From the Christian Science Monitor: Missionaries adjust to risks in Arab lands.
Brandon Bayne wants to win souls for Jesus Christ in the Arab world. That's why he steers clear of Muslim nations and instead trains Latinos from the Americas to be missionaries on the ground there.
"There has to be someone at some point who crosses a border," says Mr. Bayne, a third-year ministry student here at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Mass. But in light of escalating anti-Americanism and resentment spawning violence against missionaries, he says, that missionary "doesn't have to be a Westerner."
In fact, according to Bayne and other mission theorists, Latinos have better success rates in winning Arab converts because their dark skin and modest economic backgrounds help build relationships with indigenous Muslims. Latinos, Filipinos, and other non-Western Christians are thus increasingly staffing the front lines of the world's most dangerous mission fields, where spreading Christianity can be punishable by death. [continue]
The CBC says that Grouse Mountain's bear camera is going online.
The world's first Web site showing live video of hibernating grizzly bears will be launched on Monday by the Refuge for Endangered Wildlife atop Grouse Mountain.
Spokesperson Dr. Ken Macquisten says the new site will follow the daily activities of the refuge's four orphaned grizzlies.
Macquisten says watching them has shown researchers why the bears finish their hibernation in such great shape.
He says as they sleep, they shiver a lot when they inhale and then seems to relax as the exhale each breath.
"This shivering is not because they're cold. They manage to keep their den at a nice one to two degrees above freezing, but they seem to be exercising as they sleep."
Related links:
Refuge for Endangered Wildlife - - from grousemountain.com
Grouse Mountain Grizzlycams - from grousemountain.com
Grouse Mountain's Bear Facts page - from grousemountain.com
Mountaintop Experience - from exn.ca
From a BBC article, Riddle of 'Baghdad's batteries'.
It was in 1938, while working in Khujut Rabu, just outside Baghdad in modern day Iraq, that German archaeologist Wilhelm Konig unearthed a five-inch-long (13 cm) clay jar containing a copper cylinder that encased an iron rod.
The vessel showed signs of corrosion, and early tests revealed that an acidic agent, such as vinegar or wine had been present. (. . . ) Konig did not waste his time finding alternative explanations for his discovery. To him, it had to have been a battery. [continue]
Related links:
Smith College Museum of Ancient Inventions: Baghdad Battery
The Baghdad Battery
If we were in Venice right now for the annual Carnival, I expect we'd see costumed people like these ones and these ones all over the city. What kind of mask would you wear? I have one of these, but I should probably keep that a secret.
Here's an excerpt from Olivia Mackinder's article, Behind the Mask, about her visit to Venice during Carnival:
Of course I'd seen pictures, but as we walked to our hotel from the canal side, I soon realised that Venice at Carnival time is not something you can really prepare for. It is utterly unreal, another world, and pure escapism.
The carnival is a stylish, vibrant celebration of traditions dating back centuries. ‘carnevale’ is from the Latin ‘farewell to meat’ and it precedes the abstinence of Lent with a breathtaking 12-day festival of fantasy, intrigue, music, entertainment, parties and parades.
It opens with The Flight of the Little Dove – a papier maché puppet that floats on a cable from St Mark’s bell tower to the Doge’s Palace. In times gone by, this was known as the Flight of the Angel and an intrepid tightrope walker took the lead role - an acrobatic feat revived in 2002 for the first time in years.
St Mark's Square is the focal point of the festivities and joining the throng there, we saw for the first time the spectacular costumes that take months to perfect and take your breath away.
Faces hidden behind masks, bodies swathed in ornately decadent fabrics, anonymous, ageless figures drift through the crowds or pose elegantly in front of ancient buildings, serene and regal before the gaze of eager tourists. [continue]
Related links:
Venice Carnival information
Venice carnival pictures
VeniceCarnival.com
VeniceMasquerade.com
History of Venetian carnival masks
Related book:
Maschere a Venezia
Venetian Masks for sale at:
Il Canovaccio (I bought my mask at their shop.)
Benetto
Camacana
From the Guardian, First smile captured on film in Britain.
The boy in the wide-necked shirt is gazing intently at something off camera, a slight smile in his eyes. His image has lived down the years, because his smile was the first to be captured in a photograph in Britain and probably the world.
