has a low unemployment rate and high poverty, so the city doesn't need more low-wage jobs, she said.
"We have lots and lots of these poverty-level jobs," she said,
Maddox acknowledged that Walmart "kills jobs, but some of those jobs need to be killed," he said, because those businesses can't compete.
Walmart provides benefits to part-time workers and promotes from within, the retired state Department of Labor official said.
"I've seen people come in with minimum wage jobs and go out as manager or supervisor," Maddox said. "People have to start somewhere."
Garland said his research found that Walmart doesn't have much impact either way on local economies. It pays about the same as other retailers and has improved its business practices, he said.
Eubanks dismissed talk of Walmart. The issue is the scale and design of the development.
"A 94,000 square-foot Whole Foods would be a disaster," he said.


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Article date: 27 October 2005
Aviva plc has announced senior management changes which willtake effect in 2006.
Mike Pemberton, group HR director, will retire in March 2006 andwill be succeeded by John Ainley, who is currently people andorganisation director, Norwich Union Life and was previously HRdirector, Aviva General Insurance. Ainley will report to RichardHarvey, group chief executive of Aviva plc and will take MikePemberton's place on the group executive committee.
Russell Martin, currently HR director (UK & Europe) atPrudential Assurance, will take up the role of director of peopleand organisation at Norwich Union Life, with effect from 1 February2006.
Martin's previous positions have included specialist rolesin reward and recruitment, in addition to international HRpositions in a number of sectors, including advertising, media andbanking.
Hayley Stimpson, Aviva directorof external affairs +44 (0)20 7662 7544
Sue Winston, Aviva head of group media relations +44 (0)20 76628221
Cheryl Cox, Norwich Union Life media relations +44 (0)1904452617
Notes to editors:
- Photographs are available from the media centre at www.aviva.com/media
- Aviva is the world's sixth-largest insurance group basedon gross world-wide premiums and market capitalisation (at 31December 2004); it is one of the leading providers of life andpensions in Europe and has substantial businesses in other marketsaround the world.
- Aviva's main activities are long-term savings, fundmanagement and general insurance, with world-wide total income of£40 billion and assets under management of £280 billion at 31December 2004.


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Acoustics and Psychoacoustics: Introduction to sound - Part 4
Post a comment
[Part 1 discusses pressure waves and sound transmission. Part 2 covers sound intensity, power and pressure level. Part 3 looks at adding sounds together.]
1.4 The inverse square law
So far we have only considered sound as a disturbance that propagates in one direction. However, in reality sound propagates in three dimensions. This means that the sound from a source does not travel on a constant beam, instead it spreads out as it travels away from the radiating source, as shown in Figure 1.7.
As the sound spreads out from a source it gets weaker. This is not due to it being absorbed but due to its energy being spread more thinly. Figure 1.11 gives a picture of what happens. Consider a half blown-up spherical balloon, which is coated with honey to a certain thickness. If the balloon is blown up to double its radius, the surface area of the balloon would have increased fourfold. As the amount of honey has not changed it must therefore have a quarter of the thickness that it had before.
Figure 1.11 The honey and balloon model of the inverse square law for sound.
The sound intensity from a source behaves in an analogous fashion in that every time the distance from a sound source is doubled the intensity reduces by a factor of four, that is there is an inverse square relationship between sound intensity and the distance from the sound source. The area of a sphere is given by the equation:
Asphere = 4pr2
The sound intensity is defined as the power per unit area. Therefore the sound intensity as a function of distance from a sound source is given by:
I = Wsource/Asphere = Wsource/4pr2 (1.16)
where I = the sound intensity (in W m-2)
Wsource = the power of the source (in W)
and r = the distance from the source (in m)
Equation 1.16 shows that the sound intensity for a sound wave that spreads out in all directions from a source reduces as the square of the distance. Furthermore this reduction in intensity is purely a function of geometry and is not due to any physical absorption process.
In practice, there are sources of absorption in air, for example impurities and water molecules, or smog and humidity. These sources of absorption have more effect at high frequencies and as a result, sound not only gets quieter but also gets duller as one moves away from a source. The amount of excess attenuation is dependent on the level of impurities and humidity and is therefore variable.


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Photographer's Note
Ive arrived in southern Black Forest tired and thirsty. I was thinking, Miro how you can start hiking in this large forest without having a healthy beer?.
Do you know which is the best beer in southern Black Forest? IMO it is the Rothaus beer.
The weather was perfect, sunshine, blue sky and warm; the best condition to relax with the glass of good, cold beer.
So Im not starting this series with the Black Forest natural beauty but with the photo of old, famous Rothaus Brewery.
The brewery was founded in 1791 by the Abbot of St. Blasien (small town nearby) as a measure to encourage economic growth in the Black Forest.
It is located 1000m above sea level in Rothaus, around 3 km north of the village of Grafenhausen in the southern Black Forest. It is one of Germany's most successful and profitable regional breweries.
At 1,000 metre it is the highest located brewery in Germany as well as the most modern.
The brewery offers daily tours of the brewery costing about 20 EUR per person which includes food, a platter of traditional Black Forest hams, sausages and cheeses and Rothaus beer.
The tour starts with a film about the Rothaus Brewery. Even though the film is in German there is plenty of beautiful Black Forest scenery to admire. You are then taken through the modern hi-tech brewery and each process is explained (in German). When the tour is over you go to the Rothaus Guesthouse on the brewery site where you a served your food and beer. There is also a shop where you can buy plenty of Rothaus souvenirs including beer steins and tee shirts as well as beer.
The photo show a typical copper beer barrel located on the square between car park and brewery building.
Place that you should see if you are planning to visit this area.
Critiques | Translate
Kamilutka (8107) 2014-05-06 3:36
Hello Miro,
all the beer fans will love this picture and the note which accompanies it :-) This looks actually quite interesting with the massive copper tub drawing attention in the foreground and colorful brewery buildings in the background. The POV has been chosen very wisely and I like the angle at which you took this picture. Very good light management and as a result of it also well saturated colors.
Thanks for sharing and I am looking forward to see the whole series
gojo (1769) 2014-05-06 3:38
Hi Miro,
A very nice framing with beautiful shining copper, contrasting elegantly against the buildings.
lousat (103153) 2014-05-06 3:48
Hi Miro,absolutely beautiful this brewery,a great gift to a barman like me...ehehe...the architechure is magnificent and very well preserved,i like your point of view to create the most complete and rich composition from there,and made in the usual top quality! Have a nice evening and thanks,LUCIANO
snunney (113767) 2014-05-06 4:32
Hello Miro,
A well framed composition with a pleasing balance to it. I like the vivid colours and excellent clarity. The brewery tour sounds good value, I must make a note in my diary for the next time I am in the area:-)
jhm (167810) 2014-05-06 5:06
Hello Miro,
I know who has, the best beer, this is Belgium, maybe have to you in Belgium a visit to a brewery bring!
