The Roman Architect Vitruvius was famed for asserting in his book De architectura that a building should exhibit the three qualities of firmitas, utilitas, venustas – that is, it must be solid, useful, beautiful.

I have heard others translate it as firmness, economy, and delight.

Regardless a building should be strong, and should be able to convince us that is so. For my own part, what I have found objectionable about so much Postmodern Architecture is that it is ugly.

Two examples of late Roman architecture of the western Empire.

Santa Sabina, Rome: http://static.panoramio.com/photos/large/7055751.jpg

Basilica of Constantine, Trier: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-q9z0suLgrh4/UUjH8Y2F_5I/AAAAAAAAG1Y/eP4yjkz4AnE/s1600/20130316-IMGP1962.jpg

If the buildings of this century look as good in 1500 years, we will have done well.

Edited 9/12/2017 03:59:46

Guys, Barbuda basically doesn't exist anymore. Its that bad.

Some video of south Florida & the storm. One minute twenty eight seconds. From the New York Times.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1Kz-WnKzkI

Video of Sint Maarten. one minute forty six seconds. From Global News.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vhb2AsYJG3s

More time and care should be spent designing buildings. Beauty and sturdiness go hand-in-hand - buildings build with quality over quantity in mind, with love and culture, will be perfected in every aspect. Aesthetically and structurally.

Edited 9/11/2017 04:39:08

To avoid catastrophies like these you have to work in three different fronts at the same time:

- Create building regulations that are sufficient to avoid homes and central service buildings (hospitals, schools, ...) from crumbling.

- Enforce current, and new, regulations so that we are sure to reduce as much as possible the risk created by hurricanes.

- Work on the big climate change picture, to limit the T° increase that is responsible for the violence of Irma and Harvey.

Regulations don't work. Better let the free market take care of it. Less regulations = more money for people to invest in sturdier houses, maybe build their own.

Show data of increase in storm size and quantity to support last claim.

What a bunch of little pooftas , scared of rain.

I study economy, and in my opinion regulations are needed not because of the free market, but because people are dumb. Given the option between an uninsured and non anti-hurricane home for 200.000$ or an insured, anti-hurricane house for 400.000$, most people will always choose the second option.

Also, prices for house protection and insurance go down if a lot of people take these options vs when little ammount of people take them, as you can save costs by mass-production.

But I don't think there's another solution available. At the end of the day, it's unfortunate, but the gvt has to step in or I'm afraid that every couple years a hurricane will come and wreck the same southern states...

Okay so you want a nanny governmemt. It isn't their job to save people from obvious danger. Companies can use hurricane proof buildings as a selling point. Intelligent people can do their own research and find out what keeps them safe. Idiots will lose money and their lives, that's natural selection my friend.

^

True yea that's natural selection, one thing I think is btw the most awesome law of science that exists. But to me natural selection and letting people take care of themselves only, even for death cases, is a very animal instinct.

What differenciates us from mere animals subject to natural selection is the ability to work together to overcome great challenges, even when there is little personal gain to take from your action.

I'm totally ok with some nanny governing when it is proven that it's for the good of the many; when you put the interests of the minority over the majority, that's when government should stop.

What's a great challenge to you? I think the fall of Western Civilization is a great challenge.

I don't weigh the interest of human groups, Culture is my chief concern. Men are simply in the service of culture.

Edited 9/12/2017 00:07:09

I study economy, and in my opinion regulations are needed not because of the free market, but because people are dumb. Given the option between an uninsured and non anti-hurricane home for 200.000$ or an insured, anti-hurricane house for 400.000$, most people will always choose the second option.

So let them reap what they sow.

I would place the emphasis differently. Preventing harm to Western Civilization is a great challenge.

The modern term "culture" is based on a term used by the Ancient Roman orator Cicero in his Tusculanae Disputationes, where he wrote of a cultivation of the soul or "cultura animi," using an agricultural metaphor for the development of a philosophical soul, understood teleologically as the highest possible ideal for human development.

Philosopher Edward S. Casey (1986) describes: "The very word culture meant 'place tilled' in Middle English ... To be cultural, to have a culture, is to inhabit a place sufficiently intensive to cultivate it—to be responsible for it, to respond to it, to attend to it caringly."

Culture as E.B. Tylor would have it, is "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society."

Culture has this dual aspect. It is at the same time a cultivation of both the community and the self. The very roots of the word point towards the fact that we are, in a real way, the children of Rome.

Culture and Civilization are antithetical. Civilization is a bastardization of culture. "Culture" here means group; i.e. the Western group, all its components.

Culture and Civilization are antithetical. Civilization is a bastardization of culture.

You're looking here towards your friend Spengler?

I am using the word civilization in a less technical manner.

hey padraig u wanna see my



b e e p i s

No thank you, Wulfhere.

However, I wouldn't mind a t-shirt like this:

http://cdn4.designbyhumans.com/product_images/p/133088.b9.008d9S7YyNAAA-640x640-b-p.jpg

im about to make hurricane irma look like a f53cking joke