meersan: The File

Mon, 18 Jul 2005 19:50:07 GMT

The File: Something Awful

When we went on our fifth grade trip to some overnight camp, no one would allow me to be in their cabin, and the school had to force me to be in this one cabin with these guys who all hated me. Sometimes those nights still haunt me. I remember someone taking my teddy bear and throwing it into a camp fire. God have mercy.
-- Nick "Mayor Wilkins" Dunn, "Crazies in Elementary School"

Sun, 10 Apr 2005 19:13:41 GMT

The File: "Oligarchies With A Populist Face"

In the face of this evidence, three theories have arisen. The first is that electoral outcomes, as far as "the will of the people" is concerned, are essentially arbitrary. The fraction of the electorate that responds to substantive political arguments is hugely outweighed by the fraction that responds to slogans, misinformation, "fire alarms" (sensational news), "October surprises" (last-minute sensational news), random personal associations, and "gotchas." Even when people think that they are thinking in political terms, even when they believe that they are analyzing candidates on the basis of their positions on issues, they are usually operating behind a veil of political ignorance. They simply don’t understand, as a practical matter, what it means to be "fiscally conservative," or to have "faith in the private sector," or to pursue an "interventionist foreign policy." They can’t hook up positions with policies. From the point of view of democratic theory, American political history is just a random walk through a series of electoral options. Some years, things turn up red; some years, they turn up blue.

A second theory is that although people may not be working with a full deck of information and beliefs, their preferences are dictated by something, and that something is élite opinion. Political campaigns, on this theory, are essentially struggles among the élite, the fraction of a fraction of voters who have the knowledge and the ideological chops to understand the substantive differences between the candidates and to argue their policy implications. These voters communicate their preferences to the rest of the electorate by various cues, low-content phrases and images (warm colors, for instance) to which voters can relate, and these cues determine the outcome of the race. Democracies are really oligarchies with a populist face.
-- Louis Menand, A Critic At Large: The Unpolitical Animal: How political science understands voters

Third theory omitted--see the article for it (about half-way down the page). These theories have a typically elitist feel. Eligible citizens who choose not to vote have done the mental arithmetic of deciding that the people who do vote are informed enough and sensible enough to make the right decision, and to have confidence that no matter who is elected, their lives will not be significantly affected. This works for the same reason representative government works: The People are too busy to make all the decisions of governance themselves, so they appoint or entrust others to handle it for them. Of course these are all commonplace observations. John Keegan's opinion, as stated in The Mask Of Command, seems to be that the real benefit of democracy is the ability to kick the reigning elite out of power when they become too obnoxious--the trappings of power which inevitably corrupt and lead to all sorts of outrageous abuses. It is true that we will always be ruled by the elite, but we can at least choose which klatsch.

Sun, 10 Apr 2005 18:48:28 GMT

The File: Cerenkov Radiation

There is a visible phenomenon - Cerenkov radiation - a beautiful blue glow produced when fast moving particles strike water (speed of light in a transparent medium is a function of refractive index -- if particles have to "slow down", that energy has to go somewhere - it gets shot out in a cone of radiation).

If you're seeing Cerenkov radiation at the bottom of a reactor pool [umr.edu], it's beautiful. If you're seeing it because the neutron flux through your eyeballs is enough that your vitreous humor is glowing blue, it's probably less than beautiful, given that if you know what you're seeing, you realize that your lifespan is probably best measured in hours/weeks, rather than years.
-- "Tackhead" commenting on "Latest Chernobyl Motorcycle Photos", March 27, 2004.

I once got to watch a small nuclear reactor fire up, and got to watch the Cerenkov radiation at the bottom of the reactor pool.

That picture does not do it justice. While I was somewhat disappointed that the whole nuclear reaction was fairly anticlimatic -- no rumbling, no vibration, no nothing discernable except the blue light -- that blue light at the bottom of the pool was probably the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. There's just no way to describe the color. It's so vivid and so intense.
-- "einTier" comment from the same story.