The photographer noticed the fleeting expression since she was his aunt. She was able to capture it because, as a pioneer in the infancy of the camera, she was using an unusual fast exposure method.
Her nephew was William Mansel Llewelyn, a child in a family of Swansea chemists and industrialists. The photographer was Mary Dillwyn. Her image of Willy was revealed yesterday in an album that the National Library of Wales announced it had saved for the nation because of its importance in the history of the art.
The library bought the album for £48,000 from a private owner, after the government refused to grant it an export licence.
Mary Dillwyn's photographs were taken in the 1840s and early 1850s in a period of hectic experimentation barely a decade after the race between Louis Daguerre in France and William Fox Talbot in Britain to announce the discovery of photography.
Dillwyn's work is considered remarkable because, unlike other photographers of the period, she avoided stiff, formal portraits. Instead, she achieved intimate spontaneity in recording individuals and groups.
In her family garden, she took the first pictures of a snowman, and she was the first of tens of millions of amateur photographers to capture an inquisitive child intruding into what was meant to be a formal composition. Her photo, Peeping, shows a little girl peering beside two lace-bonneted women.
Iwan Jones, the library's head of collections care, said: "She was the first photographer to capture intimate moments. There is a lot of warmth in her work. By using short exposures she was the first - or one of the first - to capture a smile." [continue]
I'm grateful to InternetNews.com for this article: Hosted Windows Apps Coming Online with Linux.
CrossOver Officer allows users to run Microsoft Office natively on Linux desktops. (...) CrossOver Office is intended to allow users to run Lotus Notes, Office 2000, Office XP, Quicken and Visio 2000 inside Linux. CrossOver Office Server Edition allows organizations to host their Windows applications on Linux servers.
How have I missed hearing about this? I don't want to run any of Microsoft's products, but a couple of the programs I need come only in Windows or Mac versions. If I can just make those applications run under Linux, I'll be a very happy camper indeed.
Related links:
CrossOver Office page at Codeweavers.com
("CrossOver Office allows you to install your favorite Windows productivity applications in Linux, without needing a Microsoft Operating System license. CrossOver includes an easy to use, single click interface, which makes installing a Windows application simple and fast.")
Linux and Office: What a Concept -wired.com
CrossOver Office: The Killer App for the Linux Desktop? - linuxplanet.com
From the National Geographic, Army Ants Obey Traffic Plan to Avoid Jams, Study Says.
. . . ants follow a trail of smelly chemicals, laid down by other ants. Like painted stripes on a road, these chemicals tell the poorly-sighted foragers which way to go.
When raiders set out, they move along the chemical trails at high speed in one direction. However, as they encounter prey, they must return along the freeway to the nest. This task is initially very difficult with an onslaught of speeding traffic coming in the opposite direction. [continue]
From the Telegraph: Lost glories of Pompeii revealed for the first time.
Many of Pompeii's greatest archaeological finds are to be put on public display for the first time.
The celebrated Villa of the Papyri will open its doors for the first time next month while a major exhibition will show the best objects unearthed from the villa and the Pompeii area.
The villa, one of the most important and evocative ancient sites in Italy, was the rambling, stately retreat in Herculaneum of Julius Caesar's father-in-law, Lucius Calpurnius Piso.
Stumbled upon in 1752, it was then only partially excavated, when 1,800 papyrus scrolls of classical works, statues and artefacts, were found. It then fell into neglect.
Much of the villa's 30,000 square-foot area has yet to be uncovered. Scholars believe it may conceal a second library, containing lost works such as the missing volumes of Livy's History of Rome. [continue]
How did the Villa of the Papyri get into this state?
The unknown treasures of the Villa of the Papyri
Ancient Herculaneum
Hunt for Treasures of villa buried by Vesuvius
Herculaneum Papyri Photos
Herculaneum (some photos)
This Atlantic article, Caring for Your Introvert, should be required reading for all bubbly extroverts. An excerpt:
My name is Jonathan, and I am an introvert.
