Went out and saw Guy Town last night at Cafe Mundi. The ladies did a bunch of cool country songs, including a translation of Nothing Compares 2 U by Prince.
Guy Town is named after Austin’s historic red light district, in case you didn’t know.
Somehow, the wooden stick I was using to keep my living room sliding glass door closed got deeply wedged down into the doorjam while I was away in London. So this morning I tore the stick apart with tools, splintering it completely and getting it out of the way, so I could go out onto the patio with my dog, Star, to drink coffee. (In Austin, it’s finally cool in the mornings.)
Later, I went out to buy a new tension rod for the sliding glass door. I wanted to get one that was identical to the Masterlock rod on the sliding glass door in my bedroom.
I searched three stores: Target, Home Depot and Lowe’s. None of them had it, but all of them recommended the other stores on the list. Halfway through this wild goosechase, I asked myself for the hundredth time why I once again forgot step one, Google.
Back home, a little web searching revealed that these tension rods are called Dual Function Door Security Bars. I ordered one through Amazon, without leaving my couch or dealing with any sassy store personnel, and it’ll get here on Tuesday. Amazing.
September 30, 2006
Pirates of the Mediterranean
By ROBERT HARRIS
IN the autumn of 68 B.C. the world’s only military superpower was dealt a profound psychological blow by a daring terrorist attack on its very heart. Rome’s port at Ostia was set on fire, the consular war fleet destroyed, and two prominent senators, together with their bodyguards and staff, kidnapped.
The incident, dramatic though it was, has not attracted much attention from modern historians. But history is mutable. An event that was merely a footnote five years ago has now, in our post-9/11 world, assumed a fresh and ominous significance. For in the panicky aftermath of the attack, the Roman people made decisions that set them on the path to the destruction of their Constitution, their democracy and their liberty. One cannot help wondering if history is repeating itself.
Consider the parallels. The perpetrators of this spectacular assault were not in the pay of any foreign power: no nation would have dared to attack Rome so provocatively. They were, rather, the disaffected of the earth: “The ruined men of all nations,” in the words of the great 19th-century German historian Theodor Mommsen, “a piratical state with a peculiar esprit de corps.”
Like Al Qaeda, these pirates were loosely organized, but able to spread a disproportionate amount of fear among citizens who had believed themselves immune from attack. To quote Mommsen again: “The Latin husbandman, the traveler on the Appian highway, the genteel bathing visitor at the terrestrial paradise of Baiae were no longer secure of their property or their life for a single moment.”
What was to be done? Over the preceding centuries, the Constitution of ancient Rome had developed an intricate series of checks and balances intended to prevent the concentration of power in the hands of a single individual. The consulship, elected annually, was jointly held by two men. Military commands were of limited duration and subject to regular renewal. Ordinary citizens were accustomed to a remarkable degree of liberty: the cry of “Civis Romanus sum” — “I am a Roman citizen” — was a guarantee of safety throughout the world.
But such was the panic that ensued after Ostia that the people were willing to compromise these rights. The greatest soldier in Rome, the 38-year-old Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (better known to posterity as Pompey the Great) arranged for a lieutenant of his, the tribune Aulus Gabinius, to rise in the Roman Forum and propose an astonishing new law.
“Pompey was to be given not only the supreme naval command but what amounted in fact to an absolute authority and uncontrolled power over everyone,” the Greek historian Plutarch wrote. “There were not many places in the Roman world that were not included within these limits.”
Pompey eventually received almost the entire contents of the Roman Treasury — 144 million sesterces — to pay for his “war on terror,” which included building a fleet of 500 ships and raising an army of 120,000 infantry and 5,000 cavalry. Such an accumulation of power was unprecedented, and there was literally a riot in the Senate when the bill was debated.
Nevertheless, at a tumultuous mass meeting in the center of Rome, Pompey’s opponents were cowed into submission, the Lex Gabinia passed (illegally), and he was given his power. In the end, once he put to sea, it took less than three months to sweep the pirates from the entire Mediterranean. Even allowing for Pompey’s genius as a military strategist, the suspicion arises that if the pirates could be defeated so swiftly, they could hardly have been such a grievous threat in the first place.
