A Brief History of King Charles’s Vendetta Against Modern Architecture

From Architectural Digest:

King Charles III has been a rather outspoken critic of modern architecture for most of his adult life. Perhaps his most damning insult—and what gave him the sobriquet of “the most prominent architecture critic in the world,” from The New York Times—was when he declared a proposed addition to London’s National Gallery as a “monstrous carbuncle” in 1984. Since then, he has not hesitated from offering his opinion on contemporary urban planning or architecture. A story in The Guardian notes that he once called Birmingham’s city center “a monstrous concrete maze,” with a library that resembled “a place where books are incinerated, not kept.” 

And even though not everyone in the city planning and architecture worlds shares his vituperative views of modern design, his opinion has carried weight over the years. The Guardian article lists several projects that were dismissed after the then prince refused to give his imprimatur, including an office tower by Mies van der Rohe and multiple projects by Pritzker Prize winner Richard Rogers.

Apart from critiquing modern design, he’s also tried his best to champion the classic form. As prince, Charles even went so far as to produce an architecture magazine called Perspectives in 1994 (it folded just a few years later), wrote a philosophic architectural book called A Vision of Britain, and created his own architectural institute that focused on his preferred style of classical design. Perhaps his most notable achievement is Poundbury, a housing development and town in southern England filled with neo-Georgian, Victorian, and castle-style homes—you won’t find anything Brutalist here. Architectural critics like The Guardian’s Oliver Wainwright have referred to it as a “feudal Disneyland,” all show and no depth. But the monarch certainly rules over this miniature kingdom with carefully thought-out aesthetic edicts: As a September The New York Times article points out, “nobody is allowed to paint their home a new color ‘without the consent of His Royal Highness.’” You can forget about a visible satellite dish too. (Read more.)

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COVID Deaths

 From The Reactionary:

The latest data shows that 58% of COVID-19 deaths in August 2022 were from people who were vaccinated or boosted. Based on past figures and the current trends, we can reasonably estimate that the number of vaccinated/boosted COVID-19 deaths will only rise. (In September 2021, the vaccinated accounted for 23% of COVID-19 deaths; in January/February 2022, the vaccinated were 42%.)

This is what happens when you rush ineffective and dangerous vaccines.

The FDA’s promises of efficacy – 91% for the Pfizer vaccine and 93% for the Moderna vaccine – were always based on hope, not data. So too were the promises of safety. At the time of the official approvals, both Pfizer and Moderna hadn’t submitted any type of long-term numbers on effectiveness. Their trials were polluted with the unblinding of participants and their safety studies are “ongoing.”

Now, we’re seeing efficacy numbers plummet within months of vaccination. The pandemic is of the vaccinated. The boosters? They’re to the benefit of the medical establishment and the pharmaceutical companies, as they mask the true problems with the two-shot vaccines. (Read more.)

 

Evidence vs plausibility. From The Brownstone Institute:

There is perhaps no bigger plausibility sham today than “evidence-based medicine” (EBM). This term was coined by Gordon Guyatt in 1990, after his first attempt, “Scientific Medicine,” failed to gain acceptance the previous year. As a university epidemiologist in 1991, I was insulted by the hubris and ignorance in the use of this term, EBM, as if medical evidence were somehow “unscientific” until proclaimed a new discipline with new rules for evidence. I was not alone in criticism of EBM (Sackett et al., 1996), though much of that negative response seems to have been based on loss of narrative control rather than on objective review of what medical research had actually accomplished without “EBM.”

Western medical knowledge has accreted for thousands of years. In the Hebrew Bible (Exodus 21:19), “When two parties quarrel and one strikes the other … the victim shall be made thoroughly healed” [my translation] which implies that individuals who had types of medical knowledge existed and that some degree of efficacy inhered. Hippocrates, in the fifth-fourth century BCE, suggested that disease development might not be random but related to exposures from the environment or to certain behaviors. In that era, there were plenty of what today we would consider counterexamples to good medical practice. Nevertheless, it was a start, to think about rational evidence for medical knowledge.

