Michael Walsh, author of the recent history of Leftist Modernism, The Devil’s Pleasure Palace, ?facetiously? contends that today’s leftists have a great deal in common with the squelching, piscine-featured inhabitants of H.P. Lovecraft’s ancient, crumbling New England towns secretly carrying on the nefarious activities of the Starry Wisdom Cult.

It seems to be the only way to account for the frequently self-contadictory unspeakable madness characteristic of the most prominent Progressive democrats.

Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!

RTWT

Jacopo Bassano, St Valentine Baptizing St Lucilla, 1575, oil on canvas, Museo Civico, Bassano del Grappa

The popular customs associated with Saint Valentine’s Day undoubtedly had their origin in a conventional belief generally received in England and France during the Middle Ages, that on 14 February, i.e., half way through the second month of the year, the birds began to pair. Thus in Chaucer’s Parliament of Foules we read:

For this was sent on Seynt Valentyne’s day
Whan every foul cometh ther to choose his mate.

For this reason the day was looked upon as specially consecrated to lovers and as a proper occasion for writing love letters and sending lovers’ tokens. Both the French and English literatures of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries contain allusions to the practice. Perhaps the earliest to be found is in the 34th and 35th Ballades of the bilingual poet, John Gower, written in French; but Lydgate and Clauvowe supply other examples. Those who chose each other under these circumstances seem to have been called by each other their Valentines.

In the Paston Letters, Dame Elizabeth Brews writes thus about a match she hopes to make for her daughter (we modernize the spelling), addressing the favoured suitor:

And, cousin mine, upon Monday is Saint Valentine’s Day and every bird chooses himself a mate, and if it like you to come on Thursday night, and make provision that you may abide till then, I trust to God that ye shall speak to my husband and I shall pray that we may bring the matter to a conclusion.

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From Robert Chambers, The Book of Days, 1869: Feast Day: St. Valentine, priest and martyr, circ. 270.

ST. VALENTINE’S DAY

Valentine’s Day is now almost everywhere a much degenerated festival, the only observance of any note consisting merely of the sending of jocular anonymous letters to parties whom one wishes to quiz, and this confined very much to the humbler classes. The approach of the day is now heralded by the appearance in the print-sellers’ shop windows of vast numbers of missives calculated for use on this occasion, each generally consisting of a single sheet of post paper, on the first page of which is seen some ridiculous coloured caricature of the male or female figure, with a few burlesque verses below. More rarely, the print is of a sentimental kind, such as a view of Hymen’s altar, with a pair undergoing initiation into wedded happiness before it, while Cupid flutters above, and hearts transfixed with his darts decorate the corners. Maid-servants and young fellows interchange such epistles with each other on the 14th of February, no doubt conceiving that the joke is amazingly good: and, generally, the newspapers do not fail to record that the London postmen delivered so many hundred thousand more letters on that day than they do in general. Such is nearly the whole extent of the observances now peculiar to St. Valentine’s Day.

At no remote period it was very different. Ridiculous letters were unknown: and, if letters of any kind were sent, they contained only a courteous profession of attachment from some young man to some young maiden, honeyed with a few compliments to her various perfections, and expressive of a hope that his love might meet with return. But the true proper ceremony of St. Valentine’s Day was the drawing of a kind of lottery, followed by ceremonies not much unlike what is generally called the game of forfeits. Misson, a learned traveller, of the early part of the last century, gives apparently a correct account of the principal ceremonial of the day.

‘On the eve of St. Valentine’s Day,’ he says, ‘the young folks in England and Scotland, by a very ancient custom, celebrate a little festival. An equal number of maids and bachelors get together: each writes their true or some feigned name upon separate billets, which they roll up, and draw by way of lots, the maids taking the men’s billets, and the men the maids’: so that each of the young men lights upon a girl that he calls his valentine, and each of the girls upon a young man whom she calls hers. By this means each has two valentines: but the man sticks faster to the valentine that has fallen to him than to the valentine to whom he is fallen. Fortune having thus divided the company into so many couples, the valentines give balls and treats to their mistresses, wear their billets several days upon their bosoms or sleeves, and this little sport often ends in love.’

