Books & Reviews – Page 18

Larry & Jerry’s Inferno

I had forgotten about this book until recently when I came across a reprint. I read it originally in the late 1970s when I was reading a lot more sci-fi than I do today. (Many years ago, I ran a Toronto computer convention where I invited the authors to be the keynote speakers. I got to spend many hours and a memorable dinner with them.) I finished the reprint only a few days ago and started the sequel, Escape From Hell, shortly after. I was researching Dante of late for something I’ve been slogging at for the past couple of years, when ……… click below for more ↓

A Modern Take on Gorgias

2014-10-24 2014-10-24 Municipal Politics / Philosophy / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

Plato’s dialogue Gorgias is mostly about the difference between content and form. Or rather it’s about how Socrates saw the difference between philosophy – content and truth – and rhetoric – form and words. Both of which are practiced and studied today in much different forms from what they were in ancient Greece. But the essential core of his argument is still there for us. Socrates felt rhetoric – oratory – was shallow; merely using words for persuasion, for effect, for emotion: it lacked the validity, the meaning and depth of philosophy. It lacked truth and knowledge. If you look at ……… click below for more ↓

Crito: Doing What’s Right

2014-10-23 2014-10-23 Books & Reviews / Critical Thinking / Philosophy / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

In his dialogue, Crito, Plato has Socrates gently admonish his friend, Crito, for his concern over what the uneducated public might think, or might spread by rumour and gossip, and encourages him instead to focus his attention on those ‘reasonable people’ who know the facts and in doing what is right: “Why, my dear Crito, should we pay so much attention to what ‘most people’ think? The really reasonable people, who have much more claim to be considered, will believe that the facts are exactly as they are.” (Trans. Hugh Tedennick, The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Bollingen Series LXXI, Princeton University Press, 14th ……… click below for more ↓

Cold Mountain Poems

2014-10-16 2017-11-11 Books & Reviews / Culture / Personal Reminiscences / Poetry & LyricsOne Comment

I first became aware of the Tang dynasty poet, Han Shan, in the late 1960s, when I was engrossed in reading the poets of the earlier Beat generation. It was at that time that, through them, I started to discover and explore Western Buddhism – as it was adapted and represented through their experiences and words. I eagerly read everything by Alan Watts and Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsburg and others from the era. Sometime around then, I discovered a few of Han Shan’s poems. Beat poet Gary Snyder had translated 24 poems for the Evergreen Review in 1958, and later ……… click below for more ↓

Montaigne on Friendship, Liars and Politics

2014-10-13 2014-10-13 Collingwood / Municipal Politics / Philosophy / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

“I am seeking the companionship and society of such men as we call honourable and talented,” wrote Michel de Montaigne in his essay, On the Three Kinds of Social Intercourse (Book III, 3). “It is, when you reflect on it, the rarest of all our forms…” Montaigne was musing in his essay and others on the nature of not simply friendship, but on what attracted people to work, converse and share at the highest levels. To bond without some ulterior motive such as work, politics or profit. What, after all, is true friendship? Once stripped of necessity is it pure ……… click below for more ↓

The Best of Times

2014-10-12 2014-10-12 Books & Reviews / Collingwood / Municipal Politics / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

I was overcome this weekend with an urge to re-read Charles Dickens’ masterpiece, A Tale of Two Cities. I suspect it’s because of its brilliant, powerful opening. That opening epitomizes for me Collingwood’s municipal election and the dichotomy between the two camps: positive versus negative. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… I was downtown Saturday, shopping in the farmers’ market and local stores when the urge came over me. Ducking into Sandra’s little used-book store on Ontario Street, I found a copy. I sat on a bench downtown and read the first two chapters ……… click below for more ↓

The Cold War

2014-10-09 2014-10-09 History & Biography / International politics / Personal Reminiscences / Politics / War & Military / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

I was reminded by an article on Slate that the (to me) iconic film of the Cold War, Fail Safe, was released fifty years ago this week. And as the article records, more people remember the satirical film, Dr. Strangelove than the more chilling drama, Fail Safe. Perhaps they have forgotten it, as they have the Cold War itself. Forgotten too are the tensions and the fears that pervaded that era; the threats of nuclear war. the suspicions and paranoia about Communism, the McCarthy hearings, the accusations and the innuendo. It seems as distance today as the era of Frederick ……… click below for more ↓

Plato’s Apology

2014-10-01 2021-05-15 Critical Thinking / Philosophy / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