James Lind (1716-1794) advocated for scurvy protection through the eating of citrus. This treatment was known to the ancients, and in particular had been earlier recommended by the English military surgeon John Woodall (1570-1643)—but Woodall was ignored. Lind gets the credit because in 1747 he carried out a small but successful nonrandomized, controlled trial of oranges and lemons vs other substances among 12 scurvy patients.

During the 1800s, Edward Jenner’s use of cowpox as a smallpox vaccine was elaborated by culturing in other animals and put into general use in outbreaks, so that by the time of the 1905 Supreme Court case of Jacobson v. Massachusetts, the Chief Justice could assert that smallpox vaccination was agreed upon by medical authorities to be a commonly accepted procedure. Medical journals started regular publications also in the 1800s. For example, the Lancet began publishing in 1824. Accreting medical knowledge started to be shared and debated more generally and widely.

Fast-forward to the 1900s. In 1914-15, Joseph Goldberger (1915) carried out a nonrandomized dietary intervention trial that concluded that pellagra was caused by lack of dietary protein. In the 1920s, vaccines for diphtheria, pertussis, tuberculosis and tetanus were developed. Insulin was extracted. Vitamins, including Vitamin D for preventing rickets, were developed. In the 1930s, antibiotics began to be created and used effectively. In the 1940s, acetaminophen was developed, as were chemotherapies, and conjugated estrogen began to be used to treat menopausal hot flashes. Effective new medications, vaccines and medical devices grew exponentially in number in the 1950s and 1960s. All without EBM.

In 1996, responding to criticisms of EBM, David Sackett et al. (1996) attempted to explain its overall principles. Sackett asserted that EBM followed from “Good doctors use both individual clinical expertise and the best available external evidence.” This is an anodyne plausibility implication, but both components are basically wrong or at least misleading. By phrasing this definition in terms of what individual doctors should do, Sackett was implying that individual practitioners should use their own clinical observations and experience. However, the general evidential representativeness of one individual’s clinical experience is likely to be weak. Just like other forms of evidence, clinical evidence needs to be systematically collected, reviewed, and analyzed, to form a synthesis of clinical reasoning, which would then provide the clinical component of scientific medical evidence.

A bigger failure of evidential reasoning is Sackett’s statement that one should use “the best available external evidence” rather than all valid external evidence. Judgments about what constitutes “best” evidence are highly subjective and do not necessarily yield overall results that are quantitatively the most accurate and precise (Hartling et al., 2013; Bae, 2016). In formulating his now canonical “aspects” of evidential causal reasoning, Sir Austin Bradford Hill (1965) did not include an aspect of what would constitute “best” evidence, nor did he suggest that studies should be measured or categorized for “quality of study” nor even that some types of study designs might be intrinsically better than others. In the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, Margaret Berger (2011) states explicitly, “… many of the most well-respected and prestigious scientific bodies (such as the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the Institute of Medicine, the National Research Council, and the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences) consider all the relevant available scientific evidence, taken as a whole, to determine which conclusion or hypothesis regarding a causal claim is best supported by the body of evidence.” This is exactly Hill’s approach; his aspects of causal reasoning have been very widely used for more than 50 years to reason from observation to causation, both in science and in law. That EBM is premised on subjectively cherry-picking “best” evidence is a plausible method but not a scientific one.

Over time, the EBM approach to selectively considering “best” evidence seems to have been “dumbed down,” first by placing randomized controlled trials (RCTs) at the top of a pyramid of all study designs as the supposed “gold standard” design, and later, as the asserted only type of study that can be trusted to obtain unbiased estimates of effects. All other forms of empirical evidence are “potentially biased” and therefore unreliable. This is a plausibility conceit as I will show below.

But it is so plausible that it is routinely taught in modern medical education, so that most doctors only consider RCT evidence and dismiss all other forms of empirical evidence. It is so plausible that this author had an on-air verbal battle over it with a medically uneducated television commentator who provided no evidence other than plausibility (Whelan, 2020): Isn’t it “just obvious” that if you randomize subjects, any differences must be caused by the treatment, and no other types of studies can be trusted? Obvious, yes; true, no.

