Prelude: For several years, I received emails from Godaddy – the company that hosts my online material — announcing my websites and blogs (then hosted on a Linux server) would be migrated to a newer server with a cPanel administration system. Allegedly this move would prove more efficient and offer faster access to my site (access has long been dismally slow). I wouldn’t have to do anything, just let Godaddy work. However, despite numerous emails promising the migration, nothing was done for those years until … click below for more ↓
I apologize to readers who have been wondering what happened to my blog. It seemed to go haywire, with an old, out-of-date theme showing and no posts since Nov. 18. Well, the answer is simple: Godaddy — the company I use to host my blog and websites — broke it. How and why I will explain in a subsequent post, but suffice to say they screwed up and I’ve been waiting for the past week to see if they would fix it. They haven’t. Apparently … click below for more ↓
Susan lugged the laundry hampers down to the lavandería we often used in Zihuatanejo when we vacationed there; a small shop on the sidestreet where laundresses would weigh the hampers, quote a price, and a time to come back to collect the cleaned clothes. The relentless Mexican sun made the streets and sidewalks an oven as she walked back to the house where we stayed. She wondered if it was too early to open a cold beer. Meanwhile, I walked through the tall grasses on … click below for more ↓
I may be updating this site and changing themes sometime soon. I’ve been exploring alternative looks for this blog and, although I have not decided on a particular one yet, am interested in switching to a layout that has some features this one lacks. If you see changes to the look and layout, it’s because I’m experimenting. It may abruptly change to look radically different, too. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Plus the host service I use plans to migrate content … click below for more ↓
For those readers interested in the voyages of the late-16th-early-17th century adventurer, Henry Hudson, or in the European explorations of North America, I have recently scanned and edited a copy of Juet’s Journal into Word format and placed it online here. Here is my website on Henry Hudson, too. I haven’t done much with it of late, but that may be slowly changing as I find I have more time these days, during my recovery. The journal documents how Hudson and his crew ‘discovered’ parts … click below for more ↓
As the year 2018 closes, it’s time for my customary review of what I wrote. It’s also time to thank every reader for participating, for reading my humble musings, for sharing my posts and sending me emails about them. I appreciate your presence and your comments. Twenty eighteen was another good year for my blog. I wrote almost 180,000 words and saw one-two percent more visitors than last year (although not quite as many as my best year, 2016). My best month for visitors was … click below for more ↓
Twenty seventeen has a special significance for me, beyond merely another year in the ever-lengthening calendar of my life. I find it difficult, sometimes, to believe I am as old as I am – who, after all, lives this long? I used to think that. Back then, back in my salad days of my misspent youth, fifty was impossibly old. Sixty? Ancient. Beyond that? Methuselah old. Or perhaps I simply don’t act my age. I still listen to the Beatles and the music of my … click below for more ↓
My negative comments on the impending privatization of our electrical utility (and potentially our water utility once the first deal is sealed) drew some online criticism recently. None of those critics refuted any of the facts I offered, or attempted to debunk any of the numerous documents I quoted and linked to. Nor could they. After all, they are easily proven, well-documented facts. But still, they called me a liar and attempted to use other cheap ad hominem tactics to discredit me.* However, regardless of … click below for more ↓
Twenty seventeen will arrive one second later than expected, thanks to the addition of a leap second added to balance the atomic clocks with the Earth’s actual time. One more second for my readers to browse, I suppose, although 2016 was such an awful year that few folks want it to stay around any longer. One more second of Donald Trump or Brexit is unbearable for most of us, but there it is. For my readership, however, 2016 was good; the number of visitors was … click below for more ↓
To all my readers: Thank you, and Happy New Year for 2016. You made 2015 special for me. In this year, my readership more than doubled. I have had more visitors in 2015 than my previous two years combined. Each year, my stats have doubled over the previous year. Clearly I must be saying something someone likes, because the numbers keep growing. This year marks a decade blogging for me. I welcome all of you and hope my humble scribblings can continue to amuse, bemuse, … click below for more ↓
Sometime in the next two weeks, I will be amalgamating servers for the several sites I manage and conflating them onto one, new and (I hope) faster and more efficient server. There may be some downtime while the files and databases migrate, like virtual birds, to their new home. I hope that the digital gods of server migration allow my moves to go smoothly. I would sacrifice a virtual dove to propitiate them, if I could only find their virtual altar… would that I were … click below for more ↓
I added two posts today to my blog about Niccolo Machiavelli, the 16th century political philosopher. These are:
Machiavelli: The Graphic Novel – a short piece about the recent publication of Don MacDonald’s exciting new graphic book.
and
Atheist Machiavelli? A longer piece on the debate about whether Machiavelli was atheist, pagan or Christian.
Enjoy! I have a couple of new books about Machiavelli on order, too, which I hope to review this summer.
It seems that only yesterday I was saying thank you to my first 100,000 unique visitors at this blog after just over two years of writing. That was at the start of March. Now, 10 months later, I want to say thank you to more than 208,000 visitors for coming here and reading my humble efforts at writing, at philosophy, politics, history, science, reviews and – very important to me – music.* In 2014, I wrote 220 new posts, growing the total archive of this … click below for more ↓
Another piece posted on The Municipal Machiavelli this week; this time a short comment about Machiavelli and Xenophon, the ancient Greek writer who Niccolo referred to in The Prince and The Discourses: ianchadwick.com/machiavelli/machiavelli-and-xenophon/ This recent post was sparked by a review of a new book on Xenophon aimed at the business-management reader: Larry Hedrick’s Xenophon’s Cyrus the Great: The Arts of Leadership and War. The review by Richard Feloni, on Business Insider, noted: Niccollò Machiavelli’s “The Prince,” a guide for the ideal ruler, made his … click below for more ↓
I’ve written a new piece for my Municipal Machiavelli blog about the late (1982) Mikhail Suslov, the “Soviet Machiavelli.” You can read it here: www.ianchadwick.com/machiavelli/the-soviet-machiavelli/ Suslov was the power behind the Soviet throne; in fact behind several thrones. From joining the Party in 1921, he rose to the top echelon. He was appointed National Party Secretary by Stalin in 1946, joined the the politburo in 1952, and finally became a full member in ’55. He survived three-and-a-half decades of intrigue at the highest level, outlasting all of his … click below for more ↓
