Tea at Trianon

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, February 13, 2020

Why Impeachment Failed

From The National Review:

While people were still scratching their heads over all of that, the Democrats then suddenly decided to back off the bribery charge altogether, as their evidence didn’t meet the standard for bribery under U.S. law. Instead, they voted to impeach the president for (1) abuse of power on the basis of “almost bribery” and (2) obstruction of Congress for asserting executive privileges that any president would have asserted, and which were so compelling that the Democrats were afraid to challenge them in court.

The House thus sent to the Senate two articles of impeachment that struck many Republican senators as an abject failure to prove any sort of impeachable offense. The general impression among Republicans, quite apart from what they might think of the president personally, was that the Democrats were turning the whole impeachment proceeding into a circus in which the chief entertainment was their own incompetence and mendacity.

You could agree with their argument only if you already believed that the president’s conduct was impeachable before hearing any of the evidence. And there was only one Republican senator in that camp — Mitt Romney, the last remaining champion of your grandfather’s Republican Party. Even he voted against the Democrats’ absolutely preposterous obstruction-of-Congress charge.

At this point, thinking people on the Democratic side should have perceived the fatal weakness of their argument, namely that it presupposed the very proposition to be proved. Amazingly, however, there has been almost no self-reflection on their side. They appear to have collectively dismissed even the possibility that their failure to remove the president was due to the weakness of their case. Instead, Democrats are now saying that if you found their case for impeachment unconvincing, you must not have any standards and would let the president get away with anything. One’s spirits sink. The assertion is so wrong at so many levels, one knows not where to begin to set them right. (Read more.)

Charles Bell of Bucknell

The story of an escaped slave. From Valley Girl Views:

"That night a Sunday in August, 1849, my wife and I left Romney. We walked thirty miles to the Potomac River. We followed the river until we came to a bridge and before daylight were outside of the state of West Virginia. We made straight for the mountains, never stopping until we reached them. Rain had been falling all day. For a week it poured. We had no shelter nor a way to keep ourselves dry. During the day we rested as best we could under some thick tree or overhanging rocks, which sheltered us a little from the rain. At night we traveled. As soon as it was dark we worked our way down to the highway, and all night long we stumbled along in the mud. Alone either of us would have given up. However, we encouraged each other, and although we were wet and hungry, and foot-sore, we never lost our determination. We knew that if we went back or were captured, we should be sold down the river."

"For four weeks we kept to the mountains. After we had been traveling for a week or two, we came down to the highway, but almost the first thing we saw was a poster, nailed to a dead tree, Describing me and offering a reward for my return. That frightened us so we never again ventured on the highway in the daytime. "

"Only once in all four weeks did we speak to anybody. One day we came in sight of a little farmhouse in a clearing. We were very hungry and decided to try and go down to the hours and get something to eat. There were two women there. We asked for some food. The women looked us over and said they had nothing to give us then, but if we came back a little later they would have something for us. That made me suspicious at once. My wife and I went back among the trees and hid ourselves. Presently we saw one of the women leave the house and hurry over to some men on the hillside. She talked to them for a minute and then the men dropped their tools and came over to the house. We knew they intended to catch us and we hurried away as fast as we could go. By this point we were so used to traveling in the woods that we could go very fast. The farmers never overtook us." (Read more.)

Benefits Of Walking In The Rain

From Gardening Soul:

Numerous people enjoy the sound of the pouring rain, many find it romantic and soothing, and others find its smell pleasant for the nerves. Walking in the rain can be a healing experience, as it calms the mind, and releases the suppressed thoughts and emotions. The scent of the rain has a special name, Petrichor, so named by two Australian scientists in the 1960s. The fragrance is a combination of chemicals released by soil-dwelling bacteria, oils released from plants during dry spells and ozone created when lightning splits oxygen and nitrogen molecules that then turn into nitric oxide. The rainy days are ideal if you are a bit stressed, feel blue, or just need some time to relax and enjoy the present moment. (Read more.)

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Being Fired by Trump

From David Harsanyi at The National Review:

At some point he perished, no doubt, in a vile and undignified manner, perhaps succumbing to starvation or typhoid or dysentery, or maybe he was shot in the head and left in a shallow unmarked grave. We don’t know. His wife and son, the latter of whom he would never meet, would never find out how he died, despite decades of trying. His loss, like the deaths of millions of other powerless and now anonymous victims of that age, would have repercussions that reverberate today.

When “they” came for James Comey, on the other hand, he landed a massive book deal, made millions on the speaking circuit, wagged his finger at his former boss through social media to his million followers, and spent some quality time with family. He never once had to worry about state-sanctioned violence. Comey, a man powerful enough to oversee a cooked-up investigation into a presidential candidate, merely lost a job.

Like Comey, all the alleged victims on Wittes’s ludicrous list served at the pleasure of the president and could be fired by Donald Trump for almost any reason he desired, just as they could have been fired by Barack Obama or Jimmy Carter or FDR. Many of the people on the list, in fact, have been investigated by the inspector general, who found that they acted either incompetently or potentially illegally.

