Ramanisblog

Tag: Roman Empire

  • Travel The Roman Empire, Real Time

    Who would resist reading History if it is taught this way?

    History, the Novel way
    History made interesting

    In a clever bit of technological legerdemain, Stanford University has combined historical research, mapping, and Web technology to bring ancient Roman Empire travel to the Internet. A cross-disciplinary team has created and launched ORBIS: The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World. With it, a user can determine how long it will take to travel from any point in the Roman Empire to any other, as well as calculate the cost of transporting goods and people.

    This heretofore unnatural union of geographers, technologists, and historians of the ancient world is becoming more and more common under the descriptor of “digital humanities.” ORBIS looks to be one of the most effective examples of its promise.

    Built by historian and classicist Walter Scheidel and Stanford Libraries’ digital humanities specialistElijah Meeks, with the assistance of geographer and Web developer Karl Grossner and GIS analyst Noemi Alvarez, the interactive online atlas is based on a host of data. This includes historical tide information and weather; size, grade, and surface of roads; main cities and ports; land, sea, and river routes; vehicle speed (including ships, ox carts, horse, and walking); and the cost of transport.

    The time period the system centers on is about 200 CE, when Roman power was at its highest and the empire’s extent was greatest. The atlas is built from 751 sites, most of which are cities and towns, and covers about four million square miles. Two hundred sixty-eight of the sites are ports. The road network mapped on ORBIS includes 52,587 miles of road, including desert tracks and 17,567 miles of rivers and canals.

    According to Meeks, the project started when Scheidel happened to see a dynamic distance cartogram of the London tube system. Dynamic distance cartograms distort the layout of their data based on your selection. If you choose one stop, it will show you a map of how close in time expenditure the other stops are, based on information like train connections.

    “In building a geographic transportation model of the Roman Empire, you can’t just download an API for distance,” Meeks told Ars. So once the proposal was approved, the principals had to figure out how to collect that data. For land travel, they were able to use itineraria, Roman accounts of time spent traveling various routes. But for sea voyages, similar information did not really exist. It was in creating a model for the missing information that ORBIS’s builders found themselves in the role of pioneers.

    They had to write a model for ancient sea travel based on scientific data regarding wind, currents, and weather. Meeks did so using Gephi, the agnostic network analysis and visualization tool. He subsequently imported it into PostGIS, a PostgreSQL open-source database.

    http://digg.com/newsbar/topnews/unreal_engine_4_will_bring_us_beautiful_games_faster_than_ever_ars_technica

  • Jesus Did not rise from the Dead,The Bible is not Eternal.

    One should  differentiate  Parables from Facts.

    True, there might have been  Jesus.(even the name  means ‘son of God, not Jesus’s original name).

    One has to understand the social and political conditions at the time of Jesus.

    People were revolting against Roman Empire and the society had become corrupt  and was oppressive.

    There was a crisis of values.

    Jesus was a social thinker .

    He was also a rebel against the Romans.

    He  preached human values.

    Constantine, to buttress his hold on the Empire, embraced Christianity , called for a meeting of  people to organize the information on Jesus( nearly three hundred years  after Jesus’s death),had an Anthology compiled and called it The Bible; laid down Rules for the election of Popes through a Conclave of Cardinals.

    He wanted to ensure his hold on the population.

    Hence he organized the Office of the Pope for he knew that people can be controlled under faith and made  the Papacy to do his bidding.

    However, The Bible, whatever be the intentions, is one of the greatest pieces on Ethics .

    It is not important who said, but what is said.

    To research into Christianity is welcome and at the same time it should be ensured that the moral values of The Bible(excepting Religious Conversion) are not demeaned.

    Please read my blogs filed under Christianity.

    Crossan says Jesus was an exploited “peasant with an attitude” who didn’t perform many miracles, physically rise from the dead or die as punishment for humanity’s sins.

    Jesus was extraordinary because of how he lived, not died, says Crossan, one of the world’s top scholars on the “historical Jesus,” a field in which academics use historical evidence to reconstruct Jesus in his first-century setting.

    “I cannot imagine a more miraculous life than nonviolent resistance to violence,” Crossan says. “I cannot imagine a bigger miracle than a man standing in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square.”

    …..Crossan believes the public should be exposed to even the most divisive debates that scholars have had about Jesus and the Bible. He co-founded the Jesus Seminar, a controversial group of scholars who hold public forums that cast doubt on the authenticity of many sayings and deeds attributed to Jesus.

    John Dominic Crossan

    …The 77-year-old Crossan has built on the seminar’s mission by writing a series of best-selling books on Jesus and the Apostle Paul. With his silver Prince Valiant haircut and his pronounced Irish accent, he’s also appeared on documentaries such as PBS’s “From Jesus to Christ: The First Christians” and A&E’s “Mysteries of the Bible.”

    …

    Crucifixion meant that imperial power had won,” Crossan says. “Resurrection meant that divine justice had won. God is on the side of the crucified one. Rome‘s’ values are a dead issue to me.”

    How about the stories of Jesus’ miracles, like raising the dead or stilling the storm?

    John Dominic Crossan wanted to be a missionary priest as an Irish schoolboy.

    Most were parables, too, Crossan says. But there were some exceptions.

    “I’m completely convinced that Jesus was a major healer,” he says. “I don’t think anybody would talk about Jesus if all he did was talk.”

    People like to talk about Scripture, but Christians should also know history to understand Jesus, Crossan says.

    In Jesus’ time, Rome was forcing many Jewish families into destitution, with high taxes and land seizures. Some Jews advocated violent rebellion, but others opted for non-violent resistance.

    Jesus called for nonviolent resistance to Rome and just distribution of land and food. He was crucified because he threatened Roman stability — not as a sacrifice to God for humanity’s sins, Crossan says.

    If you believe in a God that uses violence to “save” humanity, you’ll start believing that violence is permissible in certain circumstances, such as suicide bombing or invading other countries to spread democracy, Crossan says.

    http://edition.cnn.com/2011/LIVING/02/27/Jesus.scholar/index.html