• reading_gibbon: Chapter IX: The state of Germany till the invasion of the Barbarians
  
  
  This chapter does what it says in the title, giving us an account of the Germans largely (and occasionally critically) based on Tacitus, and ending by wondering why they did not make more effort to attack Rome between Varus [9 AD] and Decius [251 AD] (the explanations given being lack of metal technology, and too much internal dissent). But Gibbon also uses it to attach a lot of other philosophical speculation, in particular about the politics, social life and culture of the German tribes as precursors of the civilisation of Western Europe (in particular of course England).
  
  
  (tags: gibbon)
  
  

Now that unemployment has topped 10 percent, some liberal-leaning economists see confirmation of their warnings that the $787 billion stimulus package President Obama signed into law last February was way too small. -- NYT

Did you hear the great news? The MTA will not raise fares! Or cut service! Wonderful! Except none of the headlines say "for just one year." Or "not counting the existing fare increase and de facto service cuts."

The new $11 billion operating budget is actually just an ominous warning that in a year—or maybe a few months—the Transit Authority will once again cite the need to hike fares in order to strong arm Albany in finding a newer, more regressive way of funding operating costs.

But, yes, it is insane that our mass transit is operated by a rotating cast of idiot millionaires with free E-Zpasses for life (and beyond!) beholden to absolutely no one, at all, operating with two sets of books, and yet we have to actually sympathize with them because the people who profit from the way an efficient mass transit system allows for the mobility of cheap labor don't think they should be forced to pony up any money to keep transit affordable. Fares are simply taxes—incredibly regressive taxes, just like the sales taxes that New York City residents suffer to fund our own transit while suburban New Yorkers bitch about the prospect of being charged to clog our streets with their cars, and Jersey dicks bemoan the tolls they have to pay to enter the city where they make all of their money while contributing nothing back.

Meanwhile, though, the MTA lies, about everything, all the time. They are saving just enough of the money from the emergency bailout earlier this year to allow them to not threaten to raise fares again for one (1) year (while fighting transit workers' promised wage increase in court). And thanks to that bailout, we only had to endure a slight fare increase with no service cuts! Except that not a single goddamn line is running on schedule anymore, ever, and that's been the case all year and it only gets worse every week.

Track and signal work must be up 1000% across the board, because there's hardly a line that isn't out of commission on the conveniently poorer or less utilizied portions of the routes these days. The F just gives up at Jay St now. The service advisories, when they are actually correctly posted, which is rarely, grow longer every weekend. If you live outside Manhattan, you better catch a train home before 11 pm, because otherwise who the fuck knows when a train will show up and where it will actually take you. Lord only knows what the hell the G train was doing last weekend, and why. Everyone, anecdotally, has noticed this. But no one has just straight-up said that these are the across the board service cuts that they promised they wouldn't need to institute once we saved them from disaster a few months ago.

• 17:53 bit.ly/6kUAKh - I'm at latitude 64 and it's day 324. So little sun. #

After the longest Thursday in history (it lasted something like 33 hours, thanks to the time change), we arrived safely in Fairbanks, where one inhalation of the brisk winter air reminded us why it is we don’t ever want to live here again. Not even a deep inhalation, you understand, because the dry cold air makes you start coughing before you can pull in enough for a *deep* inhalation. :)

I’m awfully glad to be here, though. Today was clear and (cold, obviously) utterly gorgeous. I had forgotten, kind of, how far apart things are here. We dropped Ted’s mom off for her haircut at a hairdresser several miles from where they live, which is just not at all something the Irish would generally do. We’ve gotten really used to living within a completely walkable distance of things, and I was bemused at the distances we were travelling today.

Driving on the correct side of the road hasn’t been bothering me, but I keep trying to find light switches for the bathrooms outside the bathrooms themselves. I have been changed. :)

Vague plans for Christmas shopping tomorrow. Definite plans for Thanksgiving/Christmas dinner on Sunday, which, due to a fluke of circumstances, it appears Ted will be largely responsible for. Fortunately, we are all quite certain he can handle the pressure. :)

miles to Minas Tirith: 68.5

http://gelatometti2.blogspot.com/2009/11/iron-gelatomettista-eddie-nunez.html

http://gelatometti2.blogspot.com/2009/11/iron-gelatomettista-cruddie-torian.html

http://gelatometti2.blogspot.com/2009/11/iron-gelatomettista-black-adam.html

Final voting ends at Monday, 5:00pm PST.

In much, much faster turnaround time, Amazon now has Defiance available for purchase!

So if you’d like to score yourself some period goodness from suricattus, joelysue, and myself, and you’re a Kindle owner or a user of the Kindle app on the iPhone, I invite you to go and make with the clicky! Thanks in advance for your support.

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

In the meantime, the current state-of-the-science message about exercise and bone building may be that, silly as it sounds, the best exercise is to simply jump up and down, for as long as the downstairs neighbor will tolerate. “Jumping is great, if your bones are strong enough to begin with,” Dr. Barry says. “You probably don’t need to do a lot either.” (If you have any history of fractures or a family history of osteoporosis, check with a physician before jumping.) In studies in Japan, having mice jump up and land 40 times during a week increased their bone density significantly after 24 weeks, a gain they maintained by hopping up and down only about 20 or 30 times each week after that.