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What Knowledge Comes To Us From Dreams?
Arthur Conan Doyle’s sinister short story “The Leathern Funnel” deals with a phenomenon called psychometry: the supposed ability of material objects associated with emotionally charged experiences to preserve and transmit a record of such events. Published in 1900, the tale begins innocently enough with a meeting between friends, then slowly builds to an ominous crescendo…
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T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men”: A Reading
No short literary effort quite captures the shadowy nothingness, the husk-like, desiccated essence of modern man, as well as T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men.” This is my reading of his poem.
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Movie Roundup (1/12/2020) (Podcast)
In this movie roundup we discuss “1917” (2019), “Earthquake Bird,” (2019), and “Furthest Witness” (2017).
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Accountability And Discipline Must Apply Equally To All
Yacub Ibn Al-Laith Al-Saffar (يعقوب بن الليث الصفار) lived from A.D. 840 to 879, and is credited as the founder of the Saffarid dynasty of Sistan. Sistan is the geographic area now known as eastern Iran and southern Afghanistan; its capital was the city of Zaranj. The word saffar in Arabic means “brass founder,” an…
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If You Cannot Be Great, At Least Do No Harm
Aesop tells us a story of a hunter who was once looking for the tracks of a lion. Searching here and there with no success, he paused to ask a local woodcutter if he had seen the footprints of a lion, and, if so, where he thought the lion’s den might be found. The woodcutter…
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Movie Roundup 1/5/2020 (Podcast)
In this roundup, we discuss four recent movies: Mike Wallace Is Here (2019) Destroyer (2018) At Eternity’s Gate (2019) Meeting Gorbachev (2018) Tune in for the discussion! Trailers for each film are shown below.
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Never Surrender What Is Most Important
There is a fable in Aesop that involves the behavior of the beaver. In ancient times, beavers were often hunted for the scented oil, known as castorea, that was found in sacs near its genital area. The beaver liked to rub its hind parts against trees and logs, thereby possessively marking them with his scent;…
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The Instituto Ricardo Brennand, And The Praia Dos Carneiros
The Instituto Ricardo Brennand is a Recife cultural institution containing a museum, library, and armory. Founded in 2002, it is an impressive complex and well worth the visit. I always try to see local museums when I travel, and I was glad that I came here.
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The Most Popular Posts At Fortress Of The Mind For 2019
It’s inventory and round-up time of the year again: time to do some record-keeping and list the most viewed posts here at Fortress of the Mind. The list below is a pure ranking. It includes not only essays, but also podcasts. The first post listed (“A G Manifesto Tweet Reading”) was number one, and is…
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Porto De Galinhas And Maragogi
We recently visited the beach areas of Porto de Galinhas and Maragogi. Porto de Galinhas is a major tourist beach destination, and is located about 60 km. south of Recife, in the state of Pernambuco. Maragogi is a greater distance away; it is located in the state of Alagoas. Both of these places are known…
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Some Views Of Olinda, Brazil
Olinda is located in the greater Recife area in Brazil’s state of Pernambuco. It is considered one of the best-preserved of the old colonial cities. We visited the city today, and the result is the collection of photos below. The city is about a 25 minute drive from downtown Recife.