Lovely architecture picture with lovely colours
Excellent composition, nice depth and perspective picture.
Very well done, TFS
Best regards,
Sergiom (96769) 2014-05-06 5:10
Bonjour Miro
J'aime beaucoup cette image et aussi la belle cuve cuivrée à l'avant plan. Elle a déjà du contenir de la très bonne bière qui fait la renommée de cet endroit. J'aime beaucoup les couleurs et la lumière de fin de journée.
Nicou (160075) 2014-05-06 6:08
Fantastique vue de cette cuve à bière mervielleux quel brillant et rendu des tons et cette brasserie en fond sueprbe compo.
Bravo et amitié
williamcoombs1 (365) 2014-05-06 6:34
Hello Miro,
Fabulous light that you've captured in the copper barrel, and the incidental detail in the background round out the context so well. Terrific!
All the best,
adramad (52536) 2014-05-06 7:47
Hello Miro.
A fantastic and amazing picture with this corner of beautiful homes, which draws attention that typical copper beer barrel,in bronze, with which there is no doubt which is the flagship product in the population.
Nice color, in these natural tones.
Also both sharpness, such as lighting are great.
Well taken photo. I Like
Great informative note.
Enjoy a nice day, my friend.
Best wishes.
Cricri (133322) 2014-05-06 7:52
Hello Miro
Intéressant de voir ce tonneau de bière reluisant par sa matière en cuivre, bon cadrage et présentation, suivi d'une note intéressante, ici en Belgique elle est aussi pour ces bonnes bières :-)
Belle journée
rychem (49331) 2014-05-06 8:42
It makes me smile, unique photo, very nice subject and very good execution
regards Ryszard
cornejo (51088) 2014-05-06 10:12
Hi Miro, very good picture of this interesting composition in this interesting place of good beer, very well captured in this interesting image, with good sharpness, light and color. Very good and interesting job well done, congratulations my friend. Thanks for sharing this beautiful work.
Good night and happy week.
Warm greetings from southern Spain.
No_One (4) 2014-05-06 10:19
Hi Miro
I fully agree, always begin with beer :) Haha, that could be the motto for Homer Simpson himself! A great shot, this large copper vessel is an unexpected sight among these quaint buildings, and its caught the light in such a way so as to demand the viewers attention. A great start to your series, I'm looking forward to seeing more. This is a brilliant composition too!
All the best
Romano46 (18472) 2014-05-06 11:02
Ciao Miro
uno dei monumenti più originali che mi sia capitato di vedere, non solo appare particolarmente interessante il suo inserimento tra le case che , sebbeni siano di fattura recente, ricordano nella loro struttura quelle tipiche del luogo.
Bella la composizione che valorizza molto bene sia il monumento quanto le case.
Ciao e buona serata
fritzi007 (13552) 2014-05-06 12:10
Hallo Miro,
fantastisches Foto, sehr gute Farben und eine hohe Fotoqualität, sehr guter Kommentar, gratuliere!
Viele Grüße
nikkitta (17068) 2014-05-06 15:01
Hola Miro
How very good way to begin your trip, a good beer and a visit to a brewery?
Like the way you take the capture, leaving some space at the front and the copper recipent ( which is its name? ) contrastng with the traditional architecture
Well done, enjoy watching, reading
Apurba20 (984) 2014-05-06 23:16
Hi Miro
Loved the anecdote. Ha ha!
Wonderful picture. Nice light and POV.
Thanks for sharing. Have a great day.
abmdsudi (63663) 2014-05-07 3:20
Hi Miro
That highly polished copper container looks like a giant version of a lab apparatus I remember in my chemistry lesson some forty years ago! But this easily can quench the whole thirsty townfolks! Looks and sounds a very interesting place for 'drinking' and there's more sense of context and 'story' Brilliant in colour in an interesting perspective that really makes you wonder around, think and relate to your description while picking up other details better. You did your best here to show it. I go for lemon juice Miro! Great capture, tfs
Best regards
carlo62 (61438) 2014-05-07 5:29
Ciao Miro
bel luogo e bella foto, molto piacevole e interessante.
Ottima l'esposizione, una composizione ben fatta e il risultato ottenuto è splendido.
eldancer1 (36343) 2014-05-07 10:07
Wow! That's a lot of beer! But then the Germans are known for quality beer. Good capture with good lighting and nice details. Well done, tfs.
mcmtanyel (35307) 2014-05-07 10:12
Hello Miro,
Did you drink all that beer? My, you must have been thirsty! I love the copper shine and the buildings' colors.
serp2000 (46526) 2014-05-07 11:16
Hi, Miro,
Oh, this is very famous brewery equipment. This photo brings me back to my trips around Europa. I love the live fresh beer too. Excellent postcard format, good presentation of Rothaus. Good illustration of this informative note.
Best wishes,
ikeharel (85042) 2014-05-08 8:47
Don't tell me it is possible to drink beer strait from the big refinery...
my humor only, Miro.
Shining brass of the big typical aparatus, contrast its surroundings with beautiful glow, which you masterfully taken the moment by camera.
Exquisite photojob, superbly done.
Good evening,
fabbs99 (17179) 2014-05-10 23:55
Hello Miro,
Lovely shot.Nice colors and sharpness.Excellent POV.TFS.
jmdias (73515) 2014-05-16 17:46
very interesting details of these buildings around and the cupper structure in the foreground. nice quality of image and a unusual subject.
Gigidusud (21393) 2014-05-18 15:33
Hello Miro,
Beautiful brewery with nice architecture and splendid colors. I like the copper vat on FG, interesting note too. Well done!
Best regards.
kato (11630) 2014-05-20 13:30
Hello Miro,
You're capturing well this place by a good composition and excellent tone/clarity, so it's interesting and impreesive to see this brewery with copper barrel and the tasteful buildings of backdrop in small town. It's very useful to join factory tour, since we can learn manufucturing process and history.
Kind regards,
tatadalou (7459) 2014-05-24 11:40
Hello Miro,
What attracted me on this photo is the nice light management over the copper tank. I hope you've enjoyed your beer beforehiking. Thanks a lot for your interesting note.
adores (46467) 2014-06-15 18:06
Hi Miro!
Nice shot! I like the light and the colours and the copper really stands out. Seems an interesting place and you got a good composition!
Miguel82 (27752) 2014-12-01 10:25
Dear Miro, that giant still enhances well the past of that region, a patrimonial item perfectly integrated among the new and modern buildings
Photo Information
- Copyright: Miro Susta (mirosu) (16295)
- Genre: Places
- Medium: Color
- Date Taken: 2014-04-10
- Categories: Architecture
- Camera: Nikon D600, Nikkor AF-S 24-85 mm f/3.5-4.5 G, circular polarizer
- Exposure: f/9.0, 1/30 seconds
- Details: Tripod: Yes
- More Photo Info: view
- Photo Version: Original Version
- Date Submitted: 2014-05-06 3:29


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By DE Editors
AVEVA Plant 12.0.SP6 engineering design and visualization software supports the Microsoft Windows 7 operating system. The 12.0.SP6 release is fully compatible with both the 32- and 64-bit Windows 7 platforms. In combination with new hardware systems, Windows 7 supports larger 3D PDMS models and offers greater overall software performance.
