Der Standard stuck an endoscopic camera into the tomb of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III in St. Stephen Cathedral in Vienna.
Frederick the Third (1415-1493) is the first Holy Roman Emperor to be photographed—five and a quarter centuries after his death—from a crack in his tomb in the Cathedral of St. Stephen in the heart of Vienna.
The cathedral’s architectural team (Dombauhütte) threaded an endoscopic camera in an existing test hole in order to examine a tomb whose contents had been commissioned thirty years before Frederick’s death.
Nested in a glazed ceramic sarcophagus and bedecked in fine velvet wrappings, Frederick’s imperial head is adorned with a mitered enamel crown and lies on a pillow of gold brocade; his hands grasp imperial scepter and orb. The inner wall panels frame embossed gold plaques.
I am watching this, and I usually avoid long videos, principally because it is interesting to see, and hear, the superhumanly energetic figure who manages to teach law, write lots of books, and produce the single most important conservative blog at a scale of productivity that continues to astound.
His take on Big Tech Social Media is also obviously of considerable interest. Glenn Reynolds is already on the record as advocating the break-up of those “Internet monopolies,” a basically incongruous position for such a libertarian thinker.
He may be, of course, a just a trifle prejudiced here. Big Tech Social Media came along and turned out to be a powerfully effective competitor to the blogosphere. It cut my traffic down into only a fraction of what it used to be, and I expect its impact on the Instapundit blog was also impressive.
I’d normally myself be totally against Antitrust persecution of corporations, but the Big Tech leviathans are themselves hypocritical political partisans systematically misusing the power that’s fallen into their laps to create totalitarian satrapies in which non-politically-correct, often merely conservative speech is stomped out.
I’m currently serving my second 30-day sentence in Facebook jail. This time based on a stupid misinterpretation of my technical description of the characteristics of Fascism as a pro-Nazi posting, doubtless by some low-level employee with English as a second language.
That green line and purple cloud isn’t rain. It’s the monarch butterfly migration being picked up by Doppler radar from the US Weather Service over Oklahoma City. How cool is that?
Five Yale students staged a protest outside of Global Affairs professor Emma Sky’s classroom on Tuesday afternoon after University administrators forbade them from entering and distributing a pamphlet criticizing the professor.
“Open your eyes, open your ears, you are being taught by those you should fear,†chanted the protestors, disrupting Sky’s 110-minute Global Affairs class titled Middle East Politics. Protestors — Zulfiqar Mannan ’20, Casey Odesser ’20, Hazal Özgür ’20, Nika Zarazvand ’20 and Francesca Maviglia MPH ’20 — said they initially intended to enter Sky’s seminar and distribute pamphlets calling their professor a war criminal.
But a Yale Police Department officer and Dean of Student Affairs Camille Lizarribar prevented students from entering the classroom. …
In an interview after the protest, Odesser told the News that she thought the University’s response to the protest foreclosed discussion about Sky’s previous involvement in Afghanistan.
“I am incredibly disappointed with the way that the University rejected our proposal to honestly, earnestly and creatively engage with [the students in the class],†Odesser said. “I’m appalled and horrified at how no one will talk to us engage with us and instead perceive us as a threat.â€
According to Mannan, who is a staff writer for the News, the project was largely inspired by “the revolutionary aspect†of Paradise Lost and draws inspiration from the Extinction Rebellion, Greta Thunberg and Shaikh Sarmad.
While Mannan and Odesser received a Creative and Performing Arts Award from Morse College for their project, the college is now “re-evaluating if they are still able†to fund the project, Mannan said. The reason for the college’s reevaluation remains unclear. The Morse Head of College Office could not be reached for comment on Tuesday evening.
Odesser said that the project was not meant to be disruptive. She explained that the group had originally planned to “perform a slinky, sexy catwalk†into the classroom and silently place a pamphlet on each of the students’ desks. She said she believed that many students in Sky’s class have “not confronted the levels of hypocrisy and violence — like white feminism — that is propagated by her class.â€
Zulfiqar Mannan ’20 shares (I’m not sure what possessive pronoun’s) viewpoint on the protest.