Picture from UMR, Cerenkov Radiation and the "Blue Glow".

Thu, 07 Apr 2005 04:42:55 GMT

The File: Alexander The Super-tastic Awesome

The increasing frequency with which Alexander was wounded as he led his army towards the limits of the known world implies a growing quality of desperation in his leadership and anticipated the probability of a serious wound.... At Multan in 325 probabilities caught up with him.... Impatient at the slowness with which his siege engineers commenced their deliberate procedures, Alexander put himself at the head of a small storming party and rushed the inner wall. He got to the top, found himself cut off and had to fight for his life. Over-exposed on the crest of the wall, he leapt down inside, put his back to the mudbrick beside a small fig tree and began to lay about him with his sword at a swelling body of attackers. For some moments he held his own, slashing and throwing stones. His attackers, deterred by his spitfire bravery, drew off and began to shower him with "whatever anyone had in his hand or could lay his hands upon." Three of his storm party jumped down to join him. One was shot in the face with an arrow. Shortly afterwards an arrow struck Alexander also. It penetrated "right through the breastplate into the lung, so that," according to Ptolemy, "breath together with blood shot forth from the wound." Such a "sucking wound" is extremely serious. Aelxander contrived to resist for a while, "but when a good deal of blood came forth, in a thick stream, as would be with the breath, he was overcome by dizziness and faintness, and fell there where he stood bending over his shield."

The frantic intervention of his followers saved the king from immediate death. They slaughtered all the Indians within sword distance and managed to carry their stricken leader away on a shield.... What this wound history suggests is a rising temperature of commitment, almost as if Alexander's fever for victory rose with the tide of difficulty....
-- John Keegan, The Mask Of Command, pp. 62-3

Finding himself over-exposed, he leapt inside. And even with the advantage of more years and better technology, no one has managed to equal his accomplishments. He was not just the right man in the right place at the right time, but the best exemplar of the heroic ideal in his era. And he must have been luckier than Lucky the Leprechaun because he kept winning. That's why, despite the Oliver Stone debacle, Baz Luhrman is still going to make a movie about him. A movie I will pay money to see!

Thu, 07 Apr 2005 04:17:19 GMT

The File: Constantine XI

The defenders began to abandon their posts, running home to protect their families. The Turkish scaling ladders were no longer pushed away, and the attack triumphed in every sector.

The emperor Constantine preferred to die with his city rather than survive as a captive. He threw away his helmet with the imperial eagle, and his emblazoned surcoat, and sought an anonymous death in the heart of the fighting. The city finally fell....
-- Andrew Wheatcroft, The Fall of Constantinople, as excerpted in John Keegan's The Book of War: 25 Centuries of Great War Writing, pp. 68

Keegan would probably classify this as a Renaissance-era example of the heroic ideal of leadership brought to the extremes: not only does the emperor "lead from the front," but he dies with his men. Alexander, one suspects, would have approved.

Wed, 06 Apr 2005 05:07:17 GMT

The File: Sebastian O

The dandy has one unique advantage over the common herd. No matter what the situation, he will always be more exquisitely dressed than his enemies. Therefore, he has already triumphed.
-- Grant Morrison and Steve Yeowell, Sebastian O

How many of these vintage-inspired graphic novels are we going to see? This one was fun, but not (of course) as fun as League.

Mon, 04 Apr 2005 03:26:34 GMT

The File: Unravelling The Franklin Mystery

It is interesting that the men seen on the march at Teekeenu had common native names--indeed, it is surprising that they had any native names at all. The leaders Toolooa and Aglooka could have acquired their Inuit names on previous voyages, but most of Franklin's officers had no experience in the north. Gilder concluded that it was probable that the names which the white men used phonetically resembled the Inuit names. If we look at the crew lists of the Erebus and Terror (appendix 1), it is hard to verify this. No men with names that sound like Aglooka or Toolooa leap from the page in the manner of "Ill-kern"/Pilkington or "Oolizhen"/Allison. However, it should be remembered that Stefansson found that even after repeated coaching the Inuit pronounced "Jim" as "Perk" or "Zerk" and that to them "Rae" sounded just like "Nerk"!
-- David C. Woodman, Unravelling the Franklin Mystery: Inuit Testimony, pp. 197

