Movies: Although I haven't been to the theater lately, I have caught several newer movies on pay-per-view. I found "The Ninth Gate" definitely not worth the price of viewing. I couldn't tell if it was really a movie or a cigarette commercial since director Roman Polanski couldn't seem to think of anything for Johnny Depp to do with himself in scene after scene except light up a cigarette. If that's the best Polanski can manage these days, he'd better give it up. I also watched "Ride With The Devil", a Civil War piece about southerners who fought a guerilla war against federal troops in Missouri, eventually ending up as part of the Quantril raid on Lawrence, Kansas. This film was mildly interesting and well directed. Having lived in Kansas, I found it interesting to see a different viewpoint of the Lawrence raid. In past retellings, I have always heard of it recounted as a brutal, unprovoked massacre. In "Ride With the Devil", the raid was seemingly justified because federal troops and union sympathizers had used Lawrence as their base for several years. From there they launched attacks on southern sympathizers often, supposedly, without provocation.

While visiting my sister, we rented "I Dreamed of Africa" starring Kim Bassinger. When it was released at the theaters, I read several complaints by critics that it was sadly pushed aside by the action blockbuster "Gladiator". However, from my viewpoint, there was no comparison in quality at all. The characters in "I Dreamed of Africa" were poorly developed. The husband was unappealing and irresponsible. No reason was given for the son's perverse fascination with venomous snakes (that eventually killed him). There were no efforts to depict interesting native characters and Africa itself (at least that part of it) was shown as a severely overgrazed landscape of scrub punctuated by the occasional graphic image of a poacher-mutilated animal. I saw nothing in this film that made me wish to visit that part of Kenya at all which I am sure was not the intended reaction. It was definitely not in the same league with "Out of Africa" or even as moving as "To Walk With Lions" which only garnered a two star rating from critics.

On television, I watched a program hosted by Erich Von Daniken, author of "Chariot of the Gods". There was an interesting segment where he displayed two golden amulets dated to the first century BC that looked astonishingly like airplanes. An aerospace engineer reproduced the amulets in a size capable of carrying a small engine (radio-controlled) and they flew perfectly. However, Daniken carries his theories beyond extreme in some cases. He theorized at one point in the program that the depiction of Egyptian gods with animal heads was evidence of genetic engineering thousands of years ago. He insisted that further evidence includes hieroglyphs on the walls of the Seraphim (sp?) where the Apis bulls were entombed indicating that the bulls were ferocious and feared by the populace and speculated that their fear could have been founded on the fact that the bulls were a hybrid of animal and human. Such wild speculation only detracts from some of the reasonable points he makes about evidence of ancient extraterrestrial visits. In the sequel to the program focussing on mysteries of the Bible, he speculates that Jesus did not die at the crucifixion because it took only a few hours when it should have taken days. He claims that ancient documents were found in a monastery in Rennes, France that may have hinted at the deception. He says the priest who found the documents painted murals on the walls that showed Christ being taken to the tomb after the moon had risen. Von Daniken says no Jew would touch a dead body after the Passover had begun. Therefore Jesus must not have really been dead. I looked at the painting and don't see how he could determine if it was the sun or the moon. The Bible tells us that it became dark at his death even though it was midday. A sun in a darkened sky could resemble a moon in a painting so I don't know why he was trying to hang his hat on that. He postulates that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and that his mortal descendants live today. I'm afraid that is more than I can swallow at this point.

I did see a repeat of a program I had watched before called "Ancient Aliens". This program is much more scholarly and includes the reference to documented accounts of Alexander The Great's troops seeing "metal shields" in the sky. They reported seeing these objects twice seven years apart. The second sighting is documented by both Alexander's troops and citizens of Tyre who were being attacked by Alexander. Multiple accounts report "metal shields" in the sky that emitted a beam of light at the city walls which caused them to crumble, allowing Alexander to enter the city. I would like to read these accounts myself as the topic of extraterrestrial visitation has always intrigued me.

I saw another program about the use of poppie derivatives by Alexander to keep his men from feeling exhausted on his long marches and to relieve the pain of the wounded. The program also mentioned that Roman gladiators used medicines from poppies to give them a feeling of invincibility and dull the pain of a mortal blow. The more I study about Roman culture the more the Romans seem to resemble our own society.

