Tricks of the mind

Books & Reviews / Literary pretensions / My Writing / Philosophy / Writing & FictionLeave a comment

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Reading involves bit of trickery. Mental trickery. It engages the imagination and fools us into thinking we are there within the book: nestled beside the author, or better yet, beside the characters. Immersed in the created world, floating through it like a ghost in a haunted house movie, or perhaps in the imagined flesh, interacting on the mental stage. We ask ourselves how we would play the scene, how we would decide, take action, engage the other characters. How would we behave at the dinner table with Becky and Rawdon? Would we defend Nancy from the rages of Bill Sykes? ……… click below for more ↓

Ontario’s liquor sales conundrum

Food & Drink / Marketing / Provincial Politics / Public relationsLeave a comment

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The C.D. Howe Institute released its report on beer and wine sales in Ontario, today, advocating for a more liberal approach and allowing beer and wine to be sold in other outlets, such as supermarkets and convenience stores. You can read the report here. I have a grudging respect for the C.D. Howe Institute, but not always an agreement with their conclusions, because I feel they are seldom as free of right-leaning ideologies as I would hope. But the report is a good read, nonetheless. It has a local significance in that we have seen three craft breweries open in ……… click below for more ↓

The Beginning of the End

Books & Reviews / History & Biography / Politics / War & Military / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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Sixty years ago, the end began. It would take almost a full year for the Allies to batter the Third Reich into submission, but in the summer of 1944, the end was inevitable. All could see it. The combined might of the Allied armies was simply overpowering for whatever Germany had left to throw at it. But it was neither easy nor simple. So why didn’t Germany sue for peace, cut its losses and surrender, rather than face the prospect of ruin and devastation? Why did Germany continue its reckless, inhumane pursuit of terror and repression – even accelerating the ……… click below for more ↓

Gut instincts

Animals & BIology / Science & TechnologyLeave a comment

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A story on Science Daily says research suggests our so-called “free will” may be less free than we ever imagined. We may, instead, be meat puppets ruled by the desires and cravings of the smallest symbiotes we carry: our gut bacteria. The story opens: It sounds like science fiction, but it seems that bacteria within us — which outnumber our own cells about 100-fold — may very well be affecting both our cravings and moods to get us to eat what they want, and often are driving us toward obesity… researchers from UC San Francisco, Arizona State University and University ……… click below for more ↓

Great books: the academic view

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In the mid-1990s, journalist David Denby took on a personal challenge to return to Columbia University for a year to take two courses, both focused on reading the “great books” of the Western canon. The results and his observations – along with an entertaining bit of biography about his journey – is told in Great Books (Simon & Schuster, 1996). I was interested in Denby’s narrative primarily because, in looking through the table of contents, I noticed he commented on Machiavelli and Montaigne – two of my favourite writers. That made me want to read what he says about them, ……… click below for more ↓

Inanity and vanity

Critical Thinking / Philosophy / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

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Michel de Montaigne wrote in his usual self-deprecating but sardonic way: If other men would consider themselves at the rate I do, they would, as I do, discover themselves to be full of inanity and foppery; to rid myself of it, I cannot, without making myself away. We are all steeped in it, as well one as another; but they who are not aware on’t, have somewhat the better bargain; and yet I know not whether they have or no. Book 3, IX: Of Vanity That chapter is one of his longer pieces in The Essays, and like most others in ……… click below for more ↓

The First Dark Age

History & Biography / Science & Technology / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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The causes of the first “Dark Age” have long been the topic of debate among historians and archeologists. Many ideas and theories have been put forward; none have found universal agreement. It’s commonly referred to in scholarly circles as “The Catastrophe.” Earthquakes, drought, migrations (or the more popular single-people migration theory), volcanoes, barbarian raiders, climate change and systemic collapse have all been blamed for the sudden collapse of civilizations in the eastern Mediterranean over a short period of time. While any one of these may account for particular cities, or even a small geographical region, it is difficult to apply those ……… click below for more ↓

