Another argument for casting your net widely is that you learn about new and fascinating things that rarely pop up in daily conversation, especially in our cloistered workaday lives. Today by way of a diary entry by Samuel Pepys, the ‘Eikon Basilike’ (full text), the “Royal Portrait”, a purported autobiography by King Charles I published [...]
This past weekend, Jody and I went to see the Hatshepsut exhibit at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth. It’s called: Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh. Apparently, Hatshepsut (Say that five times fast) was regent for her son, but she later upgraded to full pharaoh. This was around 1500 BC, which is really only [...]
Entrepreneur Magazine posted an interesting article by Faith Popcorn about spotting widespread consumer trends. Read the list below and decide for yourself how accurate trend-spotters have been over the past ten years. It is strange to think that you’re just caught up in the zeitgeist of an era, rather than directing your own reason for [...]
I’ve been rereading Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, the archetypical philosopher-king and Roman Caesar. Meditations is a diary-like accounting of Marcus Aurelius’ thoughts and ideas. You can almost imagine him encamped with his legions on the Danube, writing down his thoughts and examining his life. The original title is closer in meaning to “notes to himself” [...]
Do you know where your surname comes from? Usually surnames are derived in a few standard ways, and up until a couple hundred years ago they were not fixed as they are today in our modern era of bureaucratic record-keeping.
Occupation surnames Before we had surnames, you might have been known by what you did in [...]
What do we really ever know about history? What do we know about what’s happening today? How should we act when we have no way of knowing the ripples each action causes?
Winston Churchill, 1936:
Almost everyone I know and work with is an “adultolescent” as defined in the book, “Mediated: The Hidden Effects of Media on People, Places, and Things”, myself included. That is one of the issues I’m having with working for a video game company. I feel like I’m ready to work and spend time around mature [...]
I have the flu, lagrippe, influenza. No one calls it the grippe anymore, which got me to thinking about other diseases that now go by different names.
Mormal = Gangrene
Morphew = Scurvy blisters on the body
Ague = Any intermittent fever characterised by periods of chills, fevers and sweats.
Bad blood = Syphilis
Croup = [...]
Via BoingBoing, the Library at Alexandria has been uncovered! This is really exciting, although I doubt any of the missing books will be uncovered. I heard once that the Alexandrians would confiscate any books from visitors to the city to make copies of them for their own library. Piracy has a storied history! The Library [...]
Saw this linked over on Metafilter, a good interview with historian Emmanuel Todd:
Assuming you are right: how did this budding empire slide so quickly into decline?
A rift has been developing, slowly at first and then more quickly, between the US and their various geo-political areas of interest. During the early 1970’s a deficit in the [...]
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