Thoughts on (Re)Reading Fowler’s
I had all but forgotten how delightful it can be reading Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage. It gives me the same sort of pleasure as reading at random through…
reading
Save Your Mind, Save Your Freedom, And Save The World – Slow Down
As Chogyam Trungpa said, “The first thing to do is cut the speed.” Slow down. Unplug from all media and electronics. Make time for stillness, silence and solitude. Reflect. Read,…
If I Was Teaching Writing
(Disclaimer: not a professional writer or teacher) If i was teaching writing I would teach that writing is a process. The first step is putting all your thoughts down on…
If I Was Teaching Writing
(Disclaimer: not a professional writer or teacher) If i was teaching writing I would teach that writing is a process. The first step is putting all your thoughts down on…
This is the blog we need right now
We all have little things that irk us, things that other, more normal people would never notice or care about. In my case, it’s lazy and/or stupid media blather. I…
The Death of Reading?
There are days when I despair for humanity’s future. Many days, of late, it seems, and they seem to get more frequent as I read the news. I recently read…
Intellectual Self-Defence: Time For A Reading Sabbatical
To be brief: The obsession with quantity and volume has to end. More is not always better. Quality matters most. But people in the 21st century are addicted to endless…
Yo, Podcasters! Read This.
An excellent, important video was the inspiration for this short post (linked here, below) from a generally lackluster podcast. The musings arising after watching the video, however, I would say…
The Big Picture: Markers Of The Global Tectonic Shift, Now Underway
Or, The Big Picture: Economic Strength vs Economic Insolvency: US, Canada and Uruguay compared Uruguayan national debt in 2023:$40 billion USD(52% of GDP) Canadian national debt in 2023:$1.4 trillion USDOr$1,400…
Real Bread, Slow Dough, Bread Books
Making bread is a small passion of mine, has been for many years as readers here will know*, although the results of my efforts do not always match my optimism.…
Back to Horace No. 2
I was browsing online recently because I wanted to order another book of Horace’s Odes or maybe his Epistles in my efforts to understand and appreciate the poet more fully.…
10 Mind-Blowing Reads About the Multiverse
In a real sense, you could argue that every book is another reality. The best of them certainly feel like self-contained worlds, and when you… The post 10 Mind-Blowing Reads…
The New Odyssey
Much has been made of the fact that Emily Wilson’s recent translation of Homer’s The Odyssey (Norton, 2018) is the first translation of that great work by a woman. But…
Ammon Shea is My New Hero
Eyyyyyyy Wssup guys This was the entire first post that started a thread in a group I belonged to on Facebook. I think seeing it aged me a decade, and…
The Power Elite: What Every Thinking Person Needs To Know
C. Wright Mills’, The Power Elite, is unquestionably one of the most important books ever written in sociology, social theory, social philosophy, social psychology or political-economy – and it of…
Who To Trust: The Short Answer
Who to trust? That is always a perennial question, and particularly now, when not only government, corporations, politicians and corporate and state media have repeatedly been shown to have lied,…
A Meeting of the Minds?
Niccolo Machiavelli and Michel de Montaigne never met, nor could they have — Machiavelli died six years before Montaigne was born, and they lived about 1,200 km (800 miles) apart…
From Pirates to Pellucidar
Before I ever discovered Pellucidar, I was into pirates. In fact, one of my first memories is of reading my favorite book, Look Out for… The post From Pirates to…