A New Junk Science

 From Pro Publica:

Junk science in the justice system is nothing new. But unvarnished correspondence about how prosecutors wield it is hard to come by. It can be next to impossible to see how law enforcement — in league with paid, self-styled “experts” — spreads new, often unproven methods. The system is at its most opaque when prosecutors know evidence is unfit for court but choose to game the rules, hoping judges and juries will believe it and vote to convict.

People like Faria, defense lawyers and sometimes even the judges are blindsided. “I don’t want what happened to me to happen to anyone else,” Faria told me.

Askey, who now goes by Leah Chaney and is no longer a prosecutor, did not answer questions about the case other than to say she didn’t know about Harpster’s work until after Faria’s first trial. She has denied allegations of misconduct in other media interviews.(Read more.)

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The Seven Sages of Ancient Greece: Wisdom & Impact

 From The Collector:

Throughout ancient history, the Seven were noted by the likes of Herodotus, Plato, and numerous other writers such as Diogenes Laertius. However, there is some dispute over who should be a sage. There is a canonical set of seven sages, but more than 23 individuals at one time or another were included in different versions of the list of seven.

Despite such fluctuations, four of the seven persist in almost every version: Thales of Miletus, Solon of Athens, Pittacus of Mytilene, and Bias of Priene. The remaining three are usually Chilon of Sparta, Cleobulus of Lindos, and Periander of Corinth. These three figures are often taken out and replaced because all three were considered tyrants and oppressive political rulers. Their infamous reputations are why they were often switched out from more pleasant figures such as Anacharsis, Myson of Chenae, or Pythagoras.

As is often the case with the ancient past, myth and reality began to blur together and stories of the Seven Sages should be taken with a healthy grain of salt. The introduction of the Seven Sages marked a turning point in ancient Greece’s culture and identity. It illustrates a point where stories about ancient heroes such as Odysseus and Achilles no longer seemed convincing or meaningful to members of the political assembly. Therefore, academics like Plato and Herodotus turned to new heroes plucked from their recent past. (Read more.)

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Oatlands: The Queen's Palace

As I work on the second volume of the Henrietta of France Trilogy, I have been researching Oatlands Palace where Henriette stayed with all of her living children together for one of the last times before war divided them. While Henry VIII had intended Hampton Court to be the King's hunting lodge, and Nonsuch to be the Prince of Wales' hunting lodge, Oatlands was to be the Queen's hunting lodge. Sadly, it no longer exists. From Royal Palaces:

At the time of Henry’s death Oatlands was classed as a ‘standing house’, this meant that it was one of the few that was kept permanently furnished in readiness for the king. Elizabeth I used Oatlands for short summer breaks but under James I the house, once more, took on its original purpose. It was granted to Anne of Denmark, his queen, in 1611 and was used almost every summer for hunting trips. Anne commissioned Inigo Jones to modernise the interiors, most of which were more or less as Henry VIII had left them. The Tudor furniture was thrown out and brand new beds, tables and chairs were commissioned; silk wall hangings were woven and panelling replaced with designs of a more contemporary feel.

After Anne of Denmark’s death in 1619 James continued to use Oatlands for hunting trips so much so that he had his bedchamber rebuilt to make his visits more comfortable. Yet it was in the reign of his son that Oatlands had its golden age.

On his accession in 1625 Charles I made Oatlands over to his queen. Henrietta Maria was a French Princess who essentially regarded English taste in interior decoration old fashioned and provincial. She refitted her London residence, Somerset House, and soon did the same at Oatlands. Her architect was Inigo Jones who replaced the remaining Tudor chimneypieces with more modern ones in a French style and redesigned panelling and door cases.

New hangings and furniture were ordered for the royal lodgings. Perhaps the most important improvement was in Henrietta Maria’s gallery where, on the ground floor, a series of stucco frames designed by Jones framed views of her other houses, such as Pontefract castle, Eltham Palace and Oatlands itself. When she had finished Oatlands was the most modern and comfortable of all the royal country houses. As a result it became the usual summer residence of the Stuart Court between 1635 and 1642.

The civil war was disastrous for England’s royal palaces. Outside London only Hampton Court was to be kept. All the other palaces were to be sold to pay off parliament’s debts. Most were simply auctioned for their building materials and this was the fate of Oatlands. By 1660 all that remained were the garden walls. (Read more.)

