Dig's Blog — Memoir
Welcome to Digvijay's (my) blog! This acts as a repository, a collection of things that struck my fancy, provided I had the executive function to actually write something down. Updated sporadically over the span of several years, with no obvious overarching aim, this blog is a reflection of the meandering, albeit scenic routes my brain takes to any location; perhaps there isn't any at all. Regardless, enjoy your time here. Access to niche pages via the internet, by nature, is an eminently transient affair. I shall stop here, for fear of rambling on. Bonne chance!
I. The Roman Pilum — May 5, 2020
War. War and conflict has existed since the dawn of mankind. Well, not really, because according to a some experts, there didn't seem to be any human armed conflict in the earliest hunter-gatherer Homo Erectus societies, due to their low population density, which just further illustrates the point that I and a multitude of other people like to make, which is that all human conflict can be traced back to the Basic economic problem of infinite wants and finite resources.
Warfare has always existed as a method by which groups, sects or civilizations determine the allocation of resources. In the ancient world, around the time when the Etruscans were the big shots in Italy, wars were delightfully simple: infantry formations, phalanxes and testudo formations, fighting for land and wealth.
Even the lowest infantrymen were equipped with shields — until the pilum. The Etruscan pilum, nicked by the Romans, was a javelin with a tip of tempered steel held to a wooden shaft by soft iron fittings, so that on impact the shaft would bend, making it impossible to remove or throw back, and rendering an enemy's shield useless. The pilum gave the Roman infantry an edge in countless battles, helping Rome expand until it grew weak, decadent, and eventually collapsed at the hands of the Germanic barbarians.
II. An Elegy for the Free Press — March 23, 2022
A poem written on the erosion of press freedom and media complicity, framed as an elegy for a free press that has, in the author's view, given way to propaganda, bias, and self-censorship in service of the powerful.
III. Přelétavý pták (Overflown Bird) — April 1, 2025
A reflection on discovering a wistful Czech piece by Emil Viklícký while browsing music streaming services — its blend of longing and warmth, and the grace of things that are visibly ending, like an aging soloist or a weathered marble sculpture.
Visitors can also leave a note on the site's Notice Board (a corkboard guestbook), and toggle background music from a small selection of public-domain and Creative-Commons-licensed classical recordings.