"While Windows 7 support is the big headline for the new AVEVA Plant, we shouldn't overlook the significant performance optimizations and new functional extensions that this release also contains," says Peter Brunning, design product manager at AVEVA. "In this release we have addressed more than 100 user requests for functional improvements, enhanced our graphical user interface, and tuned up the performance on a number of operations. To give just a couple of examples, the release includes an update of our Open Steel interface, version 2.1, which now manages complex plates and curved members, and support for the Steel Detailing Neutral File (SDNF) format for greater compatibility with 3rd-party steel detailing applications. A native 64-bit implementation of the new AVEVA Review 12.1 can now handle much larger models with better performance."
AVEVA Plant (12.0 series SP6) is now shipping to existing and new AVEVA customers running on Microsoft Windows 7 operating systems, as well as those still running on Windows XP.
For more information, visit AVEVA.
Click here for full list of the AVEVA Plant solutions.
See why DE's Editors selected AVEVA Plant as their Pick of the Week.


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j_t3379849wrote a review of Union Force Snowboard Binding on November 26, 2009
Unions are pretty cool
Riddin my Unions a few times so far...only problem ive had is keeping the main strap to stay tight every once and a while. been having problems keeping my foot in and secure feeling. other then that theyve been workin great.


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© 2013 – Routledge
242 pages
The Postsecular Imagination presents a rich, interdisciplinary study of postsecularism as an affirmational political possibility emerging through the potentials and limits of both secular and religious thought. While secularism and religion can foster inspiration and creativity, they also can be linked with violence, civil war, partition, majoritarianism, and communalism, especially within the framework of the nation-state. Through close readings of novels that engage with animism, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Sikhism, Manav Ratti examines how questions of ethics and the need for faith, awe, wonder, and enchantment can find expression and significance in the wake of such crises.
While focusing on Michael Ondaatje and Salman Rushdie, Ratti addresses the work of several other writers as well, including Shauna Singh Baldwin, Mahasweta Devi, Amitav Ghosh, and Allan Sealy. Ratti shows the extent of courage and risk involved in the radical imagination of these postsecular works, examining how writers experiment with and gesture toward the compelling paradoxes of a non-secular secularism and a non-religious religion.
Drawing on South Asian Anglophone literatures and postcolonial theory, and situating itself within the most provocative contemporary debates in secularism and religion, The Postsecular Imagination will be important for readers interested in the relations among culture, literature, theory, and politics.
'Provocative and arresting, this is a work of subtle imagination and searching intellect. It is finely written, scrupulously researched and persuasively argued—very much of the times. I look forward to what Manav Ratti next has to say.' – Elleke Boehmer, Oxford University, UK
"The Postsecular Imagination by Manav Ratti is an important book and it has come to us at a time of great need. It is clear, concise, and full of insights that will help us navigate a world all too often polarized by cynicism and half-truths. His presentation to a full house of inquisitive minds was one of the highlights of the past number of years and we cannot say enough about Manav Ratti's charm and poise in front of an audience. The Postsecular Imagination deserves a huge audience."– Neil Wilson, Founding Director, Ottawa International Writers Festival
'[one of] three important monographs [that] signal … a 'post-secular' turn in postcolonial theory and criticism' – Graham Huggan in Modern Fiction Studies
'The originality of Ratti's book resides in dealing with literary works as temporal products in which secular tenets have an impact on belief systems, while still recognizing the relevance of the latter. It shares much in common with Saba Mahmood's Politics of Piety (2005), Achilles Mbembe's On the Postcolony (2001), and Talal Asad's Formations of the Secular (2003). Summing Up: Recommended.' – K.M. Kapanga, University of Richmond, USA in Choice
'Ratti's text is one of the most wide-ranging studies of postsecularism with particular attention to the field of literature.' – Anthony Paul Smith in Reading the Abrahamic Faiths
'Manav Ratti presents a study that, far from exclusively aiming at literary criticism, tackles one of the most virulent problems of cultural policy head on: the increasingly embattled relation of secularism and religion, in some parts of the world complicated by a nationalist agenda. […] The interpretations Ratti offers are illuminating and sensitive…the reader will feel tempted to discover the books they have not yet read themselves, a positive effect rarely produced by academic literary criticism. […] Ideological partisanship and one-sidedness [are] gratifyingly absent from the whole book. Also, the book shows a full command of state-of-the-art literary and cultural theory.' – Bettina Gruber in Entangled Religions
"Written evocatively, this book is an interdisciplinary work useful to those interested in literary criticism, postcolonialism, and socio-political theory. [. . .] The Postsecular Imagination is a scholarly attempt to resuscitate enchantment in this world. Given the unforgiving rationalism of the modern secular state, and the violence of organized religion, Manav Ratti deems the binary of religion versus secularism as having practically failed and as being conceptually inadequate. The book then is a search for an imagination beyond these binaries. [. . .] Within the spectrum of postsecular discourse, the author takes a balanced, centrist position. [. . .] This book deserves to be closely read, in text and in spirit." - Rajgopal Saikumar, The Hindu
"Dr. Manav Ratti's assessment of the postsecular imagination as reflected in some well-known literary works of recent decades is a highly readable book, a denouement of conflicts between conduct out of faith on one hand and claims of pragmatism and evolved rationalism on the other. Steering clear of both downright rejection or enthusiastic assertion of ideas and events under focus, the work exemplifies a calm objective approach to issues with, it seems to this reviewer, an unpronounced underlying faith that the contraries are facets of a goal towards which humanity is staging an unconscious march, for 'an eternal perfection is moulding us into its own image,' as stated by Sri Aurobindo. The content apart, the style is irresistible, a welcome academic exercise in recent times." —Manoj Das, Sahitya Akademi Fellow, Padma Shri, Saraswati Samman
"Daring, fine and nuanced, Manav Ratti's book is probably the first monograph of its kind to raise important questions that probe the potentials and limits of both religious and secular thought in India. [. . .] His meticulous analysis of the context and politics enriches his reading of the text. In fact, one of the fortes of this impressive and scrupulously researched book is its interdisciplinarity, and the way that Ratti moves between the lenses of social and cultural criticism, political theory and literary criticism [. . .] One of the greatest achievements of the book is perhaps the way in which it raises uncomfortable questions about the significance of certain values that we do not question (such as the desirability of secularism, or the enchantment of religion), and forces us to rethink and rework those values." —Journal of Postcolonial Writing
