On this day in 1904, twenty-two-year-old James Joyce moved into the Martello Tower in Sandycove, outside Dublin, with his friend Oliver St. John Gogarty. Joyce only stayed with Gogarty for a week — there were disagreements, and in October Joyce and Nora Barnacle left for Europe — but their relationship and the Tower setting would become the opening chapter of Ulysses. The Sandycove Martello Tower was one of many built by the British army a century earlier as a defense system against a Napoleonic invasion — thus Stephen Dedalus (Joyce) is able to joke that Buck Mulligan (Gogarty) pays his rent to “the secretary of state for war.”
Two deer interrupted the evening commute last Friday around 5:30 PM, crossing the Golden Gate Bridge. They were presumably on their way north to attend one of the private events up at Bohemian Grove on the Russian River.
Yale’s William F. Buckley Jr. Speaker Program announced recently that, in its third year of operation, it would be expanding its speaker program to host 8 speakers in the Fall semester. The most interesting guest speaker scheduled this Fall will probably be Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born victim of genital mutilation famous for her public criticism of certain Muslim practices.
The Oldest College Daily’s article, however, noted that not everyone approved of the speaker program.
Students who are not involved in the program have mixed feelings about its presence on campus — especially its conservative bent.
Helen Price ’18 said that although she appreciates the effort the program makes to promote intellectual diversity, in practice such an effort can be problematic.
“When you invite very conservative speakers here who perhaps have controversial views on Islam or homosexuality, you essentially make Yale a very uncomfortable place for a large percentage of the people here on campus, and everyone should feel at home at college,†Price said.
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The freshman Ms. Price received national attention for her expressed discomfort at the airing of controversial, i.e. politically incorrect, views.
Eric Owens, at the Daily Caller, pounced all over her.
Who is Helen Price? According to her Twitter profile, she’s quite a ritzy, jet-setting princess. She describes herself as a “Yale student, leftie, Berliner, Brit, blogger†with not one and not two but three locations: â€Berlin, New Haven, England.â€
She thinks incredibly highly of herself, too, let her just tell you:
Since my last birthday I’ve got into Yale, Oxford etc, been published in the Guardian, captained my national debating team & moved to Berlin
— Helen Price (@HelenPrice1994) November 5, 2013
Her Twitter profile also includes language from a May 17, 2014 tweet she composed:
And I’m wearing a tee that says “My Marxist Feminist Dialectic Brings All The Boys to the Yardâ€, so that isn’t going down well.
— Helen Price (@HelenPrice1994) May 17, 2014
It’s not clear if Price understands how such casual mentions of Marxism might make someone — from, say, Cambodia, or North Korea, or Ukraine — “very uncomfortable.â€
The young Marxist’s 15-minutes-of-fame has clearly occasioned some further discomfort as the young lady’s Twitter feed has since become “Protected,” meaning that access to her current and older tweets is now specifically limited to followers she approves.
The Daily Mail reports that DNA analysis of semen left on the shawl of one of the Ripper’s victims has pinned down the identity of the most famous killer of the 19th century.
It is the greatest murder mystery of all time, a puzzle that has perplexed criminologists for more than a century and spawned books, films and myriad theories ranging from the plausible to the utterly bizarre.
But now, thanks to modern forensic science, The Mail on Sunday can exclusively reveal the true identity of Jack the Ripper, the serial killer responsible for at least five grisly murders in Whitechapel in East London during the autumn of 1888.
DNA evidence has now shown beyond reasonable doubt which one of six key suspects commonly cited in connection with the Ripper’s reign of terror was the actual killer – and we reveal his identity.
A shawl found by the body of Catherine Eddowes, one of the Ripper’s victims, has been analysed and found to contain DNA from her blood as well as DNA from the killer.
The landmark discovery was made after businessman Russell Edwards, 48, bought the shawl at auction and enlisted the help of Dr Jari Louhelainen, a world-renowned expert in analysing genetic evidence from historical crime scenes.
Using cutting-edge techniques, Dr Louhelainen was able to extract 126-year-old DNA from the material and compare it to DNA from descendants of Eddowes and the suspect, with both proving a perfect match.
The revelation puts an end to the fevered speculation over the Ripper’s identity which has lasted since his murderous rampage in the most impoverished and dangerous streets of London.
Tyson will attack you if you come within a two-mile stretch of the Grand Union Canal in Bugbrooke, Northamptonshire. Joe Davies learned this the hard way and capsized.
The 1922 discovery of the tomb of the boy pharaoh Tutenkhamun dazzled the world with the precious artifacts and funeral goods found (which still regularly draw enormous numbers of visitors to exhibitions at museums around the world).
The deceased king was accompanied to the afterlife by two obviously personal favorite knives, both double-edged daggers in form, pretty close 3000-year-old equivalents of the Randall Model 2 Fighting Stiletto.
What is most interesting though is that King Tut’s personal daggers were made in the Bronze Age of other metals. One knife is made of gold, hardened with copper. The American custom knife-maker Buster Warenski (1942-2005) took it as a personal challenge and successfully completed in 1987 a replica. That project required five years of work and used 32 ounces of gold.
The second knife is made of iron, at a time in which the forging of primitive iron weapons was a new technology invented by the Hittites. Even in the future, when the Greeks would be besieging Troy, Achilles and the other heroes would still be armed with bronze swords and bronze-tipped spears. It’s good to be the king. Tutenkhamun possessed, and got to take with him into his tomb, the superb iron-bladed knife seen above. Modern analysis has determined that it was forged from meteoric iron, and though it lacked the complete rust-and-stain-resistance of the gold blade, it undoubtedly took a better edge and remained sharper longer. In 1300 B.C., iron would have been rarer and more expensive than gold. I think this knife may have been intentionally made with a ricasso, a flat, unsharpened area above the grip, which would allow the user to hold the blade farther forward for precision cutting.
Now when is Trader Joe’s going to start offering this interesting product discussed in Modern Farmer?
Visit the remote mountainside towns in Turkey’s Black Sea region during springtime and you may witness beekeepers hauling their hives upslope, until they reach vast fields of cream and magenta rhododendron flowers. Here, they unleash their bees, which pollinate the blossoms and make a kind of honey from them so potent, it’s been used as a weapon of war.
The dark, reddish, “mad honey,†known as deli bal in Turkey, contains an ingredient from rhododendron nectar called grayanotoxin — a natural neurotoxin that, even in small quantities, brings on light-headedness and sometimes, hallucinations. In the 1700s, the Black Sea region traded this potent produce with Europe, where the honey was infused with drinks to give boozers a greater high than alcohol could deliver.
When over-imbibed, however, the honey can cause low blood pressure and irregularities in the heartbeat that bring on nausea, numbness, blurred vision, fainting, potent hallucinations, seizures, and even death, in rare cases. Nowadays, cases of mad honey poisoning crop up every few years—oftentimes in travelers who have visited Turkey.
As the adventurous foodie might well ask, what’s the story behind this potent gloop, and why aren’t we all stirring teaspoons of it into our granola for a pleasant high?
