caesar novus

I'm warming up to the Japanese I-boat/sub commander story the most http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/77669087 . I think our view of the Pacific theater is weakened by less dialog with the enemy actors post war. That and a language problem leaves us with one dimensional view vs the Euro get togethers of US/Brit/German for post mortem analyses. This author has got a big ego and he's in the right places at the right times with the best equipment, but accomplishes almost nothing. Besides his direct accounts of key battles, and sharing what almost happened (how we unknowingly dodged bullets) he networked with other commanders and consulted postwar documentation (not translated yet?) to give his spin on the history. He has quite an anti-US and anti-prewar-FDR bias that is stimulating to unpack. Watch as he just misses opportunities to shell SFO and torpedo various carriers. . . My impressions of Russian waste of their own lives was based on anecdotes from early and late periods, such as Zhukov racing peers towards Berlin and spending double the lives if it saves him a day. If he was more careful of lives in the middle periods, that's fine. But if the attrition ratio is comparable to Hitler in retreat, that is no point in Zhukov's favor. Hitler had that crazy scheme of no-retreat fortresses, and liked to starve experienced units of supplies in favor of inexperienced ones to give the opportunity of Darwinian survival of the fittest (punish the experienced troops who may have wasted too much ammo). Also Goebbels arranged to have great numbers of retreating soldiers hung, EVEN when this demonstratedly included innocent and vital couriers. As for Bernanke, I rejoiced when he was appointed... even with no knowledge of what challenges he would face and with what policy bias he would apply. He not only studied the depression in depth (anyone can do that), but moved the state of understanding of it with rare insight. I don't rejoice for the elderly Berkeley professor-ess that will replace him with the same current policy - she seems stuck on that for the wrong reasons and may give us another repeat of the Carter admin inflation. I didn't mean Bernanke had anything to do with populism... he is mostly independant of that, but has to set policy on the basis of counteracting stupid populist elected gov't measures that have strangled growth in the name of employee entitlement or bank bashing etc. It's like being on a boat where the mob has a big rudder pointed in a self destructive direction. Bernanke has only a little steering oar to dip in and counteract it a bit. His policies may look backwards in the abstract, but in the context of what he is dealing with and his small leverage, his most every move has turned out amazing in hindsight.

I hope a distinction is made between price inflation and monetary inflation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_inflation . Monetary inflation is the devaluing of money, but is most definitely not the same as rising prices or wages. Price inflation is influenced by additional things like resource depletion that may be temporary or avoidable by switching to an alternative. The worst policies come from confusing these two... such as workers, pensioners, gov't payments factoring in "price" inflation rather than just "monetary" inflation. Same for the Romans; shed tears mainly for those who can't keep up with monetary inflation but not price. If the price of grapes doubles due to a bad harvest, switch to having servants pop plums in your mouth for heavens sake. Same thing in the modern case; some get undeserved price inflation payouts for items in inflation indices that they don't need, and it simply robs the folks who don't get the undeserved boost (monetary inflation payout boost OK). Edit: for instance, say copper mines are running low and it takes twice as much labor to extract the same amount of copper. This is price inflation, but not at all monetary inflation. No tears or pension boosts should be paid out to cover this increase in cost of living, or the system just goes berserk and consumes itself. Theoretically the whole working class could have to be devoted to supporting pensioners need just for copper (such as in San Francisco who enforces laws preventing substitution of plastic for copper pipes but doesn't enforce laws against copper theft).