"A nuanced analysis of how literature is capable of generating new ways of interpreting the limits of religion and secularism [. . .]. Ratti's book is a success and important reading for those interesed in secularism, religion, postsecularism and postcolonial theory. The text is well written, carefully argued and full of insights [. . .] [the] illustration of [the] indeterminacy and creativity associated with [postsecularism] is one of the many strengths of the book." —Postcolonial Studies
"A major addition to contemporary scholarship on postsecularism, this is a significant book for those interested in the study of issues related to religion and secularism." —Wasafiri
"Raises the stakes of both scholarly and literary interventions . . . Theoretically nimble and insightful . . . a nuanced, vibrant and stylistically elegant scholarship of possibility: one that is further informed by the author's rigorous knowledge of the geopolitical realities and physical locations (in India, Europe, Sri Lanka and further afield) that he has experienced and visited . . . Ratti's work stands out in the field as an indispensable way forward" —Postcolonial Text
"Timely—auspicious even. [. . .] Well-researched and theoretically sophisticated work contributes to debates regarding secularism by providing a critical vocabulary mediating between the secular and the religious. [. . .] Major intervention [. . .] Ratti's compelling book promises to provoke further scholarship that takes up in a similar vein. [. . .] Provocative and suggestive in its demand to go beyond conventional dichotomous formulations. [. . .] Sensitive and nuanced readings [. . .] Ratti renews the theoretical bases of postcolonial literary studies, putting it in conversation with South Asian Studies." — South Asian Review
Preface: The Literary and The Postsecular. Introduction: Situating Postsecularism 1. Postsecularism and Nation: Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient 2. Minority's Christianity: Allan Sealy's The Everest Hotel 3. Postsecularism and Violence: Michael Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost 4. If Truth Were A Sikh Woman: Shauna Singh Baldwin's What The Body Remembers 5. Postsecularism and Prophecy: Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses 6. Art After the Fatwa: Salman Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories, The Moor's Last Sigh, Shalimar The Clown, and The Enchantress of Florence 7. The Known and The Unknowable: Amitav Ghosh's The Hungry Tide and Mahasweta Devi's "Pterodactyl, Puran Sahay, and Pirtha" Coda Notes References Index
Edited in collaboration with the Centre for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, University of Kent at Canterbury, Routledge Research in Postcolonial Literatures presents a wide range of research into postcolonial literatures by specialists in the field. Volumes concentrate on writers and writing originating in previously (or presently) colonized areas, and include material from non-anglophone as well as anglophone colonies and literatures.
Part of our home for cutting-edge, upper-level scholarly studies and edited collections, this series considers postcolonial literature alongside topics such as gender, race, ecology, religion, politics, and science. Titles are characterized by dynamic interventions into established subjects and innovative studies on emerging topics. Series editors: Donna Landry and Caroline Rooney


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This dialogue reviews Sheldrake's theory of "morphic resonance," which challenges some fundamental assumptions of established science. Sheldrake offers a revolutionary alternative to the mechanistic worldview, and points toward a new understanding of the nature of life, matter and mind. One of the more profound implications of Sheldrake's account here is his suggestion that the brain may be more like a tuning system than a recording device. Rupert Sheldrake studied natural sciences at Cambridge and philosophy at Harvard, took a Ph.D. in biochemistry at Cambridge and is the author of more than 50 scientific papers. He's the author of many books including The Presence of the Past (Times Books 1995), Seven Experiments That Could Change the World: A Do-It Yourself Guide to Revolutionary Science (Riverhead Books 1995), A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Morphic Resonance (J.P. Tarcher 1995), The Rebirth of Nature; The Greening of Science and God (Bantam 1991), Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home: And Other Unexplained Powers of Animals (Three Rivers Press 2001), The Sense of Being Stared At: And Other Aspects of The Extended Mind (Crown 2003), and co-authored with Matthew Fox Natural Grace: Dialogues on Creation, Darkness, and the Soul in Spirituality and Science (Doubleday 1996) and The Physics of Angels: Exploring the Realm Where Science and Spirit Meet (HarperSanFrancisco 1996).More
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memories not stored in brain!
- Susana Lee


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BRASILIA, Aug 5 (Reuters) - Brazil's top prosecutor, who has put dozens of politicians under investigation for allegedly taking bribes in the Petrobras corruption scandal, has won the backing of his peers to stay on the job for two more years.
The association of federal prosecutors voted on Wednesday to propose Rodrigo Janot's name to President Dilma Rousseff for another term as prosecutor-general.
Rousseff is expected to nominate Janot, but it is not clear whether he will win confirmation by the Senate because the head of the upper house, Senator Renan Calheiros, is one of the lawmakers under investigation.
Janot included Calheiros on a list of 32 sitting politicians that he sent to the Supreme Court in March on the suspicion that they had received political kickbacks paid by engineering firms from overpriced contracts with Petroleo Brasileiro.
The corruption investigation has led to the indictment of dozens of executives from Brazil's top engineering and construction firms as well as former Petrobras directors.
Most of the implicated politicians belong to parties in Rousseff's governing coalition, including her Worker's Party. The scandal has undermined her popularity and turned allies against her. Rousseff is not under investigation and has said all those found guilty must be punished.
The Petrobras corruption probe came one step closer on Tuesday to Rousseff's mentor and predecessor, former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, when police arrested his former chief of staff Jose Dirceu. (Reporting by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)


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Japanese dancing has as ancient an origin as Japan itself has, dating back many hundreds of years. Early dances were very simple expressions of the peoples lives. Transformations in dancing brought music as an equal part in performances and the creation of dance-dramas. One type of dance, known as the Kabuki, was started by a woman named O-Kuni, around 1600. Being a Shrine Maiden, she combined the prayer dances she was used to performing with the Noh-Kyogen dances, beginning a cultural revolt against a rigid society. While it's not readily obvious whether these women are Kabuki dancers, it is more than likely that they are performing a dance-drama with musical accompaniment. The musical instrument being played below appears to be a Samisen, a three stringed instrument similar to a guitar, is a common form of accompaniment.
22.214.171.124 Japan, (Three Dancing Girls)
188.8.131.52 Japan, "Dancing Girl"
22.214.171.124 Japan, "Dancing"
184.108.40.206 Japan, (Woman plays musical instrument)


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Industrial property giant SEGRO has revealed growth across the board in its annual figures for 2016.
To the year ending 31 December, SEGRO's earnings per share rose 7.1% to 19.7p. The group stated the growth was underpinned by a 4% increase in like-for-like net rental income and a strong contribution from development completions.
The group also saw net asset value per share rise 8% to 500p, driven by a 4.8% like-for-like increase in the value of the portfolio, reflecting development gains, UK rental growth and asset management activities.
