HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW: Why Great Innovations Fail to Scale: Breakthrough ideas need a special kind of leader to help them flourish.
But it can help novices perform better and faster.
His advice to fellow executives: “Listen to your gut.”
And what leaders can do to ease the anxiety.
PHILOSOPHY NOW MAGAZINE: The latest issue features ‘Roman Philosophy’….
by Rick Lewis
Texas Prof Banned from Teaching Plato • Chatbots Have Favourite Philosophers • Singer Fears AI Doesn’t ‘Get’ Animal Rights — News reports by Anja Steinbauer
Sam Spound explains why the author of The Prince thought about Rome so much.
Abdullah Shaikh explores Cicero’s ideas about the core Roman principle of virtus.
Philip Vassallo learns from a classic of Classical education.
Yolanda De Iuliis looks at how Roman Mithraism incorporated Stoic philosophy.
Cassandra Brandt offers the reflections of a sedentary Stoic.
Literary Review of Canada The latest issue features:
Navigating this Age of Appetite by Krzysztof Pelc
Here’s a question I often bat around with graduate students in my International Political Economy seminar: In book 12 of the Odyssey, how do the shipmates know which Ulysses to trust?
You know the story. Ulysses and his crew have been on Circe’s island for a year. They’re finally about to depart when the goddess takes Ulysses aside and warns him of the dangers that await them. The first of these is the “piercing songs” of the Sirens. “So listen,” she says, “I will give you good instructions; another god will make sure you remember.”
Circe tells Ulysses to put wax in his sailors’ ears but that he can listen to the Sirens if he wants to — as long as his shipmates bind him “hand and foot” to the mast: “So bound, you can enjoy the Sirens’ song. But if you beg your men to set you free, they have to tie you down with firmer knots.”
As their ship approaches the Sirens’ sharp rocks, the wind dies down, they pull the sails, and they begin to row. As predicted, Ulysses yells out to his men to set him free. He is still their captain. But instead of obeying his orders, Eurylochus and Perimedes stand up and “tie him down with firmer knots.” How, I ask my students, do they know to trust the first Ulysses over the second? How is it that as readers, we never question their choice?
Form follows Ford by Kelvin Browne
Albert Kahn has been called “the father of industrial architecture” and “the architect of Detroit.” His firm was certainly prolific: it was responsible for the Ford Motor Company of Canada factory in Toronto, near a laneway that bears his name, and the General Motors assembly plant in Regina, along with nearly 900 buildings in Motor City alone. Kahn’s oeuvre encompassed offices, grand homes for his industrialist clients, and libraries and fraternity houses at the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, not to mention a post office, a synagogue, and multiple hospitals and skyscrapers. Many of Kahn’s buildings reflect a pastiche of styles that might be considered a precursor of a postmodern eclectic. Yet this prolific architect is relatively unknown today, especially outside of Michigan.
The MIT Press / 488 pages, hardcover
The mood on the Sea Adventurer’s bridge was grim. “She’s only making eight knots,” said our expedition leader. “We need to hit at least fourteen to keep to our itinerary.” We were four days into a two-week sailing and anchored off Ilulissat, near a UNESCO World Heritage site nestled into the crenellated western coast of Greenland.
Earlier that day, I had found myself at the helm of a Zodiac, manoeuvring the rubberized craft through thick fog, near-freezing water, and growlers. The ten high-paying passengers under my care likely had no idea that this was my first trip with the tour operator or my first time north of the Arctic Circle.
NATIONAL REVIEW: The latest issue features ‘America At 250’
How the founding document made America.
How Americans underrate their achievement.
On the Founders’ first freedom.
On politics, the people, and great men.
Boomers Daily 