Oh, for years I denied it. After all, I have good social skills. I am not morose or misanthropic. Usually. I am far from shy. I love long conversations that explore intimate thoughts or passionate interests. But at last I have self-identified and come out to my friends and colleagues. In doing so, I have found myself liberated from any number of damaging misconceptions and stereotypes. Now I am here to tell you what you need to know in order to respond sensitively and supportively to your own introverted family members, friends, and colleagues. Remember, someone you know, respect, and interact with every day is an introvert, and you are probably driving this person nuts. It pays to learn the warning signs. [continue]
From today's Japan Times, Austere monks in a lavish monastery.
It seems at first that they are not of this world, these monks living out their lives of mountain seclusion. They glide purposefully -- as if on some devout mission from on high -- through the monastery corridors. At times, they flit by at great speed, their black tunics and dark blue robes swishing as they pass, pausing only briefly to bow reverently in the direction of the Buddha Hall. It comes as a surprise then, when for the first time you see them acting like normal people, laughing and joking among themselves after the morning service, rather than gazing off profoundly into some middle distance.
Since 1244, after its founding by the philosopher-monk Dogen Kigen (1200- 1253), there has stood deep in the mountains of Fukui Prefecture a Buddhist temple and monastery originally called Daibutsu-ji Temple, now known as Eihei-ji Temple. Located some 20 km east of the city of Fukui, Eihei-ji is the best reason (pretty much the only reason, some might say) for visiting that prefecture. As a place for living the contemplative life, Eihei-ji certainly has great physical beauty: The temple stands among boulders thick with bright green moss, cedars of great girth, and Japanese maples that, in autumn, are a riot of cinnabar red and spectacular gold. [continue]
From Canada Newswire, Federal government helps make biodiesel viable.
The federal government has taken a big stride towards increasing the viability of biodiesel production and use in Canada with yesterday's budgetary announcement of the removal of the 4-cent-per-litre federal excise tax on biodiesel.
Biodiesel is a non-toxic, cleaner burning, renewable diesel fuel derived from agricultural commodities such as vegetable oils or animal fats. The Ontario Soybean Growers sees biodiesel as an opportunity to create new markets for Ontario soybean oil, while providing a cleaner burning alternative to fossil fuels. In addition, the use of biodiesel fuel is an excellent opportunity for Canada to meet obligations agreed to under the Kyoto Protocol.
Related links:
Canada's on the road to marketing friendlier fuel - University of Guelph
Biodiesel Information Centre - Canadian Renewable Fuels Association
From the CBC: Ancient fur coat going on display.
A 550-year-old fur robe worn by a young aboriginal hunter in northwestern B.C. will be shown at the Royal B.C. Museum in Victoria this weekend. The young man's remains were found in 1999 in a glacier – which preserved his robe made from more than 100 Arctic ground squirrels. The Champagne and Aishihik First Nations named him "long ago person found." His body was cremated in a traditional ceremony. His robe has been meticulously preserved and studied by archaeologists. "Ice finds provide a unique, rare opportunity where things are uniquely preserved. This gives us an accurate picture of how long certain types of weapons or clothing have been used," says the B.C. Museum's Grant Keddie.
Related website:
Royal BC Museum
Related Mirabilis.ca postings:
Ancient Yukon feathers, thawed
Thawing artifacts
From the Telegraph, Medieval painting returns to church in its original glory.
Britain's largest surviving medieval altarpiece has returned to a church after an eight-year restoration that has revealed many of its artistic secrets.
The 12ft-wide Thornham Parva Retable, which was lost for almost 150 years until it was discovered in a loft over a stable in 1927, is now back on display in the thatched village church near Eye, Suffolk.
"The altarpiece looks stunning and will be treasured by the local community as well as by visitors from all over the world," said Martin Kay, churchwarden at St Mary's Thornham Parva.
The survival of the altarpiece, which is thought to have been made for Thetford Priory in Norfolk in the 1330s, is little short of miraculous.
It was saved from destruction by the Duke of Norfolk's family when Henry VIII ordered the dissolution of the monasteries. It then disappeared until 1778 when it briefly resurfaced at an auction but failed to sell. [continue]
Update: Ananova's article, Restored medieval altarpiece returned to church, has a closeup photo of the altarpiece.
Related link:
Largest medieval altarpiece finds sanctuary
From National Geographic, "Out of Africa" Phrase in Use Since Ancient Greece.