Who benefits from a sole, obsessive focus on RCT evidence? RCTs are very expensive to conduct if they are to be epidemiologically valid and statistically adequate. They can cost millions or tens of millions of dollars, which limit their appeal largely to companies promoting medical products likely to bring in profits substantially larger than those costs. Historically, pharma control and manipulation of RCT evidence in the regulation process provided an enormous boost in the ability to push products through regulatory approval into the marketplace, and the motivation to do this still continues today. (Read more.)

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Joan Beaufort: a Medieval Matriarch

 From History...The Interesting Bits:

Joan Beaufort was the youngest child and only daughter of John of Gaunt and his mistress, Katherine Swynford. Her father, Gaunt, was the third surviving son of Edward III and his queen, Philippa of Hainault. He had married Blanche of Lancaster in 1359 – a marriage which eventually brought him the title of Duke of Lancaster. With Blanche he had 3 surviving legitimate children: Elizabeth, Philippa and Henry – the future king, Henry IV.

Joan’s mother, Katherine Swynford, was a member of Blanche’s household and had been married to a Lincolnshire knight, Sir Hugh Swynford, in 1367. They had 3 children together; Blanche, Thomas and Margaret. Sir Hugh was a tenant of John of Gaunt and served on the continent with him in 1366 and 1370. John of Gaunt was widowed in 1368, when Blanche died in childbirth. Katherine had been governess to the Lancaster children for a number of years when Hugh died in November 1371, leaving her a young widow with 3 children to feed.

John and Katherine may have begun their relationship shortly after Hugh’s death, despite John having married again, to Constance of Castile, in September 1371. John and Katherine’s first child, John, was probably born in 1372, with 3 more children, Henry, Thomas and Joan, born before 1379. They would be given the surname of Beaufort, though no one seems to know quite where the name came from. Although the children were illegitimate, the boys enjoyed successful careers during the reign of their half-brother, Henry IV; with John in politics, Henry rising to the rank of cardinal in the church and Thomas pursuing a military career.

Joan was the youngest of the Beaufort children, born sometime between 1377 and 1379. She was close to her family. She joined the household of her sister-in-law, Mary de Bohun, wife of her half-brother, the future Henry IV, in 1386. It seems that she was accompanied by her mum, Katherine Swynford, possibly because Katherine and John of Gaunt had separated and John was reconciled with his second wife, Constance of Castile. Joan was about 7-years-old and was continuing her education and being prepared for her first marriage – she had just been betrothed to 10-year-old Robert Ferrers of Oversley, Warwickshire. Robert would become one of her father’s retainers and, through his mother, heir to the estates of the Botelers of Wem, Shropshire. They were married in 1392, when Joan was 13 or 14 and 2 daughters were born in quick succession; Elizabeth in 1393 and Mary the following year. The marriage was cut short, however, when Robert died in 1395 or 1396, leaving Joan – still only in her mid-teens – a widow with young children. (Read more.)

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The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man: A Memoir

 

Paul Newman. From The Spectator:

He says he blocks out most of his childhood, which is why he finds it hard to access his emotions. The main problem was his mother, Tress, who fussed over him and wanted him to look pretty at all times but would also suddenly attack him with a hairbrush. She was insanely houseproud: a friend recalls that their home ‘seemed somehow sad’ because it had dustsheets covering all the furniture. ‘She would rather sacrifice people before sacrificing her house.’

 He escaped by joining the Navy and then studying drama at Kenyon College, Ohio. He was given lead roles in all the plays but says he never really enjoyed acting, which is probably why he drank so much. Nevertheless, he went to the Actors’ Studio in New York and started working in the theatre. His first film role was in a biblical toga effort called The Silver Chalice, which he describes as ‘the worst movie produced in the Fifties’. He thinks he was only ever cast because of his looks: ‘I always had that trust fund of appearance, and I could get by on that. But I realised that to survive I needed something else.’

He gradually became a more committed actor and, after ten nominations, finally won an Oscar for The Color of Money in 1986. But he always believed that his wife, Joanne Woodward, was the better actor and felt guilty that he became a film star and she didn’t. He also felt that she made him sexy, which he hadn’t been before. A girl at college told him: ‘I like going out with you because you’re so harmless!’