St. Valentine’s Day is alluded to by Shakespeare and by Chaucer, and also by the poet Lydgate (who died in 1440).

The origin of these peculiar observances of St. Valentine’s Day is a subject of some obscurity. The saint himself, who was a priest of Rome, martyred in the third century, seems to have had nothing to do with the matter, beyond the accident of his day being used for the purpose. Mr. Douce, in his Illustrations of Shakespeare, says:

“It was the practice in ancient Rome, during a great part of the month of February, to celebrate the Lupercalia, which were feasts in honour of Pan and Juno. whence the latter deity was named Februata, Februalis, and Februlla. On this occasion, amidst a variety of ceremonies, the names of young women were put into a box, from which they were drawn by the men as chance directed. The pastors of the early Christian church, who, by every possible means, endeavoured to eradicate the vestiges of pagan superstitions, and chiefly by some commutations of their forms, substituted, in the present instance, the names of particular saints instead of those of the women: and as the festival of the Lupercalia had commenced about the middle of February, they appear to have chosen St. Valentine’s Day for celebrating the new feast, because it occurred nearly at the same time.”

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February 14th, prior to 1969, was the feast day of two, or possibly three, saints and martyrs named Valentine, all reputedly of the Third Century.

The first Valentine, legend holds, was a physician and priest in Rome, arrested for giving aid to martyrs in prison, who while there converted his jailer by restoring sight to the jailer’s daughter. He was executed by being beaten with clubs, and afterwards beheaded, February 14, 270. He is traditionally the patron of affianced couples, bee keepers, lovers, travellers, young people, and greeting card manufacturers, and his special assistance may be sought in conection with epilepsy, fainting, and plague.

A second St. Valentine, reportedly bishop of Interamna (modern Terni) was also allegedly martyred under Claudius II, and also allegedly buried along the Flaminian Way.

A third St. Valentine is said to have also been martyred in Roman times, along with companions, in Africa.

Due to an insufficiency of historical evidence in the eyes of Vatican II modernizers, the Roman Catholic Church dropped the February 14th feast of St. Valentine from its calendar in 1969.

Snowflakes at Wellesley reacting to 2016 Election returns.

My blood boiled this morning when I read this reply to a question on Quora:

TheFire.Org asked, rhetorically:

Is the reaction of Yale University students against professor Erika Christakis email the signal of the start of the steep and rapid decline of Yale and its motto of truth?

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Cathy Xue, Silliman ’19 replied:

During the 2015–2016 school year, I was a freshman in Silliman College, where Erika Christakis was Associate Master (the position of “Master” has since been re-titled as “Head of College” or “HoC”). *Mrs. Christakis’ decision to express her opinions on free speech and Halloween costumes in an email the students of Silliman College, **/where she occupied a position of authority/**, was inappropriate. *I do not doubt that if she instead published her statement in a more general forum, for example as an op-ed in the /Yale Daily News/, that the reaction would not be as intense.

Basically, *Erika Christakis failed her duty as Associate Master by sending that email*, and this upset a number of students in Silliman College and in the broader Yale community. At Yale, the role of (Associate) Master/HoC is one of social and community leadership and support — kind of like the cool aunt/uncle for the 400 or so students under their watch. Erika Christakis was supposed to be someone that Silliman students could feel comfortable approaching if they felt unsafe or uncomfortable on campus. Instead, she indicated to her charges that she valued the principle of free speech and intellectual discussion over the very real personal hurt that insensitive language or other expression (like Halloween costumes, for example) might cause.

Also, the negative reaction didn’t occur in a vacuum — other events had already fueled discussion and unrest about racism on campus.

And unconditional emotional support is more important to them than Free Speech.

I’d say: Yale made a huge mistake whenever it started admitting these kinds of spoiled, entitled, sensitive blooming plants.

The Master (Bugger that “Head of College” nonsense!) of a Yale Residential College, I have news for you, Snowflakes, was never intended to be the “Cool Aunt/Uncle” meant to be used as a crying towel at all.

