Books & Reviews – Page 29

Ten Lessons Learned From the Petraeus Affair

After watching the recent, exaggerated – and sordid – upheaval over the story about an extramarital affair that the (now former) head of the CIA had with his biographer, I have come to several conclusions about America, sex, American media and publicity: 1. Americans, who bought millions of copies of “Fifty Shades of Grey“, a poorly-written, highly derivative, pornographic book, and then turned it into a national industry that includes home parties where BDSM equipment is sold to housewives, and dozens of spin-off blogs based on the book, are easily offended by “racy” emails between consenting adults. 2. Americans, who consume a vast quantity of online ……… click below for more ↓

Work and time slip by unnoticed

2012-11-13 2012-11-13 Books & Reviews / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

You’d think being semi-retired (or as I call it, creatively unemployed) would give me more time to do the things I like to do, more time to be creative. Nah. Things seem to intervene to prevent a focused approach on creativity these days. Not to mention that my Rogers internet crashed for a couple of days because their servers couldn’t keep my IP constant, so I was cast adrift from my virtual life and back into the depths of the printed work – poking through the mini-library upstairs. Most of yesterday was spent cleaning and reloading files after my blueagaveforum.com ……… click below for more ↓

Gambling: money and statistics

2012-10-19 2012-10-19 Books & Reviews / Canadian Politics / Collingwood / Games & Gaming / Internet & Social Media / Municipal Politics / Social Order & Disorder / What I'm Reading Now5 Comments

No, I’m not going to write about the morality of gambling.* I’ll save that for another post. This is about money. And numbers. I attended the OLG four-community presentation in Wasaga Beach, Tuesday, and it got me thinking about what gambling means to the economy, what it means to the government, what effect it might have on things like growth and recession. It also made me wonder how governments became addicted to gambling revenue, but that, too, is for another post. I also found some of the statistics presented interesting enough to do some extrapolation, which I’ll get to at the end. ……… click below for more ↓

Why does anyone need PR?

2012-10-06 2012-10-09 Books & Reviews / Internet & Social Media / Media Issues / Municipal Politics / Social Order & Disorder3 Comments

Flavius Aetius. Only a handful of scholars know who he was. You can look him up on Google, but 1,500-plus years later, not many people will find him memorable, nor will they care. On the other hand, I’ll bet everyone reading this post knows who Attila the Hun was. Or at least you recognize the name, even if you aren’t really familiar with his history. It’s either an insult or praise to be called “right of Attila the Hun” these days, although Attila would not have understood the reference. Attila’s reputation as a warlord still resonates, 1,500 years later. But his ……… click below for more ↓

Taking words out of context

2012-09-22 2015-06-19 Books & Reviews / Collingwood / Language & Grammar / Memes; Internet & Social / Municipal Politics / Quotes & Mis-quotesLeave a comment

Council, along with the media, the auditor general, the CBC, our MP and MPP,and a few others, were recently sent a letter complaining about council’s decision to build new, year-round recreational facilities without raising taxes. Fair enough. Everyone has the right to write letters. We’re open to public criticism, even after the issue has been decided, contracts signed, and council (and most of the town) has moved on. You can read the letter on the EEU. The letter contains two quotes – both by dead Americans – to open and close the letter. Because I am a bit of a quote-authenticity fanatic (see my other ……… click below for more ↓

The Erosion of Civil Debate

2012-09-21 2012-09-21 Books & Reviews / Canadian Politics / Collingwood / Municipal Politics / Personal Reminiscences / Social Order & DisorderOne Comment

I’ve been dismayed by the tone of the recent debate over the town’s proposed and new recreational facilities. Not by the debate itself – I love the engagement and interaction, even arguing because it’s intellectually stimulating – but rather by what has become an increasingly strident, angry, confrontational and personal tone in many of the comments council has received, or which have been directed towards council. I’m disappointed because I know we, as Canadians, can have rational, calm, thoughtful debate without rancour, without resorting to insults and name-calling, without raising our voices in anger, without resorting to gossip and rumour ……… click below for more ↓

Yet More Quotes with False Attributions

2012-07-13 2012-07-13 Balderdash & Hoaxes / Books & Reviews / Language & Grammar / Memes; Internet & Social6 Comments

It seems a good week for mis-attributed Francis of Assisi quotes. Someone on Facebook posted an image with the following quote: “He who works with his hands is a laborer. He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman. He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist. St. Francis of Assisi” That’s simply “Francis of “Assisi” for the non-Catholics among us, of course. But even without the questionable transformation of mortal flesh into an immortal, supernatural being, Francis didn’t write those words. This quote was written by Louis Nizer, an ……… click below for more ↓

And again, more mis-attributed quotes online

2012-07-04 2017-01-17 Arts / Balderdash & Hoaxes / Books & Reviews / Memes; Internet & Social5 Comments