Out of Africa. The phrase is everywhere; used to title movies, books, magazine articles, art exhibits, conferences, lectures, and travel tours. It's used as shorthand in newspaper headlines and to describe anthropological and medical theories related to Africa.
But where did it come from?
Somewhat surprisingly, the phrase stems from an ancient Greek proverb. "There is always something new coming out of Africa," wrote Aristotle more than 2,300 years ago in his book on natural history.
Writing in The Journal of African History, Harvey Feinberg and Joseph B. Solodow trace the history and meaning of the proverb from its ancient beginnings to contemporary usage.
"It's a phrase even Africanists don't know the origin of, so we were interested in tracing how it got from the ancient world to our world," said Feinberg, who teaches African history at Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU). [continue]
From the Copenhagen Post, Denmark announces first-ever eco-car. [update: article no longer available]
Denmark's Folkecenter for Renewable Energy has announced the development of a Volkswagen Lupo 3L that runs entirely on rapeseed oil. According to the center's calculations, the new eco-car will run for 35,000 km on one hectare of rapeseed.
Yesterday's news marks the first time ever that Denmark has successfully adapted an advanced, three-cylinder diesel motor with direct fuel injection under extremely high pressure to drive on rapeseed oil. (. . . )
The new Lupo, owned by Thorshavn dentist Erling Simonsen, is the first car in the North Atlantic region to be fully non-dependent on fossil fuels.
This would be an interesting lawsuit:
Producers of Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut may be sued for copyright abuse by the Romanian Orthodox Church.
Church officials are unhappy about a recorded fragment from a religious mass which was used in scenes with satanic connotations.
From Ananova's article, Romanian Orthodox Church unhappy about Kubrick soundtrack.
From The Age, Brutal trade of rare books.
The boom of a solitary bell spills through an open window and into the office of Father Sergio Pagano inside the Secret Archives of the Vatican.
For an instant, the Italian priest charged with managing the "paper assets" of the Roman Catholic Church turns his smile from the peals toward a sentinel tower of six closed-circuit television screens. The surveillance technology ensures the 85-kilometre stretch of historical documents buried in the labyrinth beneath Pagano's desk remains safe from looters and sheltered from the emerging market for paleographic investments.
"I'm a buyer, not a seller, but it's always the Pope's call," says Pagano, explaining the Vatican's rules for playing the market in rare correspondence, antediluvian books and illuminated manuscripts.
It's a quiet trade that has been conducted for millennia between popes and potentates. Modern pursuers of ancient tomes include investors such as British Land Company chairman and managing director John Ritblat and Jean Paul Getty II, the philanthropist and heir to the Getty oil fortune.
"The dealers and collectors frequently offer to sell us items," says Pagano, arching his fingers into a spire. "There's much foolery among them, but it's very difficult to fool the Vatican," he cautions. "It's rare we pay attention to market forces." [continue}
"The sun is out. The powder is fresh. The slope is clear. Meet the ice men trying to keep you alive on your next killer run." From Wired's Avalanche article.
From the Guardian: Crowe got it wrong: gladiators were the film stars of Rome.
Far from the Hollywood image of a grubby desperado fighting for his life in a lawless arena of horror, the real- life Roman gladiator was a highly trained and pampered professional - rich, famous and pursued by groupies.
New research has poked massive holes in the long- accepted image of gladiators as poor wretches sent to gruesome deaths in front of crowds baying for blood.
Gladiators were in fact provided with the best food and healthcare during their years of training and were given the best medical treatments: they were the football stars of their day, with sponsorship deals and a share of the prize money. [continue]
From Sunspot.net, Digging up a modern way of tracking ancient text. (Update: page no longer available)
Imagine the difficulties of studying cuneiform. First, you have to learn to read the ancient Middle Eastern language, a feat that only a few hundred people worldwide have mastered.
Once you've learned to decipher cuneiform, which takes at least three or four years, tracking down reading material can be just as hard. The clay tablets are often discovered in pieces.
"One fragment could go to a museum in Britain, the other could be in Philadelphia and maybe the third is in Britain. You can spend a third of your time just doing footwork to try and track everything down," said Piotr Michalowski, a professor of Ancient Near Eastern Languages at the University of Michigan.