Mr. Woodman's book is an open-minded examination of the Inuit testimony and tradition regarding the Franklin expedition, the greatest disaster in the entire history of European polar exploration. Over the years the testimony of the native people of this region has been largely overlooked, in part due to the difficulty of deciphering the sometimes contradictory tales. To his credit, Mr. Woodman thoroughly investigates the possibility of Inuit confusion with other European expeditions in the same geographic area, while highlighting the elements that could only pertain to Franklin's doomed men. I found his argument that Capt. Crozier died relatively early, in 1849 or 1850, and that the mysterious "Aglooka" must necessarily be a surviving junior officer, to be particularly convincing. Nevertheless, given the disparate and contradictory details stated in the Inuit tales, it looks as though the only chance for a real breakthrough in this long-standing riddle must lie in the discovery of one of the lost ships, or of a hitherto-unknown cache of written records from the expedition.

One of the most interesting chapters in the book, therefore, is chapter 18, "Keeweewoo". Here Mr. Woodman discusses the possibility that one of the Franklin ships sank near Kirkwall Island or O'Reilly Island in Utjulik. In recent years Mr. Woodman has been a member of several expeditions to the area searching for the lost ship, most recently in 2004. It appears that the theory that the ship sank at Grant Island has been discounted due to a lack of confirmatory sonar or magnetic evidence. Nevertheless, the proliferation of suggestive artifacts in the region of O'Reilly Island is encouraging. We wonder if any further information is available regarding the "three stone cairns" that may be located in Kirkwall Island (p. 268)?

Amid all the geographical confusion and contradictory reports of relics, artifacts, and cairns, one of the particular and humanizing details is the carved or painted hands that members of the Franklin expedition often used in directional signs and notes. These were found at the winter camp at Beechey Island (p. 69), which date from before tragedy struck. Presumably later examples were found at Cape Felix: "a piece of paper with a carefully drawn hand upon it, the index finger pointing at the time in a southerly direction" (p. 88), and at "Shar-too" on King William's Island, where an Inuit hunter found a carved wooden hand placed at the top of a cairn (p. 89). These hands served as markers, helping to guide Franklin expedition members in conditions of blizzard, fog, and Arctic night. And they point the way for the explorers of today, who share the enduring fascination of the expedition's fate.

Thu, 31 Mar 2005 18:54:07 GMT

The File: Is this an example of thinking outside the box?

Faced with similarly dire circumstances, other sailors made different decisions. In 1811, the 139-ton brig Polly, on her way from Boston to the Caribbean, was dismasted in a storm, and the crew drifted on the waterlogged hull for 191 days. Although some of the men died from hunger and exposure, their bodies were never used for food; instead, they were used as bait. Attaching pieces of their dead shipmates' bodies to a trolling line, the survivors managed to catch enough sharks to sustain themselves until their rescue. If the Essex crew had adopted this strategy with the death of Matthew Joy, they might never have reached the extreme that confronted them now.
-- Nathaniel Philbrick, In The Heart Of The Sea: The Tragedy Of The Whaleship Essex, pp. 175

Instead, they ate each other. Uncontrovertible proof that unoriginal thinking leads to cannibalism. RIAA, listening?

Thu, 31 Mar 2005 18:46:04 GMT

The File: Half-Empty Or Full

The Essex survivors had entered what McGee describes as the "cotton-mouth" phase of thirst. Saliva becomes thick and foul-tasting; the tongue clings irritatingly to the teeth and the roof of the mouth. Even though speech is difficult sufferers are often moved to complain ceaselessly about their thirst until their voices become so cracked and hoarse that they can speak no more. A lump seems to form in the throat, causing the sufferer to swallow repeatedly in a vain attempt to dislodge it. Severe pain is felt in the head and neck. The face feels full due to the shrinking of the skin. Hearing is affected, and many people begin to hallucinate.