Joanne also gave him an excuse to dump his mother. Tress said she thought Joanne was having an affair with Gore Vidal (unlikely), so he threw her out of the car and didn’t speak to her again for l5 years:

It was such a relief to use that as an excuse to escape from her. She represented all my leaden luggage, the parts of myself that I didn’t like. That sense of subservience, uncertainty, not knowing where the next attack was coming from or what the reason for it might be.

Then one day his elder brother brought Tress, unannounced, to Newman’s house in Malibu. He said ‘Hi Mom, it’s been a long time’ and she replied: ‘What a wonderful house!’ But almost the next minute she asked if he was working and said: ‘How terrible it must be to be involved in a rotten industry that settles itself in violence and profanity and sex and gore.’ So that was the end of their brief rapprochement and he didn’t see her again until she was ill at the end of her life: ‘It was important for me to show up, though there was never any change of feelings…We never discussed our rift and she never apologised.’ (Read more.)

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'Collusion' Corrections We Need Now

 From Real Clear Investigations:

Five years after the Hillary Clinton campaign-funded collection of Trump-Russia conspiracy theories known as the Steele dossier was published by BuzzFeed, news outlets that amplified its false allegations have suffered major losses of credibility. The recent indictment of the dossier's main source, Igor Danchenko, for allegedly lying to the FBI, has catalyzed a new reckoning.

In response to what the news site Axios has called "one of the most egregious journalistic errors in modern history," the Washington Post has re-edited at least a dozen stories related to Steele. For two of those, the Post removed entire sections, changed headlines, and added lengthy editor's notes. But the Post's response also exhibits the limits of the media's Steele-induced self-examination. First, the reporters bylined on those two articles, Rosalind S. Helderman and Tom Hamburger, and their editors have declined to explain how and why they were so egregiously misled. Nor have they revealed the names of the anonymous sources responsible for deceiving them and the public over months and years.

Perhaps more important, the Post, like other publications, has so far limited its Russiagate reckoning to work directly involving Steele – and only after a federal indictment forced its hand. But the Steele dossier has been widely discredited since at least April 2019, when Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller and his team of prosecutors and FBI agents were unable to find evidence in support of any of its claims.

The dossier was also only one aspect of the Trump-Russia misinformation fed to the public. Even when not advancing Steele's most lurid allegations, the nation's most prominent news outlets nonetheless furthered his underlying narrative of a Trump-Russia conspiracy and a Kremlin-compromised White House.

Along the way, some journalists won their profession's highest distinction for this flawed coverage. While co-bylining stories that the Post has all but retracted, Helderman and Hamburger also share a now increasingly awkward honor along with more than a dozen other colleagues at the Post and New York Times: a Pulitzer Prize. In 2018, the Pulitzer awards committee honored the two papers for 20 articles it described as "deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nation's understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign, the President-elect's transition team and his eventual administration."(Read more.)

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Generational Curses

 From Monsignor Charles Pope:

Generational curses are not formally taught by the Church, but neither are they denied. As you note, they are mentioned in the Bible, but also dismissed by other texts. For example, the Prophet Jeremiah says: “In those days they shall no longer say, ‘The parents ate unripe grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge,’ but all shall die because of their own iniquity: only the teeth of those who eat unripe grapes shall be set on edge” (Jer 31:29-30). So the Lord would seem to cancel whatever generational curses descended through families.

Jesus also seems to reject this idea in John’s Gospel: “As he passed by he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him'” (Jn 9:1-3).

It is true, these texts deal primarily with punishments due to sin, not necessarily all maladies or tendencies. We all know by experience that certain tendencies, both behavioral and biological, do seem to pass down the generations, for better or worse; everything from height, weight and hair color to behavioral issues such as alcoholism, anger issues and so forth. Exorcists and others in deliverance ministry tend to avoid theological debates and accept that, to some degree, generational curses are experienced and reported by many. Hence, there are prayers and minor exorcisms devoted to breaking the power of curses.

