Visiting Greenwich

The Queen's House at Greenwich

 From Frayed Passport:

Greenwich is where east meets west. It’s where time begins and where the first clock chimes the midnight hour. Each day at 12:55 p.m., the Greenwich Time Ball atop the Royal Observatory rises halfway up its mast, signaling the time to ships along the Thames. At 12:58, it rises all the way to the top. At 1:00 p.m., the ball falls and all around the world, clocks and watches are adjusted to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). Here are a few reasons you should make time to visit Greenwich, England.

 Greenwich, England – longitude 0° 0′ 0” and latitude 51° 28′ 38” N, defines both time and place for the world. All places have a latitude (their distance north or south of the Equator) and a longitude (their distance east or west of the Greenwich Meridian). Greenwich was chosen to be the Prime Meridian of the world in 1884 when 41 delegates from 25 nations met in Washington, D.C. for the International Meridian Conference.

On the south bank of the Thames River, Greenwich is a World Heritage Site recognized for its concentration and quality of buildings of historic and architectural interest. The town became a popular resort in the 17th century with opulent houses from the Georgian period constructed above the town center.

Greenwich is home to the Palace of Placentia, which dates to the 15th century. The birthplace of many in the House of Tudor, including Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, the palace fell into disrepair during the English Civil War (1642—1651) and was rebuilt in 1873 as the Royal Naval Hospital for Sailors by Sir Christopher Wren. It became the Royal Naval College in 1873 and then, in 1998, the Greenwich Foundation took control. At present, it is used by the University of Greenwich and the Trinity College of Music.

Greenwich, England also is home to Cutty Sark, the only remaining original Clipper ship from the 1800s, and Gipsy Moth IV, a 54-foot ketch that Sir Francis Chichester commissioned specifically to sail single-handed around the globe, racing against the times set by the clipper ships of the 19th century.

Greenwich Park is home to the National Maritime Museum, which is actually comprised three sites: the Maritime Galleries, the Royal Observatory, and the Queen’s House. Together these constitute one museum working to illustrate for everyone the importance of the sea, ships, time, and the stars and their relationship with people.

Home of Greenwich Mean Time and the Prime Meridian Line, the Royal Observatory is one of the most important historic scientific sites in the world. It is the official starting point for each new day, year and millennium—at the stroke of midnight GMT as measured from the Prime Meridian. In 1675, Charles II founded the observatory to improve navigation at sea and appointed John Flamsteed as his first Astronomer Royal.

Disasters at sea, including a 1707 sinking that killed more than 2,000 men, prompted Parliament to find the so-much desired longitude of places—one’s exact position east and west—while at sea and out of sight of land. In 1714, Parliament established the Board of Longitude and offered a £20,000 reward (equivalent to about £2 million today) to anyone who could solve the problem of finding longitude at sea. Nearly 60 years later, John Harrison, a Yorkshire clockmaker, claimed the prize that stumped famous astronomers, scientists, and mathematicians—Harrison’s H1 changed navigation forever.

 Inigo Jones designed the Queens House in 1616, commissioned by King James I’s wife, Anne, to build a new pavilion for her at Greenwich. A student of Roman and Renaissance architecture, Jones designed the first fully Classical building seen in England. Though generally called Palladian in style, its model was the Medici villa at Poggio a Caiano and it also served as a model for the White House in Washington D.C. The house’s design, classical in proportion and harmony, was revolutionary in Britain when the majority of buildings were Tudor-style red brick. (Read more.)

Tulip Staircase

Queen's Antechamber

Ceiling of Great Hall in Queen's House

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A Rare Talent, A Lingering Absence

 From City Journal:

Eight and a half years have passed since the February 2014 death of Philip Seymour Hoffman of a heroin overdose at age 46. Hoffman’s absence still provokes sadness. He was not quite a movie star; he was something much better. Only in retrospect has the scale of his ambition become clear. One role at a time, he was trying to take on the whole of our collective experience, to get inside the loneliness, the self-loathing, and the desperation—above all, the desperation—of life in a nation poking at its own psychic wounds.

