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An invitation from the mayor of Rome: Come see Ancient Rome in 3D

As you read this, I am standing beneath a marble statue of Julius Caesar, participating in an event that means a lot to me: the launch of the Ancient Rome 3D layer in Google Earth. Thanks to Google and the Rome Reborn Project, everyone in the world, from Rome itself to Calcutta, can now travel through time and discover Ancient Rome as it was 1,688 years ago when it was ruled by Emperor Constantine.The project includes more than 6,700 buildings of Ancient Rome rebuilt in 3D ? a true record. This accomplishment demonstrates how technology can be helpful in promoting culture and disseminating knowledge. Ancient Rome 3D is a great opportunity to rediscover the importance of Ancient Roman culture, which is at the base of the Italian, European and, more generally, Western identities. The archaeological heritage and the artistic monuments of the Roman Empire have found their way to many continents, but it is in the capital city (known in Roman times as Caput Mundi, which is Latin for "Capital of the World") that we can still find most of it. For example, architectural masterpieces like the Colosseum (considered one of the seven wonders of the world) have managed to withstand the tests of time ? resisting sacks, invasions and world wars over the centuries and proving, with the immortality of their stones, the grandness of one of the most majestic empires that has ever existed.What fascinates me most about this project is the accuracy of the details of the three-dimensional models. It's such a great experience to be able to admire the monuments, streets and buildings of Ancient Rome with a virtual camera that lets you go inside and see all the architectural details. From the Colosseum to the Ludus Magnus, from the Forum Caesar to the Arch of Septimius Severus, from the Rostra to the Basilica Julia, you can get up close to them all. The idea that virtual technologies now let people experience the city that I guide as it appeared in 320 A.D. fills me with pride ? a pride that I inherited from Rome's glorious past.(To find out more about the new layer, visit http://earth.google.com/rome/, watch the video tour below, or check out the Google Lat Long Blog.)Update @ 12:10 PM: Rome wasn't built in a day! The Ancient Rome 3D layer will be available soon. We're sorry for the delay, and we'll post here when it's live.Update @ 6:50 PM: The layer is now live in Google Earth, in the Gallery folder of the Layers panel. When you zoom in on Rome, you will see yellow Ancient Rome 3D icons. To load the terrain and buildings, click on any icon and then click the links at the bottom of the bubble.Posted by Gianni Alemanno, Mayor of Rome

