corso zundert: Dutch annual tournament of tulips parade
bromance: Donald Trump praises Silvio Berlusconi as a “nice man”
a pig in a poke: thoughtful, well-organized essay explores how the history of technology parallels the history of pockets
limestone: looking at the chemistry and biology of coral colonies, material science is developing cleaner cement
superhenge: hidden landscape project hint at the true extent of the ritual monument
Wednesday 9 September 2015
5x5
catagories: ๐ฎ๐น, ๐ณ๐ฑ, ๐บ๐ธ, ๐ฑ, environment, myth and monsters
peculium and pittance
Prior to the early decades of the fourteenth century, the civil and spiritual landscape of Britain and the whole of Europe looked very different than it does today, and it is inexorably difficult for modern minds, I think, to grasp how very alien that proximity was. No one was more than an hour’s walk separated from a monastery or covenant—comparable to the fact that settlements were more or less paced out, before sprawl took hold, a day’s distance on foot from one another, and if one was not directly under the employee of the institution as a farmer, physician or teacher, one still benefited from the round the clock prayers that the members engaged in for the whole of humanity.
Overnight, monks, nuns and friars (embedded monks that went out into the community) found themselves evicted and their treasuries raided with anything of apparent value taken for the Crown and much of their libraries lost to history, and their relics—another major economic component as it attracted pilgrims—dissected and subjected to the burgeoning scientific method, and when there was no divine intervention forthcoming to stop this destruction and desecration, peoples’ doubts were reinforced. Seeing what was happening in England in terms of tempering religious authority, where one third of all property belonged to the Church, other European powers began to follow suit, buffeted by the emergent discontent of Martin Luther, albeit that the threat against vulnerable, smaller monasteries encouraged the sale of indulgences to raise the requisite hush-money against being shut-down, and adopted their own national confessions. For Henry, the resulting security-theatre saw few gains—although one positive legacy was the endowment to great universities that still represent the heights of learning, and although the change must have been great, the actions prosecuted in Prussian, Bohemian and Low-Lands was a measure less disruptive and immediately replaced by foundations meant to care for those less fortunate and co-opting an essential service once performed by a suppressed Church, seamlessly and solidifying later commitments and general characterisations of secular assistance. The past is not so simple.
winkie-winkie and the royal we
catagories: ๐ฌ๐ง, holidays and observances
Tuesday 8 September 2015
amici curiรฆ
The Notorious RBG and her fellow US Supreme Court Justices of the present class all have perfectly plausible names, but it always seemed to me that there was a disproportionate number of individuals appointed whom did not.
Albeit there has been one hundred twelve of them holding court that has ranged from five in membership to the current nine, but beginning with associate Bushrod Washington, Esq., younger step-brother of George Washington—there are quite a few oddities to be found, many packaged in familiarity and the expectation that such achievers ought to have unique monikers. There is Salmon P Chase hailing from Ohio, Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar from Mississippi, Mahlon Pitney—and of course, Felix Frankfurter of Massachusetts and Potter Stewart. The often-cited Doctor Learned Hand, however, only rose to the position of Chief Justice on the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals—no doubt a prestigious position but not the court of last-resort.
Monday 7 September 2015
apocalypso or head in the sand
catagories: ๐ฌ๐ง, environment
Sunday 6 September 2015
unknown knowns or ignotum per ignotius
catagories: ๐, ๐ญ, ๐ฅธ, foreign policy, language