7 Myths about Robin Hood

From History Extra:

Robin Hood is an invented, archetypical hero, whose career encapsulates many of the popular frustrations and ambitions of his era. Robin (or Robert) Hood (aka Hod or Hude) was a nickname given to petty criminals from at least the middle of the 13th century – it may be no coincidence that Robin sounds like ‘robbing’ - but no contemporary writer refers to Robin Hood the famous outlaw we recognise today. There were men like Robin Hood, however, such as fugitives who flouted the harsh forest laws [unpopular laws that retained vast areas of semi-wild landscape over which the king and his court could hunt], and these fugitives were largely admired by the oppressed peasantry. But the individual(s) whose deeds inspired the legend of Robin Hood may not have been called Robin Hood from birth, or indeed even during in his own lifetime. (Read more.)

Share

More on Coconut Oil

From the Trianon Health and Beauty Blog:

Coconut oil is indispensable for health and beauty. I always keep a few jars of coconut oil around, not just for making the creams. (Read more.)

Share

A Gene for Divorce?

From Science of Relationships:

In a landmark study in this area from the early 1990s, researchers estimated the heritability of divorce to be about 50%.¹ What does a heritability estimate like this mean? Imagine a city or town where all of the people are either married or divorced. A heritability estimate of 50% means that the genetic differences between people in that city can explain half of why some people in that city stay married and why others get divorced. (What explains the other half of why some people get divorced? The environment!) Importantly, what a heritability estimate doesn’t mean is that half of the reason that Joe or Mary, individuals who live in our imaginary city, get divorced. In other words, a heritability estimate tells us that genetic factors play a role in general, but it does not explain why any one of us will experience divorce.

A heritability estimate also doesn’t tell us—by itself—whether we carry the specific genes or genetic variants that make us more likely to experience divorce. To find those genes, we would have to take a different approach. Right now, the most popular approach for gene identification is the genome-wide association study, which looks across the genome to see whether there are genotypic differences between people who do and do not have a trait or behavior of interest. For example, this analysis could determine if there are specific genetic variants associated with whether someone has straight or curly hair². No one has conducted a genome-wide association study of divorce (yet!), so it will be a while before we can ship off a saliva sample to 23andme (or any other direct-to-consumer genetic testing company) to find our risk of divorce.

A complicating factor in any such search for “divorce genes” is that divorce is what we call a “complex” outcome. In genetics, when we say that a trait or behavior is complex, we mean that there are multiple genes and genetic variants that influence that trait or behavior. Most of the things that psychologists and relationship researchers study—like how neurotic someone is, whether they have an alcohol or drug problem, or whether they are likely to get divorced—are complex traits. Contrast this with other types of outcomes that a single gene causes, such as Huntington’s disease or cystic fibrosis. The effect of each individual gene on a complex outcome like divorce is expected to be exceedingly small. This makes the search for “divorce genes” very challenging, like trying to find needles in a haystack. (Read more.)

Share

Talk to Your Father

From Crisis:

Every single culture in the history of the world has been built upon three forms of love. The first is what we have in common with all the animals: it is the most powerful of our natural bonds. It is the love of a mother for her child. The second love gives the first love a haven, and is blessed by God in a special way; it is the love without which children themselves would not exist. That is the love of man and woman in marriage, raised to the height of glory in the marriage of the eternal bridegroom Christ, with his bride, the Church.

The third, we are apt to overlook and neglect. It is the bond of brother and brother. It is not foundational, as is that of mother and child; it is not an image of the eternal, as is that of bride and groom. It is, however, the bond without which no culture comes into existence in the first place, and then survives. It is the bond that builds bridges, tunnels through mountains, raises walls, drains swamps, clears fields, drills wells, fights for the homeland, erects churches and temples, strings the nerves of commerce and power across a continent, and makes a people into a people rather than a confusion of squabbling families.