Gallery: Bond-Villain Lairs Revealed

: Photo: Richard Bryant/Arcaid/CorbisAs essential as the curvaceous leading ladies and not-so-subtle sexual innuendo, every James Bond villain has an impressive lair. Some are exotic, others chic. All are impressive locations for unsavory types to plot and scheme. With the release of Quantum of Solace on Friday, we take a look behind the scenes at the most recent Bond-villain hideouts when they're not housing the criminally insane. Let us know what your favorite Bond lair is in the comments. Left: A View to a Kill In Roger Moore?s last turn as Bond, Christopher Walken gives an inspired performance as villain Max Zorin. Bond initially discovers Zorin is cheating at the races by installing steroid-delivering microchips in his horses, but the plot soon turns more sinister. Zorin plans to corner the microchip market by destroying Silicon Valley via subterranean explosives. Zorin plots and schemes from his underground lair, which in real life (at least the façade shown in the movie) is the Renault building in Swindon, England. Built in 1982 as world headquarters for Renault cars, the structure is a futuristic metal and glass contraption that resembles dozens of bright yellow cranes holding the walls aloft. However, in 2001, Renault moved its headquarters elsewhere and, in 2004, a consortium of Chinese businesses bought it for an import-export center ? or perhaps for their own nefarious plans ?. : Photo: Tom ThistlethwaiteTimothy Dalton steps into Bond?s shoes and finds himself in peril thanks to the dubious KGB general, Georgi Koskov. It turns out amoral arms dealer Brad Whitaker, while also dabbling in blood diamonds and opium, is pulling all the strings in a plan to (what else?) get rich quick. Bond tracks Whitaker to his palatial estate, where he is engaged in reenacting the Battle of Gettysburg with tiny lead figurines. Whitaker meets his end under a marble bust of the Duke of Wellington liberated from its base by a well-placed 007 explosive. In this case the truth isn't far from fiction. Whitaker's stronghold is actually the Forbes Museum in Tangier, Morocco. Built on the grounds of the Palais Mendoub by American billionaire Malcolm Forbes (yes, of the magazine), the museum housed the fruits of Forbes' favorite hobby: collecting miniature lead military figurines ? 115,000 of them, to be exact. After Forbes passed away, his kids sold the museum to the government of Morocco and it's still open daily for visitors. : Photo: Victor EscalonaTimothy Dalton?s exit from the Bond series begins with him losing his license to kill after ?going rogue? Palin-style and seeking revenge on Franz Sanchez, a drug baron from the fictitious ?Republic of Isthmus? who has killed Bond?s newlywed friends. Trying to get closer to the enemy, Bond poses as an out-of-work assassin looking for a new assignment. Bond frames another bad guy for disloyalty to the boss, thereby winning Sanchez?s trust and being whisked away to his top-secret compound -- a hideout disguised as the Olympiatec Meditation Center. That compound is actually the Centro Ceremonial Otomi in central Mexico. The center was built by the Mexican government in the 1970s in an attempt to commemorate and preserve the indigenous Otomi culture. Today the site serves as a meeting place for Otomi tribe members, and hosts tourists from around the world. : Photo: Tomas van Houtryve/APPierce Brosnan brings more critical acclaim (and a consistent British accent) to the role of Bond in GoldenEye. The title refers to a pair of satellites that can be used as weapons by shooting electromagnetic pulses at Earth-bound targets. Villain Alec Trevelyan commandeers giant antennas to control the satellites. But his diabolical plan is foiled when Bond sabotages the giant antenna before Trevelyan can send coordinates to the GoldenEyes. The filming location is the famous Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico (also featured extensively in the movie Contact). The dish of the giant radio telescope is 1,000 feet in diameter and operated by Cornell University as part of the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center. Since 1963 it has helped astronomers and climatologists discover planets outside of our own solar system, describe the chemistry of Earth's outer atmosphere, and search for extraterrestrial life. : Photo: U.S. NavyIn Brosnan's second Bond movie, media baron Eliot Carver is trying to gain a monopoly on the Chinese market, but the government keeps blocking his progress. Instead of hostile takeovers of the competition, Carver decides to use a GPS encoder stolen from the U.S. military to send bogus commands to the British and Chinese militaries. All this in hopes of starting a war so the Brits will take out the uncooperative Chinese government. Unlike most Bond villains, Carver plots and plans from a mobile lair in the form of a tricked-out stealth boat. The boat was filmed in the waters around Thailand and modeled off two prototypes being built for the U.S. Navy. One was Northrop Grumman?s DDG 1000; the other (more poetically named) Sea Shadow (left) was a Lockheed Martin prototype that was actually used and tested quite thoroughly by the Navy, but never officially commissioned. : Photo: Tolga "Musato"/FlickrMadman and anarchist Renard imperils Istanbul and a Russian oil pipeline in The World is Not Enough. Victim of a previous assassination attempt from a Bond co-worker, Renard has a bullet lodged in his brain that is slowly killing him. Unfortunately for Bond, the injury is also dulling his senses of pain and fear, making him a tough guy to bargain with. Renard plots to melt down a nuclear submarine reactor in the Caspian Sea and, on the way to save the day, Bond gets tied up in Renard?s lair, located in Kiz Kulesi. The hideout is actually the Maiden?s Tower that rises from the waters near Istanbul. The tower dates back to 408 BC, but was relocated to its current site in 1100 AD by a Byzantine emperor who used it as a fortress. The Ottoman Turks refurbished and restored it over the years, and it served as a lighthouse for centuries. Today it serves food and drink to tourists who come to its café. : Photo: Jose GonzalezBritish billionaire Gustav Graves appears to just be in it for the money in Die Another Day, Brosnon?s last role as Bond (and an end to the tongue-in-cheek sexcapades). But all is not as it seems. It turns out that Graves is actually Col. Tan-Sun Moon, a North Korean arms dealer Bond had supposedly thrown to his death. Moon survived and had his appearance altered by a Cuban gene-therapy clinic. His true aim is to use the Icarus satellite to blow up land mines in the DMZ, clearing the way for his North Korean compatriots to overrun South Korea. Bond tracks one of Moon?s henchmen to the gene clinic and stumbles onto Graves' true intentions (and identity). Although portrayed as a Cuban location, the scenes at the gene-therapy center are actually in Cadiz, Spain, at the Castillo de San Sebastian. Built in the early 1700s, the castle was initially only accessible at low-tide and used to protect Cadiz from seafaring attackers. : Photo: Como Property ManagementCasino Royale reinvents Bond with Daniel Craig as the steely eyed spy caught in a gritty thriller. The villains this time are more pedestrian ? essentially high-stakes investors who short sell companies then stage terrorist attacks to sink their stocks. After Bond foils one such scheme, Le Chiffre, who works for the nearly omnipresent Mr. White, stages a poker tournament in Montenegro to recoup his losses. Bond wins the tournament but is captured by Le Chiffre and is tortured. He is saved when the powerful Mr. White offs his own henchmen for their failure to perform. But not even Mr. White is safe from justice. At the end of the movie, Bond tracks White to his palatial villa on Lake Como in northern Italy's lake district. Bond lures White outside, shoots him in the leg and then arrests him. This time the movie jibes with reality ? White's villa is indeed an opulent spread on Lake Como. In fact, if you want to experience the life of a debonair villain, the villa rents out a four-bedroom apartment for the reasonable price of 1,000 euros a week. : Photo: European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern HemisphereNot a lot has been leaked about the latest installment of Bond. Word is, though, that an interrogation of Mr. White will lead Bond to a bad guy named Dominic Greene, whose off-the-grid South American hideout will be filmed in a building called the Residencia in Chile's Atacama Desert. The compound is a giant residence hall for astronomers working at Chile's Very Large Telescope at the Paranal Observatory. The digs are mostly underground, but a glass dome rests on top and lets in light for the swimming pool and tropical gardens. The Residencia has been compared to a Bond-villain lair before, a fact that was apparently not lost on the new production. Check out Wired.com's review of Quantum of Solace here.

