What is the value of learning a second language aside from the obvious practical benefits : the fact that you can talk to people who don’t speak your first language, can read things which have not been translated, can politely talk to people who don’t find it easy to speak your first language and can [...]

Only time for a wuick update, but in case you haven’t been paying attention over the weekend, Spanish voters have voted in favour of the Constitution in a non-binding referendum. This now means that Zapatero will put the Constitution up for a vote in the Cortes - he had said he would only do so [...]

I would like to comment on an excerpt of a comment by Mike
“We might distinguish questions of fact (e.g. “which way will John vote at the next election?”) from questions of value (e.g. “is Blair’s outlook better than Brown’s?) by noting that the answers to factual questions may be true or false, but that the [...]

Paul Samuelson is very smart but not always polite. When praising John Kenneth Galbraith he wrote something like “it would be wonderful to write his obituary” which only meant that it was enjoyable to write a encominium on Galbraith and any other more literal interpretation would be incorrect, funny and amusing to Prof Galbraith. [...]

If you’re interested in finding out what British bloggers are talking about then you’ll probably find Tim Worstall’s first BritBlog Roundup rather useful. He’s hoping to make it a weekly event, similar to other blog roundups like the Carnival of the Vanities, and if you want to contribute or be featured then you can find [...]

I just read that a 4 year long investigation of Silvio Berlusconi was completed and that the investigating magistrates conclude that he missappropriated and did not pay taxes on “276,9 milioni di dollari, 9,4 miliardi di lire, 13,5 milioni di franchi svizzeri, 2 milioni di franchi francesi, 548.000 fiorini olandesi, a cui si aggiungono altre [...]

As many Fistful readers will be aware, it’s widely expected that there’ll be a General Election in the UK this May. Of course, because of the way our system works, no one can say for definite when it will be until the Prime Minister actually goes to the Queen and requests that she dissolve Parliament [...]

First I should say, as always, that I use blogs to write about things I know nothing about. So let me try to understand what cultural relativism might be.
Basically it begijns with the idea that should not judge other cultures. I think the origen might be with Herder who I try to [...]

Having missed my flight from Salvador back to Rio de Janeiro, I find myself in the airport?s cyber-caf? with a little extra time to spend. Alas, not enough to finish and type the lengthy post commenting on Amitai Etzioni?s thoughts about guilt and responsibility ? I began hand-writing it on another flight, but finding the [...]

The comparison of these two historians and historical actors is interesting because they appear to have nothing in common except for their extraordinary eloquence. Macaulay has been accused of writing history as ratification of the present. Trotsky has been accused of roughly everything else.
Consider these examples of eloquence. Both are quoted from [...]