Charles C. Mann, author of the 2005 study 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus and the subsequent 2011 volume 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, has a clever method for dealing with the controversial nomenclature surrounding any discussion of the pre-Columbian Americas: he calls peoples by the names which present-day members call themselves, and stays … Read more
The International Criminal Court (ICC) was envisioned as, in the words of first and current Prosecutor General Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the achievement of a “dream”: an imperative of creating an international system of justice. Established in the 2002 Roma Statute, the ICC’s creation was seen as a groundbreaking development after a century in which, as stated … Read more
The Ancient Greek poet Archilochus wrote: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” As intellectual historian Isaiah Berlin later explained in his 1953 essay The Hedgehog and the Fox, Archilochus’ words indicate the way in which different people see the world. Berlin lumped thinkers such as Dante, Plato, Hegel, Dostoevsky, … Read more
Crystal Ball “You get the word passed to you. ‘Hey, uh – make sure your food and water and ammo last – we’ve been cut off.’ “You’re like, uh, that’s not good – I’m kind of in a desert. There aren’t a ton of things around here that we could use. It’s like going back … Read more
You hear the phrases constantly. “The system is failing.” “We just can’t go on like this anymore.” So imagine this. No, that’s it. Just imagine. What would it look like? What would we do differently? And then instead of crowding your mind with the clutter of institutions and what is and is not possible, employ … Read more