Emperor's palace

Japan emperor's palace in Tokyo.

Film producer Daly dies aged 71

British film-maker John Daly, who produced 13 Oscar-winning movies including The Terminator and The Last Emperor, dies aged 71.

ROOM FOR RENT PACIFICA -- AWESOME OCEAN VIEW (pacifica) $675

I have a sunny bedroom for rent in Pacifica with an ocean view. $675 large bedroom Utilities & cable are included Includes kitchen privileges Hardwood floors AWESOME OCEAN VIEW Please no pets Call (650) 834-2853 (cell)or (650) 994-8056Touring motor gliders are seldom used in competition but they can be useful in training for cross-country flightsaccordingly the governance of his realm was undertaken by his tutor Count Gerard II of Vienne whose wife was a sister-in-law of Emperor Lothar I Gerard was a vigorous regent defending the kingdom from the Northmen who raided up the Rhone as far as Valence In 860 he ejected them from the Rhone deltateam who will operate the team under a new name in a new arena expected to be completed in time for the start of the 2009 season The team is currently in suspended operations while a new arena is built for them in downtown Toledo and was expected to return to ECHL during the 2009European Racquetball Championships 1981 2007 European Racquetball Championships Belgium France Germany Ireland Italy Netherlands 1999 European Racquetball Championships 1997 European Racquetball Championships /

Vacation home for rental in Hong Kong

KOWLOON HONG KONG OVERVIEW The word Kowloon comes from the Cantonese words "gau lung" meaning "nine dragons" which refers to the eight hills of Kowloon with the ninth being the Emperor. For the casual visitor keeping Hong Kong and Kowloon straight is sometimes confusing. Kowloon is the peninsula of mainland China that juts out into Victoria Harbour facing south towards Hong Kong Island. Most development, as would be expected, is focused around the harbour front and spreading north towards the New Territories and China. Address: 5-6 Far East Mansion, Middle Rd, Tsim Sha Tsui, KLN, HK Two bedrooms one bath, kitchen and computer room, 850 sq feet. Rates:1-6 day: $150 Per day 7-14 day: $142.5 Per day 30 day up: $120 Per day More informantion, Please call me at 415-793-1298 or email to me at griffho@lpirealtor.com

