A bonfire of vanities

An evil omen — of that there’s no doubt. After Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), hero of Joel and Ethan Coen’s No Country for Old Men, shoots and wounds a deer while hunting in the West Texas desert, he comes across a trail of fresh blood crossing at right angles the trail of deer blood that [...]

Vastly outnumbered, again

For those of you interested in the rather big question of how concepts like East and West have evolved, and how such abstractions have influenced global history and continue to influence the politics of our day, Anthony Pagden’s Worlds at War: The 2,500-Year Struggle between East & West is very much worth reading. Here’s a [...]

I loved Rome more

Fished out of the river Rhone last fall, a bust of Julius Caesar dating from 46 BCE, two years before his death. Oh yes, his death: on that delicate yet never untimely subject let us attend to Brutus once again…
Romans, countrymen, and lovers! hear me for my
cause, and be silent, that you may hear: believe [...]

What’s a nice bookstore like you doing in a place like this?

It took me nearly a year to notice this place, despite the fact that it’s located about half a block north of my office. Maybe it’s because I don’t frequently walk north (the GO train lies in the opposite direction); maybe it’s because there’s no glaringly bright signage announcing its presence (if you don’t look [...]