David Sleath, chief executive of SEGRO, said: "I am pleased to report another strong set of results. We have had a record year for development completions, delivering 422,000 sq m (4,542,408 sq ft) of new warehouse space, of which 80% is now let. We have a high quality pipeline of developments under construction and more under discussion, reflecting the continuing strength of occupier demand for, and short supply of, well located, modern urban and big box warehouses."
SEGRO upped its dividend by 5.7% to 11.2p, compared to 10.6p in 2015.
The results also showed occupier demand remains strong from a broad range of business sectors, particularly from retailers adapting their supply chains to the rapid growth of internet retailing. Segro stated future earnings prospects were underpinned by the largely de-risked development programme, as projects under construction have the potential to generate £27m of new rent, of which 61% has been pre-let. A further £27m is available from conditional pre-let and potential speculative projects which are expected to start in the coming months.
"Our business is well positioned, notwithstanding the current degree of political and economic uncertainty," added Sleath. "We have had an active start to 2017 and we continue to see opportunities to grow our business through further disciplined investment, matched by a prudent approach to financing."
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The Butler Did It
Blood of the Caesars
By Stephen Dando-Collins
The great Roman historian Tacitus once wrote, "Rumor is always prodigal of horrors when princes die," and worked with greater care than any ancient annalist to ground his accounts in direct records and first-hand accounts. He mentions the distortions of rumor only to condemn them, and he has nothing but scorn for writers who are either too credulous or too eager to treat truth with his same care.
This is only just: there are few things sadder than a good historian gone rogue.
That Stephen Dando-Collins is a good historian is beyond doubt: his in-depth studies of various imperial Roman legions are invaluable contributions to the discipline and will remain intensely useful to future scholars.
And in his latest book, Blood of the Caesars, he's equally undoubtedly gone rogue.
He has a thesis, and it's twofold: first, that the popular Roman prince Germanicus, who died in Syria in A.D. 19, was murdered (and he knows by whom), and second, and you really should sit down for this one, that this murder brought about the downfall of the Roman Empire centuries later.
His book has a bibliography six pages long, full of respected names like Mommsen and Syme (all of whom, were they able to come forward and see their inclusion in this book, would be first deeply ashamed and then deeply litigious), but the notes for each of his chapters make it clear he's building all of his story on ancient sources – Suetonius, Cassius Dio, Josephus, and most of all Tacitus. In the notes that actually support the speculations he puts forward, chapter by chapter, pretty much the only names that crop up are these four – and, damning for separate reasons, Carcopino's Daily Life in Ancient Rome, and Robert Graves' I, Claudius (Graves is at one point referred to as a 'Roman scholar'). That I, Claudius is a work of highly selective and very effective historical fiction seems superfluous to point out; if Dando-Collins can warp someone like Tacitus into his speculations, he hardly needs the help of mere novelists.
A bit of historical grounding here will no doubt be useful. Germanicus, born Julius Caesar Germanicus on May 24, 15 or 16 B.C., was the son of Nero Drusus (brother of the future emperor Tiberius) and his wife Antonia, the daughter of Marc Antony. After his father's death, he was adopted by Tiberius, who was adopted by Augustus, thus placing Germanicus squarely in the line of succession.
The young man served under Tiberius during his campaigns in Germany and Pannonia. Germanicus won distinctions in those cold seasons, and in 12 he was consul, and in 13 he commanded the provinces of Gaul and Germany. When the infamous Roman general Varus lost his three legions to the Germans in the Teutoberg Forest, it was Germanicus who led the murderous reprisals, eventually retrieving two of the three lost eagle-standards. When Augustus died, the legions along the Rhine revolted and wanted to make Germanicus their emperor, but he refused and made them acquiesce in his refusal. Tacitus refers frequently to his grace of manner and winning personality, and even tongue-wagging Suetonius has nothing but compliments.
The new emperor Tiberius obviously needed to make use of such a paragon, and he did. After career politician Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso and his wife Plancina were sent out to govern the province of Syria, Germanicus was made commander of all the Eastern provinces, effectively putting him over their heads – and probably creating a good deal of enmity in the process. Tacitus, or rather the first-hand sources he references, has made much of this inevitable animosity, but it bears stressing: Tacitus didn't actually know anything of the first-hand truth of what he was writing, sixty years later (for this reason much later writers, like Suetonius or Cassius Dio, must be accounted mere gossips and given little or no credence). Despite the fact that he had access to innumerable sources we lack (the memoirs of Agrippina's daughter, for instance, not to mention the daily Acta of the Senate), in the Annals, Tacitus is putting forward his best conjecture on the conjectures conjectured by others – it's only through the grandeur of his intelligence that we don't dismiss him too.
History has branded Piso and Plancina the murderers of Germanicus (utilizing a third party in the person of the notorious poisoner Martina), by dint of proximity and evident hostility. The traditional narrative – admissible from Tacitus with a little imagination stirred in – is that Piso and Plancina used Martina's nefarious expertise to poison Germanicus at the Syrian imperial palace of Daphne. At the subsequent (and entirely unforeseen) trial, Tiberius fatally distances himself from his former cohorts. Piso takes his own life before the trial's verdict, thus assuring the verdict of posterity. End of story.
End of story, cue speculation. Even those unfamiliar with the historical record will likely be familiar with the version of events put forward in the popular BBC mini-series I, Claudius, i.e., that Martina's secret helper in the poisoning of Germanicus was none other than his young son, the boy Caligula. In the famous TV mini-series, Piso and Plancina enlist Martina's aid on their own, without explicit instructions from Tiberius or his mother Livia (in the program's single best scene, Martina is shown wolfing down food and glibly confessing everything to a listening – and abstaining – Livia, played with gleeful grandeur by Sian Phillips). Even in Tacitus' own day, foul play was routinely assumed, either on the part of Piso and Plancina, on the part of Tiberius and Livia, or on the part of Lucius Aelius Sejanus, commander of the elite Praetorian Guard. Germanicus was heir apparent to the throne and so a prime target for anybody who wanted somebody else to sit on it instead.
Dando-Collins in Blood of the Caesars is eager to do some speculating of his own, but since the crux of his book is a stunning Agatha Christie-style revelation of a previously-unsuspected killer (ala Hercule Poirot pointing to a lounging loafer and saying, "A person such as you, Monsieur Greenwald!"), he must necessarily do quite a bit of padding in order to make his book longer than a single exclaimed sentence. And to give him credit, his padding is the best part of his book. Readers unfamiliar with the state of Tiberius' reign – and most especially the rise and fall of Sejanus – will find this book both highly readable and highly enjoyable. And fairly well grounded in historical sources – provided you don't look too close.
He begins humbly, as, come to think of it, Poirot always does:
While I have been aided by many kind people dealing with Roman history at libraries, universities, and historic sites over the decades, this particular book is all my own work. Its theories and conclusions are entirely my own, formed on the back of my many years of research into the history of ancient Rome and using what modest skills as an interpretive historian I may have developed over those years.
