SIC TRANSIT...

SIC TRANSIT... http://blogs.fullhyderabad.com/showblog.php?blogId=163 Miscellanea, obiter dicta, occasional ex cathedra... anachrone 2023-08-31T11:31:57Z The Business of Ink http://blogs.fullhyderabad.com/showblog.php?op=ViewArticle&articleId=1584&blogId=163 Just what does it mean to write? Or be able to write? No, I General 2005-03-02T19:23:11Z anachrone Sic transit... http://blogs.fullhyderabad.com/showblog.php?op=ViewArticle&articleId=1489&blogId=163 Just off Calcutta General 2005-02-13T17:22:36Z anachrone SCIPIO http://blogs.fullhyderabad.com/showblog.php?op=ViewArticle&articleId=1371&blogId=163 The Mediterranean stretched before him. In smouldering scuttled hulks, the enemy fleet lay dead, once pride and pest of that placid main. The heat troubled him; he felt oppressed. And the land held nothing for him.  < ?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p> His eyes roved over the waste. All round, death rose in listless wisps of smoke: its reek would drape history like a shroud. Turning, he gazed awhile on his salt streak, that runnel of ruin he had ploughed to neuter this obstinately fecund ground.  <o:p></o:p> Tired, he faced northwards again, and home. His eyes briefly brimmed. No unlettered lout, his mind hovered on distant Troy, and saw in a poet General 2005-01-12T18:07:52Z anachrone THE UNTRAVELLED WORLD http://blogs.fullhyderabad.com/showblog.php?op=ViewArticle&articleId=1291&blogId=163 The history of exploration might well be the history of human stupidity. Throughout its tortuous course folly abounds, reason unaccountably takes a backseat, and the seamier shades of human nature bloom overnight like toadstools after a shower. Successes are in spite of these obvious deterrents, more in the nature of happy accidents; largesse scattered by a Providence basking in the glow of a fine cognac, since there was no way the laws of probability could have so decreed.  < ?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p> But it is the failures which arrest our attention, haunt us long after the players, inept, inadequate or plain unlucky have gone to theirValhallas. Robert Falcon Scott was the quintessential British tragic hero, the man done out of the Pole by the deviousness (as the British saw it) of a vile foreigner General 2004-12-25T23:13:55Z anachrone ARMISTICE http://blogs.fullhyderabad.com/showblog.php?op=ViewArticle&articleId=1125&blogId=163                                                          At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of far off 1918 the guns fell silent on the Western Front. The lamps which went out all over Europe four terrible years before on an early August evening would never be lit again; the Edwardian twilight faded permanently into the gloom. The muffled drums of retreat rolled the recessionals everywhere, and friend and foe alike stood still with bowed heads for the most moving piece of music in all creation, the Last Post.  < ?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p> The decades since have seen many questionable wars, a few dubious peaces; but man General 2004-11-11T18:24:31Z anachrone PAUSE http://blogs.fullhyderabad.com/showblog.php?op=ViewArticle&articleId=1115&blogId=163 (A reply to Anil's comment on the post below).                                                                    Strange that you hope I find what I seek. Often I General 2004-11-07T21:10:48Z anachrone SIGNING UP http://blogs.fullhyderabad.com/showblog.php?op=ViewArticle&articleId=1114&blogId=163 Anyone knowing anything of military mores General 2004-11-07T18:12:30Z anachrone