In our democratic world, wealth is corporate and anonymous and political power fleeting. Our historians, whatever their own hue, reflect that reality and deprecate earlier historians who dwelt too long in the minutiae of the births, deaths and marriages of monarchs. This is good, I suppose, but it is well to remember that these births,… Continue reading #OTD 25 November – Blood and water
Category: The Calendar
#OTD 24 November – Brave new world
Voltaire wrote much about man and nature. A short letter to a friend on 24 November 1755 in the wake of the Lisbon earthquake picks up some perennial themes: This is indeed a cruel piece of natural philosophy! We shall find it difficult to discover how the laws of movement operate in such fearful disasters…… Continue reading #OTD 24 November – Brave new world
#OTD 23 November – The world’s but an act
The phrase “according to tradition” confesses and avoids falsehood to justify a truth. It is apt for 23 November 534 BC, the day Thespis became the first “actor”. It is also apt that most online sources justify the assertion along the lines “according to Aristotle in his Poetics“. Aristotle says no such thing in that… Continue reading #OTD 23 November – The world’s but an act
#OTD 22 November – Where were you the day…
“Where were you the day…” Over the decades, there has been the landing on the moon – an interesting choice of “landing” – and the death of Princess Diana, the visually overwhelming 9/11 and the coronation of King Charles III. Many outside – and no few inside – the Anglosphere point to many others. 22… Continue reading #OTD 22 November – Where were you the day…
#OTD 21 November – Jewishness and the US
The idea that there is a “Judeo-Christian” moral tradition is a recent one. George Orwell used it in the 1940s and in 1952 President-elect Eisenhower famously stated: Our form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don’t care what it is. With us of course… Continue reading #OTD 21 November – Jewishness and the US
#OTD 20 November – The beast on sea and land
On 20 November 1820, the Nantucket whaling ship Essex was attacked and sunk by a sperm whale in the south Pacific. The Essex was 87′ 7″ while one report put the whale at 85′. First mate Owen Chase and cabin boy Thomas Nickerson each wrote accounts, the first an inspiration for Moby-Dick. Chase and Nickerson… Continue reading #OTD 20 November – The beast on sea and land
#OTD 19 November – What is a head of state?
What precisely is a “head of state”? In 1981, outgoing President Carter was able to inform the nation: In a few days I will lay down my official responsibilities in this office, to take up once more the only title in our democracy superior to that of President, the title of citizen. These lines descend… Continue reading #OTD 19 November – What is a head of state?
#OTD 18 November – Ring, ring, how do you give me a call?
Our industrial revolutions so far are mechanization, mass production, automation and robotization. The fifth revolution, we keep telling ourselves, will be a rehumanization, an age when we all reap the benefits of these gains. Whether such optimism is justified, the one consumer durable for at least three of the ages and the one we will… Continue reading #OTD 18 November – Ring, ring, how do you give me a call?
#OTD 17 November – Lost causes
17 November is the feast day of St Gregory Thaumaturgus, patron saint of desperate, forgotten, impossible and lost causes. Gregory was born in Neocaesarea, now the city of Niksar in northern Turkey. The name “Neoceasarea” is a sensible adoption to keep the favour of the monarch, and so Lord John Berkeley and Sir George Carteret… Continue reading #OTD 17 November – Lost causes
#OTD 16 November – Something old something new
When Justice Scalia’s son presided over his father’s funeral mass, one theme was the reconciliation of the old and the new. The goodness or badness of Scalia’s jurisprudence in the transience of politics to one side, this son of an immigrant rose to pre-eminence in the law with an adherence to originalism when approaching the… Continue reading #OTD 16 November – Something old something new