Light Upon the Lost Mission of La Pérouse

 

From The Guardian:

As he prepared to climb the scaffold to be publicly executed by guillotine on 21 January 1793, Louis XVI is reported to have asked: “Is there news of Monsieur de la Pérouse?”

He was referring to Jean-François de Galaup, the count of Pérouse, a naval officer and navigator whom the French king had dispatched in 1785 on a round-the-world scientific mission to rival discoveries made by the English explorer Captain James Cook.

The two ships under La Pérouse’s command, La Boussole and L’Astrolabe, disappeared three years later after leaving Botany Bay in Australia. The wrecks were only formally identified in 2005 and exactly what happened to them remains a mystery to this day.

Now rare letters written by an illustrious scientist who perished in 1788 have resurfaced, giving a new and personal account of the voyage. They are described as veiled love letters addressed to the married daughter of an aristocratic family, and were discovered hidden in a book of engravings being examined in preparation for auction.

Ludovic Miran, a book and manuscript expert for the auctioneers selling the letters next month, described the find as “a miracle”.

“We have a certain number of documents from the expedition but they are almost all scientific, so these personal letters are extremely rare,” Miran told the Guardian. “They throw a completely new light on what is in France an extraordinary scientific and historical event.” (Read more.)

Share

How Biological Weapons Could Nearly Wipe Out the Human Race

The Nazis wanted to use biological warfare but had no way of keeping it from killing their own people. From John Hawkind at Culturcidal:

If I were currently picking the three most likely bets to destroy human civilization, the first would be AGI. Building an intelligence far smarter than we are, along with automated factories, militaries, and robots it could control, is likely a very dangerous endeavor. I always think of it as like chimpanzees inventing human beings, giving us machine guns, and telling us to get them more bananas. Yeah, you’ll probably be rolling in bananas, but things may also potentially get very dangerous down the road.

My third pick is the classic one people have been worried about for the last few decades: nuclear war. If enough missiles were to start flying, it might not only devastate the countries being hit by them, but it could potentially cause a nuclear winter that essentially stops food production for a decade and starves our species down to nearly nothing.

My number 2 pick is one I think most people underestimate: That is biological warfare.

Why? (Read more.)

Share

The Giant Problem of Tolkien’s Legendarium

 From Visions of Middle-Earth:

Giants actually occur in several of Tolkien’s works. Although we never learn a great deal about them, tracing Tolkien’s changing ideas about giants reveals a fascinating corner of his creative process and raises an intriguing question: if giants really exist in Middle-earth, what exactly are they?

Giants are among the most widespread creatures of traditional folklore and mythology. As John D. Rateliff notes in The History of the Hobbit, ‘giants have a long, long tradition in folklore of being extremely dangerous if not downright wicked.’ Tolkien encountered them in many of the traditions he knew well, from Classical mythology to the powerful jötnar of Jötunheim in the Old Norse sources.

So giants were hardly an out-of-place idea for a mythology-minded writer like Tolkien. No more than dragons, dwarves, great eagles, or walking trees. And Tolkien clearly found the idea appealing. Throughout the development of his legendarium, he repeatedly experimented with giants and different roles they might play.

In this essay, I want to follow that history and explore where giants appear across Tolkien’s writings. In a follow-up to this article, I will look at the major theories about their identity and ask which explanation best fits the evidence. (Read more.)

Share

The Medieval Mystical Concept of “Natur Naturans”

 

From Hilary White at The Sacred Images Project:

In the 13th century, Latin translations of Aristotle flooded European universities. Aristotle wrote extensively about physis (nature) as an intrinsic, active principle of motion and change within the material world. The idea was, broadly, that the physical world was not inert or lifeless. Each natural thing possesses an internal principle governing its characteristic movement and development.

Going back to the simple little grazing rabbit or the bird tending its nest, according to Aristotle’s physis, natural things possess their own principles of movement and development. And you can see this principle at work. An acorn looks nothing like an oak tree, but it grows into an oak because it contains the principle of “oakness” and its nature is to grow into the fulfilment of that principle.

When Aristotle became the foundation of Christian philosophy, thinkers like Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure had to find a way to understand this in a way that did not end in Pantheism. The obvious question had to have a coherent Christian answer: If nature itself is imbued with an active energetic force that creates, shapes and moves things, does that mean nature has its own independent power separate from God? If nature does all the work, does that mean God is relegated to being a passive bystander, perhaps something like what later thinkers would call the “watchmaker” deity who made everything like a machine that runs on its own, and then left?

The solution was obvious: God’s power of creation is combined with His will to sustain everything that exists in existence from moment to moment. And everything He created is endowed with an inherent nature and functions according to that nature. Everything has characteristic powers, activities or behaviours and ways of developing inherent to it. The rabbit grazes and burrows; the bird builds its nest and sings; the acorn develops into an oak because they were all created with those powers and instincts. (Read more.)

Share

Trump Has Delivered on the Economy, the Drive-By Media Simply Won't Report on It

 From The Enterprise:

Trump’s policies give manufacturers reasons to build here. Tariffs make domestic production more attractive relative to shipping goods into the country, while the tax law restored 100% expensing for equipment and extended it to new factory construction. Expensing lets a business deduct qualifying costs upfront rather than spread the deduction over time. That changes the calculation for a company deciding where to put its next plant.

