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Sunday Movie Roundup (5/7/2017)
Some weeks are better than others. I’ve had better weeks, but here are the results. Even disappointing movies are fun to write about.
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A Meeting With Stalin (Podcast)
A former NKVD agent describes a meeting with Joseph Stalin and the special assignment he was given. We reflect on the fact that power and glory are fleeting, and that they can vanish faster than most people believe.
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The Curious Customs Of The Franks: How One Arab Knight Saw The Crusaders
We have recently discussed a story from the life of the learned Ali Ibn Munqidh. His grandson Usama Ibn Munqidh (1095–1188) was a very famous poet, warrior and literary figure in medieval Islam and his memoirs are an almost unique portal of insight on how one culture saw the other. The scholar Philip Hitti describes…
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Language Mastery As A Secret Code: How Sadid Al-Mulk Was Saved From Danger
Mastery of language is indeed a powerful tool. This is especially true when the speakers hail from the same cultural background, and can make use of all those subtleties that would be lost on the non-native. This point is brilliantly illustrated by an anecdote told about Ali Ibn Munqidh, who became emir of the district…
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Sunday Movie Roundup (4/23/2017)
Oklahoma City (2017) Director: Barak Goodman The 1990s seem to have an air of unreality about them now. Looking back, they seem like a time of missed opportunities: failure to reform the financial system, failure to improve the infrastructure, failure to understand the consequences of unrelenting interference in Middle Eastern affairs. The drama of 9/11–and…
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Nature Or Nurture?
In this podcast, a reader has a question about nature and nurture. Which one, he wonders, has the most influence in forming our identities? The answer is complicated, of course. But some general points can be stated. We close with a reading of the Epilogue to my book Thirty-Seven.
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Sunday Movie Roundup (4/16/2017)
Disorder (2015) Director: Alice Winocour This is one of those great, slow-burning movies that slipped under the radar (at least here in the United States). It’s part character study and part suspense drama, but the end result is a very satisfying cinematic experience. Lead actor Matthias Schoenaerts is a great actor whom I’ve admired for a long…
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The Hollow Men (Podcast)
A reader from Italy writes to say he is frustrated and angry with the deceit and fraudulence of a certain political figure on the world stage. We explain why it is best to take a detached, philosophical view of such men, since experience shows that they eventually bring about their own ruin. What matters is…
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C. Licinius Macer’s Advice To His People
I recently came across a passage from a speech appearing in Sallust’s Historiae (III.48). The oration is put in the mouth of the popular tribune Caius Licinius Macer, who was battling the influence of the Roman patricians. It purportedly was delivered in 73 B.C.; Macer’s intention was to rouse the common people to action against…
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Resources Can Come In Unexpected Ways: The Bounty Of Imad al-Dawla
Imad ad-Dawla Ibn Buwaih (A.D. 891-949) was the founder of the Buyid Dynasty in medieval Persia. His name in Persian is given as Ali Ibn Buya, but he is more commonly known as Imad al-Dawla (“pillar of the state”). Ibn Khallikan’s short sketch of his life contains the story related here; this story in turn…
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François-René de Chateaubriand: The Apostle Of Romanticism
The nineteenth century literary, artistic, and intellectual movement we today call “romanticism” is not easily defined, but is generally acknowledged to embrace the following sentiments: an idealized view of the past, the emphasis of feeling and sentiment over rationality, a preference for exotic locales and peoples, and the primacy of emotion. One of the founders—perhaps…
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Joseph Persico’s “Infamy On Trial” (Book Review)
We live in an age of power without responsibility, an age where ambition and hubris are too often permitted to run roughshod over institutional controls and the dictates of common decency. We are too often made to feel helpless in the face of power exercised so far beyond the reach of accountability that many of…
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Sunday Movie Roundup (4/2/2017)
The lineup for this week was not stellar, but not the worst I’ve seen.
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Leadership Questions: Pulling The Trigger, And Dealing With A Passive-Aggressive Boss
Two different readers ask questions from their own personal experience: 1. One man is trying to overcome feelings of discomfort when ordering his men to go places where they may face certain harm. 2. Another man is trying to deal with a boss whose passive-aggressive comments may mean trouble for him.
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Machiavelli’s Principles Of Conspiracies
Machiavelli, in book III, chapter 6 of his Discourses, enunciates the principles of political conspiracies. He considers an understanding of them to be of primary importance. I intend to paraphrase his relevant points here, so that readers without access to the original text may have a better understanding of them. He begins with a point…
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Sunday Movie Roundup (3/26/2017)
Here are the latest results and post-mortems. All in all, it was a great week.
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Making Jerky From Turkey Meat
I thought I’d post a short weekend culinary tip here. Recently I wrote about making jerked meat. Never having tried to make jerky from turkey before, I finally did it this past week. I was at first skeptical that the results would be encouraging, but it all worked out well. Here are the steps and…
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Hit Them Hard
When your back is against the wall, you need to fight back however you can. Don’t allow society or other people to denigrate you. Remember that the only one who cares about you is you. Sometimes the best way to get people to listen is to force them to listen. Hit them hard, and…
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The Maritime Adventures Of Philip Ashton
In June 1722 a seaman from Marblehead, Massachusetts named Philip Ashton was aboard a vessel that entered the waters around Shelburne, Nova Scotia. Ashton was a fisherman and had no experience with trouble on the high seas. But this was to change very quickly. As his shallop entered the waters of the harbor, it was…
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Wise Sayings Of The Poet Al-Tihami
The Arabic poet Abu al-Hasan Ali Ibn Muhammad al-Tihami (? – 1025) is said to have taken the name Tihami in one of two possible ways that may hint at his family’s origins, according to our trusted chronicler Ibn Khallikan. Tihami was used both as an informal name for the city of Mecca, and as…
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Why You Should Have A Slow-Cooker
If you’re single and living alone, it’s important to know how to cook nutritious meals for yourself on a consistent basis. Like practically everything else in today’s world, you need to learn this skill yourself: no one is going to spoon-feed you. What I want to talk about today is an efficient cooking strategy that…
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Sunday Movie Roundup (3/19/2017)
The Wall (Die Wand) (2012) Director: Julian Pölsler This is an intriguing, mysterious, and unnerving meditation on loneliness and alienation. An art-house film that may not be to everyone’s liking, this top-notch drama features fantastic choreography and views of the Austrian Alps, as well as a great performance by Martina Gedeck. The plot: a woman…
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The Memory Of Benefits, And The Forgetting Of Offenses
Some weeks ago I sought to make contact with two old friends I had known in the early 1990s. I had not spoken to either one since about 1993. This kind of thing is always an uncertain proposition, as you can never really be sure how a person has changed over the years. Sometimes you…
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Fixed Fortifications Are Useless
Armies and states throughout history have sought to provide security by constructing fixed fortifications like fortresses, citadels, and walls. These projects inevitably end as dismal failures. Not only do they not provide security, but they do something even worse: they provide an illusion of security that encourages a defender to be overconfident and careless. And…
Original copy of Cicero’s De Officiis (On Duties) published in Holland in 1642. From the collection of Fortress of the Mind.
Quintus Curtius 
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