Home Custom Custom Scroll Top

Welcome to Muse & Reason, I'm Dr Robert N. Winter and this is my public Memex. A place for articles, essays and jottings.

This site is loosely divided into the categories of history, leadershipphilosophy, and technology.

Inbox Newsletter

A Sunday morning bulletin of my latest articles, straight to your inbox. Food for a more meaningful life.

No Spam. No Partisanship. No Noise. No Paywall.

GDPR Agreement *

Anchoring Teams Through Transformation

By adopting this approach, we will not only end up writing good, albeit not perfect, OKRs, but also take that vital step in the practice of management; taking individuals or teams outside their zone of comfort to learn, improve, and explore — ultimately achieving meaningful transformation that unlocks value for the organisation.
Read More

Leading GenMe

Given the obvious dichotomy in this approach to work generations, the practical implications for management are that the leadership theories many have encountered will struggle to provide solutions when it comes to developing coherent teams.
Read More

Thunderous Ambivalence

Because being off the grid is next to impossible in many societies, it is tempting to give up and proclaim 'I have nothing to hide'.
Read More

Epochs Within Epochs

While our own short lives may lack the eternality of the Holy Spirit we can transcend events by our choices. Choices which, religious or not, have deep and long lasting moral implications.
Read More

Tempus Fugit

As Apple's privacy respecting posture gives way to the pull of marketing dollars through making user data the product, their third way begins to fall short.
Read More

On Replies and ‘Reply Guys’

We do well to live and let live, we also do well to post and let post. Devote what limited energy we are gifted with to thought and the formulation of our views and let the 'reply guys' reply. They are, generally, all sound and fury signifying nothing.
Read More

Ghost Writers — Rise of the Machines

Ultimately, I do not think the problem is that we are building machines so ‘smart’ that their output is indistinguishable from human compositions. The problem is that we are educating humans whose output is so illiterate, and devoid of experience, it is indistinguishable from computer generated text.
Read More

An Opportunity Afforded

This is why some people will look at a library and see a wealth of opportunity, while others will see the same space and same books and apprehend only barriers to entry or exclusion from a world in which they think they have no part to play.
Read More

Twas Gunpowder Treason Day

As late as 2015, Royals who married Catholics were removed from the line of succession, and Prime Ministers avoided disclosing their Catholicism in office.
Read More

Reading More Efficiently And Effectively

I can well picture 'Hitch', cigarette languidly hanging from the corner of his mouth, hand clasped around a whisky glass, tossing the book toward the wastepaper bin, and then leaning back in his chair. Content in the knowledge he had repaid the reading in the only way fit.
Read More

CR III Royal Cypher

The design of the CR III cipher was produced by the College of Arms and continues a tradition of heraldry that has bound individual monarchs to the institution of monarchy for over a thousand years.
Read More

The Sources of Soviet Conduct

Today's Russia is pursuing the same aims as in 1946: autarchy for Russia and Russian-dominated adjacent areas by a leader, under pressure from nationalistic backers, who has miscalculated the situation.
Read More

Twenty Years of Firefox

Little did I know how consistently Firefox would be my window to the World Wide Web, nor how its security, and in time privacy focus, would shape my understanding of what it means to be online.
Read More

At A Journey’s End

I have a thesis of which I am proud, and a marriage to my beautiful wife Halaina — who has been a constant source of love, joy, and support as I laboured in the archives.
Read More

Teflon Leadership

Those who rise to the top jobs, do so not because they are better leaders or have fewer blots on their copybook — it is because they are better able to shrug off criticism and weather the blistering attacks that are directed at all holders of public office.
Read More

The Linux Paradigm

In science, a paradigm is a model or pattern — a typical instance or exemplar. But in rhetoric, my chosen field, it is an example or guide as to how one should behave.
Read More

A Peer’s Tube

Winter Ink PeerTube will allow for the documenting and preservation of videos to which I can link in my ongoing speculations about life and art. Links, and the content they reference, which are permanent and will always work. A necessity to promote the adoption of individually-owned and controlled sovereign spaces which enable an open and healthy web.
Read More

Intellectual Warehouse

While access to information is now relatively more widespread than in the past, the modern paywall can often prove to be as much of a hurdle to access as the price of manuscripts was in yesteryear.
Read More

The New Cathedral Door

Does it truly safeguard that which is dangerous and true while restricting that which is dangerous and false, and does it arrive at this determination through a process of deliberation; or, does it merely replace one arbitrary determination for another about that which is dangerous.
Read More

Jotting – Protect Duty

While I am not keen on the idea of self-policing, lest we go the way of some American states, I do wonder if society may not be better able to protect its citizens if its citizens were more involved in that self-same protection. Be it physical, intellectual or cyber.
Read More

Jotting – WHO

Lightblub Moment ON FRIDAY, APRIL 30, the WHO quietly updated a page on its website. In a section on how the coronavirus gets transmitted, the…

Read More

Hail, Lobster!