Plato records the trial and death of Socrates in four dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito and Phaedo. I’ve been reading The Apology this week and finding in it references that reflect well in today’s world, particularly in politics.* In The Apology – which meant defence in Greek, not saying sorry as it does today – Socrates defends himself against his accusers in a deft and bold way, but he loses his case anyway. Still, he defended himself by telling the truth, off-the-cuff and spontaneously. The Jowett translation of this dialogue opens with these words… How you have felt, O men of Athens, ……… click below for more ↓

Examined Lives

2014-09-26 2021-05-15 Philosophy / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

Thought and deed. Thought and life. How does a person’s life, their upbringing, their daily toil affect their deepest thoughts, their beliefs, faith and passions? And as outsiders looking in, can we understand a person’s thinking by examining their lives? Can we understand their philosophy that way? I don’t know. Biographies describe the events of a person’s life, but cannot look into their innermost thoughts. Modern biographies told in conjunction with living people as collaborators may pull the curtains up, letting us see what they want us to see. But dead people? Most lives are measured in arbitrary milestones that ……… click below for more ↓

Extra Virginity

2014-09-24 2014-09-24 Collingwood / Food & Drink / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

For some time before I got this book, I’ve been aware that there is more to olive oil than meets the eye. Or tongue. How much more really was startling. When I started reading Tom Mueller’s 2012 book, Extra Virginity: the Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil, I was simply amazed at how little I really knew about the stuff (and of course you already know how much I love learning new things). Recently, the good folks at the Collingwood Olive Oil Company (on St. Marie St) gave us a brief introduction and tasting of real extra-virgin olive oils (and continue ……… click below for more ↓

The Trolley Problem

2014-09-23 2015-06-11 Critical Thinking / Philosophy / What I'm Reading Now10 Comments

I had read about the “trolley problem” in the past, but not given it much thought until recently when I saw Thomas Cathcart’s little book of that name in the philosophy section of an Indigo bookstore. It’s subtitled, “Would You Throw the Fat Guy Off the bridge? A Philosophical Conundrum.” I, of course, was so intrigued I had to buy it. I have read others of Cathcart’s books and liked his work in introducing/popularizing philosophical concepts. The original trolley problem is a thought experiment that goes like this, as Wikipedia puts it: There is a runaway trolley barrelling down the ……… click below for more ↓

The Forgotten Gulag

2014-09-22 2016-07-24 Books & Reviews / History & Biography / International politics / What I'm Reading Now2 Comments

In the introduction to Anne Applebaum’s Pulitzer-prize-winning book, Gulag: A History, she ponders why the “crimes of Stalin do not inspire the same visceral reaction to the crimes of Hitler.” Yet Stalin’s actions and policies killed millions more than the Nazis. Maybe it’s because the USSR wrapped itself in as much secrecy as it could muster for so long. Maybe it’s because the Soviet camps were so far removed from sight and never received the pictorial and media coverage the Nazi camps received.* Maybe it’s because during the Cold War, the West was disinclined to care about the welfare of ……… click below for more ↓

Some Latin Quotes to Ponder

2014-09-21 2014-09-21 Culture / Language & Grammar / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

Here are some translations from Latin quotations I took from a few books of mine, notably The Anchor Book of Latin Quotations, compiled by Norbert Guterman (Anchor-Doubleday, New York, 1966 and reprinted 1990) and Cave Canem: A Miscellany of Latin Words & Phrases, by Lorna Robinson (Walker & Co., New York, 2008). Some of these have resonance in today’s politics, even local politics. Others have resonance in events, issues and thoughts about the world. Some are simply words that have resonance to me and my own choices in life. Terence: People who are unsuccessful are all somehow inclined to be ……… click below for more ↓

The Unexamined Life

2014-09-20 2014-09-20 Books & Reviews / Critical Thinking / Personal Reminiscences / Philosophy / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

“The unexamined life,” Socrates declared in his trial, “is not worth living.” His student, Plato, wrote down those words in his account of Socrates’ trial and death, in the book, Apology.* Socrates was speaking for himself and about the value of his life as a thinking person. He was on trial in 399 BCE for impiety – questioning the gods and introducing new gods – and corrupting youth. His real “crime” was his threat to established thought: he made his followers think, to question everything, to examine their beliefs and their knowledge and determine for themselves its validity. He taught them critical thinking ……… click below for more ↓