But a team of professors and scientists is working at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Howard County and on the Homewood campus in Baltimore to change that by creating an Internet library of scanned cuneiform tablets. (...)
"It's a very noble goal. We have to be able to see different shadings to identify poorly preserved cuneiform," said Robert Englund, a professor of Assyriology at UCLA and the director of the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative, which is cataloging tablets in two-dimensions.
But because cuneiform tablets generally have writing on all six surfaces, bringing the ancient writing into the 21st century won't be easy. [continue]
Related link:
Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative
Here's a bit from the Ancient Chinese Explorers page, which is part of Nova's Sultan's Lost Treasures site.
In 1999, New York Times journalist Nicholas D. Kristof reported a surprising encounter on a tiny African island called Pate, just off the coast of Kenya. Here, in a village of stone huts set amongst dense mangrove trees, Kristof met a number of elderly men who told him that they were descendants of Chinese sailors, shipwrecked on Pate many centuries ago. Their ancestors had traded with the local Africans, who had given them giraffes to take back to China; then their boat was driven onto the nearby reef. Kristof noted many clues that seemed to confirm the islanders' tale, including their vaguely Asian appearance and the presence of antique porcelain heirlooms in their homes.
If Kristof's supposition is correct, then this remote African outpost retains an echo of one of history's most astonishing episodes of maritime exploration.
Six centuries ago, a mighty armada of Chinese ships crossed the China Sea, then ventured west to Ceylon, Arabia, and East Africa. The fleet consisted of giant nine-masted junks, escorted by dozens of supply ships, water tankers, transports for cavalry horses, and patrol boats. The armada's crew totaled more than 27,000 sailors and soldiers. The largest of the junks were said to be over 400 feet long and 150 feet wide. (The Santa Maria, Columbus's largest ship, was a mere 90 by 30 feet and his crew numbered only 90.)
Loaded with Chinese silk, porcelain, and lacquerware, the junks visited ports around the Indian Ocean. Here, Arab and African merchants exchanged the spices, ivory, medicines, rare woods, and pearls so eagerly sought by the Chinese imperial court.
Seven times, from 1405 to 1433, the treasure fleets set off for the unknown. These seven great expeditions brought a vast web of trading links -- from Taiwan to the Persian Gulf -- under Chinese imperial control. This took place half a century before the first Europeans, rounding the tip of Africa in frail Portuguese caravels, 'discovered' the Indian Ocean. [continue]
Related Mirabilis.ca postings:
Ancient Chinese map of Africa
Manchu
From discovery.com, Ancient Roman Valentines Wrote of Lust, Suffering.
A recent comparison of sentiments in modern Valentine's Day cards with classical Roman poetry and love letters revealed the Romans held a very different view of love from that of today's couples.
For the ancient Romans, love was associated with lust, pain and suffering, a far cry from today's sentimental writings about caring and sharing, according to a Hamilton College press release. [continue]
Did you see the MSN picking on Opera thing I blogged a couple of days ago? I love Opera's response:
Two weeks ago it was revealed that Microsoft's MSN portal targeted Opera users, by purposely provided them with a broken page. As a reply to MSN's treatment of its users, Opera Software today released a very special Bork edition of its Opera 7 for Windows browser. The Bork edition behaves differently on one Web site: MSN. Users accessing the MSN site will see the page transformed into the language of the famous Swedish Chef from the Muppet Show: Bork, Bork, Bork!
In October 2001, Opera users were blocked from the MSN site. The event caused an uproar among Web users and MSN was forced to change their policy. However, MSN continues a policy of singling out its Opera competitor by specifically instructing Opera to hide content from users.
"Hergee berger snooger bork," says Mary Lambert, product line manager desktop, Opera Software. "This is a joke. However, we are trying to make an important point. The MSN site is sending Opera users what appear to be intentionally distorted pages. The Bork edition illustrates how browsers could also distort content, as the Bork edition does. The real point here is that the success of the Web depends on software and Web site developers behaving well and rising above corporate rivalry." [continue]
From Eurekalert, In-situ preservation of archaeological artefacts.
Preserving archaeological discoveries requires as much care as unearthing them. The army of terracotta soldiers uncovered at Xi'an, China, is a wonder to behold but shows the dangers of poor conservation arrangements. After several years of public display and exposure to air, the terracotta is drying out and the figures are crumbling. The curators cannot reverse the deterioration and many now regret the original excavations.
