Year: 2005

Dracula’s Father

The Year without a Summer caused Mary Shelly and her literary friends to hole up indoors during their Swiss vacation. To pass the time, they took drugs (laudanum) and told stories. Later, they published them. Shelly’s Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus.

Frankenstein’s monster wasn’t the only classic horror monster that came into being at that gathering. In fact, a character that, for literary purposes, is Dracula’s father got invented.

The character’s name was Lord Ruthven, and he was modelled off the notorious British aristocrat, Lord Byron. (Remember Byron. Remember Byron.)

An employee of Byron’s, John Polidori, wrote the story titled, The Vampyre and modelled the character after his master, while the two were on a trip in Europe (just like two characters in the story) and were stopped at the Swiss literary gathering by the Year without a Summer. (Strange how it all connects, ain’t it?)

The reason Lord Ruthven can be described as Dracula’s father is that, while there had been vampires before, both in the legends of Europe and other places, they were pictured as brutish, repulsive monsters, not the suave, debonaire romantic types that have dominated vampire fiction since.

So it’s interesting . . . the Year without a Summer ended up getting both Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff the jobs that made them famous, 120 years later.

READ ABOUT VAMPIRES.

READ ABOUT THE VAMPYRE.

READ THE VAMPYRE.

Giant Eagles!

Eagles

Y’know the giant eagles that come and rescue Frodo and Sam two or three hours before the end of The Return of the King? (That’s the one were the king gets back.)

Turns out that something like them really exited.

Huge birds!

Ten-foot wingspans!

Were the dominant predator in their ecosystem (as opposed to dogs or wolves or hyenas or lions or tigers or men).

Know where they existed?

New Zealand. (Oh, the irony!)

GET THE STORY.

Q: How Many Saints & Blessed Are There?

A: Seven thousand.

From the Vatican Information Service:

NEW ROMAN MARTYROLOGY LISTS 7,000 SAINTS AND BLESSEDS

VATICAN CITY, JAN 4, 2005(VIS)

– In Rome at the beginning of last

month, the second edition of the Roman Martyrology was presented. The new

Martyrology is an updated list not, as the name might suggest, of martyrs, but

of all the saints and blesseds venerated by the Church.

The latest edition of the Martyrology was presented during

an event promoted by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of

the Sacraments to commemorate the conciliar constitution on liturgical reform "Sacrosanctum

Concilium", promulgated on December

4, 1963.

The new edition contains certain differences with respect to

the earlier edition, which was published in 2001 and was the first since

Vatican Council II. A number of typographical errors have been corrected and

the 117 people canonized or beatified between 2001 and 2004 have been added. Moreover,

many saints, mostly Italian-Greek monks, whose names have not thus far been

listed in the Martyrology but who are effectively much venerated, especially in

southern of
Italy,

have also been included.

The updated Martyrology contains 7,000 saints and blesseds

currently venerated by the Church, and whose cult is officially recognized and

proposed to the faithful as models worthy of imitation.

Q: How Many Saints & Blessed Are There?

A: Seven thousand.

From the Vatican Information Service:

NEW ROMAN MARTYROLOGY LISTS 7,000 SAINTS AND BLESSEDS

VATICAN CITY, JAN 4, 2005(VIS)
– In Rome at the beginning of last
month, the second edition of the Roman Martyrology was presented. The new
Martyrology is an updated list not, as the name might suggest, of martyrs, but
of all the saints and blesseds venerated by the Church.

The latest edition of the Martyrology was presented during
an event promoted by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of
the Sacraments to commemorate the conciliar constitution on liturgical reform "Sacrosanctum
Concilium", promulgated on December
4, 1963.

The new edition contains certain differences with respect to
the earlier edition, which was published in 2001 and was the first since
Vatican Council II. A number of typographical errors have been corrected and
the 117 people canonized or beatified between 2001 and 2004 have been added. Moreover,
many saints, mostly Italian-Greek monks, whose names have not thus far been
listed in the Martyrology but who are effectively much venerated, especially in
southern of
Italy,
have also been included.

The updated Martyrology contains 7,000 saints and blesseds
currently venerated by the Church, and whose cult is officially recognized and
proposed to the faithful as models worthy of imitation.

The Year Without A Summer

As Michael Crichton tells us, nobody really knows what would happen to the climate as the result of a nuclear war. The science behind "nuclear winters" is junk science.

But that’s not to say that large amounts of dust ejected into the atmosphere wouldn’t have an effect on climate. In fact, it’s happened before.

One time it did was 1816, also known as "the Year without a Summer" and "Eighteen-hundred-and-froze-to-death."

It was caused by the erruption of the volcano Mt. Tambora in . . . Indonesia (then the Dutch East Indies).

Summer temperatures were drastically lowered. Rain poured. Snow fell. Crops were destroyed. Food rioting began. People moved out of New England to settle the Upper Midwest. And a group of laudanum-laced British friends retired to a Swiss house where they told and later wrote down their stories, among them the horror classic Frankenstein.

All because it was the Year without a Summer.

LEARN THE CHILLING STORY.

I'm With Al

Here’s something I believe but cannot prove:

The common interpretation of quantum mechanics that most scientists hold today is completely and hopelessly wrong. True randomness does not exist in the behavior of subatomic particles. Apparent randomness is just unexplained complexity. Left to itself, all physical matter and energy behaves deteministically, though a supernatural agency (such as God, an angel, or an embodied human soul) can cause matter to act in accord with the free-will decisions of the agency (which are not random, either).

