In an earlier article in this newspaper (Understanding the Trump phenomenon, August 5, 2016), I suggested that it was necessary to take Donald Trumps candidacy and its implications more seriously than many were doing then. Six months into the Trump presidency, the American media remains fascinated with the new reality show that has entered the White House.

As every small skirmish, move and tweet is given inordinate scrutiny and attention, it is easy however to lose sight of the big picture. What have we, in fact, learnt about the United States in the months since November 2016? How is this new information going to be useful in understanding the future path of the U.S., as well as its ongoing relationship with the rest of the world? Here are some suggestions and speculations.

The first point to be taken note of is that, despite the widespread disapproval of Mr. Trump in the media and the political and intellectual classes, he still has an approval rating in excess of 35% with the American public. Given Mr. Trumps rather erratic conduct so far, there seems no reason to believe that this rating will fall much further, no matter what he does. A small part of this can be accounted for by legitimism, that is, the need to support an authority figure. But far more important is the suggestion that over a third of the American public is currently made up of inflexible, hardcore right-wing and populist elements. Racism surely plays a role here too. The presidency can be won for the Republicans by adding roughly 15% of votes to this core constituency. In contrast, the Democratic Party does not have a solid base that measures up to this demographically. For them, to drum up numbers in the high-40% or more is thus a more difficult task. As American demography evolves, this could change, but only by the 2030s.

Second, the American electoral system as such is irrevocably broken, and yet there is no collective desire to fix it. In 2000, George W. Bush lost the popular vote to Al Gore by about 5,40,000 and yet won the election (this was the first time that it had happened since 1888). In 2016, Donald Trump then lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by a far larger margin of over three million votes. Still, currently there is no broad move afoot to reform the system, on the part of either major party, or to ensure that this does not happen again. This is in part because of American cultural hubris, which does not allow them to admit that their electoral system is far inferior to, say, that in use in France.

A third point concerns Mr. Trumps domestic agenda. Too much attention has been focused so far on the trench warfare regarding health care. So far, it has proven impossible to replace Obamacare, an ironical fact given that many of those who would have been adversely affected probably voted for Mr. Trump. At the same time, Mr. Trump has already placed one conservative Supreme Court judge, Neil Gorsuch, and may have a chance to effect still more changes. He has significantly turned back the clock on environmental legislation. By 2020, he will have effected many other major domestic policy changes in one or the other fashion. Again, this is an indictment of the American political system, which gives far too much power to the executive, and even to a President who has lost the popular vote.

The fourth point is more crucial still, and concerns the projection of American power abroad. Since the end of the Cold War, and the emergence of the unipolar American-dominated system around 1990, speculation has gone on regarding the nature of potential challenges to it. These could come from other state-systems, such as China, or the European Union, or from unclassifiable systems and forms, such as al-Qaeda or the Islamic State. But few could have predicted that the real challenge would come from within the U.S. itself. Yet, this is what has happened. The Trump administration appears singularly unconcerned with, and inept in dealing with, foreign policy, and after all its core internal constituency is firmly isolationist in its inclinations. The State Department is today in utter disarray. The Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, is from the petroleum industry and seems out of his depth; so that rumours even surface regularly of his imminent resignation.

Based on the past six months, it seems likely that by 2020, the systematic projection of American power on a global scale would have shrunk considerably.

Whatever the direct reality of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections, there can be no doubt that this outcome suits the Putin regime well. The Russian view appears to be that any political system that is nave enough to be manipulated from the outside deserves what it gets anyway. It could even be argued perhaps that the fresh emergence of a multipolar world is no bad thing. A system largely managed by an inept U.S. diplomatic apparatus is hardly attractive, even to the U.S.s erstwhile allies across the Atlantic.

To sum up, the Trump presidency is the product of a flawed political system that will obstinately not admit its flaws. In spite of this, it will surely have a significant impact over the medium term, both domestically and internationally. On the domestic front, it may be possible to turn some things back, depending of course on the outcome of the 2020 U.S. election. Where the impact is likely to be lasting, and not really reversible, is on the international front.

Sanjay Subrahmanyam is Professor of History at UCLA

Excerpt from:
Anatomy of the Trump presidency - The Hindu

Back in May it was announced that ABC had placed a straight-to-series order for a new Greys Anatomy spinoff based around a group of heroic firefighters, and now comes word from Deadline that Jaina Lee Ortiz (Rosewood) has been cast as the female lead.

The 10-episode drama is being penned by Greys Anatomy executive producer and co-showrunner Stacy McKee and takes place in a Seattle firehouse, detailing the brave men and women from the captain to the newest recruit who risk their lives and their hearts both in the line of duty and off the clock.

The main characters of the new spinoff are set to be introduced in an episode of the upcoming fourteenth season of Greys Anatomy before the show premiers in midseason. It is the second spinoff from the long-running medical drama series after Private Practice, which ran between 2007 and 2013.

More here:
Rosewood's Jaina Lee Ortiz cast as female lead in Grey's Anatomy spinoff - Flickering Myth (blog)

Where exactly is the grave of Andreas Vesalius? This historical mystery, at the unlikely intersection of anatomy, archeology and cartography, could soon be solved. But not without a final crowdfunding effort.

It's a mystery tinged with irony. Vesalius (1514-1564) popularised autopsies and (unwittingly) kicked off the centuries-long trend of 'resurrectionism': snatching bodies for dissection by medical students. Now it's his own grave that scientists are after, and their search involves a studious postmortem of the landscape where he was buried, with ancient maps as material evidence.