While working on my Caesar project this week I stumbled across a very interesting page which included the beginning of a Masters thesis on the women who influenced Cicero, Caesar, and Vergil by Leila Celestia Walker: http://www.scaevola.com/leilawalker.htm Frustratingly, the person who put up the web page only began digitizing the first couple of chapters. I was anxious to read this work because there is so little written about Roman women because of their "insignificance" in the overall scheme of Roman society. A friend at work said I might be able to locate it through the library loan program. I think it's definitely worth a try anyway.

Readings:

I listened to an audio abridgement of Diana Gabaldon's "Outlander". Of course I am a big fan of time travel stories so I found her tale of an English woman transported back to medieval Scotland both fascinating and rich with detail and characterization. Passionate sequences reminded me of a classic "bodice ripper", but she handled action and pacing more like an adventure novel. I was afraid she had committed an error in continuity when the as-yet unmarried evil ancestor of the heroine's modern husband was reported killed in a cattle stampede engineered by Claire to distract the British guards so she could rescue her medieval husband from prison. In a subsequent scene she is distractedly fingering her modern wedding ring. At that point I thought to myself "If the ancestor of her husband was killed before he married, that ring wouldn't be there!" But, several paragraphs later she ponders this issue herself and concludes the report of the ancestor's death must have been in error. Gabaldon had not committed an error after all. I will definitely purchase more of her work in the future.

I also listened to Ernle Bradford's biography of "Hannibal". This intelligent, wily Carthaginian is truly one of the greatest commanders of the ancient world. The most talented of Hamilcar Barca's "lion's brood", Hannibal truly practiced military command as an art. Although the Romans frequently portrayed Hannibal as brutal, frightening naughty children with the phrase "Hannibal au portis - Hannibal is at the gates", Hannibal maintained much more control over his troops, which reportedly included wild and undisciplined Gauls and Celts, than the Roman commanders. When Hannibal seized Tarentum with the help of resident sympathizers, he instructed the townsfolk who supported him to mark their doors, reminiscent of the Jews' lambs' blood episode in Egypt. When his troops finally stormed the city, Hannibal's local supporters were carefully spared as he had promised. Years later, however, when the city was recaptured by the Romans, again with aid from resident supporters, the Roman legions, so renowned for their discipline, slew citizens indiscriminately.

I also found Hannibal's Roman opponent, Scipio, quite admirable. I found it also interesting that like Julius Caesar, Scipio, despite his glorious victories and the mounds of treasure he brought to Rome, was envied by jealous, less talented aristocrats including the Cato of his day, Cato the Elder. Cato and his political supporters were suspicious of Scipio's interest in Greek art, literature, and philosophy. Cato eventually accused Scipio of mishandling funds. This so outraged Scipio he left Rome and never returned.

Technology: I am presently experiencing my first encounter with Microsoft's active streaming technology. Although Real Networks and Quicktime offer alternative streaming A/V solutions, we really didn't have an option for this new project as we are preparing to stream a series of radio interviews of our research faculty (http://interact.uoregon.edu/coeonline.html) and the streaming source is the radio station. The radio station is using a free service provided by Stream Audio (http://www.streamaudio.com ), a company that uses the Microsoft technology. The service provider not only encodes the broadcast stream but includes javascript and Flash 4 components (for Windows viewers) in the presentation. Although the resulting application includes an automatic detection for Flash 4 and redirection to a still image if Flash 4 is not present, some security-conscious people may have disabled javascript in their browser so, from an audience preparation perspective, this adds a certain degree of complexity. I also learned that Media Player does not install its plugin automatically into America Online browsers either so I have had to add a link to the AOL plugin with special instructions for AOL users to my broadcast preparation instructions (http://interact.uoregon.edu/broadcastprep.html).

We have had the most difficulty getting the program to play properly on MacIntosh machines since the software requires a certain OS version and performs best in Internet Explorer 5 due to changes to the Mac's Open Transport programming in later versions.

When you are attempting to deliver a program to the general public, you must consider these aspects since you have no control over the level of technology or computer literacy of the recipients. However, the benefits of this mode of content delivery is substantial. Normally, the range of Portland AM860 (http://www.radiofreeoregon.com ) is about a 75 mile radius of the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area. By streaming the content through the internet, we can extend our community outreach efforts to a global audience. Stream Audio also revised their encoder to add the capability to create archive files of the interviews and they have offered to provide streaming services of these archive files to us at no charge. These collaborative agreements help us as a publicly funded institution leverage our limited technology services budget.