College Masters, in my day, were older male faculty members of distinction whose role was approximately that of the British Viceroy of some minor Imperial Colony. He received a suitably impressive residence and an expense budget. His role was to preside as Master of Ceremonies over regular significant events, to represent the college officially, and to exist remotely, floating above the daily life of the college, as a benign tutelary deity, capable of dipping into that special budget under his control to bestow special favors, a celebratory dining-hall feast, a high-end table soccer game for the Common Room, special funding for the print shop or the wood shop.

The actual administrative work of the college, the disciplinary role, the shit work generally was all handled by the Dean, an humble graduate student type, only a bit older than the undergraduates, who was burnishing up his resume with an eye to future university administrative grandeur at some rinky dink institution far away from Yale.

The College Master could be relied upon to smile benevolently in your direction and to acknowledge you with a “Hullo!” or “Good Morning!” when passing by, but no one, in the pre-millennial Yale, would have dreamt of running crying to the College Master that his feelings had been hurt, Boo hoo!

Nobody, in the old days, old enough and smart enough to get into Yale could possibly have been imagined to consider himself “unsafe” or “uncomfortable” as the result of some other student or students wearing Halloween costumes.

In the old Yale, the natural response to some inadvertent insult, would have been to shrug it off. The natural response to a deliberate insult would have been to retort with a wittier and more devastating response.

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Nautilus:

In 1974, Roger Penrose, a British mathematician, created a revolutionary set of tiles that could be used to cover an infinite plane in a pattern that never repeats. In 1982, Daniel Shechtman, an Israeli crystallographer, discovered a metallic alloy whose atoms were organized unlike anything ever observed in materials science. Penrose garnered public renown on a scale rarely seen in mathematics. Shechtman won the Nobel Prize. Both scientists defied human intuition and changed our basic understanding of nature’s design, revealing how infinite variation could emerge within a highly ordered environment.

At the heart of their breakthroughs is “forbidden symmetry,” so-called because it flies in the face of a deeply ingrained association between symmetry and repetition. Symmetry is based on axes of reflection—whatever appears on one side of a line is duplicated on the other. In math, that relationship is reflected in tiling patterns. Symmetrical shapes such as rectangles and triangles can cover a plane with neither gap nor overlap, and in an ever-repeating pattern. Repeated patterns are called “periodic” and are said to have “translational symmetry.” If you move a pattern from place to place, it looks the same.

Penrose, a bold, ambitious scientist, was interested less in identical patterns and repetition, and more in infinite variation. To be precise, he was interested in “aperiodic” tiling, or sets of tiles that can cover an infinite plane with neither gap nor overlap, without the tiling pattern ever repeating itself. That was a challenge because he couldn’t use tiles with two, three, four, or six axes of symmetry—rectangles, triangles, squares, and hexagons—because on an infinite plane they would result in periodic or repeated patterns. That meant he had to rely on shapes believed to leave gaps in the tiling of a plane—those with forbidden symmetries.

Penrose turned to five-axis symmetry, the pentagon, to create his plane of non-repeating patterns, in part, he has said, because pentagons “are just nice to look at.” What was remarkable about Penrose tiles was that even though he derived his tiles from the lines and angles of pentagons, his shapes left no awkward gaps. They snugged together perfectly, twisting and turning across the plane, always coming close to repetition, but never quite getting there.

Penrose tiling captured public attention for two major reasons. First, he found a way to generate infinitely changing patterns using just two types of tiles. Second, and even more spectacular, his tiles were simple, symmetrical shapes that on their own betrayed no sign of their unusual properties.

Penrose made several versions of his aperiodic tile sets. One of his most famous is known as the “kite” and the “dart.” The kite looks like the kids’ toy of the same name, and the dart looks like a simplified outline of a stealth bomber. Both divide cleanly along axes of symmetry and each has two simple, symmetrical arcs on their surface. Penrose established one placing rule: for a “legal” tile placement these arcs must match up, creating contiguous curves. Without this rule, kites and darts can be placed together in repeating patterns. With this rule, repetition never comes. The kite and the dart tile forever, dancing around their five axes, creating starbursts and decagons, winding curves, butterflies and flowers. Shapes recur but new variations keep creeping in.

