Posts Tagged ‘Earl of Sandwich’
“What’s old is new again”*…
Photo: April L. Sanders
Toward the end of the 1800s, an insane asylum physician in Zurich discovered a surprising tendency among his patients. One, an Austrian maid, had spent years wandering the countryside, claiming to be royalty. A second, an hysterical epileptic, habitually convinced strangers that she was their distant relative. A third, a chronic masturbator, posed as Catholic (he was in fact Protestant), and compulsively pilfered items which he then discarded unused. In 1891, Anton Delbrück summarized his discovery in Die pathologische Lüge, christening the condition pseudologia phantastica, or, as we now say in English, pathological lying. And with that came the emergence of a public health issue requiring large-scale study, and somewhat improbably, widespread concern about an epidemic of dishonesty and even fake news…
As Mark Twain said, “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme”– the tale of the late 19th century “pathological” lying and fake news that plagued the nation: “Shameless Liars.”
See also: “The Great ‘Fake News’ Scare of 1530.”
* proverbial gloss on Ecclesiastes 1:9
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As we deliberate with Diogenes, we might recall that it was on this date in 1764 that English radical, journalist, and politician John Wilkes was declared an outlaw and expelled from the British House of Lords. Wilkes and Thomas Potter had written a pornographic poem dedicated to the courtesan Fanny Murray entitled “An Essay on Woman,” a parody of Alexander Pope’s “An Essay on Man.” Wilkes’s political enemies– foremost among them our old friend John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich— obtained the parody. Sandwich had a personal vendetta against Wilkes that stemmed in large part from embarrassment caused by a prank of Wilkes involving the Earl at one of the Hellfire Club‘s meetings; he was delighted at the chance for revenge. Sandwich read the poem to the House of Lords, which declared the poem obscene and blasphemous. The Lords moved to expel Wilkes. He fled to Paris to avoid a hearing, but was tried and found guilty, in absentia, of obscene and seditious libel.
“Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards”*…
45 years ago, four eminences took the stage at the University of Toronto: Irish actor Jack MacGowran, best known for his interpretations of Samuel Beckett; English poet and dramatist W.H. Auden; American architect and theorist of humanity’s way of life Buckminster Fuller; and Canadian literary scholar turned media technology oracle Marshall McLuhan. Now only did all four men come from different countries, they came from very different points on the intellectual and cultural map. The CBC recorded them for broadcast on its long-running series Ideas, prefacing it with an announcement that “the ostensible subject of their discussion is theatre and the visual arts.”
Key word: ostensible. “That topic is soon forgotten as two modes of perception clash,” says the announcer, “that of Professor McLuhan, who is one of the most famous interpreters of contemporary 20th-century cultural trends, and that of W.H. Auden, who cheerfully admits to being ‘a 19th-century man’ and sees no reason to change.” And so, though Fuller and MacGowan do occasionally provide their perspective, the panel turns into a rollicking debate between McLuhan and Auden, more or less from the point where the former — making one of his characteristically compelling proclamations — declares that modern media brings us to a world in which “there is no audience. There are only actors.” But the latter objects: “I profoundly disapprove of audience participation.”…
The conversation is above; for more of the backstory: “Marshall McLuhan, W.H. Auden & Buckminster Fuller Debate the Virtues of Modern Technology & Media (1971).
* Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means
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As we mind the message that is the medium, we might send tasty birthday wishes to John Montagu, Fourth Earl of Sandwich; he was born on this date in 1718. Lore suggests that the Earl, an enthusiastic gambler, instructed his servants to skip the distraction of a served meal, asking instead for “meat between two pieces of bread” to be consumed as he remained at the gaming table. While there’s no real historical support for the tale, the comestible is nonetheless still known as a “sandwich.”
Montagu also had a nautical edge, serving as First Lord of the Admiralty from 1771-1782. He was sufficiently regarded that Captain Cook named the Sandwich Islands in his honor. On the other hand, he was widely blamed for the sorry state of readiness displayed by the British Navy during the “Unpleasantness with the Colonies.” (Indeed, it may in gratitude for Montagu’s help– however inadvertent– that American’s have adopted the sandwich as our national dish…)
To zap, or not to zap…
Banana, before
Banana, after
From Microwhat, photos of various items, before and after being microwaved…
[TotH to Metafilter]
As we select “maximum,” we might send tasty birthday wishes to John Montagu, Fourth Earl of Sandwich; he was born on this date in 1718. Lore suggests that the Earl, an enthusiastic gambler, instructed his servants to skip the distraction of a served meal, asking instead for “meat between two pieces of bread” to be consumed as he remained at the gaming table. While there’s no real historical support for the tale, the comestible is nonetheless still known as a “sandwich.”
Montagu also had a nautical edge, serving as First Lord of the Admiralty from 1771-1782. He was sufficiently regarded that Captain Cook named the Sandwich Islands in his honor. On the other hand, he was widely blamed for the sorry state of readiness displayed by the British Navy during the “Unpleasantness with the Colonies.” (Indeed, it may in gratitude for Montagu’s help– however inadvertent– that American’s have adopted the sandwich as our national dish…)
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