Still to come for the Essex crew were the agonies of a mouth that has ceased to generate saliva. The tongue hardens into what McGee describes as "a senseless weight".... Speech becomes impossible, although sufferers are known to moan and bellow. Next is the "blood sweats" phase, involving "a progressive mummification of the initially living body." The tongue swells to such proportions that it squeezes past the jaws. The eyelids crack and the eyeballs begin to weep tears of blood. The throat is so swollen that breathing becomes difficult, creating an incongruous yet terrifying sensation of drowning. Finally, as the power of the sun inexorably draws the remaining moisture from the body, there is "living death," the state into which Pablo Valencia had entered when McGee discovered him on a desert trail, crawling on his hands and knees:

[H]is lips had disappeared as if amputated, leaving low edges of blackened tissue; his teeth and gums projected like those of a skinned animal, but the flesh was black and dry as a hank of jerky; his nose was withered and shrunken to half its length, and the nostril-lining showing black; his eyes were set in a winkless stare, with surrounding skin so contracted as to expose the conjunctiva, itself black as the gums...; his skin [had] generally turned a ghastly purplish yet ashen gray, with great livid blotches and streaks; his lower legs and feet, with forearms and hands, were torn and scratched by contact with thorns and sharp rocks, yet even the freshest cuts were so many scratches in dry leather, without trace of blood."
-- Nathaniel Philbrick, In The Heart Of The Sea: The Tragedy Of The Whaleship Essex, pp. 127-8

Note that this is an example of extreme dehydration in desert conditions.

Tue, 29 Mar 2005 18:38:01 GMT

The File: The Gift Of Fear

[B]ecause my childhood became all about prediction, I learned to live in the future. I didn't feel things in the present because I wanted to be a moving target, gone to the future before any blow could really be felt. This ability to live in tomorrow or next year immunized me against the pain and hopelessness of the worst moments, but it also made me reckless about my own safety. Recklessness and bravado are features of many violent people. [...]

As a child, I was left with the pastimes that cross time: worrying and predicting. I could see a vision of the future better than most people because the present did not distract me. This single-mindedness is another characteristic common to many criminals. Even things that would frighten most people could not distract me as a boy, for I had become so familiar with danger that it no longer caused alarm. Just as a surgeon loses his aversion to gore, so does the violent criminal. You can spot this feature in people who do not react as you might to shocking things. When everyone else who just witnessed a hostile argument is shaken up, for example, this person is calm.
-- Gavin de Becker, The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us From Violence, pp. 51

Tue, 29 Mar 2005 18:29:33 GMT

The File: Weird And Tragic Shores

During the two-week crossing [Charles Francis Hall] came again under the spell of the maritime Arctic. He was awed, as so many other explorers have been, by the strange and often beautiful optical illusions created by refraction in northern seas. Mountains appeared and disappeared on the horizon; the sun, surrounded by a corona, was duplicated so that there were two suns and two coronas; the moon rose swollen to immense size and distorted into strange shapes; indescribable forms moved with miraculous fluidity between water and sky. As usual, Hall thought of God:

A thousand youthful forms of the fairest outline seemed to be dancing to and fro, their white arms intertwined--bodies incessantly varying, intermixing, falling, rising, jumping, skipping, hopping, whirling, waltzing, resting, and again rushing to the mazy dance--never tired--ever playful--ever light and airy, graceful and soft to the eye. Who could view such wondrous scenes of divine enchantment and not exclaim, "O Lord, how manifest are thy works! In wisdom hast Thou made them all; the earth is full of Thy riches!"
-- Chauncey C. Loomis, Weird and Tragic Shores: The Story of Charles Francis Hall, Explorer, pp. 77