The moment when left leaning popular culture overreached itself and instead of fascist shaming a once obscure academic into silence, brought back into popular use what had long been taboo and empowered the very thing they thought they were destroying.
Read More

Bitcoin’s Dirty Little Secrets – Political

In praxis, the result for Bitcoin is that the ideological claims for a decentralised, government free, anonymous currency has given way to the ‘worse-is-better’ ideology of why most people seem to be dumping cash into crypto: to get rich and live the capitalist high life.
Read More

Tool Time

Consider that a UI should assume the user doesn’t have a high level of software experience, nor is willing to learn how to use the command line to undertake some level of personalisation.
Read More

Bitcoin’s Dirty Little Secrets – Environmental

I have long been concerned with the negative human impact on our environment and while I am some way off from thinking the world is on fire, it is clear that business as usual is going to leave a decidedly lessened planet for our children. Thus my spotlight on the ecological effects of our choices is slowly widening and most recently has taken in cryptocurrency.
Read More

Contribution Manifesto

In the spirit of a benign dictatorship, my determination of quality contributions will be both objective and subjective. No offence is intended, but as offence is a social construct, taking it is at your discretion.
Read More

Copying Old Masters

For the better part of 400 years, the production of art in France was largely controlled by artistic academies. With the first official academy being…

Read More

Serialisation

Whether pre-prepared or thought out during serialisation, it provides for a short or medium content format which addresses a long form topic.
Read More

Late Abroad Again

As the contagion bit hard, Pepys chronicled the flight from the city, mostly of doctors, lawyers and merchants. Then as now, only those with the financial means to do so can seek refuge in seclusion.
Read More

Art as Background

Turner was something of a privacy advocate. In the 1841 census he rowed a boat into the Thames so he could not be counted as being present at any property
Read More

Self-Gaze

It is possible to find a subjectivity and objectivity of the written word and know I am on the right track, even if my work is temporarily out of fashion.
Read More

Wedding Feast

In the tradition of my family, and the civilised everywhere, I will be planning the meal starting with dessert, working through the main to the entree.
Read More

Finding Confidence

While the fool is wise who opens not his mouth, the quiescence of the thoughtful is a loss for society. This is particularly the case when it comes to social media and blogging.
Read More

Armada

The history of the Spanish Armada is a call to take care on our journey home. Although we may feel mauled by the day, we can salvage most of what we have.
Read More

Finding Time

Find a trigger which helps you to get in the frame for writing, leverage the power of habit and set your inner candidate to the task.
Read More

Beware Generalisation

A writer can fall into the trap of imagining because 67% of respondents to a survey support X, there is genuinely wide spread support for the proposition..
Read More

Supporting Evidence

My weekends are usually spent cloistered away in my study, working on one project or another. My fiancée laments I spend too much time tinkering…

Read More

Nibbled By System

I am a simple man who fears being nibbled by system. I like things I can see and touch. In the technological realm, I like…

Read More

Easy To Use

I learn today that Jules-Albert de Dion took the chequed flag in the world’s first motor race, the Paris–Rouen in 1894. Sadly for Jules-Albert, he…

Read More

Emotional Contagion

Emotional Contagion is the phenomenon of feeling what it appears someone else is experiencing. Art abounds with examples of this, where a painting, sculpture or…

Read More

Site With Less Byte

This has started me on my own quest for a lighter footprint in my publishing platform. To that end, there is much tinkering to do.
Read More

Fête Nationale

I could not let July 14 pass without a nod to that most French of occasions: Bastille Day. A celebration which marks both the anniversary…

Read More

Gothic Reprieve

Musing on how the building I passed was the very antithesis of the Gothic, I found myself recalling some of the majestic architecture of the past.
Read More

Spot the Gorilla

For me, this can become frankly as depressing as, to quote Blackadder: getting an arrow through the neck and discovering there's a gas bill tied to it.
Read More

Doomsday Clock

The concept of a clock was chosen because it implies that unless we stop the seconds from ticking down, the hands will inevitably reach midnight.
Read More

Losing Readers?

