Praise Among Epic Poets

Banishing the Poets

The main argument of this monograph,* if I understand it rightly (something its rather cloudy writing makes me uncertain of), is that the body of works often (and traditionally) grouped together under the rubric ‘ancient literary criticism’ should be understood not as contributions to aesthetics or criticism of literature as these terms are commonly understood today but rather as political inte...

Independence-supportive Praise versus Interdependence-promoting Praise

In praise of petroleum?

Among other difficulties (1), the World Summit on Sustainable Development -Rio+10 struggled with defining “sustainability.” Typical of efforts to make concrete this slippery concept was a preparatory paper addressing one of the most pressing issues in human development, how to bring modern energy services to the one-third of humanity whose development and survival requirements suffer from lack ...

In praise of deaneries.

If you look at the foot of this article, you will see that my address is given as the London Deanery. This is possibly appearing there for the last time. I am not retiring just yet, but the structure of our institution is about to change, and possibly the name will do so too. This gives me an opportunity to write about deaneries, and why they have been such a force for good. In case you are uns...

In praise of hierarchy.

Hierarchy has not had its day. After 3,000 years as the preferred structure for large organizations, managerial hierarchy is still the most natural and effective organizational form that a big company can employ. Now, as in the past, the key to organizational success is individual accountability, and hierarchy preserves unambiguous accountability for getting work done. Unfortunately, hierarchy ...