Back to the Books

 From The Classical Difference:

It’s true that our schools are full of bright kids receiving a first-rate education. And it’s true that Crime and Punishment is an incredible novel. But it’s also true that giving it to a fifth grader, no matter how bright, would be a mistake. To rush a fine thing is to ruin it. We do not microwave a filet mignon. No young Christian should meet Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor without first having met the claws of Aslan in The Horse and His Boy. (We want our kids to engage with the problem of suffering, not be crushed by it.) Let kids first learn to appreciate the poetic structures of Robert Frost or Gerard Manley Hopkins before tackling ancient Greek epics. Give them Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare before introducing them to King Lear himself, screaming Elizabethan curses into the storm. The good books contain simpler elements of the great books. The good books can allow us to focus on one or two elements of literature at a time, whereas the great books give us layer upon layer upon layer all at once: the plot and characters, the similes and metaphors, the rhymes and meters, the themes and ideas. (Read more.)

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How Monogamy Took Hold

 From Ancient Origins:

Human, socially imposed monogamy, as Agencia SINC explains, is something of an evolutionary puzzle, for the efforts and sacrifices required by those who accept it. Scientists had always believed that the much-debated idea of monogamy was established after the advent of agriculture and the creation of more modern human societies. However, a new study suggests that sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), also known as Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs), had an important role in the establishment of monogamy as a common model for human coexistence.

According to a study recently published in the journal Nature, the appearance of multiple STDs, along with the birth of agriculture, forced prehistoric men and women to develop partnerships formed by larger groups. This new way of life, with its internal pressures due to contact with the same population, led to the establishment of the first social standards, causing a change from polygamy to monogamy. (Read more.)

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Dior in ‘Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris’

The real Dior 1957 Collection

The clothes in the film are based on Dior's actual designs

 From The New York Post:

This summer’s most romantic movie is about a woman who falls in love … with a dress. In “Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris,” out Friday, a plucky, kind-hearted cleaning lady (Harris, played by Lesley Manville) working in 1950s London discovers a Christian Dior gown in a wealthy employer’s closet. The strapless lavender frock, festooned with glittering embroidered flowers and lace trimmings, propels Harris on a quest for her own couture confection, leading her all the way to France and Dior’s hallowed maison. The film’s costume designer Jenny Beavan told The Post that Harris’ rapturous response isn’t actually that far-fetched, historically speaking.

“For [many] women, it was just fantastic at the end of [World War II] to see clothes that had such volume in fabric, after everybody had been scrimping on rations,” said Beavan, a three-time Oscar winner. (Read more.)

 

From Town and Country:

Of course, a large part of what happens in Mrs. Harris is fictional—but not all of that comes from Gallico’s book. Some was devised by Fabian to help make even the imaginary moments on screen feel more believable. “The key to this story is that it is magic realism, so it has to have an equal dose of magic and reality,” he says. “If you go too far into magic, you won’t believe it; if you go too far into the realism, it wouldn’t have that uplifting fairy tale quality. The choice to have a binmen’s strike [during Mrs. Harris’s time] in Paris seemed like a fun idea with her being a cleaner. That was also partly motivated by my desire not to create too much of a chocolate-box world. If this beautiful city is strewn with rubbish, you’re bringing a degree of reality to the fairytale. Getting the balance right was important.”

Likewise, seeing inside the homes of the Dior staff—where they live real lives somewhat less charmed than an existence inside the atelier—helps create a sense of fantasy and reality on screen. “Getting a window into where some of these characters live was very important,” Fabian says. “There are lovely contrasts all the way through the story—between London and Paris but also between the glamour of Dior and the reality of the people who worked there.” (Read more.)

 

From Variety:

As the title character of “Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris,” Lesley Manville charms nearly everyone she encounters: homeless men on the streets of Paris, the heads of the Dior fashion house (including Christian Dior himself), models, dressmakers and racehorse track operators. Even the more snobbish people she encounters eventually find themselves taken in by Ada, a kindhearted but tough English cleaning lady who — following the devastating news that her missing-in-action husband has been declared dead by the British army — makes it her life’s mission to acquire a Dior dress and live out her dreams of glamour.

For people who know Manville best from her Oscar-nominated work on 2017’s “Phantom Thread,” where she played cynical and tough-minded fashion house manager Cyril, seeing Manville as the outsider in the world of high fashion may initially feel like a bit of an in-joke. But Manville makes it easy to forget all her past roles with the film, bringing a lovely sense of dignity and longing to Ada’s seemingly frivolous pursuit of a dress that gives the frothy film some grounding. For the veteran actor, the film is the start for a busy few months with many projects ahead — not the least of which including Netflix’s blockbuster series “The Crown,” which will have her replace Helena Bonham Carter in the role of Princess Margaret. (Read more.)

 

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Tough on Crime?

