"Come with Me Into Macedonia"

 “I am not, fellow citizens, one who believes that no advice may be given to leaders; nay rather I judge him to be not a sage, but haughty, who conducts everything according to his own opinion alone. What therefore is my conclusion? Generals should receive advice, in the first place from the experts who are both specially skilled in military matters and have learned from experience; secondly, from those who are on the scene of action, who see the terrain, the enemy, the fitness of the occasion, who are sharers in the danger, as it were, aboard the same vessel. Thus, if there is anyone who is confident that he can advise me as to the best advantage of the state in this campaign which I am about to conduct, let him not refuse his services to the state, but come with me into Macedonia. I will furnish him with his sea-passage, with a horse, a tent, and even travel-funds. If anyone is reluctant to do this and prefers the leisure of the city to the hardships of campaigning, let him not steer the ship from on shore. The city provides enough subjects for conversation; let him confine his garrulity to these; and let him be aware that I shall be satisfied with the advice originating in camp.”

Consul Lucius Aemilius
168 B.C.

Tommy

 

Warriors and Scholars

“The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools.” 

– Thucydides

The Wuhan Lab

Commentary magazine: James B. Meigs on COVID and the Authorities: "It's Even Worse Than We Thought.". 

Veterans Day

All veterans have known a world that is very different from the world of civilians. 

The veterans who faced danger know a world beyond that; a far more dangerous world. 

That world is always out there.

[Photo by Thomas Ashlock at Unsplash]

"I Looked Down and There It Was"

Sippican Cottage, one of my favorite blogs, is back to posting again. Here's a taste:

See the man on the sleigh, bringing the sap back to the shed to boil? He knows the tree like a brother. He knows the woods like a mother. He knows fire like a caveman. He knows commerce like a loanshark. He knows cold like a gravedigger. He knows sap like you know the alphabet. And he doesn't have the slightest idea what you're about, because you labor in a vineyard far removed from his -- where the meaning of your efforts is likely always obscure, as all intellectual pursuits must be. Remember always what you don't know about him, lest one day, you look down, and there it ain't.

See the rest here.

Time to Re-Watch

 

Boola Boola Bureaucrats

 Yale Daily News: The number of administrators at Yale has significantly increased since 2003.

Picking Films

 

Back to the Office!

I continue to see workplaces that have far too many people working from home and which underestimate the price that is paid for that practice. Team morale, friendships, the informal exchange of information, mentoring, and other intangibles are diminished in an atmosphere that is mainly transactional and which fails to recognize that a job is more than behavior for rent.

Workplaces that straddle the fence between Normal and "New Normal" (whatever that is) will find their employees suffer from the indecision. 

Diminished relationships are the main victims. In a world where loneliness is a grave problem, that is no small wound.