The Forgotten Medieval Habit of ‘Two Sleeps’

 

Nearly 300 years later, in the early 1990s, the historian Roger Ekirch walked through the arched entranceway to the Public Record Office in London – an imposing gothic building that housed the UK’s National Archives from 1838 until 2003. There, among the endless rows of ancient vellum papers and manuscripts, he found Jane’s testimony. And something about it struck him as odd.

Originally, Ekirch had been researching a book about the history of night-time, and at the time he had been looking through records that spanned the era between the early Middle Ages and the Industrial Revolution. He was dreading writing the chapter on sleep, thinking that it was not only a universal necessity – but a biological constant. He was sceptical that he’d find anything new.

So far, he had found court depositions particularly illuminating. “They’re a wonderful source for social historians,” says Ekirch, a professor at Virginia Tech, US. “They comment upon activity that’s oftentimes unrelated to the crime itself.”

But as he read through Jane’s criminal deposition, two words seemed to carry an echo of a particularly tantalising detail of life in the 17th Century, which he had never encountered before – “first sleep”.

Perhaps insomnia is normal?

Source: The forgotten medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

On anarchism

“My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning the abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs) — or to ‘unconstitutional’ Monarchy. I would arrest anybody who uses the word State (in any sense other than the inaminate real of England and its inhabitants, a thing that has neither power, rights nor mind); and after a chance of recantation, execute them if they remained obstinate! If we could go back to personal names, it would do a lot of good.

Government is an abstract noun meaning the art and process of governing and it should be an offence to write it with a capital G or so to refer to people … The most improper job of any many, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity …

There is only one bright spot and that is the growing habit of disgruntled men of dynamating factories and power-stations; I hope that, encouraged now as ‘patriotism’, may remain a habit! But it won’t do any good, if it is not universal.”

– J.R.R. Tolkien, letter to his son, 1943 (from The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien).

Source: Tolkien on anarchism

Report: British Study Says Post-Vaccine Heart Damage Worsens With Each Vaccination

“The risk of serious heart problems called myocarditis in men under 40 soars with each dose of a Covid mRNA vaccine — and is sharply higher than the risk from a coronavirus infection itself,” Berenson wrote in his summary:

The findings call into sharp question the efforts by American colleges and universities to make their students receive booster shots before returning to school this January — especially since other studies have shown that the risk of post-vaccine myocarditis is concentrated not merely in men under 40 but in those aged 16-25.

The study, which British researchers released in late December, showed that the risk of myocarditis almost doubled after the first Pfizer shot in men under 40. Then it doubled again after the second and doubled again after the third — to almost eight times the baseline risk.

Source: Report: British Study Says Post-Vaccine Heart Damage Worsens With Each Vaccination

 

Archbishop Vigano’s message to America – profound truths

How was it possible to arrive at such a betrayal? How have we come to be considered enemies by those who govern us, not in support of the common good, but rather to feed a hellish machine of death and slavery?
The answer is now clear: throughout the world, in the name of a perverted concept of freedom, we have progressively erased God from society and laws.We have denied that there is an eternal and transcendent principle, valid for all men of all times, to which the laws of States must conform. We have replaced this absolute principle with the arbitrariness of individuals, with the principle that everyone is his own legislator. In the name of this insane freedom — which is license and libertinage — we have allowed the Law of God and the law of nature to be violated, legitimizing the killing of children in the womb, even up to the very moment of birth; the killing of the sick and the elderly in hospital wards; the destruction of the natural family and of Marriage; we have recognized rights to vice and sin, putting the deviations of individuals before the good of society. In short, we have subverted the entire moral order that constitutes the indispensable basis of the laws and social life of a people. Already in the fourth century B.C., Plato wrote these things in his last work The Laws and identified the cause of the Athenian political crisis precisely in the breaking of the divine order — the cosmos — between these eternal principles and human laws.
 

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Explanation: Sometimes falling ice crystals make the atmosphere into a giant lens causing arcs and halos to appear around the Sun or Moon. One Saturday night in 2012 was just such a time near Madrid, Spain, where a winter sky displayed not only a bright Moon but four rare lunar halos. The brightest object, near the top of the featured image, is the Moon. Light from the Moon refracts through tumbling hexagonal ice crystals into a somewhat rare 22-degree halo seen surrounding the Moon. Elongating the 22-degree arc horizontally is a more rare circumscribed halo caused by column ice crystals. Even more rare, some moonlight refracts through more distant tumbling ice crystals to form a (third) rainbow-like arc 46 degrees from the Moon and appearing here just above a picturesque winter landscape. Furthermore, part of a whole 46-degree circular halo is also visible, so that an extremely rare — especially for the Moon — quadruple halo was captured. Far in the background is a famous winter skyscape that includes Sirius, the belt of Orion, and Betelgeuse — visible between the inner and outer arcs. Halos and arcs typically last for minutes to hours, so if you do see one there should be time to invite family, friends or neighbors to share your unusual lensed vista of the sky.

Source: APOD

California School District Reverses Vaccine Mandate After Thousands Of Children Refused To Comply

COVID-19 vaccination was made mandatory for children by multiple school districts in California earlier this year. Set to go into effect in January, any child, 16 and older, will be banned from campus in all San Diego public schools, if not vaccinated.

This authoritarian move caused a massive backlash and thousands of parents and children refused to comply.

The refusal to get vaccinated set the stage for a showdown that was to unfold on January 24 when the children would be kicked out of school for non-compliance.

However, a San Diego judge struck down the mandate this week and now children wouldn’t be kicked out of school for not getting vaccinated. The judge accurately pointed out that a school district has no authority to mandate medical procedures for children.

More pushback against medical tyranny. Just say “no.”

Source: California School District Reverses Vaccine Mandate After Thousands Of Children Refused To Comply