I've gone back to reading the Masters of Rome series, trying to finish what I started. I was a little worried that I'd be lost when I started, but book three had a really good summarry and the books break in good points. Effectively, there's a new generation of people to worry about in each book, while some younger protagonists suddenly become ( Read more... )

Christmas was a bit of a quiet affair. I managed to take a bit more of a traditionally active role, which made me feel a bit better about things. I cooked the meal on Christmas Day and I also organised a New Year's Party. Neither was big. The meal was just for myself and my parents, while the party was for four of us, including myself. But it ( Read more... )

One of my relatives showed me this video, which shows, very nicely, the casualty stats for different countries in WW2, including both military ad civilian deaths, including such things like the dropping of the atom bomb. Well worth watching.

http://www.fallen.io/ww2/

One of the really cool things about sitting in a sixth form library and minding the space is that there's a lot of time to read and a lot of interesting books to read if I want to. One of them that caught my eye has been the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels. I wanted to read it, not because I want to storm the bastions of the bourgeoisie ( Read more... )

I'm still feeling really bad and all of the things that were overwhelming me before are still overwhelming me now. But, I've had some time to just distract myself from that and I've done it by going back into history and it seems to have let my mind begin the process of re-balancing itself. So while I've been feeling completely unable to cope, I' ( Read more... )

One of the bizarre things about the last while is I don't think I've been doing much in the way of gaming. So, while I'm feeling a bit delicate, I thought I'd try and do some interesting gaming ( Read more... )

Having done a lot of work on the neoliberalism article meant that I got a broader understanding of liberalism, what it is and how it works. Liberalism is important to understand because it's such a mixed church. For example, the people in the United States who claim that government involvement in the economy is illiberal are technically correct, ( Read more... )

One of the things that interested me was to know something about the history of the Aztec Empire. I know so little of the various Central American empires and states, nor why they get included in games like Civilisation, which try to represent all the great empires of antiquity.

( Read more... )

I've read a bit more of The Wealth of Nations, and the next two chapters talk a bit more about the division of labour, the kind of circumstances it arises under. Chapter two is where Adam Smith makes the very famous quote about the division of labour arising from self interest. It's really quite a short chapter. The next one he talks about the ( Read more... )

Yesterday, at the behest of my grandfather, we went to see the Polish film 1920: Battle for Warsaw, which is an account of the event that has been termed, in Polish culture, as the Miracle on the Vistula River (Cud nad Wisla).

( The history )