But it was too late to raise such questions. By the oldest trick in the political book — the whipping up of a panic, in which any dissenting voice could be dismissed as “soft” or even “traitorous” — powers had been ceded by the people that would never be returned. Pompey stayed in the Middle East for six years, establishing puppet regimes throughout the region, and turning himself into the richest man in the empire.
Those of us who are not Americans can only look on in wonder at the similar ease with which the ancient rights and liberties of the individual are being surrendered in the United States in the wake of 9/11. The vote by the Senate on Thursday to suspend the right of habeas corpus for terrorism detainees, denying them their right to challenge their detention in court; the careful wording about torture, which forbids only the inducement of “serious” physical and mental suffering to obtain information; the admissibility of evidence obtained in the United States without a search warrant; the licensing of the president to declare a legal resident of the United States an enemy combatant — all this represents an historic shift in the balance of power between the citizen and the executive.
An intelligent, skeptical American would no doubt scoff at the thought that what has happened since 9/11 could presage the destruction of a centuries-old constitution; but then, I suppose, an intelligent, skeptical Roman in 68 B.C. might well have done the same.
In truth, however, the Lex Gabinia was the beginning of the end of the Roman republic. It set a precedent. Less than a decade later, Julius Caesar — the only man, according to Plutarch, who spoke out in favor of Pompey’s special command during the Senate debate — was awarded similar, extended military sovereignty in Gaul. Previously, the state, through the Senate, largely had direction of its armed forces; now the armed forces began to assume direction of the state.
It also brought a flood of money into an electoral system that had been designed for a simpler, non-imperial era. Caesar, like Pompey, with all the resources of Gaul at his disposal, became immensely wealthy, and used his treasure to fund his own political faction. Henceforth, the result of elections was determined largely by which candidate had the most money to bribe the electorate. In 49 B.C., the system collapsed completely, Caesar crossed the Rubicon — and the rest, as they say, is ancient history.
It may be that the Roman republic was doomed in any case. But the disproportionate reaction to the raid on Ostia unquestionably hastened the process, weakening the restraints on military adventurism and corrupting the political process. It was to be more than 1,800 years before anything remotely comparable to Rome’s democracy — imperfect though it was — rose again.
The Lex Gabinia was a classic illustration of the law of unintended consequences: it fatally subverted the institution it was supposed to protect. Let us hope that vote in the United States Senate does not have the same result.
Robert Harris is the author, most recently, of “Imperium: A Novel of Ancient Rome.”
I get asked for career advice all the time. I sent this to a university teacher recently, but it applies broadly. This same message hasn’t really changed over the years.
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Decide what you want to do all day. Programming, 3d art, audio, map layout, etc. Pick one. Get even more specific: Programming AI, building multiplayer action game maps, etc. Become great at that thing…so that managers want you on their team.
The idea is to become trusted and autonomous; a fire-and-forget team member, where people say, “If we put him on it, he’ll make the right calls, autonomously, and it’ll get done, and it’ll be solid.”
Be as technical as possible. Even if you have a focus on story, human interface, mission planning, or music, make sure you’re as technical as possible; familiar with editing tools and software.
Be well-versed and well-rounded: Know not only your area (like software engineering), but be familiar with media theories, interface, psychology, sociology, various gaming platforms, social trends among gamers, general design, etc.
Look over the commonly recommended game design books: Rules of Play, Hamlet on the Holodeck, Understanding Comics, etc.
I love it when someone comes in, has passion for game design, is a great collaborator and communicator, can talk about Malcolm Gladwell or Scott McCloud, has read the Design of Every Day Things, has played a ton of games on many platforms, can program in C++ (or use Maya, 3D Max, UnrealEd, Source, et al), has written some fiction, can teach/lecture, has travelled, and is both strong-willed and willing to change her mind.
Go play this game. Play with all the tools at the bottom.