I had a chance yesterday to learn more about a strange and tragic incident in recent Brazilian history: the country’s so-called “rubber soldiers” (soldados na borracha) program of the Second World War. The story is almost totally unknown in the United States, and for this reason I thought it would be worthwhile to share some details about it here.
It has been a while, but I finally had a chance to catch up with James Maverick, the proprietor of the site Maverick Traveler. I’ve done interviews with him before here at Return Of Kings, and always found him to be congenial subject. There are a lot of travel and lifestyle sites out there, but James is one of the few who truly has practiced what he preaches.
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Here are some sayings and stories taken from Diogenes Laertius’s Lives of the Philosophers. I’ve mentioned this book in a few previous articles here. Practical life advice, amusing anecdotes, and mischievous criticisms of famous names never lose their freshness or fail to bring a smile. Indeed, we often forget that one of the greatest lessons philosophy can teach us is a sense of humor about ourselves and most other worldly things.
Diogenes Laertius’s Lives of the Philosophers contains interesting stories and sayings of a great many ancient Greek sages, of whom most we would otherwise know almost nothing. My own well-worn copy of the book presented me recently with the wit and wisdom of Lyco, who is said to have lived from 299 to 225 B.C. The details about his life and legacy are found in V.4 of the Lives.
A reader is annoyed that someone is trying to tell him how he should approach and think about his parental responsibilities.
This person is appears to be crossing lines of decorum, but as often happens, I suspect there is more to the story here.
Many decades before 1453 (the year Constantinople finally fell to the Ottoman Turks), the Byzantine “Empire” had become a sad parody of its former self. Mismanagement, bad leadership, and the inability of the old state to cope with the challenges of its strategic environment had fatally doomed it long before Ottoman cannon breached its walls.
I love meat, and I love bones. And we should try to pair these two things together whenever we can. Professional chefs will tell you that the things always taste better with the bones left in. But due to the increasingly sanitized society we live in, we’re losing touch with the beauty and taste of bones. I wanted to write this article in praise of bones, in the hope that you consider making them a part of your culinary rotation.
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