This letter was published by the short-lived Canadian periodical The Idler in September 1985. A bit of background for non-Canadian readers: the eleven men referred to are the Prime Minister and the Premiers of the ten provinces. Under the parliamentary system, the leaders of majority governments have essentially unfettered power. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms was […]
We all like to have a chuckle at the euphemisms invented by bureaucrats, public relations officers, and assorted hand-wringers—terms like animal companions for pets and challenged for handicapped. But what is more disturbing is the way euphemisms and perverted meanings creep into the popular language and choke off the truth about things—largely through the influence of journalists who are too pusillanimous to […]
The following e-books, available for free download, have been carefully prepared from texts that are in the public domain worldwide (or, as noted, in Canada, where this site is hosted). With the exception of Rolfe’s Ammianus, they contain all the original footnotes, reciprocally linked. Any classical Greek cited is correctly rendered where the device font […]
NOTE: Most of my xiangqi site has been shut down, so please don’t link to this. Some material has been archived at Xiangqi in English. When I wrote my little manual of Chinese Chess more than four decades ago, information on the game in English was very difficult to obtain; apart from H.J.R. Murray’s somewhat unreliable […]
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Revised January 30, 2018 I welcome comments. Please mail peter at this domain. Contents Introduction The chariots The sparsores The riders Tools on the track Charioteers and the law The Reds and the Whites The capacity of the Circus Maximus Claques in the circus? Appendix: Sidonius’s account of a race Notes Introduction Despite the prominence of […]
Have you noticed how many places have become “centers” (or “centres”)? Not only does every second shop and clinic call itself Fred’s Carpet Center or Central Dental Center, but it is virtually guaranteed that any large new public edifice, whether it be a basketball court or a live theatre, will be named the [Corporate Sponsor] […]
[This article originally appeared in the Autumn 1980 issue of the late lamented Games & Puzzles magazine. I have edited it slightly.] “I want to show you a new game,” said my friend from a far-off city, as he pulled a rucksack from his shoulders. Out of the sack came stacks of computer print-outs, graph paper, oddly-shaped […]
Contents Introduction The Geographical Setting The Nature of Combat How Many Fought? Locating the Battleground The Raid The Next Three Days The Morning of August 9th The Negotiations The Battle What Determined the Outcome? The Text of Ammianus Conclusions Open Question Appendix: The Text of Orosius References Notes Introduction The battle fought near Adrianople in […]
A Chinese Chess Ending with Three Hundred Variations (Shanghai, 1916) Games of skill played with checkers or counters, are very popular in China, and no one who has leisurely sauntered through the many-coloured ways of a Chinese town can have failed to notice this fact. Street urchins are often to be found outside somebody’s front-door […]
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All forms of chess are thought to have a common ancestor, but the dating and placing of the prototypical game are contentious. Following the lead of the chess historian H.J.R. Murray (whose scholarship was perhaps wider than it was deep), it has frequently been asserted that chess originated in India as chaturanga around the middle […]
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