Donald Rumsfeld has his own take on Socrates mantra that ‘the only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.’ Or, in the words of the former Secretary of Defence: There are known knowns; there are known unknowns; there are unknown unknowns; but there are also...
There’s been high praise for the Saturday Paper. If you’ve been – as they say – living under a rock, I’d direct you to the paper’s twitter feed, where many of the comments are retweeted. Unbeholden to 140 characters, let me try and capture the flavor of those tweets:...
The Battle of Stalingrad – although the word ‘battle’ doesn’t begin to fully capture its carnage and destruction – was one of those reminders from the twentieth century of the true destructive power of totalitarian regimes. The willingness of Hitler to sacrifice his...
In the old imperial district of Beijing, a Ming dynasty mansion is now used as an auxiliary campus by Beijing Normal University. In one of the converted classrooms a group of students are making preparations to leave for Australia next semester and begin their...
The English language, Orwell wrote, ‘becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.’ There’s been no better exemplar of this in recent history than George W. Bush:...
