Author: Andrei Navrozov

Chiasso, the cozy little bar I frequent in the old town, tucked away behind Piazza Borsa… But let us not be overhasty in judgment.

The subject of “election interference” is of late the media equivalent of tulip fever, notwithstanding that free competition of opinions and ideas, which interfere with and undermine one another, is what a proper electoral campaign ought to be all about.

A longish title today, but worth it. Nietzsche’s birthday, on October 15 exactly 180 years ago, is coming up, and what better tribute to the author of The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music than a modern update? Especially because my post a few weeks back, on the different speeds with which the arts atrophy, elicited such a lively response from the gentle reader.

In the wake of recent events in the Middle East, George Gilder, some of whose thoughts all those years ago I thought original enough to publish in the magazine I was editing, has just updated his book The Israel Test. I had not read the book when it was first published, in 2009, and now I thought I’d catch up with the intellectual evolution of the acclaimed author of Wealth and Poverty.

When there’s no money in the house, as happens often in the lives of a couple who are both what the Italian taxman calls liberi professionisti – people with no regular income, to you and me – I console myself and my family with the thought that however little we are paid for our labors, it’s all in gold.

Doubtless the gentle reader has no illusions about my knowledge and understanding of sport, given that on more than one occasion I confessed to have but limited mastery in only two fields, chess and badminton.

“Cloudily enwrapped in allegorical devices” was how Edmund Spenser described to his readers the plot of The Faerie Queene.