 From Heather MacDonald at the New York Post:

Yet Biden’s phony narrative about America’s law enforcement officers resulted in widespread depolicing and a flight from the profession. New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Kansas City, Seattle, Portland, San Diego, and Dallas, among many other cities, are seeing record or near record levels of officer resignations, leaving police departments struggling to respond to 911 calls, much less prevent crime before it happens.

So now Biden is calling for the hiring of 100,000 additional police officers as part of his Safer America Plan. Good luck with that. As recently as May 2022, Biden released an executive order alleging that the police disproportionately kill “Black and Brown people” and that there is “systemic racism in our criminal justice system.” The May 2022 order called for “ending discriminatory pretextual stops” — code for ending all remaining proactive stop activity. It called for increased investigations of police departments for civil rights violations.

The recruiting and retention crisis in policing is not an economic problem, it is a problem of morale. Throwing federal taxpayer dollars at local police departments will not help them restock their ranks as long as officers continue to face the charge that they are racist for fighting crime where it occurs most intensely — in minority neighborhoods. (Read more.)

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Atmospheric Halos

 From Space:

For the first time in almost 5,000 years of observations, researchers have fully cataloged optical illusions created in the sky as light shines through ice crystals known as atmospheric halos. The atmospheric halo 'inventory' details frequently seen atmospheric optical illusions from known sources as well as shedding light on rarer halos, including ones with origins that are currently a mystery.

Halos are caused by the accumulation of water ice crystals smaller than 10 micrometers in the atmosphere. Qualities of these atmospheric illusions such as their colors or whether they possess arcs, spots or white rings, are determined by the shape and orientation of the ice scatter from and the path light takes towards these crystals. Often, the type of crystal behind the scattering can be identified by the shape of the halo they create. (Read more.)

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Knights vs Snails

 From Ancient Origins:

Illuminated manuscripts are handwritten books, decorated with stunning painted illustrations and often embellished with gold and silver. While the text is emblazoned with ornate painted initials, the borders are regularly festooned with marginalia, be it scribbles, doodles or decorative drolleries, images which became popular additions to illuminated manuscripts between the 13th and 15th century. The margins were the spaces where artists could have a little fun, providing comic relief and artistic critique of everyday life. Like a modern-day meme however, the artists didn’t leave behind any kind of explanation for their doodles and so historians are unsure as to what exactly these farcical illustrations actually mean. While animals in general were often seen as synonymous for certain morals or characteristics, the scene of a diminutive snail battling it out with a medieval knight, and often having the upper hand to boot, remains a mystery. (Read more.)

 

UPDATE: Thanks to a reader who sent me a link to Catholic Tradition, which says: "The snail was believed to be born from the mud, and to feed upon it. It was, therefore, interpreted as the symbol of the sinner, and of laziness, because it made no effort to seek food, but ate what it found at hand." So we can see that knight battling the snail as symbolic of the spiritual struggle against the vice of sloth.

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Criminalizing Opposition in a Pseudo-Republic

 From Mark Steyn:

For almost a decade and a half now, the American "republic" has been decaying to the defining condition of a one-party state - that is, the total merger of the ruling party and the state. Last night, the dirty stinking rotten corrupt US Department of Justice signed off on a raid on Mar-a-Lago, so we've now moved into hardcore banana-republic territory: the regime's cops are busting into the home of the opposition leader. We're told this is because Trump took some "classified" documents with him when he left Washington. Yeah, that's always a pretext for an armed raid: You could ask Hillary Clinton or Sandy Berger.

The FBI has been getting more brazen about its political thuggery this last year, increasingly relaxed about putting its thumb on the democratic scale. As my old pal from Hillsdale days, Joy Pullman, notes in a column written pre-Mar-a-Lago:

In Michigan, the FBI openly meddled in the upcoming election by affecting the selection of candidates, arresting and charging the formerly leading Republican candidate for governor for misdemeanors. The FBI raided Ryan Kelley's home while polls showed him leading the primaries. In the primary election last week, he came in fourth.

Mission accomplished - and all while too many stars of the rube right were still insisting that there are just a few bad apples at the top, I know the rank-and-file, they're salt of the earth, straight-shooting G-men, they gave me this cute lapel pin, etc, etc. There are no straight-shooting G-men: Who do you think are manning the raids, you chumps? Where are the whistle-blowers? Or even the guys who say, "No thanks, I didn't sign up for this"? It's a wholly corrupted institution and has been for the best part of a decade. The default position for what's left of the opposition party ought to be that the FBI is beyond reform, and will be replaced by a new agency with vastly circumscribed powers.

Instead, I see Kevin McCarthy is now threatening Merrick Garland with an "investigation" and ordering him to preserve all documents. Ooooooh! Maybe, after the coming Republican landslide, they can appoint an independent counsel; maybe John Durham or Robert Mueller is available. Why would anyone take McCarthy's threat seriously? If you don't grasp that in today's America there is no equality before the law, there is no point even discussing public affairs. (Read more.)