There are dangers, however, in placing too much focus on curses. First, it can shift personal responsibility for negative things away from the self to the demonic world or previous generations. Yet, often, negative things are due to personal decisions or omissions, psychological factors and habit patterns. A second danger is that many have a kind of superstitious fear of the power of curses more than they believe in the power of Jesus Christ to break them. An exorcist or priest may pray repeatedly for any curses or weapons waged against a person to be broken and made null, only to have the individual return repeatedly, claiming the curse is still operative. What are we dealing with here? Is it really a curse or is it a compulsive fear? Is it a lack of faith? Since blessings and exorcistic prayers are sacramentals (not sacraments), the role of faith and trust are essential. Hence, those who receive prayers to break curses must make many acts of faith and trust that the power of the curse has been broken and refuse to be any further intimidated or overwhelmed by doubts that the curse is still operative. Perhaps focusing on virtuous living and refusing to be mastered by sin is the better solution if prayers against curses are not having the desired effects. (Read more.)

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‘The Rings of Power:’ Forged in Controversy

 I never thought Tolkien's description of orcs to resemble anyone human. I think perhaps people project their own prejudices about various races onto Tolkien. From The Cornell Daily Sun:

At once praised for its stunning visuals and lambasted for its deviations from lore, Amazon’s Rings of Power has sparked debate among fans, inspired a new generation of Silmarillion readers and been the object of racist vitriol. It follows the radiant, vengeance-fueled quest of Galadriel (Morfydd Clark), from the spires of Elven cities to the island kingdom of Númenor, to confront ancient evil rising without and within. (Spoilers ahead!) 

Much of the emotional heart of the story in truth lies under the mountains, with Prince of the Dwarven kingdom, Durin IV (Owain Arthur), and Half-Elven herald Elrond (Robert Aramayo), whose friendship illuminates the magnificent darkness of Khazad-dûm. Durin’s wife and resonator of the deep earth, Disa (Sophia Nomvete), is also a beacon in her warm and queenly presence — and Lady Macbeth-ish monologues. Alas, the Khazad-dûm plot veers into ominous Mithril Mystery, and is left for later stories. 

Elsewhere amidst the artful visuals of orchards, wastelands and Sundering Seas, some especially standout moments are Adar’s (Joseph Mawle) quiet grief for his fellow Uruks, the feathery ships of Númenor sailing into the dawn, the eruption of Mount Doom and the finale’s mind-bending confrontation between Galadriel and Halbrand/Sauron (Charlie Vickers). In his gentle respect for green and growing things, Silvan Elf Arondir (Ismael Cruz Córdova) is also particularly grounding, and gets the best action scenes of the series in his defense of Bronwyn (Nazanin Boniadi), Theo (Tyroe Muhafidin) and the Southlander villagers. I confess I found the Harfoots and the Stranger, though intriguing at first, overwrought.

Bear McGreary’s incredible soundtrack is the golden thread that binds the series together — from the winding, processional grandeur of “Númenor,” to the proud march of “Khazad-dûm,” to the deftly twofold hope and sorrow of “Elrond Half-elven.” Faced with the daunting task of following in Howard Shore’s footsteps, McGreary resorts to pure musical alchemy, deploying character motifs with such skill that one might discern from them whispers of the plot. For example, the acoustically elegiac “Halbrand” is in fact a major key echo of “Sauron.” (It might have been an obvious twist, but I enjoyed it, along with Halbrand’s theatrics.)

Much ink has been spilled on the show’s shortcomings, but like the Elven Rings forged (rather too hastily) at the end of the season, I think we have been exerting an incendiary degree of pressure on the apparent alloying of the legendarium with new creations. The showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay are setting up a story that will span five seasons, which they have said will henceforth lean more heavily on canon. In the meantime, they have laid the groundwork by compressing time and creating (mostly) compelling characters to reacquaint us with Middle-earth. Adaptation is always in part creation, not wholly mimicry. 