Is it celebrated in Scripture? It hardly needed to be; it was so taken for granted everywhere. But the answer is yes. We have what a wise friend of mine long ago set before my attention, the “forgotten icon,” the band of brothers we know as Christ and the apostles. Jesus was under no illusions about male perfection. He calls Peter “Satan,” he expresses impatience with Philip for being so slow to understand him, he rebukes James and John—to whom he has given the jaunty and somewhat unflattering nickname, “Sons of Thunder”—for their ambition; and we need not bother to discuss the hard words he has for the important men of his time. Meanwhile his words to women, though they are frank, are always gentle, even when he tests the faith of the Canaanite woman. Yet Jesus chose men for his apostles.

You see, young man, that Jesus himself was a man, and was drawn to the band of brothers, just as he was drawn to every other good thing in our lives: to the flowers of the desert, to happy feasts, to the love of a kind father, to the sacred songs of his forefathers. Let us then pierce through the confusion of your adolescence and the treachery of our times, and see realities again. What Jesus experienced in his humanity—the boy’s attraction to the male band; recall how the boy Jesus remained behind in Jerusalem to trade questions and answers with the learned men?—every boy and young man experiences. Every one of them; it is as natural as breathing. You are not different from any boy or young man in this regard. We are all the same. (Read more.)

Share

Les Liaisons Dangereuses

A review from author Isabel Azar:

Today, Pierre Ambroise François Choderlos de Laclos was born in 1741, in Amiens, France. He served as a soldier, but is best known for his novel, Les Liaisons Dangereuses (in English, Dangerous Liaisons). This book ruffled quite a few feathers among both the aristocrats and the bourgeoisie when it was first published in April, 1782 - people were unsure of what to make of it. Many deemed it scandalous due to its sexual content, others couldn't put it down for the same reason, and some readers took moral lessons from the tale. I believe the latter response is what Laclos desired; in his "Editor's Preface" (he pretends that his work of fiction is a compilation of actual letters, which was a common authorial device at that time), he explicitly states:

It seems to me, at any rate, that it is to render a service to morals, to unveil the methods employed by those whose own are bad in corrupting those whose conduct is good; and I believe that these letters will effectually attain this end. There will also be found the proof and example of two important verities which one might believe unknown, for that they are so rarely practiced: the one, that every woman who consents to admit a man of loose morals to her society ends by becoming his victim; the other, that a mother is, to say the least, imprudent who allows any other than herself to possess the confidence of her daughter. Young people of either sex might also learn from these pages that the friendship which persons of evil character appear to grant them so readily is never aught else but a dangerous snare, as fatal to their happiness as to their virtue.  

These messages are exemplified in the novel; the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont wreak havoc on their prey. Valmont's virtuous, devoutly religious conquest, Madame de Tourvel, dies of a broken heart after having the misfortune to fall in love with the libertine, and Cécile, Merteuil's teenaged cousin, returns to the convent where she was educated to become a nun, in order to atone for her fornication with Valmont (in which she was encouraged by Merteuil, her confidant). Her first (chaste and respectable) lover, the Chevalier Danceny, becomes a monk to make reparation for his fling with Merteuil; though their decisions to enter religious life, I believe Laclos was indicating that God's redeeming love provides solace for those who have transgressed. At the conclusion, Cécile's mother, Madame de Volanges, laments:

Who is there who would not shudder, if he were to reflect upon the misfortunes that may be caused by even one dangerous acquaintance! And what troubles would one not avert by reflecting on this more often! What woman would not fly before the first proposal of a seducer! What mother could see another person than herself speak to her daughter, and tremble not!

(Read more.)

Share

"White Children" are "Part of the Problem"

What?! ALL children of every color are a gift from God. I have never know people to be so obsessed with skin color! From Fox News:

A City University of New York sociology professor reportedly said in a tweetstorm last week that “the white-nuclear family” promotes racism, prompting a backlash on social media. Jessie Daniels, described as an expert on “the Internet manifestations of racism” on her CUNY page, infuriated social media users after reportedly saying that white families promote racism by default. The professor began her argument saying she learned that “the white-nuclear family is one of the most powerful forces supporting white supremacy,” adding that that families “reproducing white children” are “part of the problem” as they facilitate white supremacy in the country, Campus Reform reported. (Read more.)

