NYRB

I continue to mull over whether I shall renew my subscription to the NYRB when it expires at the end of the year. Or perhaps wobble rather than mull would be a better word: wobble up when an issue is good for me, down when it is bad. Which last often means too much poetry or too much literary stuff. An asymmetrical choice in that one good wobble up and the deed will be irrevocably done!

Volume LXIV, Number 14 was average, not tipping the scales either way. But I offer two factlets which struck me.

The inhabitants of the later Roman Empire suffered from a lot of eye disease, not helped by the dry and dusty climate and the habit of communal bathing. Sometimes taking as much as 10% of a garrison on Hadrian's Wall out of action. Maybe someday I will come across something more than this bald statement and stray statistic!

More substantially, there seems to be trouble brewing down the Amur, the river boundary between the wild east of Russia and the wild west of China. With the Russians in the sparsely populated borderlands melting away and the Chinese moving in. I am reminded of the Yanquis pushing into the south and west of what is now US territory, but at the time at least nominally part of Mexico. What will Putin do if push comes to shove?