Looking at all this, I inevitably wonder why so many exotic specimens of humanity from remote parts of the world, holding alien worldviews, with native perspectives often unfriendly to the United States, are given places in the undergraduate student body at Yale.
I cannot help but think that out there somewhere are five Christian All-American A-student American Eagle Scout heterosexuals far better qualified to provide leadership to this country. Yale was founded to supply Congregationalist ministers to the Colony of Connecticut. Extending that charter obligation to provide leaders in a variety of fields to the nation was a logical evolutionary development. Exactly why and how that mission has been extended to the provision of sexually-ambiguous pseudo-intellectual activists to the Middle East seems mysterious to me.
And, yes, I think plenty of alumni would like to know what Morse College thinks it is doing funding this kind of thing.
As art history lovers flock to the Louvre in Paris to see the blockbuster show celebrating the 500th anniversary of the death of Leonardo da Vinci, a new painting by his hand may have been discovered at a French chateau.
The work, a portrait of a bald man that has been in the historic house for centuries, could be by the Renaissance master, although the evidence is far from clear.
The director of the historic house, Sylvie Giroux, told Agence France Presse that “it is not impossible†that Leonardo painted the Italian political theorist, best known for his political treatise, The Prince.
The local archivist, Anne Gerardot, is more cautious. “Just because it says so in the archives does not mean it’s true,†she told AFP, noting that she thinks the Old Master portrait more closely resembles the French Renaissance essayist Montaigne.
There’s also the issue of the painting’s wooden support, which has a smooth appearance uncharacteristic of Leonardo’s time. It could be the result of restoration work done in the 1890s, or a clue that the painting was made at a later date.
But the painting, featuring a thin, bearded figure in a black coat and white shirt with necktie, does match the description in the letter, which mentions a portrait on wood measuring 22 by 17 inches. In the letter, which is dated 1874, the estate manager who wrote it says: “I am having the concierge wrap up and put on the train a box containing a painting (Machiavelli by Leonardo da Vinci).â€
The chateau plans to submit the painting to a battery of tests in the hopes of determining its subject and authorship.
It’s difficult to judge from the photograph, but my own guess is: neither of the above.
Guy Fawkes arrested in the cellar of Parliament with the explosives.
Remember, remember!
The fifth of November,
Gunpowder, treason, and plot;
There is no reason
Why the Gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot!’
Early in the morning of November 5, Guy Fawkes crept, torch in hand, into the cellar beneath the House of Lords in the Palace of Westminster. In that cellar, he and his fellow conspirators had previously placed a cache of 1800 pounds ((36 barrels, or 800 kg) of gunpowder. Just as he was about to ignite the barrels, blowing himself and the House of Lords to Kingdom Come, the torch was snatched from his hand by a man named Peter Heywood.
Fawkes was arrested and taken before the privy council where he remained defiant. When asked by one of the Scottish lords what he had intended to do with so much gunpowder, Fawkes answered him, “To blow you Scotch beggars back to your own native mountains!â€
So went the attempted Gunpowder Plot of 1605.
The intention of the plotters was to use the explosion, timed to coincide with the opening of Parliament, to kill King James I and eliminate much of the ruling Protestant aristocracy. They also intended to kidnap the royal children, then raise the standard of revolt in the Midlands with the object of restoring the freedom to practice Catholicism in England.
A reconstruction of a golden helmet, parts of which were uncovered in the hoard.
The original discovery was posted here back in 2009.
Now that many of the fabulous items from the hoard have been cleaned up and reconstructed, the Daily Mail has produced another gloatable photo feature.
A collection of Anglo-Saxon gold artefacts known as the Staffordshire hoard has been hailed as ‘one of the greatest finds of British archaeology’ by researchers.
The ‘war hoard’ collection was discovered by metal detectorist Terry Herbert who was using a £2 metal detector he bought from a car boot sale to explore a field near Lichfield belonging to farmer Fred Johnson.
Their find on July 5, 2009 was sold off to museums for £3.285million and the funds were split between them.
The artefacts are from what is widely considered the ‘holy war of the dark ages’ in which Pagan leaders fought against rival Christian kingdoms.
The haul of 3,900 items is thought to belong to Mercian King Penda, a Pagan leader who ruled until 655AD.