While I am not a popularity junkie, it is more gratifying to know one is writing for a large than a small audience as I write to try and assist others.
Read More

Cartographic Escapism

Hogwarts was not only the best but, if you didn't read the text carefully and skipped whole sections of Goblet of Fire, the only wizarding school.
Read More

Lacklustre

Today… what can I say about today… it was nothing out of the ordinary, very lacklustre indeed. Neither terrifying nor exhilarating, sad nor happy, downcast…

Read More

Time Capsule I

The novelist saw more clearly the differences between fact and fiction. That notions of a 'better world' tomorrow is a fallacy of the doctrine of progress.
Read More

Down the Rabbit Hole

Not a nice, cosy little hole, you understand. Rather a long and seemingly unending one. After you've fallen down it, you never know where you will come out.
Read More

Leading From The Front

Plato wrote of cardinal virtues and their importance in the character of a good city. It is tempting to pickup this theme in regards to leadership.
Read More

Red Tape Is Fun

As a child, the sense of being tested vexed me much. This persisted into early adulthood, as I steadfastly continued to avoided administration.
Read More

Labours of Love

As the saying goes, 'God is in the detail' and only by finessing the little things does the overall project take on a majestic form.
Read More

The Struggle is Topic

There is no dearth of ideas, but each was pondered and rejected in turn as the research involved exceeds the allotted time for this daily challenge.
Read More

The Void

I love to give back to those who give so much to me, but sometimes this sucks all my powers of concentration. This is the height of mental indigestion.
Read More

Peasants’ Revolt

Much the same could be said for the current protests. Eventually the people will leave the streets and things will largely go back to how they were.
Read More

Letterheady

One superb example of the genre is the business letterhead of Nikola Tesla - after whom the car company is named. Stunning share by Letterheady.
Read More

Damnatio Memoriae

Memory is more than the activity of an individual. It is an object, in so much as a statue or inscription reminds passers by of a person or event.
Read More

The Better Part of Valour

Obama made sure to bring together the past with the present. Memory stalking the impatiently advancing future. Into the party marched the honour ghosts, the…

Read More

Cold Calling Students

While the line between a Socratic acceptance of the limits of our knowledge and genuine ignorance is blurred, academia's financial rapacity knows no bounds.
Read More

Into the Jaws of Death

One of the most memorable photographs of D-Day was taken by Chief Photographer's Mate Robert F. Sargent and aptly titled 'Into the Jaws of Death.'
Read More

Updating My Plank

As a man who loves his technology, one thing I enjoy reading about is how others use theirs. There is a small degree of voyeurism…

Read More

The New Commons

As our forebears strove for the aspiration to vote, the mortgaging of our data for access to services requires us to strive for the aspiration to privacy.
Read More

Grey Eminence

Sadly, for our attempts to hold power to account, the 'what' is lost to the political 'how,' with which side wins becoming the benchmark for 'account.'
Read More

Contemplating Content

Though a visual man, I have grown tired of the flickering images of social media where unlimited filters and effects cannot cover the dearth of thought.
Read More

Code is Speech?

A point to remember when next your private moments are leveraged to improve a marketing algorithm. The unintended consequence of code is speech.
Read More

Marshal Your Argument

Like a genre in publishing, a work forms part of an existing discourse and this creates certain ground rules for how words will be read and ideas conveyed.
Read More

The Cloud of Unknowing

The question today, for whom do you write? Perhaps to improve your scribblings; perhaps to attract a general audience; or perhaps it is for posterity?
Read More

Gakyō Rōjin

A compelling aspect is the way in which Hokusai's work burgeoned as he aged. An unconscious reaction to feeling we are yet to realise our potential.
Read More

The Pied Piper of Zoom

In a sense, our online privacy is much like a child, vulnerable to the world and easily spirited away by a platform which offers ease of connection.
Read More

The Perfect Moment

Though it is not clear if this is the poet or the urn speaking, what is clear is that the passage seeks to transcend visual value.
Read More

Catharsis

At times, writing alone is not action enough to free my thinking from its melancholy trends. In such times I turn to that most lyric of the muses, Euterpe.
Read More

May the Third be with you

It is fitting these memorial days are side by side because a central theme in the Star Wars saga was the freedom of peoples to live according to their need.
Read More

‘I’ and ‘Me’

The notion that the 'significant symbols,' found in the harmony between the projected and received understanding of the gesture which transports meaning between employee and manager, are not fixed, but are subject to continual recreation allowing infinite flexibility when assessing project planning.
Read More

Company Men

In Calcutta a statue was erected to Lord Bentinck, Governor-General of India. Its inscription bears citing at length as it is testament to the moral…

Read More

Madmen Raging Against the Sacred

The Fourth Crusade veered from its original aim, the reconquest Jerusalem, and ended in the sack of Constantinople; earning for itself the ignominious title of the crusade against fellow-Christians.
Read More

Truth and Beauty

Never before in the history of the world has so much information been so easily accessible. Name virtually any topic and a quick Googie or…

Read More

The Lions Roar

After entering a score of passwords, and wrapping tinfoil around my head to ensure the CIA were not tracking me...
Read More