In short, "God does not play dice with the universe."

That means that I agree with Albert Einstein on this (except that I don’t know what he thought about supernatural agency and free will).

This is something that I believe but cannot prove because of the technological limitation resulting in the uncertainty principle.

If we ever find a particle that is acted-upon by electrons without the reverse being true then the limitation vanishes. That would push the problem back one step as we’d now be able to measure what we need about electrons without affecting them, though we still might not be able to measure what we need about the new electron-testing particle. The problem would go away altogether if we found a way to measure all we need about the electron-testing particles without disturbing them and without getting into a regress of new particle-testing particles.

Regardless of whether the problem would be pushed back a step or totally solved, I still believe that all physical matter and energy behaves deterministically, even though we can’t (at least at the moment) prove it.

I’m not a scientist, but

HERE’S AN ARTICLE IN WHICH A BUNCH OF SCIENTISTS WERE ASKED WHAT THEY BELIEVE BUT ARE UNABLE TO PROVE, THUS REVEALING THEIR OWN LEAPS OF FAITH.

Interesting stuff!

(Richard Dawkins’ contribution is no surprise, but at least he admitted that he can’t prove it.)

What do you believe that you cannot prove?

I’m With Al

Here’s something I believe but cannot prove:

The common interpretation of quantum mechanics that most scientists hold today is completely and hopelessly wrong. True randomness does not exist in the behavior of subatomic particles. Apparent randomness is just unexplained complexity. Left to itself, all physical matter and energy behaves deteministically, though a supernatural agency (such as God, an angel, or an embodied human soul) can cause matter to act in accord with the free-will decisions of the agency (which are not random, either).

In short, "God does not play dice with the universe."

That means that I agree with Albert Einstein on this (except that I don’t know what he thought about supernatural agency and free will).

This is something that I believe but cannot prove because of the technological limitation resulting in the uncertainty principle.

If we ever find a particle that is acted-upon by electrons without the reverse being true then the limitation vanishes. That would push the problem back one step as we’d now be able to measure what we need about electrons without affecting them, though we still might not be able to measure what we need about the new electron-testing particle. The problem would go away altogether if we found a way to measure all we need about the electron-testing particles without disturbing them and without getting into a regress of new particle-testing particles.

Regardless of whether the problem would be pushed back a step or totally solved, I still believe that all physical matter and energy behaves deterministically, even though we can’t (at least at the moment) prove it.

I’m not a scientist, but

HERE’S AN ARTICLE IN WHICH A BUNCH OF SCIENTISTS WERE ASKED WHAT THEY BELIEVE BUT ARE UNABLE TO PROVE, THUS REVEALING THEIR OWN LEAPS OF FAITH.

Interesting stuff!

(Richard Dawkins’ contribution is no surprise, but at least he admitted that he can’t prove it.)

What do you believe that you cannot prove?

The Anti-Indiana Joneses?

Several readers have sent me links to stories announcing the indictment of Oded Golan, et al., for antiquities fraud.

Golan, you may remember, was the (initially anonyous) guy in Israel who claimed to own an ossuary of St. James that mentioned Jesus. Golan is also charged with being involved in a conspiracy that falsified artifacts of interest to the Jewish faith as well (e.g., an ivory pommegranate and a tablet linked to the Temple).

It very well be true that Golan has been involved in a conspiracy to commit fraud, and I would be quite happy to see the ossuary inscription and those on the other items proved to be forgeries (nobody doubts that they are ancient; the question is whether the inscriptions, or parts of them, are).

But I know something about the politics of antiquities in Israel, and I would not take the indictment, or even the conviction, of people in an Israeli court as proof positive of forgery. (I’d look more to the scholarly community to settle that matter.) The Israeli government has been known to manipulate situations involving antiquities to its own advantage, and the following is a real possibility:

Golan said in a statement Wednesday that "there is not one grain of

truth in the fantastic allegations related to me," and that the

investigation was aimed at "destroying collecting and trade in

antiquities in Israel."

Archaeology is a highly politicized field in Israel, and the officials in charge of the Israeli antiquities authority are so untrustworthy that some archaeologists are leaving some holy sites deliberately unexplored archaeologically lest, if they were opened up to that, the Israeli officials drop an ancient Jewish artifact on the ground and then use it as a pretext for seizing control of the whole site. Owners of sites of historical interest to Christians (inlcuding one of the Stations of the Cross in Jerusalem) have been unable to get Israeli courts to defend their property rights when they have been forcibly taken over by Israeli citizens. It would not be beyond the realm of possibility that the Israeli government would choose to use a fraud case to destroy the reputation of an archaeological link to Jesus.

So the point is, I don’t know who is lying here.

Maybe both parties are.

I’m skeptical both of the box and of the Israeli officials’ charges against it.

Because of how highly political the situation is, though, I should note that my skepticism on this matter does not mean that I am "against Israel" or "on the side of the Palestinians" or anything like that. I’m not on anybody’s side over there. Being skeptical of the Israeli antiquities officials does not mean one is anti-Israel or pro-Palestinian. It’s just a recognition of the situation.

That being said, if Golan and his associates are guilty of fraud, I want them locked up for a long time as a warning to others. Messing with the world’s knowledge of its archaeological patrimony is a horrible crime against history and, in the case of biblical archaeology (Jewish or Christian), it’s a crime against religion.

GET THE FIRST STORY.

GET THE SECOND STORY.