Comparing Quality Of Minds

The other day I read a powerful defense of a classical education (yes, I mean Greek and Roman history, language and literature), and although it was written almost a hundred years ago, it got me thinking: “The literature of Rome and Greece comprised the longest and fullest continuous record available to us, of what the […]

Is Democracy Dying?

Most of us find our own beliefs to be very comforting, and as long as we don’t have any ‘skin in the game’, we usually don’t go to the trouble of subjecting them to any form of rigorous criticism. However, if serious money is at stake through, say betting or investing, then we are much more likely to think longer […]

The Mountain Of Truth

One of my favorite fictional characters is “Doc” in John Steinbeck’s “Cannery Row”. Not many people know that Doc was based on the real-life figure of Ed Ricketts who categorized specimens from tide pools and then sold them to schools and collectors. Ricketts was an interesting personality in his own right. His significance in marine […]

Experiments In Living

I recently came across the following quotation from Edmund Burke (1729-1797) – “For us to love our country, our country must be lovely.” and for some reason it has been bouncing around in my head ever since. However, I finally realized that I did not like the word ‘lovely’, because it reminded me too closely of […]