It looks like three buildings with a ship stuck on tip. From Wikipedia,

Marina Bay Sands is an integrated resort fronting Marina Bay in Singapore. Developed by Las Vegas Sands, it is billed as the world’s most expensive standalone casino property at S$8 billion (US$5.7 billion), including cost of the prime land.

The resort features a 2,560-room hotel, 120,000 sq-meter convention-exhibition center, The Shoppes mall, six restaurants, an Art & Science museum, two Sands Theatres, two floating pavilions, a casino with 500 tables and 1,600 slot machines. The complex is topped by a 340m-long SkyPark with a capacity of 3,900 people and a a 150m swimming pool, set on top of the world’s largest public cantilevered platform, which overhangs the north tower by 67m. The 51-acre resort was designed by Moshe Safdie.

The resort was officially opened with a 2-day celebration on 23 June 2010 at 3.18 pm, after a partial opening earlier in April. The museum, theatres and floating pavilions are still being built and are expected to be fully completed by December 2010.

photos via wikipedia and pixdaus

It is a commonly held myth that the ancient Romans had rooms called vomitoria for the purpose of, well vomiting. The myth holds that the Romans would have lavish banquets and the guests would indulge in excessive amounts of food and drink and once full they would slip away to the vomitorium to purge enabeling them to continue the eating binge.

Barbara Kay recently wrote a piece for Canada’s National Post, “Chewing: A brief history.” I have to take issue with Kay’s perpetuation of the vomitorium myth.  This causes one to doubt the historical veracity of the rest of the piece given this glaring error.

Rome was a custom-borrowing society, and elite Romans happily scooped up Greek food culture. But what we remember most about Rome, food-wise, is the period of its decadence, symbolized by disgustingly overwrought banquets and the vomitorium. We haven’t gone so far as to install vomitoria in the bathrooms of fast food restaurants (perhaps an idea whose time has come back?), but in many respects our society’s enslavement to the hyperpalatibility of junk food recalls the excesses of Rome in its self-destructive decline.

Rome’s decline was a bit more complicated than that.  Now, the Romans were not above purging after a meal. Romans were known for their orgies which were lavish feasts lasting hours and purging did happen to keep the party going, but they didn’t go away to special room.  They did it is style, right at the table. Describing such a feast, Seneca writes,

Cum ad cenandum discubuimus, alius sputa deterget, alius reliquias temulentorum subditus colligit.

When we recline at a banquet, one (slave) wipes up the spittle; another, situated beneath (the table), collects the leavings of the drunks.

Sounds pretty gross.  The mythological vomitorium sounds like a better idea, but why get up from the table if you have a slave to mop up the floor.

Now for the real vomitorium. The word does derive from vomitare, to vomit, but it was used in a different sense. In ancient Rome, the vomitorium was a passageway under the seats in an amphitheater that allowed spectators to access their seats.  The Romans called them vomitoria because the people were”spewed out” to their seats.  Our modern stadium ramps are architectural descendants of Roman vomitoria.

So there you go. The Romans did indeed purge and they had vomitoria but they didn’t do the former in the latter.

The Telegraph reports:

The archaeologists have unearthed reception rooms, colonnades, mosaic floors and traces of a hot bath complex at a site in mountainous countryside near the town of Rieti, north of Rome.

The villa is close to the ancient Roman village of Falacrinae, where Vespasian was born in AD 9.

Its discovery coincides with events in Rome and elsewhere in Italy marking the 2000th anniversary of his birth.

“We’ve found a monumental villa with elaborate floors made of marble brought from quarries in Greece and North Africa,” said Dr Helen Patterson, of the British School at Rome, the archaeological institute involved in the excavation.
“There’s also a very extensive bath complex which is just beginning to emerge. It’s the only large villa in the area, and the size and dating fits in perfectly with Vespasian.

“Until we find a stone or marble inscription saying ‘Vespasian lived here’, we can’t be 100 per cent certain, but it seems very likely. It’s in a perfect position, overlooking a river and the old Via Salaria trade route.”

The head of the team of 25 British and Italian archeologists, Professor Filippo Coarelli of the University of Perugia, said: “It’s a very important find. It’s a rich villa which is pretty much in the middle of nowhere.”

Before becoming emperor, Titus Flavius Vespasianus had a successful military career, commanding the second legion in the invasion of Britain in AD 43 and penetrating as far as Devon and Cornwall in an attempt to subdue the south-west.
He later became governor of the province of Africa and a trusted aide to the emperor Nero.

He is best known for ordering the construction of the Colosseum in Rome but is also remembered for his decision to tax the collection of urine, which was valued for its ammoniac properties. Even now, public urinals in Italy are known as “vespasiani”.

“The villa is in what would have been a very small, very remote village,” said Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, director of the British School at Rome.

“He was a local boy made good. He was the first of a series of emperors who did not come from Rome itself. Given where he was from, to have risen to the position of emperor was amazing.”

North Korea’s Ryungyong hotel is getting a face lift, or at least some makeup. The 105-story hotel was to be the pride of the totalitarian North Korean regieme. It’s construction was begun in 1987 under Kim Il-Sung but funding dried up and construction was halted in 1992 leaving a 1,083 foot concrete eysore that has dominated the Pyongyang skyline for 17 years topped off with a construction crane that has stood atop the edifice this whole time.

The pyrimidal concrete shell was wiped off official government maps and hardly being a symbol of pride, it had become an embarrasment to the state. When foregners asked locals about it, they would act like they didn’t know anythinng about it despite being the most dominant feature in the North Korean skyline.

It seems, however, that efforts are being made to complete the strucutre. There have been questions about the soundness of the concrete framework, having been exposed to the elements all these years. New photos have emerged showing reflective glass being placed over the face of the building. I wonder if this is just an attempt to improve the building’s appearance or to actually make the building functional.
“Pyongyang: Home to the Tallest Hotel in the World That Could, but Will Never Be“, ABC News. 23 October, 2006
“North Koreans revamp ‘world’s worst building’”, The Independent. 18 July, 2009

Last month it was that nifty Forbidden City virtual tour. Today we have Ancient Rome in Google Earth. This view is a snapshot of Rome in 320 C.E. This was produced by the Univeristy of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities and is based on their Rome Reborn model.