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Monthly Archives: February 2011
The Feast
I’ve just started reading some Montaigne. He seems a splendid chap, not least as you can get to know him so well through his 1000+ pages of observations on the profound, trivial and mundane. As Wikipedia has it “Montaigne’s stated … Continue reading
Posted in Death, Life
Tagged Death, Essays, Feast, Gallop, Kierkegaard, Living, Montaigne, Sated Guest, Seneca, Stephen Fry
3 Comments
Belisarius
Belisarius, the last great Roman general, retook Rome for Constantinople twice. He fought off barbarians in a dozen lands. He took on impossible numbers and outmanoeuvred them. He took on increasingly unrealistic ‘asks’ from the Emperor, and, through his great … Continue reading
Posted in Life, Work
Tagged Belisarius, Happy High Status, Jealousy, Justinian, Positive Sum, Zero Sum
2 Comments
Inner Disposition
Twice this week I made myself feel a lot better by acting to adjust my ‘inner disposition’. Before Christmas I read the Stoic Epictetus’s ‘Handbook’. The translator and expert guide Keith Seddon has produced a simple summary of Stoicism in … Continue reading
Posted in Achilles, Aristotle, Life
Tagged Achilles, Anger, Aristotle, Epictetus, Eudaimonia, Fearlessness, In the Moment, Inner Disposition, Keith Seddon, Kierkegaard, Letting Go, Peace of Mind, Ranting, Risk, Serenity, Stoicism
2 Comments
Obituary
We had another big leaving do at work this week. Hard to do justice to over 30 years (by my rough estimate 8,000 or so working days) of a person’s working life in 15 minutes of speeches, but it felt … Continue reading
Posted in Death, Life, Work
Tagged Death, Emma Hamilton, Enjoy, Epitaph, Florence Nightingale, Ghengis Khan, Henry Ford, Let go, Life, Lord Nelson, Obituary, Work
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The Daffodil
The Daffodil, or more classically and correctly the Narcissus, perfectly captures my week. First my daughter. Three years ago when she started school, I sometimes thought of her as a little snowdrop, a tiny beautiful flower, but gently bowed and diffident. … Continue reading
Posted in Life
Tagged Culture, Daffodil, Joy, Kierkegaard, Life Balance, Multiculturalism, Narcissus, Spring
2 Comments
Newspad
With remarkable prescience Arthur C Clarke gave his character Dr. Heywood R. Floyd a Newspad in 2001: A Space Odyssey. It collected a constantly refreshing stream of all the world’s news. But he also noticed (with even more impressive prescience) … Continue reading
Posted in Life
Tagged 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C Clarke, Bob Monkhouse, Collecting, iPad, News, Newspad, RSS
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Kindness
Three takes on kindness. First, a person I scarcely know – without any guile or hesitation – kindly bought me my coffee at work on Friday. I was completely thrown by it. An older man, he works in Human Resources. … Continue reading
Posted in Aristotle, Ethics, Life, Work
Tagged Aesop, Aristotle, Benjamin Franklin, Charity, Cognitive Dissonance, Generosity, Giving, Kindness, Reverse Psychology, Sour Grapes, Trained Ethics, Wikipedia, Wired
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Truisms iv) Demos
Growing up in a safe, benign and predominantly urban country like the UK, means you miss out on a lot of the experiences which define life in other countries. We don’t really have natural disasters, extreme weather, earthquakes, civil war, … Continue reading
Posted in Life, Truisms
Tagged Australia, Democracy, Egypt, Golem, Government, HAL 9000, Henry VIII, Jenny Holzer, Plato, UK
1 Comment