For me, pacing is the main issue. Slow burn, exposition-driven elements are productive; it is rather that the writers seek a deeper narrative haste without taking much time to build the wheeling scale of epic. Númenor in particular falls victim to this, where we see only inklings of the all-consuming desire for eternal life that will eventually drown them. But where the Númenor storyline falters, it is rescued by the gravity of Elendil (Lloyd Owen) and Queen-regent Míriel (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), as well as their trials of faith.

As for Galadriel, I enjoyed her strength and vulnerability. At first I was worried that she was going to be consigned by poor writing to seem vaguely motivated by kicking ass. Then, at last, I got confirmation that this was a deliberate arc — she swears to Adar that she will eradicate orcs, but in the ashes muses bleakly on war’s poisoning of the heart. All at once, the writers’ vision of Galadriel began to materialize for me like dawn, the flickering reflection of a Queen that all might love and despair. We must first see the roots of her rage, and struggle with her desire for absolution, before we can see her rise to be Sauron’s great equal and enemy. 

Legally, the writers can only draw on the material of The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings and its appendices; one might wonder why tell a tale of the Second Age without rights to The Silmarillion. For the readers that have not encountered The Silmarillion, it is a mythic collection of stories recounting the origins of Middle-earth, the rise and fall of Morgoth (Sauron’s predecessor), the strife over jewels called the Silmarils and many other beautiful tales besides. (Read more.)

 

My thoughts on the series, HERE.

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More Of A Disaster Than People Realize

 From The Federalist:

After it trained upwards of 50,000 poll watchers, poll workers, and other roles for ongoing citizen engagement in the election process over the year leading up to the 2022 midterms, the Election Integrity Network sent out a survey to its on-the-ground volunteers following Election Day to gauge how things went. The responses from election workers in key battleground districts and states around the country showed a mostly calm election cycle compared to 2020, with one massive and overwhelming exception. In Maricopa County, Arizona, election workers were appalled and aghast at how things had been run there.(Read more.)

From Just the News:

The inspector at another vote center that Sonnenklar visited "had a messy pile of spoiled ballots next to her chair, many of which had not been marked 'Spoiled,'" he recounted, adding that she periodically "left those unspoiled ballots unattended while she was working in other areas of the vote center."

Several voters asked the inspector to spoil their ballots. "Each time, the Inspector took the ballot and put it on top of her pile without actually spoiling it," Sonnenklar observed. He added that nearly all of those voters waited "awkwardly" for the inspector to spoil their ballots, "and it was only then that the Inspector would write 'Spoiled' on the ballot."

Sonnenklar noted that before leaving the vote center, he asked her "if she was going to spoil all of the ballots in her pile." She "got defensive," he reported, and said that "she hasn't spoiled the ballots yet only because she keeps getting pulled away by her staff." Another vote center Sonnenklar visited had 115 spoiled ballots and 116 misread ballots dropped into Box 3, to be counted later. (Read more.) 

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Nicholaa de la Haye, England’s Forgotten Heroine

 From History...the Interesting Bits:

The eldest daughter and co-heiress of Richard de la Haye and his wife, Matilda de Venon, Nicholaa was probably born in the early 1150s. Her father, Richard de la Haye was Baron of Brattleby. His father was a Norman and his mother was a Lincolnshire heiress, the granddaughter of Colswein of Lincoln. In 1166 Richard he was recorded as owing 20 knights’ fees, which had been reduced to 16 by 1172. When he died in 1169, Nicholaa inherited her father’s land in Lincolnshire and his position as castellan of Lincoln Castle, a position she would hold for over 40 years.

Nicholaa was married twice, her first husband, William Fitz Erneis, died in 1178, leaving Nicholaa a young widow with one daughter, Matilda. Before 1185 she married Gerard de Camville, brother of Richard de Camville, admiral of Richard I’s crusading fleet during the Third Crusade. Nicholaa and Gerard had at least 2 children together; Richard and Thomas. Richard was heir to both Nicholaa and Gerard. Nothing is known of Thomas beyond his name.

Nicholaa’s husbands each claimed the position of castellan of Lincoln Castle by right of his wife; but Nicholaa seems to have been far from the normal subservient wife. When her husband was not in the castle, she was left in charge rather than an alternative, male deputy. (Read more.)

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