Principles of War is downloadable on an army web page of Ft Leavenworth KS pamphlets from Combat Studies Institute. Seems to be a translation (by Joseph West) of a Japanese guidebook only slightly modified beyond ww2 to include one cold war issue. At first glance, looks pretty cool. Brief, eccentric, and to the point. I haven't read much because it is a type of pdf that my ink type kindle is sloooow to render. maybe here http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/cgsc/carl/download/csipubs/PrinciplesOfWar.pdf

(reply to above) "Herodotus"... All previous translations are claimed to be obsolete with the new release by Holland, according to http://www.spectator.co.uk/books/9097452/the-histories-by-herodotus-review/ "Zhukov"... The excessive attrition rate he inflicted on his own army mars his great record, and I hope he had some regrets about this even though virtually mandated by Stalin. "Bernake" [sic]... Bernanke was maybe the only real adult in the room among all leaders of this century so far, with economic lifesaving realism that benefited the globe. His detractors fail to recognize that more ideal reformist solutions were infeasible due to populist politics (Greek rather than Roman style democracy = two wolves and a lamb voting on what's for dinner). Loaded on my new kindle: Now that I no longer even try graphics-rich pdfs that freeze or crash the thing, I am progressing mainly on history titles from the 1930's and 40's, I loaded older books, but it can be so tedious to get past their typically lengthy preliminaries because my kindle is slow to turn pages. One is Mussolini's Rome which claims the present appearance of medieval and ancient Rome is more influenced by his regime than just a few new roads and facades. Also the first 1936 Fodor tourist guide of Europe (free amazon download) gives a prewar view of, say, charming Antwerp just before it was accidentally pulverized by the Luftwaffe. Italy is depicted as being sort of a exasperating banana republic. "Air to Ground Battle for Italy" promises to give a U.S strafing-eye-view of maybe too much collateral cost for the damage they actually did to Kesselring. "Hitler's Hangman" puts a different spin on "plucky Czechs kill a monster". The Czechs overwhelmingly did not want to risk retribution for this assassination, which was pushed by the Brits with suggestions of leaving them Nazi occupied post-war. I guess the respected author promises to show Heydrich was less an inherent monster and more a product of his environment, but we'll see. From the Pacific theatre I have a Japanese principles of war, and a "I-boat Captain" memoir. The latter shows how "peacenik" Yamamato pushed for Pearl Harbor attack against wide opposition, and how the attack almost fell apart due to many last minute challenges. Author is fairly unrepentant and puts various attacks in a defensive spin (what's that term for attacking to prevent their attack?). Well, I've got Roman empire for dummies and idiots... with the auto bookmarking I can sample then flit on elsewhere on a whim. Maybe I should increase the quality of reading by spending on some 99 cent titles that hold my interest longer. I was creeped out by an apple computer highlighting the music I last loaded on my Kindle from an independent Windows system. Who is monitoring this even with 3g off? Anyway, since Kindle doesn't shuffle I have to load music that stands up to heavy repeated playing of the first few titles.

Gentium stock rose over 12% just today. That about equals the entire last 12 months of London stock market return, which highly paid people try to beat by even just a bit. So again Italian knowhow turns pig guts and human urine into gold... I am reminded of the ancient Roman urine collectors (for laundry cleaning ammonia?) and animal guts diviners.

When I have been camping, there was not the slightest impulse to get up needlessly in wee hours... especially in the damp cold, the getting up is painful and not to be repeated. But even without lighting equipment, we would stay up well after sunset.

I had downloaded 2 free kindle books (find them on amazon) that touch on this. One, called something like Private lives of the Romans has chapters on the typical roman day, and on the hours scheme. Another's title starts out with Ancient Rome (IIRC). I'm starting to forget which said which, and you had to cross reference stuff in different chapters (with a hotlink that your kindle app or hardware can follow). Basically they suggested they ate the big meal of the day just before sunset, then immediately konked off to sleep. There weren't night events to speak of... you had to socialize during, not after the meal. But then you arose extremely early... breakfast could start at 4am, and by then lawyers and authors may have been working since 3. I'm sure there are a thousand counter examples, but this is what these hundred year old books said. They said most work and public events (we are talking mid/upper class) was finished before noon lunch and then there was an hour siesta after. Afternoon for baths, theater, exercise, socializing, then supper. I fail to see the need for them to rest again after getting up in the wee hours and looking forward to siesta. Some famous Roman author I read wrote to warn husbands from visiting slave quarters at night. He pointed out you would set an example for your wife to do the same during your frequent absences, with obvious consequences about not knowing the paternity of her future children among other things.

