Mr. Autodidact Is Asked : Where to Begin?
An academic friend about go on a sabbatical in England, writes to ask how he should remedy his deficiency in Greek and Roman history and wonders if it is not the sort of question I frequently receive.
Category: Free Content
The EU Iron Curtain
Freedom of expression is being targeted by the bureaucratic cliques in Brussels, and most recently they are doing it without any pretenses.
A Primer for Voters, Lesson #4: Weed the Garden
When I ask people about candidates they support–and why–they usually respond by praising their position of abortion or taxes or foreign policy. When I probe further and ask what, for example, J.D. Vance has done to limit abortion, they cite some speech he has given or a position paper, To quote the godfather of Beat poets, “The thing is, they never learn.”
A Primer for Voters, Lesson #3:
It is a truism of political analysts that while most Americans say they do not trust the members of Congress, they tend to trust their own representative. This is a bizarre dichotomy.
A Primer for Voters, #2: The Free Market
We are often reminded that “There is not only no such thing as a free lunch.” This is true in one sense, since, while I may get my lunch free by robbing the restaurant or blackmailing the proprietor or extorting money fraudulently that enables me to spend other people’s money on lunch, but then the restaurant or my victims are paying for the lunch.
A Primer for Delusional Voters in Several Easy Lessons, Lesson 1: Capitalism
I don’t know how many of our readers s intend to vote in the next or any election, but if a vote is to be anything more than a shot in the dark at a tree rustling in the breeze, a citizen is morally obliged to spend a little time grappling with political realities
Back to the Future II: The Olympics
I haven’t paid much attention to the Olympics for years. It. has been a long time since the Games were a genuine amateur sport. All my life they have been big business that guaranteed endorsements and jobs to the winners. When the allowed professional basketball players in, it was a public declaration that they were giving up the pretense.
Back to the Future
I’ve been in 15th century Florence, to be precise, colloguing with Petrarch, Pico della Mirandola, Savonarola, Cosimo and Lorenzo de’ Medici, Machiavelli, and others. As a traveler in time and space, I was eager to share my thoughts on the American present, which for them is an unimaginably distant future.
Book of July: Cyril Kornbluth
Cyril Kornbluth was a popular science fiction writer of the 50’s and 60’s, and a frequent collaborator with the somewhat better known Frederick Pohl.
Tuscan Convivium
Our next program abroad is scheduled to begin roughly, for Oct 16/17 and will last 7 days with the possibility of additional days in Rome.