Boehlert: Drudge unplugged: How his campaign influence has collapsed

I'm not saying that given the choice I wouldn't pick a robust economy and a worry-free global outlook. But circumstances being what they are, I have to say that as the White House campaign hits its final stride under the ominous shadow of the Wall Street meltdown and the deep recession that's hurtling this way, perhaps the only silver lining -- the one unexpected pleasure -- has been watching the Drudge Report be completely neutered by current events. Matt Drudge is still doing his loyal best to boost the chances of the GOP down the homestretch in the form of a blizzard of anti-Obama and pro-McCain links on his site. (Last week, it was the half-baked McCain "comeback" that Drudge hyped relentlessly.) And there's no question that Drudge's Web traffic remains strong and continues to grow, thanks to a burgeoning international audience. But in terms of setting the ground rules -- in terms of setting the campaign agenda -- Drudge has been AWOL since mid-September when the credit crisis erupted. His current spectator status mirrors that of the low-flying right-wing bloggers. Just as the bloggers were hailed for their (pseudo) detective work in undermining CBS' Dan Rather in 2004, Drudge was credited for the way he used his widely read platform to push the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth story into the mainstream press, which helped derail John Kerry's campaign. Four years ago, Drudge and the right-wing bloggers were at the peak of their political power. Today, they're pretty much watching the election pass them by, reduced to the role of frustrated sideline hecklers. But that's sure not the narrative the press enjoys pushing about Drudge. In The Way to Win, the 2006 conventional wisdom-affirming book about campaigning, Mark Halperin and John Harris were wildly impressed by Drudge's acumen and his nearly limitless media power. The authors devoted an entire chapter to Drudge, toasting his "visionary" "insights" and anointing him "the Walter Cronkite of his era." "Matt Drudge rules our world," they wrote. "With the exception of the Associated Press, there is no outlet other than the Drudge Report whose dispatches instantly can command the attention and energies of the most established newspapers and television newscasts." And looking ahead to 2008, the duo warned, "No Democratic politician will survive in the 2008 presidential campaign without understanding the singular power of Drudge, and crafting a strategy to defend against this power." (That wasn't the only thing Halperin and Harris got wrong about 2008.*) That adoration has remained constant among mainstream journalists, who praise Drudge's godlike power and prestige, and then benefit from the high-traffic links he rewards them with. "What nobody who follows the daily cut and thrust of American politics questions is Drudge's continuing power to drive the stories and shape the narratives that define presidential politics," Politico announced this year. [Emphasis added.] Not to be out-Drudged, washingtonpost.com's Chris Cillizza recently labeled him the "single most influential source for how the presidential campaign is covered in the country." Well, I'm here to call bullshit. And no, this isn't just a wishful, I-don't-like-Drudge-so-I'm-going-to-claim-he's-irrelevant column. This is fact. Because it's obvious that since Wall Street's meltdown commenced five weeks ago, and since America's economic crisis became a tsunami of a news story that's not only dominated the media landscape, but also irrevocably altered the course of the campaign, the Drudge Report has become largely irrelevant in terms of the setting the news agenda for the White House run. That's because a story like the unfolding credit crisis -- sober and complicated -- knocks Drudge completely out of his element of frivolous, partisan gotcha links. Think about it. Since Monday, September 15, when word of emergency government intervention to save the economy began to spread, the presidential race, according to all the available data, has gone through a dramatic fourth-quarter shift, with Barack Obama opening up a comfortable lead. We haven't seen this kind of wholesale shift in voter sentiment this late in a White House campaign since 1980. The race is unrecognizable in terms of where the players are situated now and where they were five weeks ago. (Between September 15 and October 19, there was a 12-point swing in the Gallup daily tracking poll.) Now ask yourself: What role has the Drudge Report played in that burst of campaign movement? The answer, of course, is zero. Zilch. Nada. Nothing. His trademark flashing red lights have gone missing. The dynamics of the campaign have irrevocably changed, and the mighty Drudge Report, the news site Beltway journalists trip over themselves to genuflect in front of, has been a complete bystander in the closing weeks of the 2008 campaign. (Not that this is the first time Drudge has choked down the stretch of a nationwide election.) The reason is simple. Because of the unprecedented economic turmoil, we're now in serious times. (Fifty thousand home foreclosures this year, in the state of New Jersey alone, is serious business.) And the Drudge Report doesn't do serious. The American public's attention has shifted from the campaign to the economy, and that's why the Drudge Report remains largely irrelevant to that unfolding story. In fact, nearly two-thirds of Americans (63 percent) claimed economic conditions or the stock market drop were the news story they followed most closely during the second week in October, compared with just 24 percent who selected the campaign. Meanwhile, the credit crisis has unleashed waves of voter anxiety. As long as those patterns hold, Drudge finds himself in no-man's-land with no levers of power to pull. For instance, Drudge spent last week going all-in on the McCain "comeback" narrative. But rather than aping the line, most of the press corps demurred, simply because the nationwide polling data did