The Best time to be alive: The University of Paris in the Middle Ages

Paris. Everyone knows what that word means, even though most people have never been there. Style. Sophistication. Fashion. Learning. Power. Money. A place to be, a box that must be ticked. How did one more city in northern Europe get ahead of all its peers? What is the secret of Brand Paris?

We think the answer lies in the foundation of the University of Paris. Starting as an adjunct to the Cathedral school before 1100, it gradually expanded into a powerhouse of teaching which began to attract the best minds from all over the world. It drew the patronage of magnates such as King Phillipe Augustus and Pope Innocent 111, who recognised the value of cultural capital and soft power. While the roll call of alumni from the earliest time to the present includes such names as Peter Abelard, St Francis Xavier, John Calvin, Marie Curie, Louis de Broglie, Emmanuelle Charpentier, Simone de Beauvoir and Yann Le Cun. This was where it was at, to coin a phrase: and the network of hotels cafes, art studios, bookshops and spin-off enterprises simply grew around in a multiplying effect that would gladden the heart of any fan of Keynesian economics. (For the curious the Sorbonne started as one college of the University, but expanded so much that its name became metanymic for the whole thing)

It was one of the earliest Universities in Europe, and even today its successor institutions remain among the best. But if you had been a student there, perhaps of Abelard, you would have known yourself at the start of something big, new and world changing, that was going to last the ages. But let’s close when our own original thought When they set it up, the costs must have seemed rather large, the incomings rather small. No doubt the same argument was advanced against the Pyramids in Egypt or the monuments in Rome. But they have paid for themselves over and over again in tourist revenue alone ever since. As its greatest alumnus of all, St Thomas Aquinas said

“Sicut enim maius est illuminare quam lucere solum, ita maius est contemplata aliis tradere quam solum contemplari.”

“Just as it is better to illuminate than merely to shine, so it is better to pass on what one has contemplated than merely to contemplate.”

And we agree.

#france #middle ages #university of paris# #sorbonne #philosophy #learning

A Quick Roundup: Power from rain, a plea for peace, Base Pair goes big, reality trumps Trump-and Schubert on hubris

So many stories have crossed our screen in the last few days that the only thing we could think of was to run a quick round up and invite you to dive in for yourselves

Pennies from Heaven? The desperate need for renewable sources of power can produce some surprising ideas. For once the old Bing Crosby number may come true as this intriguing idea of generating electricity from raindrops shows. Popular Mechanics has the story:

_{thanks to P Seymour}

India-Pakistan: please don’t do it! We are ignorant of the quarrel between these two great nations. But the consequences of a nuclear war would be dire indeed. Apart from the millions of dead and wounded, the unprecedented waves of refugees would find a chilly welcome wherever they went. They too would be breathing the clouds of radioactive waste(and goodness knows what other toxins) from the burning cities. And, we know this is unsayable, but we will anyway: the only real winner would be China, with no strong powers to counterweight it. We have many readers in the subcontinent: what have you got to gain? Alright, we go with the Mail: but as George Orwell noted, even they can be right sometimes

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14686439/The-world-worried-tit-tat-strikes-hated-rivals-India-Pakistan-quickly-spiral-nuclear-Armageddon-countries

Base Pair Goes to market We have long sung the praises of new biochemical techniques like CRISPR Cas 9 and Base pair editing. But, we humbly admit, it’s always from a slightly academic, detached viewpoint. Some of our correspondents have a more hard-nosed commercial orientation. Which is why they sent us the exciting tale of companies taking it into real-world, commercial solutions

https://www.biospace.com/drug-development/safer-crispr-base-editing-breaks-through-in-the-clinic-as-beam-verve-advance?

_{thanks to G Herbert}

Donald Trump’s Cunning Plan won’t work Ever since February, a story has been drifting in and out of the financial columns; Donald Trump’s actions are all part of a Cunning Plan to crash the dollar and bring the rest of the world to its knees in Mar-a- Lago, where he will dictate terms as he pleases. It was scary, it was tempting to believe: but it relied on flawed assumptions as Kenneth Rogoff succinctly explains in this piece for the Grauniad (surely “Guardian?”-ed)

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/may/07/why-donald-trumps-plan-to-weaken-the-dollar-is-flawed

Schubert : the queasy air of Pride before a Fall Ever since Griffin Johnson, the armchair historian [1] used it to accompany the French Army marching to Sedan, Schuberts Piano Trio in E Flat, No2 has really put the hook in us. You know, that outward confidence masking deep ineer doubts. Listen to the second movement if you don’t believe us. And wonder what happens to over-confident politicians just as the pass their peak.

https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?&q=schubert+piano+trio&&mid=3A9911F1E9485D296FD63A9911F1E9485D296FD6&&FORM=VRDGAR

#donald trump #base pair editing #economics #CRISPR Cas 9 #india #pakistan #nuclear war #renewable energy

[1]https://armchairhistory.tv/en-gbp/

Three fascinating examples of scientific detective work

Photo by u041bu044eu0441u0438 u0414u0440u0435u043cu0430u043bu043eu0432 on Pexels.com

We have three stories for you this morning. Not only because the stories themselves are intriguing. But because they illustrate the scientific method at its best. Persistence. Careful collection of the data, Thoughtful analysis. And above all this” Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” It’s from the first of today’s features. But it runs like a thread through all of them, and much else that is done by scientists, and all true scholars everywhere. It is of course the antithesis of the claims of conspiracy theorists, hucksters and plain incompetents everywhere.

Floods in the Mediterranean We’ve known the idea that the Mediterranean Sea was once a hot dry basin, a sort of desert land. Until one fine day about five million years ago when a truly humungous great flood burst through the Straits of Gibraltar, turning the whole, thing into that vast lake suitable for swimming, sailing and other watersports which it remains to this day. The proponents of the theory, Daniel Garcia Castellanos and Paul Carling were careful to say this Zanclean Flood was just that, a theory, Until recently they found that the alignment of hills in Sicily. plus the way that rocks of the right age were lying around there, confirmed it nicely. Detective work worthy of Comissario Montalbano, that island’s most famous son!

https://theconversation.com/the-largest-flood-in-earths-history-burst-through-gibraltar-and-sicily-and-refilled-the-entire-mediterranean-in-just-a-few-years-249242?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Lat

Awesome Jaw About 20 years ago, a large ugly looking jaw was dredged up off the coast of Taiwan. No one knew exactly how old it was or how it fitted into the jigsaw of human evolution. Now some incredibly skilful work extracting and analysing proteins from it have revealed it to belong to a Denisovan, that intriguing third branch of modern humanity Here’s Nature Briefing: Mysterious Taiwan Fossil is Denisovan

A fossilized jawbone discovered more than 20 years ago belonged to an ancient group of humans called Denisovans. Named Penghu 1, the jawbone was dredged up by fishing crews 25 kilometres off the west coast of Taiwan. The confirmation that the bone belonged to a Denisovan — the result of more than two years of work to extract ancient proteins from the fossil — expands the known geographical range of the group, from colder, high-altitude regions to warmer climates.Nature | 5 min read
Reference: Science paper

Standoffish Saharans Moving forward from the dawn of humanity to the dawn of agriculture, Chris Melore of the Mail has an intriguing story about the ancient proto-Neolithic populations of North Africa. Careful molecular detective work has revealed that they tended to keep themselves isolated from the population flows across the rest of the world which were happening about 7000 years BP. And this has quite profound implications for how agriculture and herding must have spread. One school has always held that Neolithic techniques were carried as cultural tropes by tribes who migrated out of the fertile crescent (a bit like the way particular European customs and technologies were carried to North America) The other school always held that local people came up with these ideas for themselves, perhaps with a bit of help from conversations with early travellers and traders. This evidence of isolated North Africans invented stock breeding and grazing economies independently is a definite plus for the second school and its ways.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-14600327/Newly-mummies-reveal-new-human-ancestor-broke-humanity-thousands-years-ago.html

Careful thoughts, provisional conclusions. This is what we are all about here, and we hope you are too. Perhaps more people could be like this, if they had been given a fairer life. It is a thought we will pursue in the next blog

#neolithic #paleolithic #geology #agriculture #denisovan ##dna #protein

Why Easter is a time for understanding- a message from the Board

Once again we share one of our management to staff communiques, which we believe are a model for other companies and organisations

Now, it’s come to our attention that there have been certain ill-disguised whisperings and feelings about the staff leave arrangements for this Easter Bank Holiday weekend. Specifically-how come only the Editorial Board get Thursday afternoon off? The answer is both simple and complicated.

Firstly, the Thursday before Easter (Maundy Thursday) is an ancient time hallowed custom. So someone has to have time off. Obviously it can’t be everybody , as our productivity figures, already low, would just fall through the floor. So the Board got in consultants, who came up with a scheme based on geography, finance and above all peoples’ real needs. And this is how it works out.

Most of you it turns out live within 5 or ten miles of this building. OK, a couple of you trundle in from places like Kingston or Haywards Heath, but its really not too far to get way when the weekend begins, is it? Whereas we on the Board have our holiday homes in amazingly far-flung places. The Cotswolds. Perigord. Even Tuscany. Of course we need that extra time to get to the airport. And what about at the other end, we have to get to that shop in the village, the one that does that marvellous olive bread, and check the wine cellar, or the weekend’s half-gone. Whereas you lot, in some pub in Croydon-well you’re right on top of it as you stumble out of your little flats.

Each of us needs to understand other people and their different needs and pressures. Clearly we on the Board have somewhat different needs to the rest of you. Easter is a time of understanding. And with the annual salary reviews coming up, we hope you will understand once again.

A very special French ’75

We know Friday Night Cocktails got dropped a few months ago (on orders from the top). But that won’t stop us from bringing you searing, cutting edge journalism when we think a story is much in the public interest that it must be broken. Even if it upsets The Great and the Good, the Powerful, and the Establishment, assuming that members of any of these groups read LSS. So, anyway, such was the case with the French 75 which we discovered at Cote, Brighton, last Saturday night before dinner.

Now, before you reach for your lawyers: we do note get any money for this. We have no commercial, financial ,commercial nor personal connection with Cote nor any of their staff. But when we, in the company of a companion visited that outlet at the end of a hideously long and dry January, we were more than in the mood for a little pick-me-up. And so it proved. Naturally we have adapted the details a bit, as we soon found ourselves a bit hazy about their precise nature. But the following will suffice:

The beauty of the French 75 is its simplicity. Refreshing simplicity, that fruity, slight sour quality we always look for in a great cocktail. Take a simple champagne flute; add a small quantity of sugar. Now add 1/2 measure of lemon juice and one measure of white gin. Cover all with cold white bubbly- Champagne, Cremont, Prosecco or cava, any of these will do. Top off with a slice of lemon peel to add that extra piquancy such ingredients demand. Now sit back and savour.

So, if you are Great, or Good, or Powerful-or just an ordinary Joe like us, here is a recipe which we hope all of you will enjoy. It’s going to be a bust weekend-so goodbye for now.

#french 75 #cocktail