Share

The Prosecution of the Chicago Tribune

From the National Security Archives:

Documents posted today by the George Washington University-based National Security Archive detail FBI, Justice Department, and Navy efforts to charge the Tribune with damaging national security by indirectly alluding to U.S. penetration of Japan’s naval codes – one of the most sensitive secrets of the day. But federal prosecutors dropped the case after senior officials expressed doubts about whether the Tribune and its correspondent knowingly acted improperly and after Navy brass chose not to allow public testimony for fear of increasing the chances Japan would realize its codes had been compromised.

The Tribune case was the first time the U.S. government tried to pursue charges against a major media source under the Espionage Act for publishing classified information – making it of particular interest in the current political environment.

Today’s posting draws on grand jury records that had been sealed for decades until historian Elliot Carlson, joined by the Reporters Committee on Freedom of the Press, the National Security Archive, and other historians’ organizations, filed a lawsuit for their release. A court ruled in favor of the suit on June 10, 2015, but the government appealed, sending the case to the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which decided 2-1 on September 15, 2016, to unseal the files. They are now available to researchers at the National Archives and Records Administration in College Park, Maryland. This is the latest in a series of judicial decisions to open grand jury records of historical importance, including from the investigations of Alger Hiss and Julius Rosenberg. (Read more.)

Share

Matisse and the Decorative Arts

From Meredith Mendelsohn at Architectural Digest:

Matisse was collecting more seriously as early as 1906, when he purchased of a small seated African figure from the Congo from a Paris dealer. But the artist never thought of himself as a collector in the traditional sense. “This may sound like an odd thing for an artist to say, but later in his life he remembered that in his early years of hardship, he detested collections and collectors,” says Matisse scholar and independent curator Ellen McBreen, who co-organized the show with Helen Burnham from the MFA. “His parents were hardworking seed-shop owners, so he was raised with a fundamental distrust for excessive luxury and waste.” It’s not surprising then, how much use he got out of these objects.The Surrealist poet Louis Aragon aptly referred to the wares as Matisse’s “palette of objects,” and just like a painter might grab a different brush or tube of paint, Matisse stored his collection in his studio and pulled out different pieces while working. In some cases this means a direct representation, or using his wares as props. A green blown-glass Andalusian vase, a Tunisian hexagonal table, and a French silver chocolate pot on view in the show reappear in his paintings, given new life with each rendering, while a stunning Egyptian curtain appears in an interior and also clearly inspired the floral shapes of Matisse’s cutouts. Other textiles, meanwhile, were hung in layers like curtains to provide lush, exotic backdrops for his odalisques. (Read more.)

Share

When New York City Was the Capital of American Communism

From The New York Times:

For a few decades — from the 1930s until Communism’s demise as an effective political force in the 1950s — New York City was the one place where American communists came close to enjoying the status of a mass movement. Party members could live in a milieu where co-workers, neighbors and the family dentist were fellow Communists; they bought life insurance policies (excellent value for money) from party-controlled fraternal organizations; they could even spend their evenings out in night clubs run by Communist sympathizers (like the ironically named Café Society on Sheridan Square in Greenwich Village, a showcase for up-and-coming black performers like Billie Holliday).

What became the Communist Party U.S.A. (its name varied in the early years) was founded in Chicago in 1919 and, following a period of underground organization, opened its national headquarters in that city in 1921. But the bulk of the movement’s members were in New York, and in 1927 Communist headquarters were shifted to a party-owned building in Manhattan, at 35 East 12th Street, two blocks south of Union Square. (The building still stands, although under new ownership, and in what has evolved into a considerably less proletarian neighborhood than in the old days.)

New York would remain the capital city of American Communism from then on. Leading communists, including such figures as William Z. Foster and Earl Browder, had their offices on the top floor of the 12th Street building; accordingly, within the movement, it became the custom to refer to party leadership as the “ninth floor.” (And, for some reason, even in non- and anti-Communist left-wing circles, “the party” was always understood to refer to the Communists, rather than any rival organizations.)

Immigrants, many of them of Eastern European Jewish background, provided the main social base for the party in New York City in the 1920s: As late as 1931, four-fifths of the Communists living in the city were foreign-born. (Read more.)

Share