Leaving discoveries in situ now appears more and more attractive to archaeologists. But this approach brings its own problems. Isolated sites may not benefit from the specialised buildings and on-site expertise that museums have and each case is different.
Milan Kovac, a Slovene-Swedish architect, has spent most of his working life developing techniques and technology which can preserve ancient objects and monuments in near perfect condition at their site of discovery. He led the Swedish and Slovenien project partners in the EUROCARE ARCH IN-SITU project aimed at developing techniques to assess the needs of different sites and find customised solutions to the individual problems. The project brought together an array of experts including archaeologists, lighting engineers, materials scientists and microbiologists to tackle problems ranging from climate and weather through pollutants such as acid rain to careless tourists. [continue]
While looking for information about a favourite cheese, I discovered that making cheese at home probably isn't as hard as it sounds. These directions and photos show how goat's milk cheese is made; all I need now is a larger kitchen and a goat! Cheesemaking kits are available, and there are tons of cheesemaking recipes and other cheese info at Gourmet Sleuth.
Related link:
How to make cheese
Related book:
And That's How You Make Cheese!
Tonight I stumbled upon The Modern Antiquarian: "a massive resource for news, information, images, folklore & weblinks on the ancient sites across of the UK & Ireland". If you're interested in this sort of thing, you must go play with the Techno Map Browser. It requires Flash and takes a bit to load, but is it ever cool. Click on any map dot, and up come photos of the related ancient site, and information, too.
When Ben Hammersley describes email from a certain website as "like a weekly Christmas for the literati", we perk up our ears and scurry off to see the thing he's found. It's Byliner, which introduces itself this way:
Byliner allows you to keep up-to-date with your favourite writers. You can set up a personal list of writers and Byliner will look out for new articles by them. You can be sent daily or weekly emails containing links to these articles, or you can simply return here and they'll be waiting for you on this page.
An excellent find! I think I owe Ben a beer or two for this.
From the Guardian, French island monastery to be freed from mud.
The historic French island monastery of Mont-Saint-Michel is about to be freed from a decades-old build-up of sand, slime and sludge which has almost completely clogged up its magical setting.
State-appointed surveyors last week submitted studies showing an overwhelming majority of people living near the abbey, off France's north coast, support plans to scoop away half a century of silt and restore its natural channel.
A local government official said yesterday that the project, which would involve ripping up a road built to the islet in 1879 and replacing it with an electronic shuttle, could be under way by early next year and take up to four years. It could cost up to €134m (£88m).
"The reason why Mont-Saint-Michel is so magnificent is because at high tide, it really does look like an island," the official said. [continue]
A website about the project (It's called Official website of the syndicat mixte for the restoration of the maritime character of Mont St Michel; what a mouthful!) has lots more details.
Related links:
Photos of Mt St Michel
Mt St Michel page from Medievel art and Architecture
From The Scotsman, The Scots and the lost city of Egypt.
A Scottish archaeological expedition, operating on a shoestring budget, has uncovered an ancient Egyptian city, buried by the sands of time.
The expedition, which scrapes together £10,000 a year to maintain its dig near Memphis, the ancient Pharaonic capital, has written a new page of Egypt’s history.
For the newly-discovered town, situated near the necropolis of Saqqara, 15 miles from Cairo, is almost certainly where the workmen who built the pyramids lived with their families.
The presence of large temples, some nearly 200ft square, a number of tombs and the mix of large and small dwellings indicate a place where the wealthy lived alongside the artisan, a "real" town that will offer a unique insight into Egyptian life unaffected by the glamour of the royal and aristocratic classes. [continue]
Related links:
British archaeologists uncover ancient Egyptian town
From the National Geographic, Medieval Garden Intrigues British Archaeologists.
The buried remains of a 700-year-old garden at Whittington Castle in Shropshire, England, could substantially change historian's understanding of medieval gardens.
The 14th-century garden had one of the earliest and largest viewing mounts ever found in England, an unusual layout, and an elaborate ditched water system.
Viewing mounts were built to provide elevated views of a castle's garden, grounds, and surrounding landscape and symbolized the owner's wealth and high status.