Happiness & Fulfillment

Buddhism / Faith / History & Biography / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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There are ten methods for meditating on the world, begins one scroll in the 1,300-year-old collection of Tang-dynasty sutras from Xian, China, that can lead us to happiness and fulfillment. I realize that sounds like the opening of a New Age piffle book, but the sutras were actually discovered in a cave near a Buddhist monastery, in the far western region of China, in 1900. The scrolls were looted and sold to collectors and academia, and until 1998 were pretty much lost. Now the public can read a few selections from them in the book, The Lost Sutras of Jesus, ……… click below for more ↓

Testing a Homeplug-Powerline Network

Personal Reminiscences / Science & Technology / Technology & GadgetsLeave a comment

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I’ve had some wireless issues for quite some time now. There are dead spots in the house – a central wall has metal ducts and a gas fireplace, which are beside the laundry room with its metal-enclosed washer and dryer. About 5-6m of metal interfere with the wireless signal. The modem is attached to the cable, which comes through the north side of the house, and there are no other active cable outlets in other rooms (there are outlets for cable, but they’ve never been properly connected). Plus the ducts and pies in the basement and the metal front door ……… click below for more ↓

Re-reading Heraclitus

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I started to re-read Haxton’s 2001 translation of Heraclitus last night. I came across references to him when reading introductory material on Montaigne recently and I wanted to flesh out my knowledge and understanding. Heraclitus of Ephesus was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who lived during the transformational Axial Age, roughly contemporary with other philosophers like Gautama Buddha, Zarathustra, Confucius and Lao Tzu. He wrote a significant treatise (On Nature) consisting of three books, one on the cosmos, one on politics and the third on theology. It may have been, like the fragments, a collection of aphorisms and epigrams. That master work vanished around the time ……… click below for more ↓

The Soviet Machiavelli

Blog & Blogging / History & Biography / PoliticsLeave a comment

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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 compatriots in one of the most challenging – and often lethal – political environments. He ……… click below for more ↓

Montaigne and Machiavelli

Philosophy / Politics / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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Michel de Montaigne mentioned Machiavelli only twice in his Essays, both in Book Two. This tells us he was aware of the latter, but not whether he was intimately familiar with his works. Nor does it tell us which of Machiavelli’s writings he is referring to (by this date, all of Machiavelli’s major works were in print). Machiavelli himself had died in 1527, some 50 or more years before Montaigne penned this part of his essays (first published in 1580). The first mention is in Chapter XXXIV: OBSERVATION ON THE MEANS TO CARRY ON A WAR ACCORDING TO JULIUS CAESAR ……… click below for more ↓

Chasing storms on Saturn

Astronomy & Cosmology / Science & Technology / Technology & GadgetsLeave a comment

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There’s a beautiful video about the Cassini mission and its images of the storms on Saturn at the New York Times website. It’s amazing to see what images and information science has given us about a planet 886 billion miles (1.4 billion kms) away and its odd collection of rings and 60 moons. Saturn’s storms Saturn takes 30 years to orbit the Sun and in January, 2014, began its first spring in 15 years. Until then, the northern hemisphere was shrouded in darkness and the rings tilted away from us. Now the north pole is in sunlight and the magnificent, monstrously large, hexagonal ……… click below for more ↓

Montaigne’s words on anger

Philosophy / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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“There is no passion that so shakes the clarity of our judgment as anger,” Montaigne wrote in Book II of his Essays (Chapter 31). “It is a passion that takes pleasure in itself and flatters itself.” That strikes me a very Buddhist statement, a comment lifted from the Dhammapada, although Montaigne was a solid Catholic. It certainly has a similar wisdom. I have seen that anger cloud the judgment of people in political debate, on many stages from national to local. It blinds people to the reality of the issues, and carries them on a wave of self-induced pleasure, as ……… click below for more ↓

Dave Clark Five

Culture / Music & Reviews / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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We’re sitting on the front deck listening to British Sixties Radio, an internet radio station we like and listen to a lot, and they just played the Dave Clark Five doing Glad All Over. That song came out on the UK charts in January, 1964, reaching North America a bit later. Fifty years ago this year. I was a young teenager then, not long moved to a new apartment, going to high school, and listening to the music of the British Invasion on the transistor radio I carried everywhere with me. In another year or so, I would be moved ……… click below for more ↓

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