I’m currently reading “For Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization” by Charles Adams and I happened to come across this quote, which seems rather appropriate for the times.

Thomas Jefferson, an Anti-federalist, believed that (tax) rebellions every twenty years or so were “good medicine” for government. He further believed that rebels ought not be punished too harshly. To this end he referred to a Latin maxim which might come in handy when you need to dazzle naive fools.

Malo periculosam libertatem quam quietam servitutem
(“Rather a dangerious liberty than a peaceful servitude”)

Be sure always to repeat it in Latin. Fools won’t understand it anyway. Those who are simply ignorant will look it up.

As I mentioned before, the Generalist is undergoing a big reorganization and upgrade right now. As the upgrade progresses, new sites will be coming online that will explore some of the topics covered here, but in more detail. I recently launched Learning Languages where you can access a nifty tool for hearing the pronunciation of new words as you learn a new language. That website covers American English, Spanish, Italian, French and German. Other languages are possible, too, so if you like the tool, but I don’t include the language you’re learning, post a comment here and let me know and I’ll see if I can get it.

I’m currently at the intermediate level with Italian and one of the hardest things to do when you’re learning is to begin to actually speak and express your own thoughts in the language. In order to help myself with that task, I started a diary in Italian where I write whatever comes to my mind. I also try to do transcriptions of things I hear, or translations of pieces that I find difficult. I’ve decided to put my diary online with it in mind that other learners of Italian might find it useful and might offer me some help, too. The site is brand new and it’s called… you guessed it… My Italian Diary! Or more properly, Il mio diario italiano. You can be sure as I progress with Spanish I will want to add Mi diario español, but that’s a ways down the road yet. For now, if your interested in the Italian language, please check out My Italian Diary and by all means post your own translations or ideas in the comments sections, or if you are a native speaker of Italian, please, please, correct my errors! I know there will be many!

I’ve just launched a new website called Learning Languages where you can use a nifty Site Pal audio pronunciation guide if you are ever wondering how to pronounce a word in English, Italian, Spanish, French or German. I’m having some problems with Firefox at the moment, but if you are using Safari or Internet Explorer you should have no problems. I’ll also be launching a new blog some time soon that will focus on learning Italian at the intermediate level. Getting past intermediate seems to me to be the most difficult part of learning a new language. The problem is that there are no really good systems that focus on that level, so for the most part you are on your own finding the right optimum. I’m hoping that the blog will help learners of Italian, but also anyone learning a language that finds himself in that intermediate fog.

I hope you enjoy the new site.