I'm listening to Paul Theroux's "Dark Star" travels thru Egypt, etc. His (always) negative impressions echoed my own experience long ago. A big bank had only nonworking ink pens set out, and a teller very sneakily stole my own. Cold blooded gratuitous cruelty to coptic or gypsy trash pickers. Jewish American tourists stopping over on the way to Israel treating the sites with comtempt... we on group tours wasted half our time waiting for them to no-show, and eventually our guide abandoned all of us. Oh, there was the nice time a felucca captain overheard me expounding on sailing and gave me the helm. Then he "fires" me due to not realizing you have to point absurdly high into the wind since they don't have daggerboards or whatever to reduce slippage. Their economy is very unfair because they don't have the basic legal infrastructure for a free market system to function on. Unable to get land titles for their homes and biz for example, corruption, etc.

An update on the chaotic fate of Egyptian antiquities also has some hopeful notes: http://news.yahoo.com/egypt-39-antiquities-fall-victim-political-chaos-073640237.html I'm glad to see they are trying to spread out the Cairo collection to an adjacent building as well as one across the Nile. Precious mementos of the past need dispersion to protect them from disasters, and also to make easier for educational exposure across the globe. Remember how the Cairo museum was damaged due to riots a few years ago. I assume the museums of the world have halted their overeager repatriation activities of sending their Egyptian artifacts back to Egypt. More than just for clearly stolen articles, many curators of the west tried to fly their progressive flags by emptying out their collections to the shaky stewardship of Egypt, Greece, and Italy. I remember the Egyptian archeology official often on documentaries tended to bully foreign museums... was he the one fired in 2011? The root cause of the recent chaos in Egypt isn't fairly covered in the west. As I understand it, it wasn't second thoughts about a fairly elected leader. Rather it was the hijacking of their constitution by a fringe element who had squeeked by an election. I recall being outraged by our president O. throwing his support to the Islamic extremist now overthrown... there was a centrist candidate at the time who actually quoted Thomas Jefferson, and originally had a lot of support, partly because he seemed a safe bet in keeping the $billions of US aid flowing.

Just an observation of something that amazes me... an Italian biotech company stock has been rocketing up about 5 fold in the last few months http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?t=6m&s=GENT&l=off&z=l&q=l&c=efa&ql=1&c=^GSPC . Isn't the business environment hostile and crippled in Italy and Europe? Isn't Europe dead set against meddling with DNA, GMO, etc? Apparently people become less purist and more hypocritical when they are sick and someone else is paying their bills http://www.gentium.it/ . EDIT-> Ahh, I see their euro web page above doesn't highlight how their product is basically jamming pig DNA and human urine into patients (ok with me, if disclosed) http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=GENT . Actually I welcome their success, nestled just on the Milan side of Lake Como. But beware of investing in this ticker=GENT at such a high price because it can crash very suddenly.

I'm missing an easy fix? Aren't you supposed to be blocking my posts? Anyway I am wary about conventional lcd screens, because: IBM repairs quoted me $900 to replace a backlight on an old thinkpad. Then they agreed to do it free, but created other problems. A toshiba flickered out and I found an online fix instruction about microscopic resoldiering of a plug behind the screen. I extended the life by periodically opening up and just wiggling the plug until losing patience. My 2 17" apple pro laptops lost their screens and I use TV out instead. Well, one of them had a posted fix where apple kindly replaced some unreliable graphic chip out of warrantee. I described the other problem with the apple genius who kind of hinted it was a messy power supply problem to the screen. As for tablets, I moderate a forum for a tablet brand with particularly troublesome screens. Folks occasionally describe how they replaced them, but it doesn't sound pretty. The problem is inherent with their frugal design anyway. Oh, I just got notified of my Kindle DX shipment, but found my local library mainly supports Kindle Fires (which just went off their cybermonday sale prices).