“It’s easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled.” Allegedly by Mark Twain, but unlikely, and not found in any published source I have of Twain’s quotations. Online sources, of course, don’t count as authorities because they lack all credibility. As one person commented on Yahoo, The fact that “Quora attributes it to him” is worthless. Quora is yet another one of those idiotic “quote websites” that misquote and misattribute things all the time. Note that Quora doesn’t bother to give an actual citation — what book was it from, what page, etc. Without a full ……… click below for more ↓

Goodbye, Carlos Fuentes: 1928-2012

2012-05-16 2012-05-16 Arts / Books & Reviews / Politics / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

I was in a bookstore in Israel in 1980 or thereabouts, looking for a book in English to read during my visit. I found Terra Nostra, a 900-page novel by Carlos Fuentes, in a Penguin paperback edition. I had read another Fuentes’ book, A Change of Skin, a few years earlier, so I picked it up. I’ve carried Terra Nostra with me ever since that day in Israel. It’s still on my bookshelf. I don’t remember if I ever finished it. I remembered that book this morning when I read that the Mexican writer, Carlos Fuentes, had died last night, ……… click below for more ↓

54,232 words… and it’s done

2012-05-05 2012-05-05 Books & Reviews / Language & Grammar / Municipal Politics / What I'm Reading Now8 Comments

I passed 54,000 words yesterday in my book on Machiavelli for municipal politicians. A little tweaking today, and an additional selection from The Discourses pushed it to 54,232 words. It prints out at 163 letter-sized pages. Even though that count includes chapter titles and subheads, as well as the opening notes and quotes, dedication, bibliography, and back page copy, it’s still about 20,000 more than my original target. I just don’t seem to be able to stop working on it. I’m still reading books about him and his writing – bios and denser, academic tomes by scholars like Mansfield and ……… click below for more ↓

A Delightful Farce Called Anonymous

2012-04-29 2012-04-29 Arts / Books & Reviews / History & Biography / Memes; Internet & SocialLeave a comment

Watched a delightful, satirical farce last night, called Anonymous. It’s a spoof about the conspiracy theory that the Earl of Oxford (Edward de Vere) wrote the works of William Shakespeare. This conspiracy notion has a pop following, but lacks significant scholarly and any historical support. Like other conspiracy theories, it has gained ground on the Internet from the simple fact that most people are naturally superstitious and suspicious, and would rather not apply critical thinking or do any serious research to prove or disprove outlandish claims. As theories go, de Vere-as-Shakespeare is up there with the Elvis-is-still-alive, JFK-survived-the-Dallas-shooting or the-American-government-was-behind-the-9/11-attacks. ……… click below for more ↓

Fifty thousand words…

2012-04-25 2012-04-25 Arts / Books & Reviews / Municipal Politics / Personal Reminiscences / What I'm Reading Now4 Comments

This morning I crossed the 50,000 word mark in my book on Machiavelli’s The Prince for municipal politicians. It’s longer than I had originally intended, but I think it’s a reasonable length for the content. I’m pleased with the current draft and should have my reading and self-editing done by next Monday. Then it’s on to my next book, about e-government. I have an overhead of perhaps 2,000 words I could reduce it by through my own editing. Primarily that would involve deleting the addendum with the maxims from his Art of War and from Sun Tzu’s book of the ……… click below for more ↓

This time it’s a Machiavellian mis-quote.

2012-04-10 2016-02-26 Books & Reviews / History & Biography / Language & Grammar / Memes; Internet & Social / Quotes & Mis-quotes2 Comments

Whilst perusing the Net for some material for my book on Machiavelli, I came across this maxim: “Never attempt to win by force what can be won by deception.” It’s attributed on many, many sites to Machiavelli in his most famous work, The Prince. Sounds pretty Machiavellian, doesn’t it? Well, it isn’t. Machiavelli never wrote those words. Sun Tzu wrote that, “All warfare is based on deception.” (Book 1, 18), which is close. Sun Tzu went on to add in the next two lines (19 and 20), “Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, ……… click below for more ↓

Machiavelli in popular art: Don MacDonald’s graphic novel

2012-04-08 2012-04-08 Arts / Books & Reviews / Municipal Politics / PoliticsLeave a comment

A graphic novel about Niccolo Machiavelli… who woulda thought? It’s not like the Florentine was exactly the X Men or Mr. Natural as a comic book hero. Artist Don MacDonald has put together a graphic biography of Machiavelli on his blog, stretching more than 150 pages (so far) ranging through the entire span of Niccolo’s life. He even includes footnotes for some of the historical material he has drawn on, with sources listed. It does help to read his notes, and even more to have some familiarity of Machiavelli’s life. But even without it, it’s captivating. Well, of course I ……… click below for more ↓