The New Atlantis by Sir Francis Bacon

Picture from the Yale Library

Utopia is a name for an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system. The word was invented by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. (Wikipedia)

We all have individual ideas of Utopia. New Atlantis, published in 1626, is Bacon’s idea of a Utopian world. The island is called Bensalem where people of all races and religion live together in harmony but leaning much more towards Christianity. The people are honest, generous, pious, and enlightened. There is an ideal college “Solomon House” where they study pure and applied science. In Bensalem religion and science co-exist perfectly. Bacon coined the phrase “Knowledge is Power”.

It is theorized that Bacon was hoping that America would be a model of this utopian world. There are many controversial ideas in the novel but it’s amazing all the wonderful ideas that Bacon foresees. Towards the end of the novel he describes all the things they have discovered, here’s an example:

"We have also furnaces of great diversities, and that keep great diversity of heats; fierce and quick, strong and constant, soft and mild, blown, quiet, dry, moist, and the like. But above all we have heats, in imitation of the sun's and heavenly bodies' heats, that pass divers inequalities, and as it were orbs, progresses, and returns whereby we produce admirable effects… Instruments also which generate heat only by motion. And farther, places for strong insulations; and, again, places under the earth, which by nature or art yield heat. These divers heats we use as the nature of the operation which we intend requireth.”

The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan

Reading these books make learning history so much fun. Rick (yeah we’re on a first name basis) takes us on another adventure, this time it’s the history of the Gods of Egypt. He stays true to his trademark with young hero Carter, 14 years old, and his sister Sadie, 12 years old, who team up with the Gods to save the world.

After their mother passed away six years ago under mysterious circumstances Carter and Sadie were separated. Carter traveled with his dad Egyptologist Julius Kane and Sadie lived in London with her grandparents. On Christmas Eve their father takes them for a private tour of the British Museum and the fun begins. I’m looking forward to the second book.

A few Egyptian Gods:

Amon - The creator

Anubis - God of mummification.

Isis – Diviner and the wife of Osiris and mother of Horus.

Osiris - Ruler of the underworld.

Horus – The Falcon/sky god. Son of Osiris and Isis.

Set - God of Chaos and enemy of Horus.

Sobek - The crocodile god.
Ra - The sun god.

From the UnMuseum

The Destruction of the Indies by Bartolomé de las Casas

This is a very detailed account, from Bartolomé, of how the Indies was colonized. Friar Bartolomé de las Casas wrote to Prince Philip II in 1542 about the mistreatment of the Native Americans. The writing is repetitive and filled with examples over and over again of horrible cruelties the Natives had to endure.  The Friar was not only horrified by the treatment of the natives, he was also concerned that Spain would come under God’s judgment for these evil acts. According to him the poor natives never had a chance to know the real Christian God because of the cruelties they witnessed they associate Christianity with the Devil. Bishop Bartolomé said he witnessed liquid gold being poured down a man’s throat, many of them burned alive or had their mouths and noses cut off.

What I tried to get my head around is the total number of natives killed. Is it 10 million, 20 million?  I don’t know if I believe that the Prince had no idea of what was going on? Where is all the gold that was taken from the Natives? How sad that the Natives never recovered?