Hoffman’s most durable role was probably in Capote, for which he won an Academy Award in 2005. He portrayed writer Truman Capote during a pivotal period in Capote’s career—as he researched and composed his greatest book, the true-crime story In Cold Blood. The book both made Capote’s reputation and drained him emotionally, beginning the moral and physical collapse that ended in his premature death. Totally lacking in physical vanity, Hoffman made himself smaller, raised his voice several octaves, mastered Capote’s distinctive gestures. It was a triumph not merely of technique but of understanding. Hoffman played Capote as a man both exquisitely self-possessed and entirely captive to his own ambition. Hoffman could underline Capote’s self-deceptions in his pursuit of the truth about the murders of the Clutter family because he understood the artistic stakes the writer was playing for.

Contrast Capote with Hoffman’s performance in Sidney Lumet’s 2007 crime thriller Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead. As he is delicate in Capote, here he is bullying and brutal. His Andy, an inept criminal and a worse son and brother, is hateful and cruelly manipulative. He brings ruin and death to the people around him. But Hoffman connects us to Andy’s need, just as he connected us to Capote’s, and when Andy breaks open in a pivotal scene, we see the unloved little boy he once was. As his plan unravels, Andy commits terrible violence, but he never quite loses our sympathy.

Hoffman was interested in male sexual frustration and dysfunction. In Happiness, he played a proto-incel, a man who feels an overwhelming need to express himself sexually but has no way to connect. His Jacob in 25th Hour and Scotty J. in Boogie Nights are rendered almost mute by obsession. These men have pornography at their fingertips, but sexual intimacy is on the other side of the moon. His Lester Bangs in Almost Famous delivers an aria for the uncool, telling a journalistic protégé that “women will always be a problem for guys like us.” In Doubt, Hoffman invites the audience to consider that his Father Flynn, a man of intelligence and wit—a man who truly cares for children—might also be a predator.

In a nation increasingly defined by its addictions, Hoffman himself was an addict. He was dependent at various times on alcohol and heroin, and more loosely, on food and cigarettes (“anything by mouth,” he joked). He played addicts time and again. Capote’s life was destroyed by alcohol. Hoffman’s grieving widower in Love Liza sniffs gasoline. Of course, anyone can play a crazed dope fiend, as Frank Sinatra did to dubious effect (and an Academy Award nomination) in The Man With The Golden Arm. Hoffman merged the addictions of his characters into their broader psychology, their peculiar sense of what was missing and what they were owed. An actor must be specific, and no one was more specific about suffering than Hoffman.

Hoffman’s consuming career and early death invite the cliché of the suffering artist. He would have rejected this idea as the kind of lazy first thought he worked to get past in his roles. Heroin killed Hoffman, just as heroin and other opioids will kill 50,000 Americans this year who are not as gifted or driven as he was. It would be speciously romantic, then, to say that fame or self-imposed pressure was what led to his death. (Read more.)

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Swim Upstream or Die

 From Dr. Zmirak at The Stream:

I was excited to watch Donald Trump’s speech at the America First Policy Institute, in part because I honestly haven’t heard him speak in months. While he was still in the White House, that became a regular treat. Because Trump doesn’t speak like ordinary politicians.

He speaks like my dad. (A blunt letter-carrier, like Trump from Queens.) Like most people’s dads, unless you’re a blue-blood. And that was always refreshing, especially compared to other politicians:

Bill Clinton, who speaks like a sociopathic traveling Bible salesman who’s out to seduce you in a barn, then steal your artificial limb.

George W. Bush, who sounds like Forrest Gump wandered into the White House and ended up standing in front of a microphone.

Barack Obama, who sounds like a parole officer who envies his perps and desperately wants them to think he is cool.

Hillary Clinton, who talks like Big Nurse from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Joe Biden, who’s Grandpa Simpson, except he’s in charge of the nukes, not Homer.

Kamala Harris, who is the Mean Lady from the DMV who tells you your documentation is insufficient, she doesn’t care how long you waited in line.

Mike Pence, who sounds like paint drying on the wall of your room in rehab.