Right from the book's start, he wants his readers to understand how special Germanicus and his wife Agrippina were, how forward-thinking, how adored. He's so avid for this that he inadvertently tips his hand as to the role he himself would like to play:
Imagine a glamorous pair of young royals today who were also movie stars – such was the status achieved by Germanicus and his Agrippina in their day and long after it. If there had been celebrity magazines in those times, Germanicus Caesar and Agrippina would have dominated their covers year in, year out.
The reader at this point may be wondering something, and they would be right: after all the dormant centuries, the ancient Romans have finally come to the attention of the paparazzi.
The same reader may be, should be, indulgent. After all, Carlyle's The French Revolution is written in a tone bordering on hysteria, yet it is not despised. Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire can hardly be called dispassionate, but its validity still stands. The key lies in the integrity of the author, and that integrity is made manifest in how that author treats his sources.
And so we come to the whole 'gone rogue' part of our sad story. Take any ancient quote or anecdote in Dando-Collins' book – not just from salacious Suetonius or Dio, but from sober Tacitus himself – and actually examine it, and chances are you'll find it wantonly, misleadingly altered from the original it purports to quote. Examples begin piling up almost from the first page, until the author's bare narrative can scarcely be heard over the din. Take an early, scene-setting tableau:
At the bedside [in the palace at Daphne in the province of Syria] kneels Germanicus's attractive thirty-two-year-old wife Agrippina, granddaughter of the late emperor Augustus and daughter of Augustus's loyal lieutenant Marcus Agrippa. She is alternately giving Germanicus sips of water and dabbing his flushed face with a damp cloth. His red-headed young chief of staff and five of his best friends – generals and Roman senators – cluster around the bed. Some of them are looking worried, others angry. Anxious servants hover in the background.
A dramatic, touching scene, for which the reader is referred to Book Two of Tacitus' Annals, and there the matter ends; unless one actually refers to Tacitus, in which case one discovers these things: there is no mention of who's at the bedside, no mention that the chief of staff has red hair, no mention of Agrippina 'dabbing' anybody, no mention of a flushed face, no mention of kneeling, no mention of worried or angry looks, and no mention of servants, hovering or otherwise. Aside from the correct factual identification of the people involved (Agrippina was Agrippa's daughter, etc.), nothing of Dando-Collins' version is in the ancient text he's purporting to source.
Oh well, the aforementioned indulgent reader might say, let's allow him some latitude, shall we? After all, his book is clearly pitched toward a general audience, and we all know they like a little drama mixed in with their history. And besides, all of those things could have happened, so what's the problem?
Even though requiring such indulgence would be anathema to any historian in his right mind, what if we accept it and move on? Dando-Collins wants to describe the atmosphere at Daphne in those last weeks of Germanicus' life, weeks in which, as Tacitus actually does tells us, the young prince was certain he was being poisoned. The deathly scene continues:
Those present at Germanicus's palace in his final weeks and days would say that he'd become angry when these 'spies' [envoys sent by Piso to ask after Germanicus' health] were detected in his palace. According to them, Germanicus had said, "If my doors are to be besieged, if I must breathe my last breath under the gaze of my enemies, what hope is there for my grieving wife and my little children?"
The reader is again referred to II Annals, and if the reader consults the 'referenced' text, the doubts as to our author's candor darken ominously. The source, first of all, is only Tacitus, writing a century after the fact; that 'those present…would say' makes it sound like Dando-Collins circulated among Germanicus' houseguests with a tape recorder – it's a deliberate attempt to trick the reader, and it has plenty of company even in that one slim paragraph. That 'according to them' reinforces the lie of 'those present,' and equally incriminating is the fact that it's Tacitus (and only Tacitus, no multiple attribution) paraphrasing what might have been Germanicus' words, not Germanicus speaking them directly.
Each a little thing, perhaps, but they add up. At every turn, Dando-Collins can be found stage-directing and filling in fabricated details here and there, until, after a very short while, the dutiful reader can't take him at his word on anything. He describes the rivalry between Germanicus and Piso this way:
Whenever Germanicus sat in judgment of legal cases in his capacity as chief judge in the province, for example, Piso, who would otherwise have occupied the judge's seat, rarely bothered to attend court. If he did, it was wearing a sullen frown and showing signs of opposition to Germanicus's rulings with sighs and raised eyebrows.
Sighs and raised eyebrows might be stereotypical signs of sullen behavior, but they aren't in Tacitus. Likewise a scene illustrating the distrust Agrippina felt toward Tiberius after Germanicus' death:
Tiberius began to think that Agrippina suspected him of trying to poison her. So to test her, he praised the apples being placed on the table in front of them as the last of the meal's many courses, then took one from the bowl and handed it to Agrippina, recommending it. He then pretended to become involved in conversation with his mother, but out of the corner of his eye he watched as Agrippina beckoned to one of her female servants. When the girl knelt by her mistress, Agrippina slipped the apple to her, and Tiberius saw her do it.
Lay this alongside the passage it's purportedly referencing, again from Tacitus:
Placed next to the Emperor, she [Agrippina] sat quiet and immobile, not touching her food. Tiberius (on his own or at someone's hint) noticed this. To press the point, he praised a bowl of fruit as soon as it appeared and offered one to his daughter-in-law. Agrippina, suspicions alerted, took it in silence and handed it to her slaves. Tiberius didn't say anything to her, but turning to his mother he said, "Is it any wonder I dream misfortune for a woman who'd imply I'm a poisoner!"
No apples. No last course. No many courses. No pretending to be preoccupied with Livia. No watching out of the corner of anybody's eyes. No female servants. No beckoning. No 'girl.' No kneeling. No 'slipping' anybody anything, and therefore no need to stress that Tiberius saw it. Dando-Collins has not only dramatized a scene with fabrications, he's dramatized it wrong: Tacitus' point is surely that Agrippina's haughty nature (about which, Tacitus tells us, Germanicus had warned her before he died) led her to make a public gesture of suspicion.
But the nature of the dramatization is beside the point; an author caught doing this over and over again simply cannot be trusted. And trust is essential if the author in question is trying to build a unique case, to forward an unprecedented theory, as Dando-Collins is. The main thrust of his book is far grander than simply serially misrepresenting his ancient sources, and his first order of business it so solve the murder of Germanicus.
He carefully assesses the cases made against the traditional suspects (and while he does this, again, he's fun company), Piso, Plancina, Tiberius, Livia, and Sejanus. Piso and Plancina, the favorite culprits, he eventually acquits: Piso never liked Tiberius, and besides, they had too much to lose if anything went wrong. Tiberius and Livia, after much re-hashing of fact and gossip, are likewise let off: again, too risky to move openly against somebody as popular with the people as Germanicus, especially so soon after Tiberius had publicly scolded the young man for an ill-advised trip to Egypt earlier in A.D. 19.
