Inanity and vanity
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…
Ian Chadwick
The First Dark Age
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…
Happiness & Fulfillment
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.…
Testing a Homeplug-Powerline Network
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…
Re-reading Heraclitus
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…
The Soviet Machiavelli
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…
Montaigne and Machiavelli
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…
Chasing storms on Saturn
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…
Montaigne’s words on anger
“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…
Dave Clark Five
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…
Shock Top beers
Just tried two American beers from St. Louis: a Belgian White and Raspberry White, both in cans. The former has coriander, lime and lemon peel, the latter has, of course,…
Montaigne’s library
I read yesterday that Montaigne had a library of 1,000 books, of which he was very proud. It was his retreat – the room he went to where he wanted…
Finding my muse in Montaigne
Muse: a source of inspiration; especially a guiding genius; the imaginary force thought to provide inspiration to poets, writers, artists, etc. A muse, for modern writers, is that indefinable force…
Fools
Even though for all his life, A fool attends upon a wise man, He no more knows wisdom Than a spoon knows the flavours of soup. The Dhammapada, Chapter 5,…
Another fad bites the dust
The gluten-free fad took another major hit to its already weakened credibility this week when researchers who had first diagnosed “non-celiac gluten sensitivity” found out that, oops, they were wrong.…
Two new books
Yesterday I received two new books from Amazon: The Complete Works of Michel de Montaigne translated by Donald Frame, and How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question…
My Grandfathers’ War
One hundred years ago World War I began, a war that started as a clash in a tiny, almost unknown Balkan state and blossomed into a violent, gruesome war that…
New post on the Municipal Machiavelli
I’ve written a short post that I trust will serve as an introduction to a longer piece I plan to write. It’s on the letter of Quintus Tullius Cicero to…
What’s in a (Popular) Name?
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.” Juliet, in Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2) A recent article in…
Neolithic site dig uncovers sophisticated structures
A Neolithic site in the Orkney Islands shows our ancestors had sophisticated building skills more than 5,000 years ago. According to a story in The Scotsman, A groundbreaking excavation of…