One long term project is finally nearing publication – my artificial society of Romans who pay respects one to another (the morning ‘salutatio’: the process of visibily re-affirming patronage links). In the model, a theory of civil violence in the Roman world is articulated, as an outcome of patronage or its failure (I use to have a ‘smite!’ button and could kill the digital Romans at will, but that was obviously unsatisfactory).
The model lives here. Below the model on that page are excerpts from the paper describing what the model does, and an ever so brief rationale for why it does these things – you’ll have to wait for the formal publication for why any of this matters!
It’s currently under review, so I made the model public in order for the reviewer to be able to delve into the code if he or she so desires. Simulations are arguments-in-code, as Ian Bogost tells us, so the rhetoric of my code needs to be evaluated as much as the rhetoric of my article.
Persepolis in Iran, roughly 500 to 300 BCE?
Surely it is Persepolis
The answer to ‘When on Google Earth #1′ was indeed Persepolis; however it is a quirk of the current theme that I am using, that the comments for a post are accessed by the post title – click through there and you’ll be able to find the trail to subsequent ‘When on Google Earth’s! – most recent lives here.