. I need pretty big fonts and still may have to view pdfs by the half page if the DX sharpness doesn't make up for it. Amzn still haven't shipped or given me a DX delivery date after several days, yet they are now airmailing 3 gallons of something I hardly need at no extra cost! I love big screens... you should see pdf on my 13" laptop folded into tablet mode and rotated to portrait... luxury! But all my laptops have died due to screen failures, and I don't want to burn extra hours e-reading on them. Same for an 11.5 inch android tablet I ordered from China... pdf looks marginally good, but all my bargain tablets develop touch problems in midlife, so I don't want to kill big, more expensive ones early just staring at books. One solution is to convert pdf to epub or whatever (losing a bit in translation) then reading on a smaller device which is cheap enough to bear the earlier screen failure. I don't like it too small so I am paging every few seconds. But the DX has a large-ish screen at a cheap, expendable price. Not only is it extra sharp but can work in bright outside light, which I want. My wifi router security setup is maxed out with device count, but the DX can use free 3G. Ahh, the anticipation is always greater than the reality.

. Maybe this sale indicates they are clearing out stock for an improved DX, although today they have extended the huge price cuts to some fire models. I can't find any academia forum, unless you mean the Brazilian one. Oh goodie, I have lots of .epub and .pdf available. Strange how amazon isn't giving me any delivery date on the DX after a full day, yet they are working on 30 minute deliveries by drone:. .

Ok, sort of a note to myself. I recalled manybooks.net having more free books out of copyright, and indeed it seems to offer .mobi and .azw which apparently is kindle compatible (send to it via usb cable rather than 3g). There are probably other sources too (gutenberg.whatever), all of which I need to experiment on before investing real bucks into newfangled "books in the cloud".

I saw an extremely cheap deal on amazon for their almost 10" non-color kindle so that I can read e-books even in bright daylight. I guess it is cheap due to no touch screen and clunky outdated firmware... perfect for the frugal! Also it runs on free(ish) 3g only, so can still run if no wifi. If I search on amazon for "Roman" kindle books and sort by low price, there is quite a number for free... any recommendations, since they aren't obviously winners? They do have a history->ancent->rome section with good looking mostly 99 cent books. I take it I can also load most any .pdf (or better yet .mobi?) such as from free archive.org and sometimes it will even convert it to spoken word.

My main point is the newly released 3D project for Hadrian's Villa http://vwhl.clas.virginia.edu/villa/ where you can savor this really important Tivoli site in reality or recreated 3D. I hope it makes anyone skipped that sidetrip out of Rome feel BAD :) I took the difficult public bus route there even when I was sick, hacking up blood everywhere. Here is a video on the project which is great for the first 15 minutes, then you may as well bail out of the self congratulating wrapup. Well, I do admit the architecture is a bit Greek and spindly compared to classic Rome, such as in ROME REBORN http://romereborn.frischerconsulting.com/about-current.php . I lost track of that project so much discussed here, and wonder if this is a cut down version of it. Anyway here is the superset of such digital 3d Rome projects from Virginia http://vwhl.clas.virginia.edu/projects.html . It used to be Google earth had an ancient Rome 3d overlay too that you could fly around in, but I cannot find it.

. There is wisdom to be found here. . In this environment of "lite" moderation, there is still a brute force approach (that I assume some folks have been applying to me). You can filter out people's posts by clicking your name (at top) and then on "manage ignore prefs". Just type in the first few letters of the names in question. I tried it, and it's not as extreme as it appears. You still see the headers of everyone's posts, but the targeted ones simply are reduced to a single line that you can click if you wish to see them. Not censoring... it even piques your curiosity to click to see what you're missing.

World Archeology magazine reports amusingly on the halted (out of money) but nice partial renovation of this enigmatic villa at http://www.world-archaeology.com/travel/richard-hodges-travels-to-villa-del-casale-at-piazza-armerina/#.UpfDcrB6fm4 Hmmm, is that a worthwhile mag to subscribe to just for the occasional Roman coverage like http://www.world-archaeology.com/travel/ostia/#.UpffpLB6fm4 ? .