From Mike Huckabee:

It seemed in 2016 to be just a handful of rogue FBI and DOJ officials. But we now know beyond doubt, with the shameful pre-dawn raid by 30+ FBI agents on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-A-Lago home to confiscate 15 boxes of materials, that it’s a systemic, methodical, highly orchestrated attempt to shut half the country completely out. Two things MUST happen, like a one-two punch to put an end to this travesty:

First punch: Every conservative –- and fair-minded liberal –- must galvanize and gear up to change Congress in November, in a landslide.

Knockout punch: After we do that and Trump announces, we need to rally around him and simply say, “He is the candidate.” He WILL be re-elected. That’s because he’s the only candidate who’ll have the guts to take on this incredibly corrupt machine. We MUST put him back in and let him do this. I’m convinced at this point that this is the only hope for our nation, to get it back to the point where people can believe in it. As it stands now, half of us, if not more than half, do not. (Read more.)

 

From Red State:

There is nothing the Biden administration and the left at large want more than another January 6th moment before the mid-terms. They long for it, and they are willing to do anything to try to manipulate a reaction out of the right to feed into their narrative. Why? Because they believe it can save them from certain destruction in November.

Further, the FBI specifically wants justification to fight its war on “domestic terrorism.” They want to crush you and anyone who thinks like you. All they need is some on the right to lash out to enact their plan, and they have the entirety of the country’s institutions, including the press, supporting them.

Let me be frank: Do not give them what they want.

Now is not the time to play into the hands of our opponents, and you will not beat the FBI and these other corrupt institutions via disorganized attacks from the outside, no matter how good it might feel in the short term. A red line was crossed with this raid on Trump’s home, and electoral vengeance is justified. But it must come in ways that are actually effective, and that means being strategic and playing the long game. It’s going to take a Republican Congress in 2023 and a Republican president in 2025 to make any headway against this insanity. There is no other way, and once the tables are turned, any Republican politician who doesn’t have the stomach to fight back must be banished. (Read more.)

From Compact Mag:

Love him or hate him, during Trump’s presidency, the economy was strong, markets were up, inflation was under control, gas prices were low, illegal border crossings were down, crime was lower, trade deals were renegotiated, ISIS was defeated, NATO allies were stepping up, and China was stepping back (a little). Deny all that if you want to. The point here is that something like 100 million Americans believe it, strongly, and are bewildered and angered by elite hatred for the man they think delivered it.

Nor was Trump’s record all that radical—much less so than that of Joe Biden, who is using school-lunch funding to push gender ideology on poor kids, to cite but one example. Trump’s core agenda—border protection, trade balance, foreign restraint—was quite moderate, both intrinsically and in comparison to past Republican and Democratic precedent. And that’s before we even get to the fact that Trump neglected much of his own agenda in favor of the old Chamber of Commerce, fusionist, Reaganite, Conservatism, Inc., agenda. Corporate tax cuts, deregulation, and bombing Syria: These are all things Trump’s base doesn’t want, but the oligarchs desperately do, which Trump gave them. And still they try to destroy him. (Read more.)

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The Writing on the Rosetta Stone

 From Live Science:

The famous Rosetta Stone is a black granite slab inscribed with three ancient texts — two Egyptian and one Greek. It ultimately helped researchers decipher ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, whose meaning had eluded historians for centuries. But why did ancient scribes include three different kinds of writing, or scripts, on this iconic stone in the first place?

The reason the stone has a trio of scripts ultimately stems from the legacy of one of Alexander the Great's generals. The Greek text on the stone is linked with Egypt's Ptolemaic dynasty, founded by Ptolemy I Soter, a Greek-speaking Macedonian general of Alexander’s. Alexander conquered Egypt in 332 B.C., and Ptolomy I Soter seized control of the country nine years later following Alexander's death. (Cleopatra, who died in 30 B.C., was the last active ruler of the Ptolemaic line.)

The stone isn't associated with Ptolemy I Soter, but with his descendant Ptolemy V Epiphanes, whose priests had the inscribed message composed in three different scripts that each played important social roles during the Ptolemaic dynasty. (Read more.)

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The Book of St Alban

 

From Open Culture:

This past month, on the eve of the June 22nd feast of St Alban, the library of Trinity College Dublin announced that it had digitized the “13th century masterpiece” the Book of St Alban, a richly illustrated manuscript that “features 54 individual works of medieval art and has fascinated readers across the centuries, from royalty to renaissance scholars.” Created by the Benedictine monk Matthew Paris, the manuscript “chronicles the life of St Alban,” notes The Irish Times, “and also outlines the construction of St Alban’s Cathedral in Hertfordshire.” The text and illustrations explain the origins of a cult of St. Alban, the first English martyr, that began to spring up after his 4th century death. (Read more.)

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