(This little incident is handled adroitly by Dando-Collins, who wants no stain of impropriety to adhere to his golden boy. In 19 Germanicus entered the province of Egypt, which was then enduring a famine, and made to open the Imperial granaries there, or so his defenders maintained. It was illegal for anybody of Germanicus' rank to enter Egypt without the Emperor's permission, and for a very good reason: seizing the granaries and the flow of commerce on the Nile was a necessary first step to seizing the government of Rome, as Germanicus, no tactical fool, knew perfectly well. Tiberius' rebuke – issued publicly to a general beloved by all – was entirely justified, but Dando-Collins reduces Germanicus' behavior to "this innocent Egyptian sojourn, a combination of drought relief mission and sightseeing trip." The adoptive grand-nephew of Caesar, once removed, must be above suspicion.)
Sejanus gets a much longer trot around the block: Dando-Collins has him scheming for Imperial power the very moment Tiberius succeeds Augustus, despite the half-dozen biological candidates in line at the time. As in the gossip of Suetonius and the conjecture of Tacitus, so too in Blood of the Caesars: Sejanus plots against all the male heirs of Tiberius, including the Emperor's son Drusus, whom he has poisoned even while bedding the poor victim's wife, Livilla. But eventually even Sejanus is cleared of the main crime concerning Germanicus and goes off to his own quite unrelated doom, and suddenly the deck seems cleared of any suspect. Dando-Collins stands ready to fill the void.
Readers who might want to explore his book on their own are warned at this point that "spoilers" lie ahead. I have no wish to ruin anybody's surprise, but Dando-Collins' two central theories require evaluation, and that requires naming names.
And the name on which Dando-Collins descends? Again, you might want to sit down for it: Seneca.
The Death of Germanicus, by Nicholas Poussin (1594-1665)
|No, not some other Seneca you've never heard of. The Seneca, Lucius Annaeus Seneca, the philosopher, satirist, and tragedian who Nero compelled to commit suicide and whose works have been read and studied and emulated and discussed from the Elizabethan era to the present day. The Seneca who has never before now been connected with the death of Germanicus in any way. Rather than point the finger at any of the more likely suspects – any of the people known to hate Germanicus or to in some way benefit from his death – or, Hell, at a disgruntled house-servant – Dando-Collins turns to a revered Stoic man of letters and says, "Someone like you, Monsieur Greenwald!"
His proof, you ask incredulously? Well, back when Germanicus made his sightseeing trip to the granaries of Egypt, the province was under the care of Senatorial prefect Gaius Galerius, whose 21-year-old nephew, young Seneca, was staying with him to improve his always-tenuous health. So he probably met Germanicus and Agrippina. At some banquet or other. And maybe he took it into his head that he should kill Germanicus, because the Emperor, Germanicus' adoptive father, might just like it:
Surely, he would have thought, the emperor would be grateful to a man who rid him of Germanicus' annoying presence?
Yes indeed. Emperors are always so grateful when commoners they've never heard of poison members of the nobility. Astounding, really, that nobody spotted it before now. Why, it's a wonder every asthmatic young dramatist wasn't busy slipping wolfsbane into Germanicus' pudding.
It's absurd, and on some level Dando-Collins must know it's absurd, but you have to give the man his due: he keeps hammering away at it, even though he's forced to go it alone (the dozen or so endnotes to each chapter dwindle to only one apiece for his final, revelatory ones). Taking his cue from the fact that Seneca was banished from Rome for eight years for committing adultery with Julia Livilla (eight years during which Seneca kept himself busy, as Dando-Collins, with accidental hilarity, points out: "during the same period, with plenty of time on his hands, he [Seneca] had written some of his best philosophical work"), he posits an earlier illicit love affair between Seneca and a member of the Imperial family: no less than Agrippina, the allegedly devoted wife of Germanicus.
And it gets worse: Dando-Collins not only throws Seneca and Agrippina into the same bed, he throws them into the same murder plot. Impossibly, beyond anything even Suetonius dared to suggest, our author accuses Agrippina of being guilty, in fact, of exactly the dynastic ambitions Tiberius would later accuse her of having. Germanicus, it appears, was just too lackadaisical about the succession, unwilling to fight for their children if Tiberius should settle the line on his own son, or his son's son. The fateful interview reads like a scene rightfully cut from I, Claudius:
And as Agrippina poured out her heart to Seneca about how Germanicus was denying her the future she felt she and her children deserved, the young man had an idea …
There's not a speck of evidence, of course, but that would only matter if Dando-Collins were interested in evidence, and in his rogue state during the course of this book, he clearly isn't. This applies even more so to his second thesis, that the death of Germanicus brought about the eventual downfall of the Roman Empire. It's tempting to simply dismiss this part of his book as a cheap ploy to snare readers, but its very outlandishness requires at least a gesture of response.
Dando-Collins predicates this weird claim pretty much exclusively on the high opinion historians who never met him had of Germanicus – and the assumption that blood will out. If Germanicus had lived in A.D. 19, this claim goes, he'd have succeeded Tiberius, thereby rendering it highly unlikely that people like Caligula, Claudius, or Nero would have been emperor. Instead, Germanicus' own son would have succeeded him, or his grandson, and if his sons had died, his brother would have succeeded him, or his brother's sons. In any case, blessed, enlightened stability, with an empire extending from Ireland to China, all on the shoulders of one really great guy:
…If we are to accept the glowing character references given to Germanicus Caesar by Tacitus and the other Roman writers who unanimously sang Germanicus's praises, then Germanicus would have made an incomparable emperor. His reign would have been an exciting, optimistic time unlike that the Roman people knew before him or after him.
Again, there's no possible way to know, but human nature being what it is, we may be inclined to doubt the truth of it even in the hypothetical. After all, Caligula showed every sign of being as popular and noble as his father, until a bad fever broke his sanity. And Nero's first five years were praised in antiquity for their wisdom and activity, by no less a figure than the emperor Trajan, who was himself one of the most powerful and enlightened rulers ancient Rome ever had, without a drop of Germanicus' blood in his Spanish veins. And Germanicus himself was as Claudian as Caligula or Nero or Claudius, every bit as prone to megalomania upon acquisition of ultimate power as they were.
No, that part's just a ploy to get attention, and the specter of a Seneca/Agrippina conspiracy is if anything worse.
Tacitus should sue.
Ascanio Tedeschi is a graduate student in the classics, born and raised in Rome. This is his first publication in English.
2 Comments »
I just finished reading "Blood of the Caesars", and came away with many of the thoughts that Mr. Tedeschi so eloquently presents in his essay. I am not a Roman scholar, but after reading "I Claudius" some 15 years ago I became very interested to know what the "true" story of the period was. I devoured Tacitus and Suetonius, and have read a variety of recent authors, including Michael Grant (several books), Anthony Barrett ("Caligula" and "Agrippina"), Barbara Levick ("Claudius"), Richard Holland ("Nero" – this book also offered some novel views on the characters which I found not always compatible with my earlier reading), and others. As I read "Blood of the Caesars", I felt that it was history with a bit of drama added, and when I reached the concluding chapters, I felt that Mr. Dando-Collins was making wild accusations; both about the identity of Germanicus' murderers and the cause of the fall of Rome. I thought the book's thesis would have made an interesting annectode in the "What If?" series by Robert Cowley, in which "eminent historians imagine what might have been" (quote from the front cover of one of the books).
