Yes, we could talk about Voltaire cutting his way through any Comedie Francais actress that wasn’t nailed down, but I’d rather talk about his two more steady relationships – with the great Emilie du Chatelet and the okay Madame Denis.
Chatelet is one of my favorite figures in history, period. She died young, at 42, and in that time managed to produce a translation of Newton’s Principia which remains a standard, AND discover what we now know about an object’s kinetic energy, namely that it is proportional to the square of the velocity. She was a steady advocate of women’s education, a critical analyst of the Bible, and just generally awesome.
Madame Denis was Voltaire’s niece, and was some 18 years younger than he. Her contemporaries didn’t have anything particularly great to say about her, finding her vain, nagging, and extravagant in spending other people’s money, but her presence during Voltaire’s final years gave him the space he needed to write some of his greatest works and pursue the revision of the French justice system, and he wasn’t necessarily always a peach to live with himself, so let’s call it a draw.
– Count Dolby von Luckner
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Chances are, if you’re reading us, you have more than a passing interest in Historical Figures Using Their Powers For Awesome, mathematics, and engineering improbabilities. If that is indeed the case, I’d like to point you towards 2D Goggles. It features Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage basically Irresponsibly Using Math to better the human condition, though often by worsening it considerably first. Its pacing is phenomenal, its characterizations downright BRILLIANT. It is, along with LaSalle’s Legacy, my new Favorite Thing.
In other news, less than two weeks separate us from the East Bay Alternative Press Book Fair, where we shall be along with The Littlest Elle and Suck It Mussolini. It’s a fun show, so swing on by if you’ve a moment and give me things to draw!
– Count Dolby von Luckner
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The few of you out there who have somehow not yet purchased the print phenomenon that is Light Opera and Heavy Consequences, here is the first appearance of Leibniz’s awesome, yet amazingly task-specific, creation.
And now, to Thanksgiving, which will involve playing football with my students in the morning, watching The Muppets in the afternoon, and eating pizza while going through the annual “Pangs Episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer” ritual by night. Thanksgiving, y’all!
– Count Dolby von Luckner
