Reprising this post about the early death of Franz Schubert, the great lyrical composer of the early nineteenth century. He died at age 31. While his music is usually too melancholy for my taste, what a sadness. Franz was lucky to get that many years. Biographer Christoper Gibbs reports that Schubert’s parents had fourteen children […]
Franz Schubert’s early death Read More »
Refreshing this from Thomas Sowell’s classic Ethnic America: I am struck by this comparison he makes between the desperate state of the Irish peasantry in Ireland and the black slaves in America: “A French traveler in the early nineteenth century returned from a trip that included America and Ireland and wrote: ‘I have seen the
Irish peasants and black slaves Read More »
In his open letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (1615), Galileo offered a defense of science against the prevailing heavy hand of religious orthodoxy: “But I do not feel obliged to believe that that same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended to forgo their use and by some other
Galileo’s modern compromise: Letting science work *with* religion Read More »
Reprising these reflections from reading Eric Axelson’s Congo to Cape: Early Portuguese Explorers. Always an interesting question to ask how great ventures begin: Why did they start when and where they did? Why were they initiated by those individuals or groups and not others? The circumnavigation of Africa was a great achievement over many decades.
Why did Portugal become a great exploring nation? Read More »
Reprising this about Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio [Die Entführung aus dem Serail], which has a charming scene indicating England’s eighteenth-century reputation in Europe as a land of liberty. A woman named Konstanze and her English servant Blonde have been abducted by pirates and sold to Pasha Selim. In Act II, the Pasha’s crude overseer,
English liberty and Mozart’s opera Read More »
Reprising this from when I read E. G. West’s fascinating Education and the Industrial Revolution, which is a powerful argument for the conclusion that … well, let’s first look at some data. Here’s a table comparing school enrollments in various parts of the world with enrollments in England and Wales a century earlier. The table
All from the twenty-first century: * Sorcerers stealing or shrinking men’s penises in Congo. * Black magic murders in Brazil. * Witches beaten and humiliated in in southern India. * God punishes Haiti for its witchcraft and other immoralities. * Though progress in Ghana: a call “for the immediate abolition of witches camps and witchcraft
What’s new in witchcraft Read More »
Reprising this rant-post about those who fail to learn from history, who are condemned to … well … uhhh … something or other. But I digress. Last weekend we went to a school-sponsored Santa Shop. The idea of the Santa Shop is that while the parents eat cookies and sip punch and listen to carols,
Don’t know much about history — anecdote Read More »