Tue, 22 Mar 2005 05:09:31 GMT

The File: Ease

To enjoy ease, it is surely necessary to labor. To enjoy luxury, it is necessary to live hard. Since our work in these after-days is all too often sedentary, since we all too often tend to overfeed, and since we shun living hard, if we have not lost the capacity for it, it is small wonder that we are dyspeptically out of tune with life, and have to pay to have our jaded appetites whetted by manufactured thrills on stage, screen, dirt-track, or playing field.
-- Sidney Rogerson, Twelve Days, as excerpted in John Keegan's The Book of War: 25 Centuries of Great War Writing, pp. 271

Rogerson was writing of his experiences as a British officer serving in the trenches of World War I. 89 years later, citizens of the developed world are even further cocooned by technology, and our "manufactured thrills" are ever more complex. I doubt they are any more satisfying. You can try to distract yourself from your hunger for life, but when the entertainment is over the hunger is still there. So people fall asleep with the television on, whispering to them as they dream....

Tue, 22 Mar 2005 04:27:07 GMT

The File: Gulp

First they saw bones--human bones--littering the thwarts and floorboards, as if the whaleboat were the seagoing lair of a ferocious, man-eating beast. Then they saw the two men. They were curled up in opposite ends of the boat, their skin covered in sores, their eyes bulging from the hollows of their skulls, their beards caked with salt and blood. They were sucking the marrow from the bones of their dead shipmates.

Instead of greeting their rescuers with smiles of relief, the survivors--too delirious with thirst and hunger to speak--were disturbed, even frightened. They jealously clutched the splintered and gnawed-over bones with a desperate, almost feral intensity, refusing to give them up, like two starving dogs found trapped in a pit.
-- Nathaniel Philbrick, In The Heart Of The Sea: The Tragedy Of The Whaleship Essex, pp. xii-xiii

I think the amazing thing about the experience of the Essex survivors is not so much the horror--although I'll return to that shortly--but the fact that these two men were able to survive the hardship and mental anguish and yet go on to live long, normal lives. They returned to their families and occupations without the benefit of therapy, decompression, or even modern dentistry. I find that more interesting than the fact that their pockets were filled with fingerbones when they were finally rescued.

As for horror, the only thing I find repulsive is my own morbid interest. In my defense I'm basically making a writer's scrapbook available on the web, a catalog of the extreme, but the excuse, I fear, doesn't count for much. When I was little my dad told me that people are fascinated by evil. I presume this accounts for the mainstream media.

Thu, 17 Mar 2005 02:13:33 GMT

The File: Smug Athens

89. Athenians: "Then we will not make a long and unconvincing speech, full of fine phrases, to prove that our victory over Persia justifies our empire, or that we are now attacking you because you have wronged us, and we ask you not to expect to convince us by saying that you have not injured us, or that, though a colony of Lacedaemon, you did not join her. Let each of us say what we really think and reach a practical agreement. You know and we know, as practical men, that the question of justice arises only between parties equal in strength, and that the strong do what they can, and the weak submit."
-- Thucydides, The Melian Dialogue, as excerpted in John Keegan's The Book of War: 25 Centuries of Great War Writing, pp. 6

Wed, 16 Mar 2005 05:32:03 GMT

The File: Funny English Chaps

Scott's party, bogged down by a bewildering array of modes of transportation--ponies, such as Shackleton had already proved to be useless, motor sledges that didn't work, and dogs that no one knew how to drive--slogged their way south, adhering closely to Shackleton's route and playing out the now traditional drama of starvation and hardship. Amundsen and his four companions, travelling by ski with a team of fifty-two superbly conditioned and trained dogs, averaged a comfortable fifteen to twenty miles a day in comparison with Scott's ragged ten- to thirteen-mile daily pace. On their homeward run, the Norwegians covered up to thirty miles a day.

"Cannot understand what the English mean when they say that dogs cannot be used here," Amundsen puzzled in his diary. On January 16, 1912, Scott and his debilitated team staggered to 89° south to find the snow crisscrossed with the tracks of Amundsen's party.