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Recife, Brazil At Night
We took a boat ride in Recife last night. It was really just a short ride from one part of the city to the historic downtown area, which was surprisingly alive, considering that it was Christmas Day. I sampled a lot of the street food, as is my usual habit. One interesting thing I noticed…
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Andrei Martyanov’s “The Real Revolution In Military Affairs” (Review)
Reading the works of American military pundits and the vast US media commentariat that amplifies their voices often feels like entering an alternate universe. Weaknesses are touted as “strengths”; self-congratulatory propaganda and delusion are seen as substitutes for hard analysis; belligerent, callous jingoism passes as the norm; and American “exceptionalism” is taken for granted almost…
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Thoughts On Surrealist Painting (Podcast)
What is surrealist painting? What are its underlying rationales? In this podcast, I offer a few thoughts on surrealism in painting, and name a few of my favorite surrealist painters. This is a vast subject, but a lot can be gained by looking at the work of the very best artists: Giorgio de Chirico, Yves…
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On Each Side Swords, And On Each Side Corpses
The Battle of Zama essentially concluded the Second Punic War, that terrible contest waged by Rome and Carthage for control of the western Mediterranean. It took place in 202 B.C. near the town of Zama in what is now Tunisia. The commanding generals were Hannibal on the Carthaginian side, and Publius Cornelius Scipio on the…
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Thoughts On Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman” (Podcast)
In this podcast we discuss some aspects of Martin Scorsese’s movie The Irishman. This movie seems to divide people into proponents and detractors. I think it is a great film, and very much worth seeing, as long as we approach it from the right perspective.
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On Obedience And Disobedience
We spend most of lives in obedience to one form of authority or another. Rarely, if ever, is it counted as a virtue worthy of discussion by us moderns. On the contrary: we are expected to applaud disobedience, disorder, and challenges to authority, as if such disobedience were automatically exempt from scrutiny.
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Some Recommended Movies And Programs (Podcast)
In this podcast we discuss some good movies and programs I’ve seen recently. “Dark Waters” (2019) is a legal drama dealing with corporate malfeasance, and “The Confession Killer” (2019) is a gripping documentary about how the Henry Lee Lucas serial killer investigation was handled. In some ways, the message of both of them is the…
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Selfish Leaders Are The Ruin Of A Nation
We have previously discussed the Book of Kalila and Dimna in these pages. Its source material can be traced to the Indian classic The Panchatantra of Vishnu Sarma. And it is from this book that the following fable originates.
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Enlarged Curiosity: The Observational Powers Of Charles Darwin
A period of travel and overseas residence can transform a man from a plodding conformist to a free-thinking iconoclast. Travel is the expediter of dreams, the elixir of mental health, and the abolisher of parochial preconceptions. Nowhere is this truth more clearly demonstrated than in the life and career of scientist Charles Darwin, whose five-year…
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Another Michael Porfirio Tweet Reading (Podcast)
If you are not laughing, you are not fully enjoying life. It’s been a while since I’ve done a G Manifesto (Twitter: @MichaelPorfirio) tweet reading. But popular demand can’t be ignored, so I decided to put another podcast out with some of his most recent tweets. The laughter is nonstop…listen for yourself.
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Only The Brave Will Find Redemption
There are two things that a man must learn to accept in life: the inherent ambiguities in choosing between alternatives, and the omnipresence of suffering. Consider the story told about Socrates in Diogenes Laertius’s Lives of the Philosophers (II.33): a young man asked the philosopher for his advice on whether he should get married. The…
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The Wisdom And Recklessness Of Ibn Al-Sikkit
The birthdate of the philologist and grammarian Yacub Ibn Al-Sikkit (ابو يوسف يعقوب ابن السكيت) is not known with certainty, but 800 A.D. is a reliable estimate. His father enjoyed notoriety and prestige in court circles, and may have conferred on his son some access to the corridors of power. The sobriquet “Al-Sikkit” was given…
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The Audiobook Of “Lives Of The Great Commanders” Is Now Available
The audiobook of Lives of the Great Commanders is now available on Audible, Amazon, and iTunes. This new, original translation of Cornelius Nepos’s Lives of the Great Commanders is the first to appear in nearly a century, and has been almost single-handedly responsible for renewing interest in this long-neglected classic.
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The Loss Of Confidence, And The Infliction Of Shame (Podcast)
There are two things that can be especially harmful to an individual or to a society: a loss of confidence, and the acquisition of a consuming sense of shame. How many people do we know who have been set adrift after losing their sense of purpose, or after acquiring a sense of guilt? The same…
Original copy of Cicero’s De Officiis (On Duties) published in Holland in 1642. From the collection of Fortress of the Mind.
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