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John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester; I love reading about rakish characters from history, it reminds me that bad behaviour has a very long and distinguished tradition, one which I’m proud to participate in.

Thomas Kendall, lapsed missionary and Pākehā Māori.

Joybubbles

Nassim Nicholas Taleb: the prophet of boom and doom. This fellow seems pretty interesting, I’d like to meet him.

I’m revising for some exams, and I’m trying to use the Memory Palace method, which interestingly I first heard about in connection with Matteo Ricci, a sixteenth-century Jesuit who travelled to China. He would use the memory palace to perform feats of memory, such as remembering 300 Chinese symbols that he had never seen before in sequence. This, and much else of his fascinating life are documented in Jonathan D. Spence’s The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci.

I’m reading Lame Deer: Seeker of Visions. It’s the autobiography of a Lakota holy man, a Heyoka, and it’s a brilliant insight into I world I know nothing about, a fascinating man, and a chilling reminder of how vulnerable groups can be persecuted even in the self-proclaimed “land of the free”.

Today’s Wikipedia article of the day is an excellent biography of Suleiman the Magnificent, the longest ruling Sultan of the Ottoman Empire.

Perhaps you, my judges, pronounce this sentence against me with greater fear than I receive it.

-Giordano Bruno, d. 1600, after being sentenced to burn at the stake for claiming there were planets orbiting stars other than the Sun. (Via the How to Live blog.)

John Hawkwood is a fascinating character from history. A 14th century English mercenary, he terrorised the Italian countryside and its city states for over 30 years. His extremely interesting and very eventful life is described in Hawkwood: Diabolical Englishman by Frances Stonor Saunders, which I read recently.