Edmund Harriss, an assistant clinical professor in mathematical studies at the University of Arkansas, who wrote his Ph.D. thesis on Penrose tiles, offers a comparison. “Imagine you’re on a world that is just made up of squares,” Harriss says. “You start walking, and when you get to the edge of the square, and the next square is exactly the same, you know what you’re going to see if you walk forever.” Penrose tiling has the exact opposite nature. “No matter how much information you have, how much you’ve seen of the tiling, you’ll never be able to predict what happens next. It will be something that you’ve never seen before.”

RTWT

Oldest College Daily:

The Yale College term bill will increase by 3.8 percent, from $69,430 to $72,100, for the 2019–20 academic year, the University announced last Monday.

Tuition will rise from $53,430 to $55,500, and the cost of on-campus room and board will jump from $16,000 to $16,600. Over the past two decades, the term bill has increased at a rate similar to this year’s. According to the press release announcing the change, the level of the student effort — the amount of money students on financial aid are expected to contribute to their education — will remain constant for the fourth straight year.

“Although the cost of a Yale education changes each year, students receiving financial aid can rest assured that their Yale financial aid award will continue to meet their full demonstrated financial need,” said Director of Undergraduate Financial Aid Scott Wallace-Juedes.

For the 2000–01 academic year, at $32,880, Yale’s term bill was 55 percent lower in absolute terms than that of the coming school year, though inflation has accounted for the bulk of the difference. Tuition as well as room and board have been consistently increasing by roughly 4 percent annually since then, even through the 2008 financial crisis, which slashed the University’s endowment by 25 percent. Yale has said that it increases tuition and room and board to keep pace with inflation and University expenses.

Obscene, outrageous, absolutely appalling. But the top elite schools have a natural monopoly as gatekeepers to the International Ruling Class and every year more people are lining up trying to get in.

Yale cost $3000 a year when I was a freshman back in 1966.

espaces-atypiques:

This magnificent boat sailing 25 meters/82 feet, is moored in one of the most sought after areas of the Latin Quarter. Classified of heritage interest, it has a roof of 16m/52.5′ long under which take place all the comfort of a beautiful apartment.

The wheelhouse, entirely preserved in exceptional condition, gives access to an unusual reception. Its proportions allow it to host a lounge area with its cozy fireplace and a dining room that will turn into a billiard room if necessary.

At the same level, at the stern, under the wheelhouse is a first cabin separated from the living room by an office area and kitchen. On the other side, at the bow are two cabins, one with a bathtub overlooking the Seine.

At the bow level, a terrace of 15m2/49 sq. ft., will allow you to appreciate the exceptional view of the Louvre and the Ile de la Cité, in the tranquility typical of the small arm of the Seine.

The authentic fittings, its look and its benefits give it an undeniable charm.

Anneau: 1500 € ($1690.50) quarter

1 050 000 € ($1,183,350)

Let me tell you how it will be
There’s one for you, nineteen for me

Now my advice for those who die
Declare the pennies on your eyes
‘Cause I’m the taxman, yeah, I’m the taxman
And you’re working for no one but me.

–Taxman, the Beatles.

NY Post:

Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy is poised to sign a “rain tax” bill passed by the state legislature Jan. 31 — and Republicans and lots of taxpayers are howling with rage.

“Every time you think there’s nothing left to tax, we come up with something else,” Assemblyman Hal Wirths (R-Morris-Sussex) exploded during a debate on the measure.

“It’s just never-ending down here.”

The law allows each of the state’s 565 municipalities to set up its own public stormwater utility. The new bureaucracies will build and manage sewer systems to treat pollutant-filled stormwater runoff.

The infrastructure could cost billions, state authorities say. Under the law, the utilities can levy steep fees on properties with large parking lots, long driveways, or big buildings — which create the most runoff.

The state would scoop up 5 percent of the proceeds.

The idea for the new fee goes back to 2010, when President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency ordered states whose rivers and streams flow into the Chesapeake Bay to drastically cut sediment pollution.