Government bureaucrats aren’t endowed with a God-given right to work in the executive branch of the United States government. Most of these “victims” will find lucrative work elsewhere. None, I confidently say, are going to be thrown into camps. If you don’t like who Trump fires, or how he fires them, you can always vote for another candidate.

It might come as a surprise to those who, through hyperbole, demean the real victims of history, but Nazi Germany didn’t hold impeachment hearings for their leaders in 1938, there was no institutional anti-Hitler media in 1939, and most people in 1940 did not publicly accuse Hitler of being a seditious criminal and madman. Those who did, such as Martin Niemöller, ended up in Sachsenhausen and Dachau, not the green room at CNN. (Read more.)

Europe’s Oldest Intact Book

From My Modern Met:

Sometime after 698 CE, a small red book made its way into St. Cuthbert’s tomb along with other offerings. The book, a rare surviving medieval manuscript, was removed from his coffin in 1104 CE and transferred to Durham Cathedral, where it was kept as a separate relic. In 2012, The British Library acquired the 1,300-year-old text, which still retained its original binding and pages. The book’s binding is covered in a deep crimson stained goatskin, which was stuck to boards while still damp. “The decoration of the boards was enriched by tooling and coloring lines on the surface, with the tip of a fine folder or a stylus,” describes The British Library, which has also digitized the book. “The left board is decorated with a rectangular frame with interlace patterns in the upper and lower fields and a larger central field containing a chalice from which stems project, terminating in a leaf or bud and four fruits. This raised motif was apparently made using a matrix, with a clay-like substance beneath the leather.” (Read more.)

Invisible Light

From Bored Panda:

I've photographed hundreds of glowing flowers since 2014 after seeing Oleksandr Holovachov's work with ultraviolet-induced visible fluorescence (UVIVF) photography. Each time I do a set of UVIVF photos, it starts with going out under the cover of darkness to snatch unsuspecting flowers growing around the neighborhood. I rarely know what to expect from a flower before I get it back to shoot. Some I think will dazzle end up flopping, and others I am surprised by their colors or light. Every one is a surprise!

In the same way a tee-shirt blue glows under a black light, most organic material glows at least a little with UV stimulation and in all kinds of colors. To make the most of it, I make sure I'm working in the darkest environment I can and use a 365nm light so the camera can't see the UV light. Any time the flowers are hit by sunlight, they're letting off their own glow in response and it's simply overwhelmed by the sunlight we can see. These photos capture something we always see, but never can observe. (Read more.)

The Era of Limbaugh

From The National Review:

It’s one thing to excel in your field. It’s another to create the field in which you excel. Conservative talk radio was local and niche before Limbaugh. He was the first to capitalize on regulatory and technological changes that allowed for national scale. The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 freed affiliates to air controversial political opinions without inviting government scrutiny. As music programming migrated to the FM spectrum, AM bandwidth welcomed talk. Listener participation was also critical. “It was not until 1982,” writes Nicole Hemmer in Messengers of the Right, “that AT&T introduced the modern direct-dial toll-free calling system that national call-in shows use.”

Limbaugh made the most of these opportunities. And he contributed stylistic innovations of his own. He treated politics not only as a competition of ideas but also as a contest between liberal elites and the American public. He also added the irreverent and sometimes scandalous humor and cultural commentary of the great DJs. He introduced catchphrases still in circulation: “dittohead,” “Drive-By media,” “feminazi,” “talent on loan from God.”

The template he created has been so successful that the list of his imitators on both the left and right is endless. Even Al Franken wanted in on the act. Dostoyevsky is attributed with the saying that the great Russian writers “all came out of Gogol’s ‘Overcoat.’” Political talk show hosts came out of Limbaugh’s microphone. (Read more.)

How Artists Become Famous

From Artsy:

In a 2012 exhibition about the birth of abstraction at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, curators highlighted the way that the artists may have influenced one another. Titled “Inventing Abstraction: 1910–1925,” the show illustrated over 80 artists’ radical departures from the traditions of representational art, and opened with a large diagram depicting their network to show who knew each other (an interactive version of which is online), with the most connected, like Pablo Picasso and Wassily Kandinsky, toward the center.

While working on the show with her colleagues, exhibition curator Leah Dickerman (now MoMA’s director of editorial and content strategy) was influenced in part by a course she had taken with Columbia Business School professor and Chazen Senior Scholar Paul Ingram, which was about how curators can use their professional networks to achieve success. Ingram helped to develop an early iteration of the network of early pioneers of abstraction, and later, he used the same data to embark on a new investigation.

Ingram and his colleague Mitali Banerjee, of HEC Paris, used MoMA’s findings to examine the role that creativity and social networks played for these artists, in relationship to the level of fame they achieved. In a 2018 paper, they relayed their findings—including that for successful artists, making friends may be more important than producing novel art. (Read more.)