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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…
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The Rise Of The “Plutocratic Insurgency”
I’ve written before on the extreme social dangers that come about from excessive concentrations of wealth in the hands of a few. An important series of articles by Robert and Pamela Bunker in Small Wars Journal has taken this idea one step further: they have identified the current vast income disparities as a form of insurgency…
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The Hedonistic Philosophy Of Yang Zhu
It is an unhappy fate for a philosopher to be known to posterity only through his enemies. Quotes may be taken out of context, writings may be warped or obfuscated, and conclusions may be cherry-picked to present a picture far out of accord from the writer’s original intention. We do not know if this is…
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Friday Movie Roundup (3/10/2017)
The Bridesmaid (2004) Director: Claude Chabrol
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The Life Of Father António Vieira
One of the most compelling figures of Portuguese history–and surely one of the greatest practitioners of its prose–was Father António Vieira, a Jesuit missionary, orator, statesman, writer, and mystic. His career illustrates that stimulating mixture of conservative and progressive thinking that would come to characterize the Jesuit order throughout much of its history. He was born…
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The Wisdom Of Mercy From Ibn Hazm Al-Zahiri
We turn now to those founts of wisdom who have lessons to teach us. Abu Muhammad Ali Ibn Ahmad Ibn Sa’id Ibn Hazm (أبو محمد علي بن احمد بن سعيد بن حزم) is known to history as Ibn Hazm Al-Zahiri. Born in Cordoba, Andalusia (Spain) in 994, he achieved enduring fame for his incredible intellectual…
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The Lizzie Borden Murders
Writing recently about the O.J. Simpson murders has rekindled an interest in another infamous American crime story, one that is not as well-known to modern readers. The Lizzie Borden axe murders of 1892 were in their day somewhat comparable to the Simpson case: both trials were highly publicized, the jury’s perceptions were skewed by preconceptions…
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Wednesday Movie Roundup (2/28/2017)
These are the latest two films I’ve check out in recent days. Both of them are very good, if somewhat maddening in not resolving some plot twists I would have liked to see resolved.
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The Lazarus Taxon: Something “Raised From The Dead”
There is a concept in biology called the Lazarus taxon. The word taxon (plural taxa) means a taxonomic category, as a species or genus. The term is used to describe animals or plants that vanish from the fossil record for long periods of time, only to “reappear” at a different point in history. Organisms long thought…
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Revisiting the Simpson Case: Netflix’s “The People Vs. O.J. Simpson”
I was a first-year law student in 1995. When the whole O.J. drama broke, I followed it (off and on) in the media like everyone else. I don’t remember exactly what my feelings were about the case at that time, other than the fact that I didn’t think things were going to turn out well…
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Tuesday Movie Roundup (2/21/17)
Whiplash (2014) Director: Damien Chazelle
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Why Every Man Should Read “Robinson Crusoe”
By any standard Daniel Defoe (1659?-1731) is one of the most remarkable authors in English history. In versatility, energy, and practical wisdom, few can claim to be his peer in life experiences or in skill with the pen. He came to writing by a circuitous route. After fathering seven children, he threw himself into business…
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Six Ethical Principles To Rejuvenate Societal Health
I read recently that a very rare animal was observed in the wild in the state of Iowa for the first time in over one hundred fifty years. It is called a fisher; I had never heard of it before, but the biologists tell us that it is a predatory mammal related distantly to the…
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Some Questions From An Ex-Military Reader (Podcast)
I received a great email the other day from an accomplished ex-military man who is currently enrolled in a higher degree program at a major US university. He wanted to know my thoughts on these questions:
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How Benito Mussolini Took Power
Stalin biographer Stephen Kotkin spends several pages of his book discussing the lessons to be learned from Mussolini’s seizure of power in Italy in the early 1920s. It was something that happened gradually, in stages, when institutions that should have been able to bring him to heel did nothing, either due to their own lack…
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Abu Al Hasan On The Fleeting Nature Of Earthly Riches
We will now relate another anecdote from Ibn Khallikan.
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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