A chip fab takes four years from permit to wafer; a petrochemical plant takes five. The wait is real, and a pledge is no guarantee of completion. Yet the same reporters who dismiss Trump’s commitments as vapor celebrated every Biden CHIPS Act press release as a manufacturing renaissance, including projects since shelved. Apply the same scrutiny to both. One-directional skepticism is partisanship with a notebook.

The habit predates the factory announcements. In 2021 and 2022, the Biden administration called inflation “transitory,” and the drive-by media repeated it for most of a year as inflation climbed from 5% to 9%. When a Fox reporter asked Biden about inflation in January 2022, the president answered with an obscenity on a hot mic and the press corps chuckled. When gasoline crossed $5, CNN supplied silver linings. When two consecutive quarters of negative growth arrived that summer, the White House redefined recession and the networks adopted the definition within a news cycle. (Read more.)

Share

The Making of Alfred the Great

From Historical Chronicles:

At the time of the Great Heathen Army's Invasion of England in AD 865, Alfred was a young, quite unassuming, prince (Atheling) of Wessex.

He was studious and interested in religious matters, and when he was just a boy, he undertook a pilgrimage to Rome and met with the Pope. Because Alfred had four older brothers and was therefore well down the royal pecking order, this may have been intended to prepare him for a life of the cloth.

However, any hopes of a peaceful monastic life were dashed in late 870 when the Viking menace turned its furious gaze to Wessex.

By this time, only Alfred and his older brother, King Aethelred, remained. The pair rose to the occasion and marched out to meet the Great Heathen Army at Reading, but here they were taught a brutal lesson, and both were rather lucky to escape with their lives.

Alfred’s first major bout with the Vikings ended in disaster. It was, in fact, very nearly his last. Yet, in what would become the defining pattern of his reign, Alfred refused to stay down. (Read more.)

Share

Characteristics of Baroque Architecture

 From My Modern Met:

It is difficult to separate Baroque architecture from art and sculpture. Since ornamentation was such a critical component to this architectural style, these buildings also introduce us to other mediums that follow the same ideals. Grandeur, or drama, is probably the most obvious characteristic of Baroque architecture. This theme is also the reason for other characteristics like ornamentation or curves. In churches, the grandeur of the architecture was used to inspire awe that made visitors feel connected to God or to feel small in comparison to the size of God—and the church. Grandeur, in this sense, often means size—both in height and in the sheer size of the building—but grandeur can also be applied to the amount of ornamentation and decoration. It makes sense that Baroque architecture would feature unexpected curves and organic shapes considering the term is roughly translated to “irregularly shaped.” These movements regularly occur in grand façades and are often concave entrances or places of statues. However, these organic design moves can be found anywhere in Baroque architecture, especially in the domed roofs of cathedrals or churches. (Read more.)

Share

Trump’s Next Two Years Can Be His Greatest

 From The Enterprise:

Donald Trump should enter January ready to govern with confidence. Last Tuesday the Democrat Party captured both the House and the Senate, then joined its willing accomplices in the drive-by media in spending the week composing his political obituary. They mistake a congressional majority for control of the presidency. Chuck Schumer will run the Senate calendar and Hakeem Jeffries will hold the House gavel. Neither will inherit the executive branch, its lawful authority, or the money already appropriated for Trump’s priorities.

His agenda never depended on a Republican Congress that, for most of two years, acted like an obstacle wearing an ally’s uniform. Chasing 218 House votes and 60 Senate votes for bills that never arrived consumed attention better spent governing. Victor Davis Hanson identified the opportunity within days of the results: a nominal majority of 53 senators can mean 53 private vetoes. Divided government can strip those vetoes of their bargaining value. (Read more.)

Share

The Sun Also Rises Over the Young Adult Group

The cultural and sexual revolutions have destroyed the old boundaries as well as the old codes of chivalry and etiquette, leaving so many young people rudderless. For centuries the parish church was the center of social integration; it is now another place of social isolation for some young believers. From To the Ends of the Earth:

In this way, Catholic social life risks becoming yet another extension of the broader status economy, subtly reinforcing the very hierarchies it claims to transcend. Cliques form. Certain people become the people you need to know. Certain events become the events you need to attend. Certain friend groups somehow begin functioning like a small country club with a rosary attached. Suddenly, a ministry designed to foster unity and belonging begins, paradoxically, to generate its own factions and divisions.

That is where Hemingway becomes useful. The characters in The Sun Also Rises are constantly together, but togetherness does not necessarily mean communion. They eat together, drink together, travel together, gossip about one another, become jealous of one another, sleep with one another, and repeatedly injure one another. Their social life is incredibly busy. Yet for all their activity, their lives remain marked by a profound emptiness.

Brett is perhaps the clearest example: she is beautiful, magnetic, desired by almost every man around her, and almost incapable of remaining still. There is always another romance, another city, another party, another possibility.

Jake loves her, but because of the wound he suffered in the war, their relationship can never become what either of them wants it to be, so their longing remains unresolved.

That ache sits underneath the entire novel. While our circumstances differ dramatically, the ache of unresolved longing is strikingly familiar. Modern Catholic young adults talk constantly about vocation, dating, marriage, community, intentionality, and discernment. Beneath all that language is often an extraordinarily simple desire: I want to be known. I want friends who actually know me; I want someone to love; I want my life to mean something; I want to know that I am not wasting these years.

There is nothing pathetic about these desires; they are, in fact, profoundly human. Yet when we fail to acknowledge these desires honestly, we begin to perform them instead, enacting a script rather than living a reality. (Read more.)

Share