The search started some time before 2014, the 500th anniversary of Vesalius's birth. To celebrate that event, medical artist Pascale Pollier set out to reconstruct the face of Vesalius, from his actual skull a fitting tribute to the father of modern anatomy. But where was that skull? The historical record showed that Vesalius died on the Greek island of Zakynthos. And that's where the trail went cold.

16th-century map of Zakynthos, transposed on a topographically accurate modern map.

It's fair to say that few scientists have been as consequential for the development of modern science in particular medical science as Vesalius. So how could his last resting place have been neglected, forgotten and ultimately lost?

Born in Brussels to a family of apothecaries and physicians, Andries van Wesel later latinised his name to Andreas Vesalius, as was the fashion among Renaissance scholars. He studied anatomy in Paris and Louvain, where he famously robbed a corpse from a gibbet outside the city walls in order to procure a complete skeleton. He obtained his doctorate in Padua in 1537, then immediately received a professorate there, teaching surgery and anatomy.

His seminal work is the seven-volume De humani corporis fabrica ('On the Fabric of the Human Body'), published in Basel in 1543, when Vesalius was just 29 years old.The book is a milestone in the transition from the symbolic approach to medicine to an empirical one. With his insistence on learning via dissection of the human body, Vesalius not only improved upon, but even superseded Galen, whose teachings on medicine had been authoritative for over a millennium, despite the fact that Galen's autopsies on Barbary macaques were as close as he got to human anatomy.

The Fabrica has been called the most beautiful medical book ever published, combining the best science, art and typography that 16th-century Europe had to offer. In 2011, the only completely coloured first-edition copy of the Fabrica known to exist (probably the one presented by Vesalius to Charles V in the autumn of 1543) sold at Christie's for over $1.6 million, more than double the highest estimate of $600,000. Because the colouring was most likely carried out under the supervision of Vesalius himself, the author's portrait provides the only historical basis for our knowledge of Vesalius's complexion and hair colour.

For Vesalius, publication of the book also marked a turning point in his career. He left academia to become the personal physician to Emperor Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and from 1556 to his successor Philip II and their respective entourages, in Spain.

In 1564, Vesalius, a devout Catholic, left Spain for a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He visited the Holy Places, but never made it back. It was long assumed that he had been shipwrecked on the island of Zakynthos, then a Venetian colony. Scientists now think Vesalius fell ill on the sea voyage home with scurvy, some argue; general fatigue, say others. Recently rediscovered eyewitness reports say he collapsed on the quay of Zakynthos, dying in October 1564.

Previously, Vesalius was thought to have been buried at the Franciscan abbey at Kalogerata, near the beach. However, reports from European pilgrims to Jerusalem place the tomb at the local Catholic church of Santa Maria delle Grazie (1).

Ground plan of the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie (1806)

That further complicates matters, as the church was destroyed in the big earthquake of 1953 which levelled most of the buildings on the island. The ruins of the church were bulldozed into the sea, and it was never rebuilt. The city itself rose from its ashes on a slightly different street grid.

So in 2014, with the help of Belgian embassy in Greece, Belgian archeologists conducted Phase One of the Quest for the Lost Grave of Vesalius.Painstakingly matching historical maps of the area to satellite imagery and modern cartographic data, Dr. Sylviane Dderix identified the exact location of the ruins of the Santa Maria delle Grazie church: on the north side of the city, partly under the intersection of Kolyva and Kolokotroni streets, and partly under some adjacent houses built after the quake.

Location of the vanished church on the current street grid.

So far, so good. But now, to enrich the data of the first phase, more applied cartography is necessary, specifically: tracking down cavities, foundations and other subterranean anomalies via ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and electrical-resistivity tomography (ERT). The archeologists have now received permission from the Greek ministry of Culture to perform this non-invasive research. Work could start as soon as September, if the crowdfunding campaign to raise the necessary funds, now tantalisingly close its goal, is successful.

Location of the church on Google Earth.

If Phase Two produces actionable results, Phase Three would consist of targeted, small-scale excavations in areas that could hold the grave. And there is indeed a good chance that Vesalius is still in the ground, says Theo Dirix, of the Vesalius Continuum project: Previous construction work on the spot has already turned up funerary slabs, proving there was a cemetery. Moreover, one of them dates from around the time Vesalius was buried here.

One report suggests Vesalius's tombstone may have been looted in 1571 by the Turks. If bones are found without identifying inscriptions, it is hoped they will yield enough DNA for forensic analysis; the project has already tracked down descendants of Vesalius's mother Elisabeth Crabb for mitochondrial DNA comparison.

Zakynthos street grid pre-earthquake (blue) and post-earthquake (red).

There is however a small chance that bones yielded by the underground on this specific plot of Zakynthos belong to another luminary from centuries past. The church was constructed over a much older cemetery; in the 1540s, about two decades before Vesalius was interred at the church, a grave believed to be that of the famous Roman orator Cicero was discovered in its grounds.

Many thanks to Theo Dirix for the images used here. For more on the search for Vesalius's grave, go to Vesalius Continuum.

Strange Maps #850

Got a strange map? Let me know at strangemaps@gmail.com.

(1) Christoph Furer von Haimendorff, who visited Zakynthos in the year following Vesalius's death, gives the epitaph: ANDREAE VESALII BRUXELLENSIS TUMULUS, QUI OBIIT ANNO DOMINI M. D. LXIV. ID. OCTOBRIS, CUMEX HIEROSOLYMA REDIISSET, Anno Aetatis suae LVIII. Mariae de Gratia (however, Vesalius was 50, not 58 years old when he died)

Read the original:
Anatomy of a Grave-Hunt - Big Think