Adrian Buck > Recent Status Updates

"And in the meantime Greece was experiencing a relief which she had needed for two generations. A field had been opened to her superfluous children, who were pouring by thousands, or rather tens of thousands, into Asia, to find careers, if not permanent homes." - demographics drive military expansion, cf the Vikings.

The Water of Life chapter has been the least believable so far. This is unfortunate, as you have to believe what happens there, to believe everything that follows. The problem seems to inadequate foreshadowing.

"Does the prophet see the future or dors he see a line of weakness..." - "Just saying it could even make it happen" Kate Bush/Cloudbusting

I need to see the film again.

"The advance to the Indus was no mere wanton aggression, but was necessary to establish secure routes for Indian trade" - what a shame we don't have a context for this insight, the history has focused on 'wanton acts of aggression" rather the development of commerce in the Greek world.

"The host with which he now to descend upon India must have been at least twice as numerous as the army with which he had crossed the Hellespont seven years before" - no lines of supply problem then, why did Napoleon, Hitler have them - because they were dependent on national armies.

"All the Greeks and Macedonians who followed regarded the east as a world to be plundered and rifled by their higher intelligence and courage..." - so much Greek behaviour reminds me of Nazism, that I have to wonder how much Nazism itself was a precipitated from the 19th century surge of German interest in Greece (I think particulary of Nietzsche).

"One general principle [Alexander] did adopt - the division of power...Under the Persian kingdom the satrap was usually sole govenor...Alexander in most cases committed only the internal administration to the govenor, and appointed beside him, and independent of his authority, a financial officer and a military commander" - obviously he had read Dictator's Handbook

"The men of mighty words were as children in the hands of the man of mighty deeds." - Churchill?

"It was the calamity of Athens, as it has been the calamity of Holland, that she was solidly attached to the continent" - cf Britain, Venice, Spain

"The speech of Demosthenes, in particular, is a triumph in the art of sophistry. No politician ever knew better than he how short is the memory of ordinary men for the political events which they have themselves watched and evem helped to shape by their votes and opinions" - one reason politicians deceive is protect themselves from the self-deception of voters. Looking forward to the post-Brexit fall-out already.

"If [Philip] did not destroy the whole empire of the Great King, he might at least annex Asia Minor 'from Cilia to Sinope' to the Hellenic world and appropriate it to the needs of the Hellenic people" - at another time this policy was called Lebensraum.

"Caught by the infection of the military spirit, seduced the motives of emulation and ambition, they were to forget that they were Orestians or Lyncestians, and blend into a single homogenous Macedonian people" - Philip anticipates Rome - or emulates?

"But perhaps suspensors are another thing to avoid in the open desert. Maybe they attract worms they a shield does" - Dune's big idea: the interaction of technology and ecology?

"Writing is, however, used more and more frequently within social contact situations..." - because of social media. The most insightful chapter so far.

"An ideal mark range for a written assessment might be between 50% and 100%.". Allow second chances for lower marks.

"How much dictionary use is advisable?" - no distinction is made between productive and receptive use of dictionaries. The use of dictionaries for receptive tasks is essential, for productive tasks it is usually a diaster. Collacational dictionaries, however, are useful for writing. This reflects on the limitations of single item vocabulary for language learning.

"[Writing] it is not necessarily the most difficult skill to acquire since at least students have time to reflect on what they are writing and carefully monitor and review their work." - public standards of accuracy are much higher for writing than for speech; e.g. pronunciation v. spelling.

"Dionysius then has significance of a pioneer" - also good to read twenty pages of purposeful narrative, rather than the endless reshufflings of power in Old Greece.

"And Kynes realized in that moment the dukedom still existed and solely because of this youth - and this was not a thing to be taken lightly." - Herbert seems quite serious about the hereditary principle, is this unique for science fiction?

"Sensible teachets do "teach to the test" and this is fine when the test is appropriate and reflects good practice" - Well said!

"when we see a word, its phonological representation is automatically activated and precedes the retrieval of it meaning from long term memory". - this can't be true in my case, because I am learning Hungarian vocabulary from text, only to hear the word for the first time after I"ve learnt it.

"Thus Athens was now in the position of being an ally of both Arcadia and Sparta, which were at war with each other; and Arcadia was the ally of Athens and Thebes, which were also at war with each other." - The ancients were obviously finding it as difficult to follow events as I am.

"It was not until Athens lost her empire that she began to exert a decisive influence on Greek thought and civilisation" - can't say the same for Britain, or anyplace else?

"Laconia, Boetia, Attica, each represents a distinct constitution, and each constitution is justified; the union of Boeotia in a federation is as natural as a union of Attica in a single city, as legitimate as the union of Laconia in its subjection to the Spartan oligarchy." - the real contribution of Greece to polical science is not democracy but constitutionalism.

"Keep in mind that teachers (who were successful language learners) may have a tendency to over-estimate exactly how much students are comprehending at any one time." - I feel I offer my students the insight of a teacher who wasn"t a successful language teacher.

"Students who struggle with listening often say that they are just hearing a meaningless stream of sound, wirh just the occassional word or phrase popping out." - yes, that's it, exactly.

Three straight chapters of military history uncritically taken from original sources: I would have like more about the economy - looks like mercantilism was the dominant ideology, more about the theatre - given the impact it had on public opinion, and at least more about institutional development of the military and navy. Archeology, linguistics etc should inform history.

"Coinage - how to create an L2 word from an L1 word" - works in Hungarian from Englished Latin, but from English itself?

Compositional writing encouragrs spontaneous speech.