Adrian Buck > Recent Status Updates

"Greek doctors saw the maintenance of as largely a matter of diet. And for the fifth century author of ON ANCIENT MEDICINE the healing art began when cultivated foodstuffs, cooked meals and a balanced diet replaced the 'animal-like' diet of primitive man" - these days the most fashionable diets embrace the primitive rather than reject it.

"It was a constant battle of one upmanship - the army brought bigger, multimillion-dollar trucks, and the Taliban responded by packing an extra ten dollars's worth of fertilizer into plastic jugs they buried beneath the roads' - So that's what asymetric watfare means.

"Decline or Adolescence?....Grant worked out a division of morality into three eras: first...popular or unconscious morals; second, the sceptical era, third the philosophic era. (In the third era, of course, the three stages will exist contemporaneously among people of different education and intellectual powers)" - and conflict between these groups, like we see today between populists & progressives, is inevitable?

"...for in Greek eyes pracrical instruction and moral advice constituted the main function of the poet." - hence Plato had it in for them.

Slow fuse extract from Adam Johnson's The orphan master's son

'To describe is to select; to select is to evaluate; to evaluate is to criticise'

"So long as the profits of empire were many and its burdens light, the Athenian democracy would feel few searchings of its heart in adopting the imperialism of Pericles" - anticipates Britain in this.

"If Athens had adopted the policy which was so successfully adopted by Rome, the policy of enlarging herself by admitting the citizens of smaller states to her own citizenship, she might have built up a more enduring fabric of empire." - Orbán, Trump, Brexiteers ;)

"Europe is greatly indebted to Ionia for having founded philosophy; but that debt is enhanced by the fact that she theteby rescurd Greece from the tyranny of a religion interpreted by priests."

..it would seem indeed that the nobles became members of the religious organisation, in order to use it as an instrument of political power. - Rome?

"Between the brutality that would sacrifice a single innocent life to a fear without a name, and the enlightenment that would sacrifice a single innocent life to a fear that we have named, I have found little to choose."

"Between the brutality that would sacrifice a single innocent life to a fear without a name, and the enlightenment that would sacrifice a single innocent life to a fear that we have named, I have found little to choose."

"It is fortunate that youth recognizes its ignorance, for if it did it would not find the courage to get the habit of endurance. It is perhaps an instinct of the blood and flesh which prevents this knowledge and allows the boy to become the man who will live to see the folly of his existence,"

Book II would have been appropriately titled 'Julia' and sits oddly with Book I. Tidy solution as to why Augustus exiled Julia. But, how are the books going to be brought together?

"Tiberius is a Claudian" - The treatment of Augustus' marriage to Livia seems the biggest difference with I, Claudius

"I almost believe that the form has not been devised that will let me say what I need to say." - until now presumably

In the introduction we are told: "To achieve this, [Augustus] had to overcome many obstacles, not least his own nature". But nearly half way in, Augustus' nature remains a mystery, Marc Anthony however...

"'The new journalism' helped foster a new imperialism - and an imperial ethos that would reshape Britishness."

'The technological revolution only exacerbated that sense of racial dominance. Nothing was believed to differentiate societies more than the invention and use of modern technologies..."

"This is a common feeling which exists all over the world,...viz: a dislike of foreign masters and new usages..." - interesting that Brexiteers, Trumpeteers and Orbáneers should still see the world in this way: their enemies are imperialists, and they will not be colonies.

"Japan had seen rapid urbanisation and the creation of a commercialised market economy grafted onto a strictly graduated feudal hierarchy" - markets don't need democracy.

"What [the UK and US] were trying to conceal was that they were fighting over Central America in the name of trade. Both governments realised that when the canal was constructed Nicaragua would become the gateway to Asia."

"What [the UK and US] were trying to conceal was that they were fighting over Central America in the name of trade. Both governments realised that when the canal was constructed Nicaragua would become the gateway to Asia."

...the British were prescribing 'from their little island their own laws in all parts of the world...laws not least aimed at the benefit of mankind, but only at the satisfaction of the commercial interests of Great Britain' - Russian view on British free trade at time of Crimean War

"And as meaning arises in a cultural context, a full account of meaning-making ultimately needs to include all three points of this golden triangle..language, mind and culture..." - a bit late in the day

"nunchi"- do Koreans make the best waiters?

"nunchi"- do Koreans make the best waiters?

"Meaning, our capacity to signal an idea - a wish, feeling, belief, instruction - and be understood to be signalling that idea, did not originate with language." - Certainly, this book makes me look again at the intentionality of other animals.

"...and in the absence of telepathy, the function of language is to enable us to communicate AND, thereby, interact with and influence one another one another" - in the absence of language, wouldn't telepathy be a form of mind control rather than communication?

Red/redness is a poor example for the point he wants to make about lexical classes - 'Red' can also function as a noun.