"The worst has happened," Scott allowed in his diary. "All the day dreams must go."
-- Caroline Alexander, The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition, pp. 8

"One has the feeling that if it had been Shackleton who lost to Amundsen at the pole, he would have met up with the Norwegians on the way back, and they would have all held a big celebratory party," a distinguished polar historian once told me.
-- ibid., pp. 12

Despite the luminescent portrait of Shackleton painted by Alexander, we're forced to wonder why such an obviously talented leader of men set out on his famously interrupted polar expedition by making most of the same mistakes Scott did. Yet more clunky motorized sledges, yet more dogs no one was trained to drive (the deworming pills were even left in Argentina), and a single crewmember with any knowledge of skiing--the slackerly Thomas Orde-Lees, also in charge of the motor sledges. If the Endurance had reached Vahsel Bay, would Scott Part 2 have played out on the ice? One suspects that in spite of it all, Shackleton would have found a way.

Sat, 12 Mar 2005 04:30:19 GMT

The File: Horrors

Charles Francis Hall, the American who later searched for Franklin survivors, interviewed some of these Inuit nearly twenty years afterward. "Several native families," he reported, "provided an officer thought to be Crozier and a group of his men with seal meat. The Inuit then left, ignoring pleas for further aid." At the time, this was accepted as proof the native Americans abandoned Crozier and his pleading, begging men. In fact, that they shared what little seal meat they had was noble; that they stole away at the first opportunity is understandable. Imagine yourself on a family camping trip when, suddenly, a gang of hairy, incoherent Hell's Angels appear out of nowhere. They're plainly starving, heavily armed with guns, knives, and hatchets--and openly carrying human body parts. The Inuit, thinking they might be next on the menu, were clearly terrified. They gave what seal meat they had and got away as fast and as far as they could."
-- Scott Cookman, Ice Blink: The Tragic Fate of Sir John Franklin's Lost Polar Expedition, pp. 181

I wonder if this Capt. Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier is any relation to Capt. William Crozier of the Indian, which rescued the Essex survivors off Valparaiso. I'll have to check.

Fri, 04 Mar 2005 00:48:00 GMT

The File: Gentlemen's Blood

Some stalwarts saw all the lighter weapons as decadent and a sad comedown from knightlier days. Even a lady could lift them. La Maupin, for instance. She was by no means a lady, being a principal singer at the Opéra, but she was a woman, and one of her lovers had been a famous fencing master who gave her lessons. She was so hot-tempered and so skillful with the blade that some people didn't believe she was a woman at all.

One evening at a ball, she insulted a lady, and the lady's gentlemen friends demanded that she leave the room. She said she would, but only if the indignant gentlemen would come outside and fight. They did and, according to the generally accepted story, she killed them all, fair and square, and then smoothed down her dress and went back to the ball....

In an earlier and possibly more likely account, we learn that she was tall, athletic, and strikingly beautiful, with white skin, blue eyes, and auburn hair as well as a lovely contralto voice. She often dressed as a man and enjoyed the attentions of women as well as men. By this version, she didn't insult the lady at the ball; on the contrary, dressed as a dashing cavalier, she was dancing and flirting with her, and kissed her in the middle of the dance floor. Three of the lady's suitors objected, and she replied, "At your service, gentlemen," the standard offer of an instant duel. All four of them went out into the dark gardens to fight it out, and only La Maupin returned. As to whether the three gentlemen were dead or only bleeding, nobody says....