 

Oatlands was where Henry VIII married his fifth queen, the very young and ill-fated Katherine Howard. From The Tudor Travel Guide:

 By the mid 1530s, the principal country seat of the English monarchy had moved westwards from Greenwich to Hampton Court. According to Simon Thurley’s contribution in Poulton’s Excavations at Oatlands Palace, the acquisition of Oatlands in 1537 from the wealthy Reed family was: "… part of a project masterminded by Thomas Cromwell, to provide the new palace [Hampton Court] with the ancillary lands and subsidiary houses necessary for its status."

At its peak, The Honour of Hampton Court consisted of a huge area covering 40,000 acres. This included the palaces of Oatlands and later, Nonsuch. The transformation of Oatlands was closely linked with the development of Henry’s principal out of town residence; the same master craftsmen oversaw its remodelling, and a road was built directly between the two in the summer of 1537. It has been proposed by Thurley that the intention was that Hampton Court would be assigned as the king’s residence, Oatlands the queen’s, and Nonsuch reserved for the use of Edward, Prince of Wales. Given the timing of this building project, the hypothesis is that the manor of Oatlands was originally intended as a palace for Anne of Cleves. (Read more.)

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Accusations Against Frank Pavone: Analysis

 From Arise! Let Us Be Going!:

 I have written at great length on numerous occasions about insults being hurled against the most corrupt sinners by Jesus and his forerunner, the greatest of all the prophets, and by others in the Sacred Scriptures. These insults of Jesus and John and others have theological and juridic import, such as these sinners being liable to being damned by God to hell forever. But Jesus is God and none of the prophets are God, even if they are the voice for God Himself. Father Pavone is not God. So, let’s use as an example John the Baptist, another non-God. John is not being sinful in this example. He is not blaspheming. He is the voice of the Holy Spirit. I ask people not to blaspheme in saying that the Holy Spirit is sinful. Let’s get into this:

Let’s take a look at Mt 12:34 or 23:33 – γεννήματα ἐχιδνῶν – John’s “brood of vipers” insult. Oops! Those are Jesus’ own words. Let’s see, how about Lk 3:7 and Mt 3:7 – γεννήματα ἐχιδνῶν – indeed John’s “brood of vipers” insult. What’s that all about? It says that those he is thus insulting are willingly demon possessed blasphemers who will be, get this, they will be damned by God unless they repent. Let’s say it so that we can understand, the greatest of all prophets says that these sinners are God damned. Just like that. Yep. (Read more.)

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The Islamic World’s Perspective on the French Revolution

 From The Collector:

France and the Islamic world enjoyed a close relationship since the Crusades. Both sides benefited from their multilayered contacts, influencing each other in differing fields. This reciprocal relationship was so significant that the Islamic societies called the entire Europe “Frangistan” (The Land of the Franks). Sociopolitical and economic developments in the sixteenth century facilitated their close ties, even leading to alliances for France, notably with the Ottoman Empire. It eventually prepared the ground for the wide-ranging impacts of the French Revolution on the Islamic Empires.

These empires experienced socioeconomic and political problems since the eighteenth century. When the Ottomans were at war with Russia and Austria, Selim III became the new sultan in 1789, and the Qajar tribe under Mirza (Agha) Muhammad revolted against the ruling dynasty (Zand) in the same year, demolishing it after a civil war in Persia.

 In this context, Ottoman and Persian authors of the Islamic world differed in perceiving the French Revolution. While Ottoman ambassadors viewed the American Revolution and fiscal crisis as the main reason for the French Revolution, Persian travelers regarded the suffering of ordinary people under royal pressure as its leading causes. Therefore, the Islamic world had different responses to the French Revolution which were complicated. (Read more.)

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Christmastime in 1960s Japan

 From JSTOR Daily:

Anthropologist David W. Plath observed a growing tradition of celebrating Christmas in Japan in the 1960s. Originally introduced by missionaries in the sixteenth century, the holiday and its trappings only really gained traction in the nineteenth century.

“By the 1870s some famous Tokyo stores such as Maruzen and the Meiji-ya were displaying Christmas decorations and were importing Christmas cards and gifts,” Plath noted, and by the 1920s, “Christmas was percolating downward and outward into the lower classes and rural regions.”