It’s incredibly refreshing to hear a man in politics call a sicko a “sicko.” Instead of muttering something about the “Minor-Attracted People community.” (Read more.)

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Murals for the Cathedral

 

Gwyneth is an amazing artist! From The Catholic Missourian:

Northern sunlight illuminates a panorama of Missouri wildlife, flowers and fauna. A bishop, a priest and a deacon lead a procession through a glorified version of the Missouri River. People of all ages, backgrounds and skin tones are taken up in the gathering, which close examination reveals to be expedited by a fishing net, being dragged by the clergymen.

“And caught up in the net, in addition to all the beautiful native species, are the newly baptized, who are carrying their Baptism candles and representing individuals from all walks of life who are crossing the spiritual Jordan into the Promised Land of new life in Christ,” stated Gwyneth Thompson-Briggs (gwyneththompsonbriggs.com), a painter of sacred art.

This vivid illustration will adorn the walls and octagonal ceiling of the new baptistery in the Cathedral of St. Joseph in Jefferson City. The work is part of a substantial, yearlong renovation, expansion and renewal of the 53-year-old Cathedral, focused on enhancing its beauty, functionality, capacity for hospitality and uniquely Catholic identity. Bishop W. Shawn McKnight directed Mrs. Thompson-Briggs to include images of distinctly Missouri wildlife and hints of the bluffs of the Missouri River in the distance. She incorporated native trout and catfish in the water, flowering dogwood trees on the banks, and cardinals and bluebirds in the air.

“The idea is to visually enculturate the universal call to Baptism within the Diocese of Jefferson City,” Mrs. Thompson-Briggs explained “to show how Christ’s call to baptize all nations (Matthew 28:19) is also a call to Baptism for the people of this particular place.”

The entire work is made up of three large panels, each about 9 by 9 feet, and eight smaller panels to adorn the octagonal cupola in the ceiling. All are being rendered in oil-based paint on thick canvas, which will be secured to the baptistery walls. The cupola will be situated above the marble baptismal font, which will also have eight sides — representing the six days of Creation, the Sabbath, and the day on which Jesus rose from the dead. The final panel includes two souls — one receiving Baptism by blood, the other receiving Baptism by desire.

“Bishop McKnight wanted to be sure that all three forms of Baptism — by water, by blood and by desire — were represented,” Mrs. Thompson-Briggs noted, referring to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, #1257-1261. Each of the smaller panels for the cupola includes a fruit-laden garland known as a festoon.

“All the fruits are Missouri fruits,” Mrs. Thompson-Briggs noted. “In the center of the cupola is a depiction of the Holy Spirit. So the festoons also symbolically represent the spiritual fruits that are transmitted through the grace of Baptism.” (Read more.)

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A Tragic Farce in the Senate

 From Dr. Zmirak at The Stream:

Perhaps the most outrageous recent exchange in our public life took place in Senate hearings, when the pro-family patriot Sen. Josh Hawley was questioning U.C. Berkeley Professor Khiara Bridges. As The Guardian reported:

During the judiciary committee hearing, Hawley, who has previously co-sponsored a bill which would prevent transgender children from competing in sports, questioned Khiara Bridges, a professor at UC Berkeley School of Law who was invited to testify on reproductive rights.

“You’ve referred to ‘people with a capacity for pregnancy’,” he said. “Would that be women?”

Bridges replied: “Many women, cis women, have the capacity for pregnancy. Many cis women do not have the capacity for pregnancy. There are also trans men who are capable of pregnancy, as well as non-binary people who are capable of pregnancy.”

Hawley said: “So this isn’t really a women’s rights issue. It’s … it’s what?”

Bridges said: “We can recognise that this impacts women while also recognising that it impacts other groups, those things are not mutually exclusive, Senator Hawley.”

She added: “I want to recognise that your line of questioning is transphobic and it opens up trans people to violence by not recognizing them.”

We can’t just lazily wave at Bridges’ position and point to it as madness. Of course it is, to you and me. We know with all the certainty of biological science and thousands of years of human civilization, plus the testimony of Scripture, that the divide between the sexes is real, crucially important, and tied to reproduction.

