Posts Tagged ‘Napoleon’
Indigestion through the ages…
It’s only fair, after Friday’s post, to give equal time to culinary pursuits less thoughtful. And so, to Aspic and Other Delights, a Tumblr devoted to food that’s both bad and bad for one…
More (more perhaps than readers can stomach) at Aspic and Other Delights.
As we reach for the ipecac, we might wish a disciplined Happy Birthday to playwright, poet, artist, biologist, theoretical physicist, and philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe; he was born on this date in 1749. Probably best remembered these days for Faust, he was “the master spirit of the German people,” and, after Napoleon, the leading figure of his age.
Fun with Food!…
TotH to the ever-amusing eBaum’s World.
As we contemplate what, exactly, goes on in our stomachs, we might might recall that it was on this date in 1815 that Napoleon escaped from Elba. Following his disastrous Russian Campaign, Napoleon French Empire was attacked by the Sixth Coalition (a collection of the Emperor’s enemies who found solidarity in their desire to be rid of him). After a successful invasion of France in 1814, the Coalition exiled Napoleon to the Tuscan island. But in less than a year, he escaped and made his way back to France and to power for the period now called “The Hundred Days”– which ended with his defeat at Waterloo, and was followed by another exile, this time to the island of St. Helena (2,000 km into the Atlantic from the nearest land mass).
… Oil that is– black gold, Texas tea…
With thanks to Suzanne Lainson for the tip, The Guardian‘s “From extraction to consumption: Oil, an exhibition by Edward Burtynsky.”
As we consider all things crude, we might recall that that on this date in 1781, Cornwallis, after a loss at Yorktown, surrendered to The Continental Army (and the French who’d joined them), effectively ending the Revolutionary War (as it’s known over here)…
click to enlarge… then, just 31 years later, on this date in 1812, Napoleon threw in the serviette, and began his retreat from Moscow.
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Explanations one would really rather not have to give…
EATR (source)
From a press release issued by Cyclone Power Technologies and Robotic Technology:
In response to rumors circulating the internet on sites such as FoxNews.com, FastCompany.com and CNET News about a “flesh eating” robot project [ c.f., e.g., EATR: The Robot That Can Survive on Corpses], Cyclone Power Technologies Inc. (Pink Sheets: CYPW) and Robotic Technology Inc. (RTI) would like to set the record straight: This robot is strictly vegetarian.
On July 7, Cyclone announced that it had completed the first stage of development for a beta biomass engine system used to power RTI’s Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot (EATR™), a Phase II SBIR project sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Defense Sciences Office. RTI’s EATR is an autonomous robotic platform able to perform long-range, long-endurance missions without the need for manual or conventional re-fueling.
RTI’s patent pending robotic system will be able to find, ingest and extract energy from biomass in the environment. Despite the far-reaching reports that this includes “human bodies,” the public can be assured that the engine Cyclone has developed to power the EATR runs on fuel no scarier than twigs, grass clippings and wood chips – small, plant-based items for which RTI’s robotic technology is designed to forage. Desecration of the dead is a war crime under Article 15 of the Geneva Conventions, and is certainly not something sanctioned by DARPA, Cyclone or RTI.
“We completely understand the public’s concern about futuristic robots feeding on the human population, but that is not our mission,” stated Harry Schoell, Cyclone’s CEO. “We are focused on demonstrating that our engines can create usable, green power from plentiful, renewable plant matter. The commercial applications alone for this earth-friendly energy solution are enormous.”
As we contemplate off-label uses, we might also celebrate the happier fall-out of military maneuvers, as it was on this date in 1799 (or close; scholars agree that it was “mid-July” but disagree on the precise day) that a French soldier in Napoleon’s Egyptian Campaign discovered a black basalt slab inscribed with ancient writing near the town of Rosetta, about 35 miles north of Alexandria.
The stone contained fragments of passages written in three different scripts inscribed by priests of Ptolemy V in the second century B.C.– Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphics, and Egyptian demotic. The Greek passage proclaimed that the three scripts were all of identical meaning– so allowed French Egyptologist Jean Francois Champollion to decipher the hieroglyphics… and opened the language of ancient Egypt, a written language that had been “dead” for nearly two millennia.
Time’s past..
From the inquisitive folks over at Reason, an amusing, and at the same time provocative, look at “The Top 10 Most Absurd Time Covers of The Past 40 Years”
Consider for example:
Oh, Just Settle Down: The crack kids myth has been extensively debunked, most recently in the January 2009 New York Times article “Crack Babies: The Epidemic That Wasn’t.” The Times quoted researchers who’ve been following the so-called crack generation of kids, and they’re finding the effects to be minor and subtle, and virtually indistinguishable from other problems that kids of crack mothers might experience, such as unstable families and poor parenting. Persistent scare stories from Time and other media outlets (including The New York Times itself) made “crack babies” a nationwide moral panic, inspiring a racially fueled push for stricter drug laws. As the Times article explains, the crack baby myth itself may now be doing harm to otherwise normal kids: “[C]ocaine-exposed children are often teased or stigmatized if others are aware of their exposure. If they develop physical symptoms or behavioral problems, doctors or teachers are sometimes too quick to blame the drug exposure and miss the real cause, like illness or abuse.”
For similar treatments of Mr. Luce’s Magazine’s hysteria over satanism, porn, crack, and Pokemon see here.
As we contemplate the substitution of hyperbole for reportage in so much– too much– of the mainstream media, we might recall that it was on this date in 1812 that President James Madison signed the declaration of war against Great Britain that formally launched the War of 1812. Three U.S. incursions into Canada launched in 1812 and 1813 were all handily turned back by the British despite the fact that the bulk of British force was tied up in an unpleasantness with the Emperor of France and his troops. But the decline of Napoleon’s strength freed the English to devote more resources to the West… leading to the 1814 burning of the White House, the Capital, and much of the rest of official Washington by British soldiers (retaliating for the U.S. burning of some official buildings in Canada. Still, by the end of 1814 a combination of naval and ground victories by the Americans had driven the British back to Canada, and on December 14, 1814 the Treaty of Ghent, ending the war, was signed… sadly for the British, word of the accord did not reach troops on the Gulf Coast in time to head off an attack (on January 8, 1815) on New Orleans– which was turned back by American forces led by Andrew Jackson. Jackson became a national hero, who rode his fame to the (rebuilt) White House; Johnny Horton got a Number One record out of it (Billboard Hot 100, 1959)… and the English had to console themselves with their victory at Waterloo later that year– on this date in 1815…
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