All Blog Entries

Note: This review was also posted on the forum. . . .

On the first day of a graduate seminar in literature, our professors would often tells us about their creation of the syllabus. We'd hear the rationale for the course, the course objectives, the student responsibilities (all pretty bland and standard stuff). And then we'd hear the most interesting part: what books/authors were left out. . . .the just didn't make the cut list. I took notes like hell during this part. Those were ...

I don't know if anyone has noticed this or not, but right now it's a great time for taking a look at the planets. Well, in UK it is anyway

So, at the moment, just after sunset the planets Venus, Jupiter and Mars are all visible. Venus in particular is astonishingly bright and fairly high in the night sky. Being as I'm rather keen on all things you have to crane your neck to see (including tall buildings, giraffes and, of course, clouds) a number of years ago we purchased a telescope ...

I have currently --to my great surprise --completed the first eight books of War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. I have come very late in life reading him and the experience is pleasant.

Now this has to be carefully said. I like Tolstoy but I am underwhelmed by him.

Years of reading Rafael Sabatini have forever conditioned me to what I expect in an historical novel. Bold dashing characters having adventures where honor and chivary and bravery accomplish much. Add to ...

As I had formerly a friend who was a transgender individual we spent a lot of time talking about gender roles and concepts relating to the Anima and Animus, and a lot of times with my guy friends, they tend to be more effeminate while I tend to be more masculine, so me and my friends joke around a lot about how I am the "guy."

And so this quote sums up how I feel about gender:

"Well, there's a little bit of man in every woman and a little bit of woman ...

There’s nothing new under the sun. You say that’s an old fogey speaking. Well, I came across this outstanding piece in the (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...EYWORDS=cicero) Wall Street Journal on politics. Not American politics, not the politics of a European nation, not even the politics of the 21st or 20th centuries. Here summarized by Philip Freeman, professor of Classics, is a little know political treatise by the brother of the great Roman ...