But that’s not enough. We face a new ideology that bears all the force of an evangelizing religion, backed by activist billionaires, which has captured all the high ground in our culture.

So we must think through clearly, even ruthlessly, the full implications of the dogmas taught by the Transgenderist cult, which public school teachers are preaching to our children — and Democrats are enshrining into law. (Don’t worry, Establishment Republicans will be obediently repeating the same superstition, just a few years later. They always do.) (Read more.)

From Todd Starnes:

More than 80 Christian conservative organizations wrote a letter to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) calling on him to oppose the “Respect for Marriage Act,” which would codify same-sex marriage into law.

The bill, which is now awaiting a vote in the Senate, passed the House of Representatives last week with the help of 47 Republicans.

Michael Farris, the Alliance Defending Freedom CEO and president, asserted the Democrat-sponsored bill will not only redefine marriage but also intentionally jeopardize religious freedom.

“When culture and political institutions fail to respect the institution of marriage and instead promote open aggression against those who believe that marriage is between a man and a woman, they not only undermine human flourishing, but seriously harm religious freedom,” Farris said.

“The so-called ‘Respect for Marriage Act’ doesn’t simply codify the Obergefell decision… it also empowers the government to punish millions of Americans who hold decent and honorable beliefs about marriage,” he added. (Read more.) 

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One of the Driving Forces of Alzheimer’s Disease

 From SciTech Daily:

Now, new research from Flinders University has demonstrated how a protein called tau, which is a critical factor in the development of Alzheimer’s disease, turns from normal to a disease state. Furthermore, the study reveals how this discovery could deliver a therapeutic target.

Published on July 6, 2022, in the journal Science Advances, the team’s findings provide hope for preventing the tau transformation process from happening, thereby maintaining tau in a healthy state and avoiding damaging consequences on brain cells.

“Alongside a small peptide called amyloid-beta, the tau protein is a central factor in Alzheimer’s disease. Tau is necessary for the toxic effects on brain cells that then result in impaired memory function,” says senior study author Dr. Arne Ittner, Senior Research Fellow in Neuroscience in the Flinders Health and Medical Research Institute. (Read more.)

 

From Science:

In August 2021, Matthew Schrag, a neuroscientist and physician at Vanderbilt University, got a call that would plunge him into a maelstrom of possible scientific misconduct. A colleague wanted to connect him with an attorney investigating an experimental drug for Alzheimer’s disease called Simufilam. The drug’s developer, Cassava Sciences, claimed it improved cognition, partly by repairing a protein that can block sticky brain deposits of the protein amyloid beta (Aβ), a hallmark of Alzheimer’s. The attorney’s clients—two prominent neuroscientists who are also short sellers who profit if the company’s stock falls—believed some research related to Simufilam may have been “fraudulent,” according to a petition later filed on their behalf with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Schrag, 37, a softspoken, nonchalantly rumpled junior professor, had already gained some notoriety by publicly criticizing the controversial FDA approval of the anti-Aβ drug Aduhelm. His own research also contradicted some of Cassava’s claims. He feared volunteers in ongoing Simufilam trials faced risks of side effects with no chance of benefit.

So he applied his technical and medical knowledge to interrogate published images about the drug and its underlying science—for which the attorney paid him $18,000. He identified apparently altered or duplicated images in dozens of journal articles. The attorney reported many of the discoveries in the FDA petition, and Schrag sent all of them to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which had invested tens of millions of dollars in the work. (Cassava denies any misconduct [see sidebar, below].)

But Schrag’s sleuthing drew him into a different episode of possible misconduct, leading to findings that threaten one of the most cited Alzheimer’s studies of this century and numerous related experiments.

The first author of that influential study, published in Nature in 2006, was an ascending neuroscientist: Sylvain Lesné of the University of Minnesota (UMN), Twin Cities. His work underpins a key element of the dominant yet controversial amyloid hypothesis of Alzheimer’s, which holds that Aβ clumps, known as plaques, in brain tissue are a primary cause of the devastating illness, which afflicts tens of millions globally. In what looked like a smoking gun for the theory and a lead to possible therapies, Lesné and his colleagues discovered an Aβ subtype and seemed to prove it caused dementia in rats. If Schrag’s doubts are correct, Lesné’s findings were an elaborate mirage.