 The years of US occupation after World War II more directly inserted Christmas into Japanese popular culture, and Plath found that in the post-occupation era, “Christmas has not only been encouraged by the mass media and the retail merchants; it has further been encouraged by school English readers…with their chapters on an American family Christmas, or again by school teachers who sometimes praise the event as ‘democratic.’”

Christmas is traditionally a religious holiday, but the embrace of it across the archipelago indicated a secular significance as well. Plath noted that in a survey of people living in the Nagano Prefecture, around half of the respondents said they had a Christmas tree, even if they practiced another religion.

“Christmas usually is listed in calendars issued by Shinto and Buddhist organizations in Japan, which apparently do not interpret it as a religious threat,” Plath explained. He even found evidence of attempts to make December 25, the Anglo-American Christmas (as opposed to a December 6 St. Nicholas Day), a national holiday to be known as “International Goodwill Day.” The proposal prompted “several newspapers to wonder whether such a gesture would be regarded as international goodwill by people in Islamic and Buddhist nations.” (Read more.)

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'Deeply Disturbing'

 From Scottish Daily Express:

A controversial move to label paedophiles as "Minor-Attracted People" in a top-level report has been defended by Police Scotland, with the force suggesting the EU was to blame. Chief Constable Iain Livingstone's annual year end report refers to child abusers as Minor-Attracted People (MAPs). The move comes amid wider concerns by campaigners over what they see as attempts to rebrand paedophilia as a harmless sexual preference. A spokesman for the force stressed that MAPs is not a term they routinely use to describe child abusers and said that its use in the report had to be understood in context. He explained that the reference to MAPs was in relation to the force's engagement with the European Union's Horizon Europe Project – Prevention of Child Sexual Exploitation. The report states: "The project's main agenda is to develop understanding and approach to avoid the victimisation of children by engaging Minor-Attracted People (MAPs) and providing them with the necessary support, treatment and guidance to help prevent criminal activities." (Read more.)

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Catholic Recusant Poet: Edmund Bolton

 From Stephanie Mann:

Because I discovered Mrs. Dorothy Lawson's father, Henry Constable, the poet, I learned about one of Constable's contemporaries and friends, Edmund Bolton. Bolton was a poet and historian, born in 1575. According to Father Herbert Thurston, SJ in the Catholic Encyclopedia, he died circa 1633 and

He seems to have been born of Catholic parents in Leicestershire, and must have been of good family and position, for he claims to have continued "many years on his own charge a free commoner at Trinity Hall, Cambridge", and after going to London to study law to have lived there "in the, best and choicest company of gentlemen". There can be no doubt that there was a strong Catholic element among the lawyers of the Inner Temple (Richard Southwell, the father of the martyr, might be named as one example among many), and the tone of the drama and much of the lighter literature of the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean period shows that the Bohemian society into which Bolton and his fellows were thrown was often pronouncedly papist. But while many who for a while were Romanizers, like his friend Ben Jonson, ultimately fell away, Bolton, much to his credit, remained stanch to his principles. Of his ability and zeal in the pursuit of knowledge there can be no question. He was the friend of Cotton and Camden; whose antiquarian researches he shared, and as a writer of verses he was associated with Sidney, Spenser, Raleigh, and others in the publication of "England's Helicon". Many influential friends, including for example the Duke, then Marquess, of Buckingham, tried to help him in his pecuniary embarrassments, but there seems no doubt that his Catholicism stood in the way of his making a living by literature.

(Read more.)

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An Australian-Designed Brain Implant

 From Zero Hedge:

Clinical trials are currently underway in the United States and Australia with Opie saying the procedure was minimally invasive—a factor he believes sets it apart from Musk’s Neuralink.

“We don’t need to remove the scalp and skull or put electrodes directly into delicate brain tissue,” he said in comments obtained by AAP.

“We’ve come up with a clever way of getting to the right place in the brain just by using the body’s naturally occurring highways and blood vessels.” He added this ensured patients recovered faster as well from the procedure. So far, four Australian paralysis patients have received implants since undergoing the procedure at Royal Melbourne Hospital in 2020.

“All of those patients were able to control a computer with their mind,” he said. “And there were no serious device-related effects.” The first U.S. patient was treated in July 2022 at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York after Synchron received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration last year. In contrast, Musk’s Neuralink has yet to receive approval from the body and is also facing questions over potential animal welfare violations. Musk had wanted to start human trials in six months, yet the billionaire is also reported to have approached Synchron about a potential investment. (Read more.)

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