In any case, Louis XIV pardoned her, and she went off to Brussels to become mistress of the elector of Bavaria.
-- Barbara Holland, Gentlemen's Blood: A History of Dueling from Swords at Dawn to Pistols at Dusk

Mon, 14 Feb 2005 03:49:17 GMT

The File: The Writer's Journey

Shamans have been called "the wounded healers". Like writers, they are special people set apart from the rest by their dreams, visions, or unique experiences. Shamans, like many writers, are prepared for their work by enduring terrible ordeals. They may have a dangerous illness or fall from a cliff and have nearly every bone broken. They are chewed by a lion or mauled by a bear. They are taken apart and put back together again in a new way. In a sense they have died and been reborn, and this experience gives them special powers. Many writers come to their craft only after they have been shattered by life in some way.
-- Christopher Vogler, The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers

Mon, 14 Feb 2005 03:45:10 GMT

The File: Nelson's Navy

Someone with good connections in the service (as most midshipmen had) could have his name borne on the books of a ship for several years, though the young man himself was still at school, or even in the nursery.... In 1801, a lieutenant was convicted of drawing the pay of his son, aged one, registered as an able seaman.
-- Brian Lavery, Nelson's Navy: The Ships, Men and Organisation 1793 - 1815

Sun, 06 Feb 2005 16:46:11 GMT

The File: Magic in the Ancient World

In Theocritus as well as Virgil, or in the elegiac poets, and generally in the great majority of the literary texts, it is women who practice magic, whether erotic or of another kind. This situation amounts to an astonishing reversal of what we find in the epigraphic texts and the recipes on the papyri. In the papyri, most commonly a man tries to attract, bind, and possess a female victim....

How can one explain the fact that it is almost exclusively men who tried, clandestinely and by magic, to obtain women, not for the purpose of an affair, but for one of marriage? Why, on the other hand, do these same men, when they are well educated, always imagine the reverse situation and represent women practicing erotic magic in order to possess men? ...

We begin to catch a glimpse of the answer to the second question--why, in literature, is it always the women who perform erotic magic?--or at least an aspect of the answer. These stories remove erotic magic still further away from the world of men; they are thus a means for getting rid of what should not exist. ... A true man does not need erotic magic--the only male sorcerers are those funny foreign specialists.
-- Fritz Graf, Magic in the Ancient World

Sun, 06 Feb 2005 16:29:21 GMT

The File: Project Gutenberg

Till the first contest was decided, Severus treated the man, whom he had doomed to destruction, with every mark of esteem and regard. Even in the letter, in which he announced his victory over Niger, he styles Albinus the brother of his soul and empire, sends him the affectionate salutations of his wife Julia, and his young family, and entreats him to preserve the armies and the republic faithful to their common interest. The messengers charged with this letter were instructed to accost the Caesar with respect, to desire a private audience, and to plunge their daggers into his heart.
-- Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol 1, Ch V, Pt II

Tue, 25 Jan 2005 14:44:54 GMT

The File: The Economist

The oldest member of Les Hénokiens is Hoshi, a Japanese inn founded in Komatsu in 718. Run by Zengoro Hoshi, the 46th generation of the family to be in charge, the firm's motto is unusually practical: “Take care of fire, learn from water, co-operate with nature”.
-- "The world's oldest companies"

Tue, 25 Jan 2005 14:44:07 GMT

The File: The Economist

Peter Brown, the doyen of religious historians at Princeton University, gives a striking account of what early eastern monks thought they were doing. They “did not abandon the world, in the sense of severing all connection with it. Rather, in the imagination of their contemporaries, they transformed its wild edges. They ringed a careworn society with the shimmering hope of paradise regained. Having drained from themselves all hint of the dark passions that ruled the world, they validated the world by constantly praying for it.”
-- "Monasteries of the Christian east"

Thu, 20 Jan 2005 23:44:59 GMT

The File: Slate

"Newton was not the first of the age of reason," Keynes said. "He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind which looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10,000 years ago." Newton opened a door to our world, sure. But he belonged to the world we have left behind.
-- James Gleick, "Isaac Newton's Gravity"

Thu, 20 Jan 2005 23:42:10 GMT

The File: The Economist

As for Dariga Nazarbaeva, she may either have simply failed to gain much public support or been put in her place by her father. The acting chairman of Otan, Amangeldy Yermegiyaev, shrewdly describes the father-daughter relationship with a common Russian proverb. A soldier who does not try to become a general is a bad soldier, he says, and smiles.
-- The Economist, "Dynastic blues"