not support the claim. In fact, as Howard Kurtz noted on washingtonpost.com on Monday, the press has pivoted in the opposite direction, with even conservative media commentators declaring the cause lost for John McCain. One of the few times Drudge has come up in the national conversation was when conservative commentator Pat Buchanan almost got laughed off the set of Hardball after citing Drudge's unscientific reader poll to suggest Sarah Palin had been the clear winner of the vice-presidential debate. (See Crooks and Liars for the clip.) And yes, it's true that post-Wall Street meltdown, Drudge did influence the campaign narrative when, on the eve of the vice-presidential debate, he trumpeted information about moderator Gwen Ifill's upcoming book. But that was ostensibly a get-the-media story; it didn't affect the Obama campaign or help to boost the Republican ticket. Most viewers still thought Palin lost the debate. Other than that, Drudge has mostly been shooting blanks and remains unrecognizable from the 2004 campaign, when his site was central in pushing President Bush's re-election. Why the misfires? As Halperin himself noted in 2006, "Matt Drudge is not doing stories on policy, on welfare, on healthcare. He's doing stories on the most salacious aspects of American politics. When that drives the dialogue, that's where the country heads, that's where our political coverage heads." Thanks to our current economic crisis, "the most salacious aspects of American politics," as Halperin put it, have taken a vacation during the closing weeks of this campaign. And the press can't even pretend that those "salacious aspects" are remotely newsworthy, which means the second part of Halperin's claim, about Drudge driving the dialogue, no longer applies. Halperin's writing partner John Harris admitted as much recently while addressing students at St. Lawrence University in upstate New York. In an article on Harris' speech, the local paper reported: "The Republican Party's 'Machiavellian' style of attack politics hasn't struck a chord in this election, Mr. Harris said, leaving John McCain to shift strategies nearly weekly." Note that that Machiavellian style of attack politics is pretty much code for the Drudge Report, which has been unplugged down the stretch. Not that Drudge hasn't tried to lay gotcha (Machiavellian) traps on behalf of Republicans: VIDEO: Liberal Outrage: A Pro-McCain March In Manhattan... CBS REPORTER SHOCK CLAIM: OBAMA AIRPLANE SMELLS BAD; CAMPAIGN TREATS PRESS POORLY... RAGE: Burning McCain campaign sign lands men in hot water... JESSE JACKSON PREDICTS CHANGE IN U.S. FOREIGN POLICY WITH OBAMA... Joe Biden looks... different... PAPER: Obama's NH event scraps National Anthem... MCCAIN: OBAMA POLICIES SOCIALIST PROBE: OBAMA SUPPORTER STOLE MENTALLY-CHALLENGED MAN'S VOTE? POWELL FOR OBAMA: IT'S NOT ABOUT RACE Not one of those Drudge headlines, all posted within the past week, led anywhere in terms of blossoming into larger, damaging stories for Democrats, let alone full-blown controversies. (The ACORN voter registration story, which Drudge has peddled incessantly, has also failed to take hold in the mainstream as a true campaign scandal.) Yet the sad truth is that in previous campaigns, all those items stood a very real chance of being embraced by the Beltway press and becoming big stories. As Glenn Greenwald wrote last year: The last two presidential elections were overwhelmed by the pettiest and most fictitious "controversies" (things like Al Gore's invention of the Internet and Love Story claims, John Kerry's windsurfing and war wounds, John Edwards' hair brushing and Howard Dean's scream), and our discussions of the most critical issues are continuously clouded by distortive sideshows concocted by this filth-peddling network. Their endless lynch mob crusades supplant rational and substantive political debates, and the most wild fictions are passively conveyed by a lazy and co-opted national media. Still, despite Drudge's power outage this year, you won't see Harris or Halperin or any of the other Beltway players who lust after his attention ever mention that the Drudge Report's cache has been dented. That kind of talk is not allowed. Only constant adoration will do. In fact, just this month, Halperin still counted Drudge among "the five most important people in American politics right now -- who aren't running for president." And while liveblogging the final presidential debate last week, Jonathan Martin at Politico, which is part of Drudge's permanent cheering section, claimed that Joe the Plumber had been inserted into the national debate about taxes because McCain picked up his story from the Drudge Report. " 'Joe the plumber' can thank "Matt theInternetist" for his instant fame," wrote Martin, who noted that "McCain first used this anecdote in his economic speech" on Monday. The problem with that gratuitous hat tip to Drudge was that the Drudge Report didn't highlight Joe the Plumber until Wednesday, two days after McCain started talking about him. So, no, the Everyman does not owe his instant fame to Drudge. But the Drudge fans at Politico ("he has an uncanny ability to drive the national conversation with what he chooses to highlight on his site") sure wanted to push that pleasing line. And today, either Beltway insiders can't see that the media landscape has changed dramatically in recent weeks, or they're too afraid to acknowledge that their online emperor is missing some clothes. *Footnote: I had to chuckle as I paged through The Way to Win for the first time since it was published in 2006. The book is about the blueprint for taking the White House and which politicians were positioning themselves for victory in 2008. I laughed because there was one name that did not appear anywhere in the book about the upcoming campaign, one name Halperin and Harris left out of the index: "Obama, Barack."

Rome reveals tombs of dark ages city

Other archaeological finds include site of emperor Caligula's murder, nobleman's tomb and baths used by rich and powerful