Maryland was the first to fall into line, with a 2012 law that charged cleanup costs to property owners — and sparked taxpayer fury. Republican Larry Hogan’s promise to repeal the “rain tax” helped sweep him into the governor’s mansion in 2014.

“the narrative that Stonehenge has been ruined by mass tourism goes back a long way. Even Samuel Pepys complained of being ripped off by shepherds and innkeepers.”

Viewing Stonehenge is currently disrupted by the roar of traffic and the glare of headlights after dusk, but moving the road north or south has issues and putting it underneath the site in a tunnel has been found to be too expensive.

Even celebratory ceremonies always seem to go wrong.

The Guardian looks at the plethora of controversies currently raging round the landmark.

To celebrate the millennium, an ill-fated project, funded with £100,000 from the national lottery, attempted to re-enact the fetching of a single three-tonne dolerite bluestone from Wales to Wiltshire. The original plan was for volunteers, some 40 a day, to wear “‘appropriate clothing’ of skins and furs”. But that had to be abandoned for safety reasons, according to Mike Pitts’ book Hengeworld – and many of the volunteers drifted away, disenchanted by the awful task. After eventually loading the boulder on to a boat at Milford Haven, from where it was meant to travel up the Bristol channel, a frisky wind saw it tumble into the sea. At this point it was rescued, using the un-neolithic technology of a crane, and transported on a flatbed truck to the botanical gardens in Carmarthenshire, 140 miles from Stonehenge, where it remains. As a spokesman for Pembrokeshire council remarked at the time: “Stone-age man never had the health-and-safety people looking over his shoulder.”

RTWT

Isis Davis-Marks

Yalies, if you see this Jonathan Edwards senior looking at you and fingering her smart phone, be careful what you do or say. She’s making a list, and checking it twice, and if you are ever nominated for an important political job requiring Senate confirmation, decades down the road, she may be gunning for you.

Yale Daily News:

Everyone knows a white boy with shiny brown hair and a saccharine smile that conceals his great ambitions. He could be in Grand Strategy or the Yale Political Union. Maybe he’s the editor-in-chief of the News. He takes his classes. He networks. And, when it comes time for graduation, he wins all the awards.

One day, I’ll turn on the television — or, who knows, maybe televisions will be obsolete by this point — and I’ll see him sitting down for his Senate confirmation hearing. Yes, he’ll be a bit older, with tiny wrinkles sprouting at the corners of his eyes and a couple of gray hairs jutting out of the top of his widow’s peak. But that smile, that characteristic saccharine smile, will remain the same.

When I’m watching the white boy — who is now a white man by this point — on CNN, I’ll remember a racist remark that he said, an unintentional utterance that he made when he had one drink too many at a frat party during sophomore year. I’ll recall a message that he accidentally left open on a computer when he forgot to log out of iMessage, where he likened a woman’s body to a particularly large animal. I’ll kick myself for forgetting to screenshot the evidence.

And, when I’m watching him smile that smile, I’ll think that I could have stopped it. …

This problem begins far before our classmates graduate, and we need to call them out on their transgressions — boldly and publicly. … We should make instances of sexual assault and harassment public knowledge. Whisper networks, which are known as private chains of information which pass along knowledge of sexual assault, are useful, but insufficient in spreading information about indiscretions.

I think that we need to continue to call our classmates out, but it’s still not enough. After all, it wasn’t enough to stop Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

To be honest, I’m not sure what the solution is. This expands beyond vocalizing problems about sexual assault: The core of this problem has to do with our values. The problem isn’t just the Yale administration; it’s Yale students. We allow things to skate by. We forget. We say, “No, he couldn’t have done that,” or, “But he’s so nice.” No questions are asked when our friends accept job offers from companies that manufacture weapons or contribute to gentrification in cities. We merely smile at them and wave as we walk across our residential college courtyards and do nothing. Thirty years later, we kick ourselves when it’s too late.

But I can’t do that anymore — I can’t let things slip by. I’m watching you, white boy. And this time, I’m taking the screenshot.

RTWT