Author: Quintus Curtius

Sometimes You Have To Make Allowances For People (Podcast)

Quintus Curtius Podcast , , ,

Sometimes you have to accept the flaws and issues that people have, in order to accomplish the greater good.  If you are in a leadership position, the priority is mission accomplishment.  All else is secondary.  Your people will not be flawless: some of them will have issues.  If someone is a top performer, sometimes you have to learn to work around those flaws, as long as his abilities merit consideration.  In special situations, you have to make allowances for people, and work around problems.  Circumstances will be the judge of this principle–and it should not be abused.

Continue reading →

Interview At “Knowledge Without College” With Patrick Butler

Quintus Curtius Podcast , ,

Last week I had a great interview with Patrick Butler, whose fantastic “Knowledge Without College” series has the following mission statement:

Continue reading →

The Lack Of Thankfulness (Podcast)

Quintus Curtius Podcast , , ,

There are many people who manifest a lack of thankfulness in their daily lives.  This comes across not only in how they treat others, but in how they treat themselves.  Lack of gratitude comes down to a failure of will: a failure to appreciate the real potential that lies within, and a failure to understand how short life can be.  Stop looking for free handouts, and start being someone who offers value.

Continue reading →

The Mind Of Hippocrates

Quintus Curtius Thought , , , ,

Thomas Kuhn, in his brilliant 1962 treatise on the structure of scientific revolutions, proposed that the advancement of knowledge takes place more often in periodic surges than through slow, incremental linearity.  He proposed that progress can best be understood as a sequence of “paradigms;” in his view, a paradigm was a kind of general consensus on how systems should be understood and interpreted.

Continue reading →

The Top 13 War Films

Quintus Curtius Film ,

Someone on Twitter recently asked me to make a list of the top war films.  The titles below are the result.  I present them in no strict order, although I do believe the first five are superior to the remainder.  There are a great number of war films, but my goal was to select the few that occupy a special category.  Each reader, of course, may form his own judgments.

Continue reading →

Sometimes You Bite Off More Than You Can Chew (Podcast)

Quintus Curtius Podcast , , ,

If you are out there pursuing your goals, overcoming obstacles, and blasting through barriers, there will be times when you take on more than you can handle.  You will misjudge situations and, as the saying goes, will “bite off more than you can chew.”  This is part of the growth process.  This applies both professionally and personally.  Don’t let the opinions of others diminish your focus. Deal with the situation as best you can, and chalk it up to life.

Continue reading →

Roman Surgical Extraction Of Projectiles In Ancient Combat

Quintus Curtius History , , ,

The most comprehensive treatise on Roman medicine that has survived is Celsus’s De Medicina (On Medicine), a work that fills eight carefully composed books written in a simple and elegant style.  His full name was Aulus Cornelius Celsus, and appears to have flourished during the emperorship of Tiberius (A.D. 14—37).  But beyond these bare bones we know almost nothing about the man or his background.  Scholars have established that his manual was originally part of a larger, Pliny-esque encyclopedia that included books on military science, agriculture, law, and rhetoric, among other topics; in this respect he is very much like the biographer Cornelius Nepos, whose surviving work is but a fraction of a larger corpus.

Continue reading →

Max Hastings’s “The Korean War” (Review)

Quintus Curtius History, Literature , ,

There are no “forgotten wars.”  We may choose to talk about them, to write about them, or to learn from them.  Or we may not.  It is a question of what value we place on the lessons.  Some eras, forged in strife and hardship, embrace history’s lessons, and consume narratives of past conflict with an eager inquisitiveness; other epochs, softened by luxury and lassitude, are largely immune to the lessons of the past.  In the end, it is always a matter of choice.

Continue reading →

Some Recommended Books For Boys

Quintus Curtius Literature , , ,

In the past I’ve resisted the idea of making lists of recommended books.  One gets the sense that the instant something is committed to a list, many will assume that the list is exclusive, and that other options should not be considered.  There is also a personal feeling of distaste I have towards the “listicle” writing format:  it seems trite, simplistic, and geared towards the lowest attention span reader.

Continue reading →

Prisoner Of The Bolsheviks: The Ordeal Of Henry Pearson

Quintus Curtius History , ,

The newspapers and magazines of previous eras provide us a window on the age.  One gets a sense of the mood and odor of the times.  Personal accounts are better still, especially when the writer has endured a direful or traumatic experience.

Continue reading →