Schrag, who had not publicly revealed his role as a whistleblower until this article, avoids the word “fraud” in his critiques of Lesné’s work and the Cassava-related studies and does not claim to have proved misconduct. That would require access to original, complete, unpublished images and in some cases raw numerical data. “I focus on what we can see in the published images, and describe them as red flags, not final conclusions,” he says. “The data should speak for itself.” (Read more.)

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A Palace in Sicily

 From Architectural Digest:

The palace changed hands in several occasions during the years. From the 18th to the mid 20th century, a Sicilian family lived there, and then in 1981, the Order of the Knights of Malta inherited the palazzo and kept it for 30 years. Any grand mansion requires substantial upkeep, and Palazzo Castelluccio wasn’t the exception. Though the Order kept it from collapsing to the ground in a great big cloud of dust and debris, the organization didn’t exactly look after the magnificent palace. So in 2011, French filmmaker Jean-Louis Remilleux purchased the palazzo and spent the next four years renovating it to its former glory before finally opening it to the public in 2018.

Restoring long-forgotten homes of nobility is Remilleux’s hobby, and he is good at it. He typically uses his own taste and judgment when it comes to the architecture and interiors in addition to the original style, but in the case of Palazzo Castelluccio, his inspiration was particular. After reading Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s 1958 fictional novel, The Leopard, about a Sicilian nobleman, Remilleux got to work on his new palazzo. He salvaged what he could from the 18th-century masterpiece, including the ceramic floors and colorful frescoes, but he also took some creative liberties that he imagined di Lampedusa would have approved. (Read more.)

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Villa de Las Niñas

 From Crisis:

“The girls have learned how to protect themselves against the evil ones; they’ve been sent out as warriors who understand the spiritual battle,” Fr. Leary said. “They have exorcised water and salt. They will be praying their rosaries on break; they’ll be walking to daily Mass in their villages, they will be in prayer. They know God is with them to protect them, moment by moment.

“These girls have a new light in their eyes—and the monsters see it—and when they see it, they often stop touching [abusing] them. The monsters see the change and they begin to drift away.”

When Fr. Leary arrived in Mexico in 2020 as a new chaplain to the Sisters of Mary—who run boarding schools throughout the world for poor, neglected, and often humiliated children—several teenagers had trouble sleeping. Many awakened in terror and pulled open windows, where they sucked in the night air in gulps as if it was an elixir that could erase memories. These nightmares were of the worst variety because they stemmed from real evil inflicted upon them; countless teenage girls here have been harmed by men in unspeakable ways. (Read more.)

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The Story of Diogenes

 From DSF Antique Jewelry:

In 412 BC, in the ancient Greek city of Sinope, a boy named Diogenes was born. His childhood took an entirely different turn after his family was sent into exile in Athens because his father tried to circulate counterfeit money. It wasn't easy for Diogenes to go from his home, good food, and a certain status in society to a life where he had none of these things. They were so poor they were almost starving.

In those days, Athens was a famous cultural center, and one of its most famous citizens was a philosopher named Antisthenes, who argued that a person does not possess things, but rather things come to possess the person. If one measures one's success by how many and valuable things one owns, then that person will not be able to own every possible thing he wants and will not stop wanting more and more things. In other words, such a person will not be able to reach a point where they are truly happy, so the fewer things a person wants, the more likely that person is to be happy.

Diogenes, the boy who had lost almost everything, listened to Antisthenes and thought about his own situation. Wasn't his father's greed that got him into trouble? Wasn't he himself depressed because he missed everything they had left behind? Diogenes concluded that the philosopher was right. In time, he developed his own philosophical concept and started talking about it, attracting larger and larger crowds of people. As his reputation grew, people sought his advice on all sorts of things. Sometimes because they knew he was wise, and sometimes because his answers were quite funny. (Read more.)

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