The Chronicle of Higher Education opined: http://chronicle.com/article/Against-Environmental-Panic/139733/ . http://chronicle.com/article/The-Gallic-Gadfly/139731/

. Oh, too bad it looks like he died last fall. I guess I'm listening to his "Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life" and the order got scrambled so I don't know what book I was on among the jam packed digressions upon Rome and Greece. Additionally, maybe in the St Mark Gospel he riffed about how Christianity was so much shaped by the Greek/Roman culture... more than just St. Paul making it a bit more Rome friendly, but the whole trinity crises was because Aristotle taught there must be hierarchy rather than joint rule. Graven images had to be allowed due to the Roman and Greek heritage of art. Stuff I never heard before, so wondered if his appealing ideas are accepted or eccentric. What a relief to load his lectures on my mp3 player for long walks... I just endured 24 lectures on that kook Richard Wagner, and then bailed out of a series that demonized St. Paul. How can I learn about St. Paul from a lecturer that hates him him as practically a Franco type reactionary vs Christ as revolutionary Che Guevara role model...

I'm trying to test the veracity of prof. Rufus Fears, a frequent and enjoyable lecturer on Roman history in the Teaching Company series http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/professors/professor_detail.aspx?pid=165 . He gave an implausible sounding method of how Nero had his rival Britannicus murdered (the natural son of Claudius.. how different and better the empire might have become under B.) that is at odds with what some googling brings up, such as from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britannicus . The conventional sources say B. was poisoned, although maybe actually died by an unrelated epileptic fit. He had survived poison before, but this time his food taster was subverted by serving too hot wine (safe), which was sent back for cooling water containing the poison. Some say Nero raped young B. beforehand to avoid the superstition against murder of virgins. Anyway I wonder if we know the type of poison and whether it would stand up to heat. But I wonder most where Fears got the theory that the poison came from a split apple. The knife contained poison on one side, so the safe side of the apple passed muster with the food taster. This sounds made up, because it seems hard to avoid slimeing both sides of the apple. Even if the two halves don't clap together immediately following the knife, some poison would be pushed back on the trailing edge of knife and slime the other side unless you angled it carefully. It would be an interesting experiment to put molasses on one side of a knife, and play food taster by trying the supposedly safe side.

. I saw a long sentence about that recently. I think in an external article, but possibly linked to from here (maybe even by me). Anyway it listed a number of things not invented by Rome, like togas, and who originated them, like Etruscans. Maybe roman numerals... weren't they originated elsewhere? Anyway, I wasn't terribly impressed by that theme, somewhat like how guns originate from China. Those early guns were highly ineffective except for making the best out of soldiers too clumsy to shoot arrows, and had to be reinvented in the west. Or take the example of the C-47 cargo airplane... it borrowed all it's innovations, but using them in combination and appropriate balance made it a revolutionary item in itself and perhaps the most long used aircraft.

. His wikipedia link loses it's final ) when parsed in this forum: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Jones_(classicist) From that, I highlight in bold his mission as I see it... addressing the relevance of Rome to today's everyman rather than his old works that address Rome to the scholars. . I have read his journalism for years, but that was before my interest in the Romans. I guess I can restart at http://www.spectator.co.uk/author/peter-jones/ for instance, although that said I hit my monthly quota after reading about Quaddafi as Caligula. That was a great magazine years ago when edited by today's mayor of London, but now perhaps not worth the subscription. I thought their review was poor and almost didn't post it, but thought the book itself might be good anyway.

From Trieste you could also take a summer ferry or probably a train to quaint nearby Pula Croatia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pula#Sights . . I haven't been there, but this picture shows how the arena ring dominates the town which is probably not much touristed vs other parts of Croatia. You can take summer ferries back to Venice, which would be a shame to not visit. To avoid crowds, just avoid the crush along the mindlessly obvious spine route from train station to Piazza San Marco along the canal or Rialto bridge. Walk the more serene pathways that locals use like thru Campo Santa Margherita and Academia bridge. A bit further down the coast is Split with it's magnificent Diocletian's Palace. Not well appreciated by tourists because it is entwined with the regular fabric of city shops and apartments, but I arrived on a quiet dawn and it was stunning. You can also visit the basements in near original state to get the gist of original floorplan.