Frivolous "love" and double jeopardy

We didn't find her - she found us.
She sniffed us out.
She sat there
Slightly filthy with erotic mystery.
I saw the dreamer in her
Had fallen in love with me and she did not know it.
That moment the dreamer in me
Fell in love with her, and I soon knew it. Ted Hughes (1930-98)

This woman, Assia Wevil, killed herself (gas) in a suicide that made sure that her young daughter by Hughes died with her, declaring in a suicide note she simply couldn't leave little Shura behind, explaining: "She's too old to be adopted."

The essence of "left" versus "right".

Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827), one of the greatest scientists of all time, sometimes referred to as the "French Newton" or "Newton of France", with a natural phenomenal mathematical faculty possessed by none of his contemporaries, remarkably propounded the idea of black holes over 200 years ago.

However his notions of public office were not so profound. The great man's very short tenure as Minister of the Interior was terminated abruptly by Napoleon (1769-1821) with the following insightful practical assessment:

"Geometrician of the first rank, Laplace was not long in showing himself a worse than average administrator; since his first actions in office we recognized our mistake. Laplace did not consider any question objectively: he sought subtleties everywhere, only conceived problems, and finally carried the spirit of "hair-splitting" into the administration".

A genius ... after and before

Beethoven (1770-1827) Death Mask, Kunsthistoriches museum, Vienna.

... at 13 by an unknown Bonn master

There is controversy as to whether this was done before the autopsy or after ... at any rate it was apparently carried out two days after Beethoven's death. The resemblance to his depiction as a child in a contemporary portrait is remarkable. Life’s toll registered in the death mask itself is intensely profound.

 

Taking in a movie ...

“A lot of people [are] in the dark sharing something that can’t be put into words. And since all of life is basically not mentioning the main thing - that we’re going to die – we’re used to the idea of something bigger than anything going on, but unspoken.” … observed by film director Mike Nichols (b.1931) about movies.