by David L. Smith | Great Conversation, Litigation
So Muhammad Ali, William the Conqueror, Philip II of Macedon, and Themistocles walk into a bar… That joke was not going to end well, but it gets you where I want you. What do these dead old white men have in common with a modern sports icon? Strategy....
by David L. Smith | Great Conversation
Two events spurred the idea for a series of posts about strategy. The first was when I was talking with my wife about ways to win arguments with people. My favorite tactic is to lead my adversaries down a string of seemingly logical statements which are...
by David L. Smith | Great Conversation
It is a peculiar time. For the past two hundred thousand years of our existence, all we’ve had to rely upon is constancy. The seasons turn; we sleep and rise; our loved ones are born, and then they die. Any perturbation of what is and always has been...
by David L. Smith | Great Conversation
In my last post, I mentioned the Greek maxims Know yourself and Seek the mean in all things. Today, I’d like to touch on the latter and one of its implications. While I prefer the above translation, usually MHDEN AGAN is translated “Nothing in...
by David L. Smith | Great Conversation
When Pausanias, the traveler and geographer, visited the Temple of Apollo at Delphi in the second century A.D., the inscriptions in the forecourt were nearly a thousand years old. They read ΜΗΔΕΝ ΑΓΑΝ and ΓΝΩΘΙ ΣΕΑΥΤΟΝ: “Seek the mean in all things”...
