Michael Flynn's Blog, page 77

The Curse of Hermes

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Witchcraft and the Dark Ages

Although some folk apply the term "Dark Ages" to the entire medieval period, others apply it only to the early middle ages and refer to the High Middle Ages as the Early Renaissance.  This is done in service to belief, of course.  It is not how the historians generally view things.  (In fact, those have been abandoning such propaganda labels in favor of century labels.)  But in any case, one of the most cherished foundation myths of the Modern Ages is that of the ...

The Evolution of Evolution

The End of Darwinism Evolution
or
Evolutionism vs. Creationism

The surest way to gin up some traffic here is to put those terms into the post.  Heheh. 

Now, I cheated in the title, as will become apparent in a moment.  Aristo-Thomists might already suspect the pun.  If so, keep quiet until I'm done here. 

On one side of the debate is a group of people with deeply held metaphysical beliefs who tell fables.  On the other, a group of people who desire above all that their beliefs be recognized as ...

Ragtime on the Harmonica

Behold! 

The Finnish Harmonica Quartet

And the music is actually in rag time and follows the classic Joplin structure. 


There is hope for the world, after all. 

(h/t Mark Shea)

Quote of the Day

When Selfish Gene author Richard Dawkins challenged physicist John Barrow on his formulation of the constants of nature at last summer’s Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellowship lectures, Barrow laughed and said, “You have a problem with these ideas, Richard, because you’re not really a scientist. You’re a biologist.”
www.templeton.org/milestones/milestones_2006-04.asp

Ouch. 

Disenchantment

How the Greeks Lost Their Groove (redux)

An Alert Reader writes to ask regarding the earlier post: m-francis.livejournal.com/133066.html
You say that according to the ancient Greeks, there was intention in nature. But didn't Greece's intellectuals disavow this worldview?

If Greek philosophers didn't believe that the pantheon of gods animated the world around them, what did they think caused motion in the universe, and how did Christianity "fix" their misconception?


1. There was no single ancien...

A Blast from the Past

M&M the millennial couple!

Here is a photo of a photo, taken by one of my bros from one of Pere's photo albums.  She is still every bit as beautiful as then.  I, on the other hand....

H.G.Wells Reviews Metropolis

Wells Did Not Like Metropolis

It gives in one eddying concentration almost every possible foolishness, cliché, platitude, and muddlement about mechanical progress and progress in general served up with a sauce of sentimentality that is all its own.

It is a German film and there have been some amazingly good German films, before they began to cultivate bad work under cover of a protective quota. And this film has been adapted to the Anglo-Saxon taste, and quite possibly it has suffered in the...

Now for something completely different

Food for Thought

You've always wanted to hear a chef talk about how the "calcium reacts with sodium." 

Europe's Drinking Preferences

Wine, Beer, or Spirits?

This was on Strange Maps

My old history professor John Lukacs used to describe the border of the Roman Empire thusly: "On one side were Latins, and light, and wine.  On the other side were Germans, and darkness, and beer."  You can pretty much still see that border in modern preferences for wine and beer.  In Roman times, of course, vineyards prospered much farther north ("The Roman Climatic Optimum") and again during the medieval Optimum than they do in today's chilly t...

The Benefits of Youth

One of the benefits of youth is the ability to go to sleep anywhere at any time: