Monthly Archives: August 2025

Cosmos of the Lonely

29 August 2025 By in Physics, Science, Space Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

The universe keeps expanding. When researchers analyze data from the Hubble and James Webb telescopes, alongside a suite of other astronomical tools, they find that the recessional velocity of galaxies, the speed at which they appear to move away from the Earth, varies depending on what they measure.

If they calibrate distances deep into the cosmos using Cepheid variable stars, the expansion rate appears faster than when they use red giant stars or the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). This discrepancy, known as the Hubble tension, reveals a deeper mystery: different cosmic yardsticks yield different rates of expansion.

Yet despite the disagreement in values, all methods affirm the same truth: space is stretching…a lot…like a sheet pulled and stretched taut between Atlas’s burden and Hermes flight: a cosmos caught between gravitational pull and a mysterious push: Pushmi-Pullyu on a cosmic scale.

To understand why the cosmos resembles a sheet of rubber we need to travel back about 110 years and peer into the minds of those who first saw increasing separation as a universal law. These new architects of reality: Einstein, Friedmann, Lemaitre; who replaced Newton’s planetary, static models of the cosmos with a dynamic spacetime of bends, ripples, and persistent expansion.

After Einstein published his General Theory of Relativity in 1915, Russian physicist Alexander Friedmann’s analysis of his work showed that the universe could be expanding, and that Einstein’s equations could be used to calculate the rate. In 1927 Belgium priest and physicist Georges Lemaitre proposed that the expansion might be proportional to a galaxy’s velocity relative to its distance from Earth. By 1929, American astronomer Edwin Hubble expanded on Lemaitre’s work and published what became known as Hubble-Lemaitre law: galaxies are moving away from us at speeds proportional to their distance. The greater the distance the faster the speed.

A key feature of this law is the Hubble constant, the proportionality that links velocity and distance. Hubble’s initial estimate for this constant was whopping, and egregiously off, 500 kilometers per second per megaparsec (km/s/Mpc), but as measurements improved, it coalesced around a range between 67 and 73, with the most recent value at 70.4 km/s/Mpc, published by Freedman et al. in May 2025.

The Hubble constant is expressed in kilometers per second per megaparsec. The scale of these units is beyond human comprehension but let’s ground it to something manageable. A megaparsec is about 3.26 million light-years across, and the observable universe, though only 13.8 billion light-years old, has stretched to 46 billion light-years in radius, or 93 billion light-years in diameter, due to the expansion of space (see mind warping explanation below).  

To calculate the recessional velocity across this vast distance, we first convert 46 billion light-years into megaparsecs: which equates to 14,110 megaparsecs. Applying Hubble’s Law: 70 km/s/Mpc times 14,110 Mpc equals 987,700 km/s. This is the rate at which a galaxy 46 billion light-years away would be receding relative to another galaxy one megaparsec closer to Earth.

That’s more than three times the speed of light (299,792 km/sec) or Warp 3 plus in Star Trek parlance. Einstein said this was impossible but fortunately there is some nuance that keeps us in compliance with Special Relativity (or else the fines would be astronomical). This isn’t the speed of a galaxy moving through space, but the speed at which space between galaxies is expanding. Which, admittedly, is terribly confusing.

The speed of a galaxy, composed of matter, energy, and dark matter, must obey Einstein’s rules: gravity and Special Relativity. And one of the rules is that the speed of light is the cosmic speed limit, no one shall pass beyond this.

But space between the galaxies decides to emphasize the rules in a different order. The expansion of space is still governed by Einstein’s equations, just interpreted through the lens of spacetime geometry rather than the motion of objects. This geometry is shaped by, yet not reducible to, matter, energy, and dark matter.

Expansion is a feature of spacetime’s structure, not velocity in the usual sense, and thus isn’t bound by the speed of light. If space wants to expand, stretch, faster than a photon can travel, well so be it.

The space between galaxies is governed by dark energy and its enigmatic rules of geometry. Within galaxies, the rules are set by dark matter, and to a lesser extent by matter and energy, even though dark energy is likely present, its influence at galactic scales is minimal.

Note the use of the word scale here. Galaxies are gigantic, the Milky Way is 100,000-120,000 light-years in diameter. But compared to the universe at 93,000,000,000 light-years across, they’re puny. You would need 845,000 Milky Ways lined up edge-to-edge to span the known universe.

Estimates of the number of galaxies in the universe range from 100 billion to 2 trillion. So, at the scale of the universe, galaxies are mere pinpoints of light; blips of energy scattered across the ever-expanding heavens.

This brings us to dark energy, the mysterious force driving cosmic expansion. No one knows what it is, but perhaps empty space and dark energy are the same. There’s even some speculation, mostly mine, that dark energy is a phase shift of dark matter. A shift in state. A triptych move from Newtonian physics to Quantum Mechanics to…Space Truckin’.

In the beginning moments after the big bang, the universe was dominated by radiation composed of high energy particles and photons. As the universe cooled, the radiation gave way to matter and dark matter. As more time allowed gravity to create structures, black holes emerged and a new force began to dominate, dark energy. But where did the dark energy come from? Was it always part of the universe or did it evolve from other building blocks. Below are a few speculative ideas floating around the cosmic playroom.

J.S. Farnes proposed a unifying theory where dark matter and dark energy are aspects of a single negative mass fluid. This fluid could flatten galaxy rotation curves and drive cosmic expansion, mimicking both phenomena simultaneously.

Mathematicians Tian Ma and Shouhong Wang developed a unified theory that alters Einstein’s field equations to account for a new scalar potential field. Their model suggests that energy and momentum conservation only holds when normal matter, dark matter, and dark energy are considered together.

Ding-Yu Chung proposed a model where dark energy, dark matter, and baryonic matter emerge from a dual universe structure involving positive and negative mass domains. These domains oscillate and transmute across dimensions.

These ideas all rotate around the idea that reality revolves around a concept that everything evolves and that matter and energy, of all forms, flickers in and out of existence depending on dimensional scaffolding of space and the strength of gravity and radiation fields.  Rather than radiation, energy, matter, dark matter, and dark energy as separate entities, these may be expressions of a single evolving field, shaped by phase transitions, scalar dynamics, or symmetry breaking.

Now back to my regularly scheduled program. In August 2025, Quanta Magazine reported on a study led by Nobel laureate Adam Riess using the James Webb Telescope (JWST) to measure over 1,000 Cepheid variable stars with unprecedented precision. Cepheid stars pulsate in brightness over time with a highly predictable rate or rhythm, making them ideal cosmic yardsticks. Riess’s team found a Hubble constant of ~73.4 km/s/Mpc, consistent with previous Hubble Space Telescope measurements of Cepheid stars but still significantly higher than what theory predicts.

That theory comes from the standard model of cosmology: Lambda Cold Dark Matter. According to this framework photons decoupled from the hot electron-proton opaque soup about 380,000 years after the Big Bang went boom, allowing light to travel freely for the first time, and allowing space to be somewhat transparent and visible. This event produced the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB).

This CMB permeates the universe to this day. It was discovered in 1964 by Bell Lab physicists Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, who were trying to eliminate background noise from their radio antenna. The noise turned out to be the faint afterglow from the Big Bang, cooled down from its original 3000 Kelvin to a frosty 2.7 Kelvin. They received the Nobel Prize in Physics for this discovery in 1978.

Light from the CMB, as measured by the European Space Agency Planck satellite, has a redshift of approximately 1100, meaning the universe has expanded by a factor of 1100 over the past 13.42 billion years. By analyzing the minute temperature fluctuations in the CMB, Planck can infer the density of matter, dark energy, and curvature of the universe. Inserting these parameters into the Lambda Cold Dark Matter model yields a Hubble constant which turns out to be 67.4 + 1.71 (65.69-69.11). This value is considered the gold standard. Values beyond the Planck measurement are not necessarily wrong, just not understood.

At first glance, the difference between Planck’s 67.4 and Riess’ 73.4 may seem small. But it is cosmically significant. Two galaxies 43 billion light-years away and 3.26 billion light-years apart (1000 Mpc) would have a velocity difference of 6000 km/s or about 189 billion kilometers of increased separation per year. That’s the scale of what small differences in the value can add up to and is referred to as the Hubble tension.

Meanwhile, a competing team of researchers studying red branch and giant branch stars consistently scored the Hubble constant closer to the theoretical prediction of 67.4. This team led by Wendy Freedman believes that Hubble tension, the inability of various methods of measuring the Hubble constant to collapse to a single value, is a result of measurement errors

While some researchers, Wendy Freedman and others, suggest lingering systematic errors may still be at play, the persistence of this discrepancy, across instruments, methods, and team, has led others to speculate about new physics. Among the most provocative ideas: the possibility that the universe’s expansion rate may vary depending on direction, hinting at anisotropic expansion and challenging the long-held assumption of cosmic isotropy. But this seems far-fetched and if true it would likely break the Lambda Cold Dark Matter model into pieces.

And so, the cosmos grows lonelier. Not because the galaxies are fleeing, but because space itself is stretching, a wedge governed by the geometry of expansion. The further they drift apart, the less they interact, a divorce from neglect rather than malice. In time, entire galaxies will slip beyond our cosmic horizon, receding faster than light, unreachable even in principle. A cosmos of the lonely.

Source: The Webb Telescope Further Deepens the Biggest Controversy in Cosmology by Liz Kruesi, Quanta Magazine, 13 August 2024. JWST Observations Reject Unrecognized Crowding of Cepheid Photometry as an Explanation for the Hubble Tension at 8σ Confidence by Riess et al, The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 6 February 2024. Graphic: Cosmic Nebula by Margarita Balashova.

Duckhorn Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 2019

27 August 2025 By in Red Wine, Wine Tags: , , , Leave a comment

Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa Valley, California

Cabernet Sauvignon 83%, Merlot 13%, Cabernet Franc 2%, Petit Verdot 2%

Purchase Price: $59.99

James Suckling 92, Wilfred Wong 92, Connoisseurs Guide 91, Wine Spectator 90, Wine Buyer 90, ElsBob 92

ABV 14.5%

A dark ruby wine with aromas of anise, dark fruits, spices, and vanilla. Full-bodied, with tingly fresh acidity, tannins with a bite, and flavors of blackberries and black cherries on the palate. A wonderful long finish.

An excellent fine Napa wine at a fair price. Recent retail prices range from $60 to $115, with a median price just under $70 for a 92-point 2019 vintage. Selected retail is $78.

Trivia: Founded in 1976 by Dan and Margaret Duckhorn in St. Helena, Duckhorn Vineyards was one of Napa Valley’s first 40 wineries. Their inaugural releases in 1980 included both Cabernet Sauvignon and the now-iconic Merlot. Over the decades, they expanded into Sonoma, Anderson Valley, and Washington State under various duck-themed labels.

Beginning in 2007, the Duckhorns began selling controlling interests to private equity firms. After several transitions to various companies, the winery was acquired by Butterfly Equity in 2024, a firm specializing in food and beverage investments.

The Lost Boys

24 August 2025 By in History, History, Philosophy, Philosophy Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

The end of the Peloponnesian War in 404 BC marked the end of Athens’ Golden Age. Most historians agree that the halcyon days of Athens were behind her.  Some however, such as Victor Davis Hanson in his multi-genre meditations, A War Like No Other, a discourse on military history, cultural decay, and philosophical framing, offers a more nuanced view suggesting that Athens was still capable of greatness, but the lights were dimming.

During the following six decades, after the war, Athens rebuilt. Its navy reached new heights. Its long walls were rebuilt within a decade. Aristophanes retained his satirical edge even if it was a bit more reflective. Agriculture returned in force. Even Sparta reconciled with Athens or vice versa, recognizing once again that the true enemy was Persia.

Athens brought back its material greatness, but its soul was lost. What ended the Golden Age of Athens wasn’t crumbled walls or sunken ships. It was the loss of lives that took the memory, the virtuosity of greatness with it. With them generational continuity, civic pride, and a religious belief in the polis vanished. The meaning, truth, and myth of Athenian exceptionalism died with their passing. The architects of how to lead a successful, purpose driven civilization had disappeared, mostly through death by war or state but also by plague.

Victor Davis Hanson, in his A War Like No Other lists many of the lives lost to and during the war that took much of Athens’ exceptionalism with them to their graves. Below is a partial listing of Hanson’s more complete rendering with some presumptuous additions.

Alcibiades was an overtly ambitious Athenian strategist; brilliant, erratic, and ultimately treasonous. He championed the disastrous Sicilian expedition, Athens greatest defeat. Over the course of the war, he defected multiple times: serving Athens, then Sparta, then Persia, before returning to Athens. He was assassinated in Phrygia around 404 BC while under Persian protection, by, many beleive, the instigation of the Spartan general Lysander.

Euripides though he did not fight in the war exposed its brutality and hypocrisy in his plays such as The Trojan Woman and Helen. The people were not sufficiently appreciative of his war opinions or plays, winning only four firsts at Dionysia compared to 24 and 13 for Sophocles and Aeschylus, respectively. Disillusioned, he went into self-imposed exile in Macedonia and died there around 406 BC by circumstances unknown.

The execution of the Generals of Arginusae remains a legendary example of Athenian arbitrary retribution; proof that a city obsessed with ritualized honor could nullify military genius, and its future, in a single stroke. The naval Battle of Arginusae, fought in 406 BC, east of the Greek island of Lesbos, was the last major Athenian victory over the Spartans in the Peloponnesian War. Athenian command of the battle was split between 8 generals: Aristocrates, Aristogenes, Dimedon, Erasinides, Lysias, Pericles the Younger (son of Pericles), Protomachus, and Thrasyllus. After their victory over the Spartan fleet a storm prevented the Athenians from recovering the survivors, and the dead, from their sunken ships. Of the six generals that returned to Athens all were executed for their negligence. Protomachus and Aristogenes, likely knowing their fate, chose not to return and went into exile.

Pericles, the flesh and blood representation of Athens’ greatness was the statesman and general who led the city-state during its golden age. He died of the plague in 429 BC during the war’s early years, taking with him the vision of democratic governance and Athens’ exceptionalism. His 3 legitimate sons all died during the war. His two oldest boys likely died of the plague around 429 BC and Pericles the Younger was executed for his part in the Battle of Arginusae.

Socrates, the world’s greatest philosopher (yes greater than Plato or Aristotle) fought bravely in the war, but he was directly linked to the traitor Alcibiades. He was tried and killed in 399 BC for subverting the youth and not giving the gods their due. That was all pretense. Athens desired to wash their collective hands of the war and Socrates was a very visible reminder of that. He became a ritual scapegoat swept up into the collective expurgation of the war’s memory.

Sophocles, already a man of many years by the beginning of the war, died in 406 BC at the age of 90 or 91, a few years before Athens’ final collapse. His tragedies embodied the ethical and civic pressures of a society unraveling. With the deaths of Aeschylus in 456 BC, Euripides in 406 BC, and Sophocles soon after, the golden age of Greek tragedy came to a close.

Thucydides, author of the scholarly standard for the Peloponnesian War, was exiled after ‘allowing’ the Spartans to capture Amphipolis, He survived the war, and the plague, but never returned to Athens. His History ends in mid-sentence for the period up to 411 BC. He lived till 400 BC, and no one really knows why he didn’t finish his account of the war. Xenophon picked up where Thucydides left off and finished up the war in his first two books of Hellenica which he composed somewhere in the 380s BC.

The Peloponnesian War ended Athens’ greatest days. The men who kept its lights bright were gone. Its material greatness returned, glowing briefly, but its civic greatness, its soul, slowly dimmed. It was a candle in the wind of time that would be rekindled elsewhere. The world would fondly remember its glory, but Athens had lost its spark.

Source: A War Like No Other by Victor Davis Hanson, 2005. Graphic: Alcibiades Being Taught by Socrates, Francois-Andre Vincent, 1776. Musee Fabre, France. Public Domain.

The Sum of All Fears–Real and Imagined

17 August 2025 By in History, Philosophy, Philosophy Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

The Peloponnesian War, fought over 27 years (431-404 BC), cost the ancient Greek world nearly everything. War deaths alone approached 8-10 percent of their population: up to 200,000 deaths from battle and plague. The conflict engulfed nearly all of Greece, from the mainland to the Aegean islands, Asia Minor and Sicily. Though Sparta and its allies, in the end, claimed a tactical victory, the war left Greece as a shadow of its former self.

The Golden Age of Athens came to an end. Athenian democracy was replaced, briefly, by the Thirty Tyrants. Sparta, unwilling to jettison its insular oligarchy, failed to adapt to imperial governance, naval power, or diplomatic nuance. Within a generation Sparta was a relic of history.  First challenged by former allies in the Corinthian War, then shattered by Thebes, which stripped the martial city-state of its aura of invincibility along with its helot slave labor base: the economic foundation of Sparta. Another generation later, Macedon under Philip II and Alexander the Great finished off Greek dominance of the Mediterranean. After Alexander’s death in 323 BC, Rome gradually absorbed all the fractured pieces. Proving again, building an empire is easier than keeping one.

Thucydides, heir to the world’s first historian: Herodotus, reduced the origins of the Peloponnesian War to a primal emotion: fear. In Book I of his History of the Peloponnesian War he writes: “The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Sparta, made war inevitable.” Athens had violated trade terms under the Megarian Decree with a minor Spartan ally but that was pretext, not cause. Sparta did not go to war over market access. It went to war over fear. Fear of what Athens had become and a future that armies and treaties may not contain.

War and fear go together like flame to fuse. Sparta went to war not for fear of a foe, Sparta knew no such people. It was not fear of an unknown warrior, nor fear of battlefields yet to be choregraphed, but fear of an idea: democracy maintained and backed by Athenian power. And perhaps, more hauntingly precise, fear of itself. Not that it feared it was weak but of what it may become. They feared no sword or spear, their discipline reigned supreme against flesh and blood. Yet no formation, no stratagem, no tactic of war could bring down a simple Athenian belief: the rule of the many, an idea anathema, heretical even, to the Spartan way of life.

So, they marched to war, not to defeat an idea but to silence the source. Not to avenge past aggression but to stop a future annexation. They won battles, small and large. They razed cities. But they only destroyed men. The idea survived. It survived in fragments, bits here, bits there, across time and memory. What it did kill, though, was the spirit of Athens, the Golden Age of Athens. But the idea that was Athens lived on across space and time: chiseled into republics that rose from its ashes and ruins.

The radiance of Athens dimmed to shadow. Socrates became inconvenient. Theater became therapy; a palliative smothering of a cultural surrender. And so, civilization moved to Rome.

Source: A War Like No Other by Victor Davis Hanson, 2005. History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, Translated by Richard Crawley, 2021. Graphic: Syracuse vs Athens Naval Battle. CoPilot.

Dr. Frank Konstantin Blaufrankisch 2022

13 August 2025 By in Red Wine, Wine Tags: , , Leave a comment

Blaufrankisch from Finger Lakes, New York, U.S.

Purchase Price: $27.99

ElsBob 87

ABV 12%

Aromas of blackberry, black cherry, and spice. Red fruits dominate the palate with firm tannins and a medium body, but the acidity is not for the faint of heart, tending to overshadow the fruit. Decanting is recommended to soften its sharper edges. Will pair well with hard, sharp cheeses.

A very good table wine, but not worth $28. If you can find it for $12 or less give it a try.

Trivia: Blaufrankisch has been called “the Pinot Noir of the East” for its finesse-meets-spice profile (not really) and its deep roots in Central European wine culture. It’s also a parent of the Zweigelt, Austria’s most planted red grape.

Blau means “blue” in German, referring to the grape’s dark skin, while Fränkisch historically denoted noble grape varieties in contrast to lesser “Hunnic” or more rustic ones. Despite its Germanic name, Blaufränkisch likely originated in what is now Slovenia. It’s a cross between Gouais Blanc (a prolific parent of many noble grapes such as Chardonnay, Gamay, and Riesling) and Blaue Zimmettraube.  

Phalanx: Discipline in Geometry

11 August 2025 By in History, History Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Near the ancient Sumerian city of Girsu, mid-way between present-day Bagdad and Kuwait City, stood a battle marker; the Stele of Vultures, now housed in the Louvre. It commemorates Lagash’s 3rd millennium BC victory over Umma. The stele derives its name from the monument’s carved vultures flying away with the heads of the dead.  It also depicts soldiers of Lagash marching in a dense, shield to shield formation, holding spears chest high and horizontal, led by their ruler: Eannatum, who commissioned the stele in 2460 BC. The importance of the stele, though, is that it is the first visual depiction of the use of a phalanx in a battle. It is believed that the phalanx as a military tactic is much older.

The phalanx was more than a combat formation, it was a battlefield philosophy enshrining discipline and courage over strength, unity of the team over the individual. A dense, rectangular wall of men, generally 8 deep stretching across the battlefield to protect against flanking maneuvers. Each man wore heavy armor of leather and bronze: helmet, cuirass, greaves, armed with a spear and a short sword. But the breakthrough that brought the phalanx great renown was the apsis, a round shield invented for the Greek hoplite in the 8th or 7th century BC. With its dual grip, a forearm strap and central handhold, it allowed the infantryman precise control of his shield, helping create an impenetrable barrier of bronze and bone against the oncoming enemy’s spears and swords. It transformed the phalanx from an offensive wall of attack to an added defensive engine of defiance.

The phalanx only succeeded in cohesion. When courage and discipline held, the formation with the apsis as its core defense was practically unbeatable on confined terrain. It overcame the enemy with a seamless, tight mass executing a relentless forward march into the belly of the opposing beast. But it was only as strong as its weakest link. Once discipline faltered and cohesion broke, the formation collapsed, and the opposing army ran it to ground. Victory belonged not to brute force, but to the combined strength of the military unit. Teams won, individuals lost.

From late 8th century BC onward, Greek phalanxes were manned by hoplites: citizen soldiers, generally landowners and farmers. Emerging in Sparta or Argos, possibly imported from Sumeria or born of parallel discovery in Greece, phalanx battles initially were confined, blunt, and deadly affairs. They devolved into fierce pushing masses of brawn, bone, and metal until one side broke. Heavy casualties occurred when the enemy lines broke and soldiers fled Helter skelter in shock and chaos, pursued by the victors for plunder, unless they were restrained by honor.

The phalanx became the standard that destroyed the mighty Persian armies at Marathon and Thermopylae early in the 5th century BC. At Marathon in 490 BC 10,000 Athenians and 1000 Plataeans stretched out their formation to match the breadth of 26,000 Persians, filling the Marathon plain and denying the armies any room for flanking movements.

The Greeks stacked their wings with additional rows of hoplites and thinned them progressively toward the center creating a convex crescent. The Greek wings advance faster than the center generating a pincer movement that collapsed on the Persian center. When the dust settled 192 Athenians and 11 Plataeans were lost while the Persian losses were approximated at 6400.

In the 19th century, Napoleon, possibly improvising on phalanx encircling tactics developed at Marathon, would invert his attacking army with a concave formation consisting of a strong center and weaker wings. His strategy being to split the enemies’ center with strength and attack their divided ranks on the flanks. The tactic worked until Wellington at Waterloo.

At Marathon, unity triumphed with geometric discipline. At Thermopylae the formation bought time and ended with a sacrifice that concluded Persian hubris.

During the second Persian invasion in 480 BC, Darius’s son Xerxes with 120,000-300,000 men attacked a contingent of 7000 Greeks at Thermopylae. The Greeks held back the Persian advance like a cork in a bottle, using a rotating phalanx of roughly 200 men to defend a narrow pass for two days, until betrayal by Ephialtes exposed their flank and they were destroyed in a inescapable Persian barrage of arrows. Greek losses were estimated at 4000 men including Leonidas’ 300 Spartans and 2000-4000 Persians (beginning and ending estimates for manpower strength vary widely).

The Greeks defiant stand at Thermopylae allowed the Greek navy to regroup at Salamis where they won a decisive victory against the Persian navy. A year later the Greeks at Plataea crushed the Persians quest for a Hellenic satrapy.

The Phalanx endured for another century, including use in the Peloponnesian War, where it remained lethal but of limited use. Then came Epaminondas at Leuctra in 371 BC, transforming the phalanx into a machine that erased Sparta’s mighty reputation. Typically, each army’s phalanx strength was concentrated on their right wing so that the strongest part of a force always faced off against the weaker wing of the opposition. What Epaminondas did was say nuts to that.

He reversed the order and created an oblique formation, more triangular than rectangular with his strongest troops on the left wing. His left wing was stacked 50 deep while keeping his center and right wings thin. His 50-deep was aimed directly at Sparta’s best under the command of King Cleombrotus (in those days officers and kings were in the front rows of the phalanx). As the phalanxes began to attack Epaminondas kept his right-wing stationery creating an asymmetrical front. The left wing easily broke through Sparta’s right wing, killing Cleombrotus and collapsing their superior flank. At that point Epaminondas’s wing pivoted inward creating an enveloping arc around the remaining parts of Sparta’s phalanx effectively ending the Spartan myth of invincibility.

Epaminondas tactics shortened battles with fewer casualties. His innovations proved that properly trained and equipped citizen soldiers could defeat professional warriors while instilling a new civic honor through restraint and discipline. His oblique formation allowed landowners and farmers to settle their disputes, usually in a few hours or less, with minimal loss, and return to their farms in time for the harvest. Epaminondas not only brought asymmetrical tactics to the battlefield but shattered claims of superiority by employing the unexpected.

As the Golden Age of Athens and western civilization’s Greek center waned and Roman hegemony rose, the phalanx evolved again. The Greek phalanx gave way to the Roman manipular system, a staggered checkerboard pattern, enabling units to rotate, reinforce, or retreat as needed. It was a needed refinement and improvement to the phalanx, more effectual on open plains and less susceptible to calvary and arrows.

Then came Hannibal to Cannae in 216 BC. During the 2nd Punic War, he upended the war cart of tactics once again and ruthlessly exploited Rome’s refinements.

Hannibal’s improvisations of the phalanx maneuvering tactics, but not the actual formation, showed that he had studied Marathon. Instead of a convex line with strong wings and a weak center he developed a concave line with strong wings and weak center. He allowed the center to fall back, which the Romans unwittingly obliged by surging into Hannibal’s weak center. With the Romans committed Hannibal’s deception encircled them with precision and brutal lethality. The Romans were annihilated on the field losing somewhere between 50,000-70,000 killed and another 10,000 captured. Hannibal lost 6000-8000 men (again estimates vary). Then came the 3rd Punic War.

The phalanx began as a wall of spears and shields, a bulwark of bronze and bone. Its stunning victories echo through history’s scholarly halls and hallowed plains of death and destruction. Yet its Achilles’ heel, vulnerable flanks, precise terrain requirements proved incompatible to horses and gunpowder.

Still its legacy of discipline and unity endure. Born of necessity, refined through rigor, and studied for centuries, the phalanx stands as a testament Aristotle’s enduring insight, slightly abridged but still profound, ‘The whole is greater than the parts.’ And perhaps the Roman’s said it best: ‘E pluribus unum’, ‘out of many, one.’

Source: A War Like No Other by Victor Davis Hanson, 2005. Et al. Graphic: Stele of Vultures.

Castellani Sangiovese Toscana 2019

7 August 2025 By in Red Wine, Wine Tags: , Leave a comment

Sangiovese from Tuscany, Italy

Purchase Price: $14.99

James Suckling 91, Wilfred Wong 90, ElsBob 88

ABV 13%

A medium to dark garnet red, medium-bodied wine with aromas of red cherries and spice. Forward tannins and mild acidity give it a bit of structure, with a hint of sweetness that softens the edges. The finish is short but pleasing, an easy companion for pizza, tomato-based pastas, and hard cheeses.

A very good table wine at a reasonable price. Recent prices range between $14-24. Anything over $17 is a bridge too far.

Trivia: This wine hails from the Castellani family’s coastal vineyards in Tuscany, near the Tyrrhenian Sea, and is classified as a Toscana IGT. Though it’s made from 100% Sangiovese, a composition fully permissible under Chianti DOCG rules, it does not qualify as a Chianti, as the vineyards lie outside the designated Chianti zones.

The winemaker notes that they follow an “old traditional Tuscan vinification method.” Given the wine’s modest 13% ABV, this likely refers to fermentation in concrete vats, extended skin contact, and the use of native yeasts, a nod to pre-industrial winemaking. It almost certainly does not involve the more elaborate Governo all’Uso Toscano (translates roughly to Tuscan-style winemaking) method, which requires an early harvest, partial grape drying, and a second fermentation that typically results in higher alcohol and a richer body.

Windows into the Soul

4 August 2025 By in Art Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

Francisco de Goya, court painter to the late 18th century Spanish royalty, was no great admirer nor groveling sycophant of his patrons. He portrayed them, literally and figuratively as pretentious hypocrites and regal bores. Somehow, he was able to convince the king and queen that his paintings embodied their imagined over-hyped majesty. They did, just not in the way the royal couple envisioned.  Goya sold the fiction ‘the king has no clothes but isn’t he marvelous’ with the aptness of Hans Christian Andersen, and it likely paid handsomely.

Modern portraitists of the rich and famous seem to follow a similar creed. A veiled contempt that comes through in their brushwork.  Faces frozen in contempt for the world beyond the palace, bodies wrapped in pop-art symbolism, palates of unmistakable gauche screeching, all undermining an uplifting narrative of benevolent power and grace. And, like Goya, they persuade their patrons that all is light and beauty, even though the cracks and shadows are front and center.

A portrait is not just posture, paint, and brushwork; it is an appointment with truth. Maybe just one minor truth, but truth none-the-less. The true artist illuminates the soul where he finds it. An artist’s symbolic performance can flourish in irrelevance of style, but the truth must come out.

Kehinde Wiley’s 2018 portrait of Barack Obama is a curious specimen. It goes beyond tradition into overt symbolism that lands in a duality of truth. It’s a disruptive panel bordering on cartoonish messaging. Botanical motifs of chrysanthemums and lilies in the background, engulfing Obama seated on a wooden chair with six fingers. A portrait not of a President but a topiary clipped into a pose of nonchalance and a distant soul focused on…nothing. The overall effect is one of mockery. Is Wiley mocking the President or is the President mocking his audience, maybe both. Wiley sold it as an informal symbol of a great man but maybe he was painting what he saw. A man whose legacy, much like the foliage behind him, now blooming with grandeur but fading to irreverence over time.

Compare this to Jonathan Yeo’s two portraits of King Charles III and Camilla. The former awash in crimson ambiguity, with vague lines of demarcation. Its symbolism is gaudy and obtuse: the lone butterfly, the seeping reds, the gaze misplaced: together, a haunting emergence from a bloody mess. A reliance on cryptic visual metaphors over soulful revelation. A painting wishing to express depth, and it does, but as a downward drift into circles of Dante rather than a royal crimson of empire. Yeo does not explain much of his trajectory of the portrait. He seems satisfied to leave the interpretation to others. Camilla says it captures him perfectly. But what it captures is not a dignified, confident king, but one who bartered his soul for the crown which Yeo captured impeccably, consciously or not.

Yeo’s 2014 portrait of Camilla, HRH The Duchess of Cornwall, compliments his painting of King Charles: another study of a lost soul. A picture of non-essence. A painting of emotional neglect. Blotches of earth tones for blood and straight lines of iron and fog for character and birthright. In the background vertical lines of changing width suggestive of a perspective view of Camilla sitting in the corner of a prison cell, trapped in a unwanted life, with sub-horizontal lines crossing her clothing like lines of filtered light originating from a broken, tilted structure of casements in disrepair. Windows into a soul without balance or integrity. A blotchy face, pressed lips and the piercing eyes of disgust are the caricature of woman who finds the world a bore and the artist gives wholehearted ascent to her wishes.

Yeo’s portraits of the royal dyad are of tragic symmetry. Charles as an entitled blood-soaked monarch, lost in a mythic realm of post over duty. Camilla is a shadow brought along for form without script, shadow without light.

Each of the three portraits in the triptych, at first blush, are merely lacking in technique or likeness and immensely soulless. With further exposure and examination, the artists have captured their subject’s essence. They are gauche and grotesque, but the painter’s truth is bleeding through. They portray their subjects as an antithesis to their public persona. Wiley’s Obama is lost in symbolic foliage, Yeo’s Charles stands embalmed in a crimson history of unrestrained desire, and Camilla appears accidentally sentenced to royalty by an artist barely able to contain his disdain.

Symbolism, when wielded well, lives in the background, like Botticelli’s Primavera, where flora guides the viewer through renewal without eclipsing the figures themselves. Art that elevates does so through integration, not ornamentation. Symbolism must serve beauty, and beauty must point toward goodness. But if the truth isn’t of beauty, what then?

True portraiture captures the soul and, if need be, is not afraid to offend. It does not flatter blindly, nor does it subtract without cause. It seeks something elemental. It lets the canvas speak, the brush guide, and the palate reverberate with reality. Great portraits are a reckoning of the soul, not decoration of form.

Graphics: President Obama by Kehinde Wiley, 2018. King Charles and Camilla by Jonathan Yeo, 2023 and 2014. All copyrighted. Used for purposes of critique.