I'm working on a historical novel centering on the death of Germanicus. It's speculative fiction, like Graves. But also like Graves, I want it to be as plausible as possible.
I thought I was working on some pretty outlandish theories…a la Graves' involvement of Caligula…but I gotta tip my hat to Dando-Collins.
I will say that I found his book entertaining and useful (as a novelist, not a historian) and it does dramatize the story nicely. It's a thrilling read. I only hope my own book will be as much fun.
But my book is admitted fiction. The idea that (spoiler alert) Agrippina would murder her own husband based on this absurd plan of Seneca's buggers the imagination.
She's a 32 year old woman who has born nine children and followed her husband through campaign after campaign. Everywhere she goes, she's covered in glory along with her husband and children.
If she's as ambitious as Dando-Collins (and, you know, Tiberius) make her out to be, her ambitions are best served by the ongoing health and success of her husband. Even if she's unaccountably bored of being married to the second most powerful (and single most popular) man in the Roman Empire, she has ample motive to wait out the reign of Tiberius with her husband waiting in the wings.
There's no indication that Germanicus would have refused to be emperor. What he refused to do was start a civil war and overthrow the duly elected emperor, which not only would have been treasonous, but also would have destabilized the freshly stabilized Rhine, since the troops for this adventure would likely have to come from there. No way Germanicus would subject the northern provinces to that kind of security risk. Not after Teutoburg.
Germanicus had no reason to have any sort of beef with Tiberius. And Tiberius seemed to be grooming him well enough to take over the empire. Putting him in charge of the Eastern Provinces all but made him Lieutenant Emperor. Why wouldn't Germanicus follow the same path with Tiberius that Tiberius had with Augustus? Be the older man's strong right arm? Rise to power in the natural course of time?
Had Germanicus succeeded Tiberius, there would be nothing to fear from Drusus or Gemellus. Germanicus could name his own heir at that time and that heir would be Nero. What was the Senate going to do? Demand that Germanicus name Gemellus as his heir? A boy younger than Caligula?
And Tiberius hated Agrippina. There's no reason to believe her star would rise without her husband there.
And why would Tiberius name Nero to be his successor on the death of Germanicus? Nero would have been 15 years old. Being emperor wasn't like being a Pharaoh. It wasn't something a child could do. Tiberius would have made Drusus his heir. Not only was it politically correct, it was practically necessary.
Of course Drusus said he didn't want to be emperor. So did Germanicus. Because no one says they want to be emperor. And no one says they want to be emperor especially while the current emperor is still alive. Tiberius even refused before the Senate begged him to accept. Pro forma, of course, but that's the point: no one ever says "make me emperor." Voicing the ambition to be emperor was grounds for arrest, as the unlucky Nero discovered.
But with Germanicus dead, of course Drusus would step up. His father would demand it even if he didn't want it. And he was already working diligently in government, negotiating peace on the Rhine and in Pannonia and working with his father in the Senate.
So, sorry, there is simply no way…it's simply insane…to suggest that Agrippina would kill her husband who happens to be heir to the throne in the hopes that the emperor, who hates her, will adopt her children, who are not of age.
It's also ridiculous to believe that Agrippina would believe that the people would blame Tiberius for the death of Germanicus and rise up to overthrow him and that after that bloody mess the Senate would appoint her son to replace him.
Even if either of those things were remotely possible, it's insane to suggest that Agrippina would bet her life on it. And trust Seneca, a 22 year old kid who she barely knew.
No, the most likely candidate is Sejanus. Tiberius and Livia would not risk poisoning Germanicus. If they wanted him dead, they would have let him stay in Germany and they would have worked up a way to have him betrayed like Varus (though probably not with such heavy losses.) A death on the battlefield in a dangerous war zone would arouse less suspicion. But ultimately, Germanicus wasn't a problem for Tiberius and Livia. They just didn't like him or his wife, but you don't murder everyone you don't like.
Most likely it was Sejanus. He's the only one who truly needed Germanicus out of the way. Drusus lacked the ambition and had plenty of power of his own anyway. And his place was secured.
One element from Dando-Collins I do buy: belladonna was used precisely so people would know he was poisoned. It's likely that Sejanus sussed out that Piso would make a great scapegoat and had Germanicus poisoned by one of his inside guys in the military. Clearly, Sejanus had enough influence to mount a conspiracy in the guard and the legions, so it's not impossible that he'd have one of his guys slip Germanicus the poison during drills or on a march.
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[…] his previous book, Blood of the Caesars, with mounting incredulity and rage. At one point in his scathing attack, Tedeschi makes some passing comment to the effect that Dando-Collins had previously written fairly […]
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DETROIT (WWJ) – It's time to break out your "suit and tie," because Justin Timberlake and Jay-Z are coming to Ford Field.
With more than 23 Grammy Awards, 67 million albums sold and two Emmys combined, music icons Jay-Z and Justin Timberlake are bringing their "Legends of the Summer" tour to Detroit on August 6.
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Hayden Reader of the Week: Ariana Ward
July 19, 2013
Ariana Ward, 6, was chosen as Hayden Public Library's Reader of the Week. Ariana's parents are Kellie and Kona Ward. She was born in Steamboat and has lived in Hayden her entire life. Ariana has a brother, Will, 5, and a sister, Hadassah, 3. She enjoys playing and hanging out with her friends McKenna and Madison. She regularly attends many of the library programs for kids.
The family has four pets: dog Hitchie, 8, cat Chloe, and two parakeets, Peppy and Lana.
Ariana is not sure what she wants to be when she grows up, but she is thinking about maybe becoming a violinist or an astronaut like her great uncle. In her free time, Ariana enjoys playing Barbies, Leapster, watching TV and playing with her Caroline doll. Her favorite colors are pink and purple. Her favorite movie is "Jake and the Neverland Pirates," and her favorite book is "Tinkerbell: A Fairy Tale" by Apple Jordan. She is going into second grade, and her favorite subject is science. Ariana said she also likes to play soccer. This summer, her family went to New Mexico, and she enjoyed going to White Sands, visiting a Space Museum, the Billy the Kid Museum and the Smokey Bear Museum.
When asked if she had any thoughts about reading, she replied, "It takes practice." When her mom told her she was named the Reader of the Week, she said she was excited.
The library holds the Reader of the Week contest each summer, and the winner is interviewed for the Steamboat Today; wins a T-shirt, a water bottle and a book; and chooses the food for the weekly Bingo and Cooking program.
— Ana Lash, Hayden Public Library