The Whittington Castle mount, a 16-foot (5-meter) man-made mound, puzzled archaeologists for years. It was originally thought to be part of the castle's defenses or a viewing mount built later in the 16th or 17th century.
A view of Whittington Castle as seen from it's 14th-century garden mount. The 16-foot (5-meter), human-made structure puzzled archaeologists for years.The discovery by historical researcher Peter King of a reference in records dating to 1413 to "a garden with a ditch of water around it," led archaeologists to conduct a geophysical survey of the area. Employing techniques such as magnetometry, ground penetrating radar, and soil resistivity surveying to look below the site's surface, the archaeologists traced the buried outlines of the paths and rectangular plots of the garden. The findings suggest the mount and garden were built sometime between 1300 and 1349. [continue]
Related links:
English Heritage helps unlock secrets of unique medieval water garden at Shropshire Castle
Whittington Castle Preservation Trust
If you use Moveable Type to run your blog, you might be interested in Phil Gyford's directions for removing evil image links from Movable Type. Phil gives a couple of reasons why a person might prefer to have a text-based menu, and then he explains how to achieve this. What a good idea.
From Wessex Archeaology, Tests reveal Amesbury Archer ‘King of Stonehenge’ was a settler from the Alps.
The man who may have helped organise the building of Stonehenge was a settler from continental Europe, archaeologists say.
The latest tests on the Amesbury Archer, whose grave astonished archaeologists last year with the richness of its contents, show he was originally from the Alps region, probably Switzerland, Austria or Germany. The tests also show that the gold hair tresses found in the grave are the earliest gold objects found in Britain.
The grave of the Archer, who lived around 2,300BC, contained about 100 items, more than ten times as many objects as any other burial site from this time. When details were released, the media dubbed the Archer "The King of Stonehenge".
The grave was found three miles from Stonehenge, near Amesbury in Wiltshire, last May during an excavation by Wessex Archaeology, based nearby at Salisbury, in advance of the building of a new housing scheme and school.
The Archer was obviously an important man, and because he lived at the same time that the stones at Stonehenge were first being built, archaeologists believe he may have been involved in its creation. [continue]
The Amesbury Archer website has more information about the excavation, the finds, etc.
Related links:
King of Stonehenge found?
Amesbury's Bronze Age Archer
Was the Amesbury Archer the 'King of Stonehenge'?
The Amesbury Archer
‘The Amesbury Archer’: a well- furnished Early Bronze Age burial in southern England
What do you do when it seems like British Telecom will never get around to supplying broadband Internet access to your small town in the UK? You give up on them, of course, and set up wireless Internet access for the community instead. A Guardian article mentions several towns that are taking this approach.
Those interested in wireless Internet access will find several inspiring points, like the bit about Jon Anderson's MeshBox, "which uses WiFi and can be plugged in and connected to the net to provide wireless coverage for a local community without any technical configuration". And I'm particularly pleased to hear that free wireless access is available in most of Cardiff.
Related links:
An introduction to the MeshBox -- a Linux-powered wireless mesh repeater - from Linuxdevices.com
Become a wireless ISP: for £300 - more on the MeshBox from The Register
Community Wireless
The Murthly Hours is one of Scotland's great medieval treasures. Written and illuminated in Paris in the 1280s, it also contains full-page miniatures by English artists of the same period, and was one of the most richly decorated manuscripts in medieval Scotland. Medieval additions include probably the second oldest example of Gaelic written in Scotland.
The Murthly Hours website has lots of information about the book, and --oh joy!-- over 200 folios. Here's a fine one from the beginning of the office for the hour of Vespers (larger image here) and here's a page from The Hours of the Holy Spirit.
"You won't believe the words that didn't exist until the first English translations of the Bible." From an interview with Stanley Malless, author of Coined by God:
According to Coined By God: Words and Phrases That First Appear in English Translations of the Bible (published this month by W.W. Norton), puberty, appetite, and excellent are among more than 100 English words, phrases, rhythms, and idioms coined in Bible translations.
Authors Stanley Malless and Jeffrey McQuain researched the Wycliffe (1382), Tyndale (1526), Coverdale (1535), Geneva (1560), and King James (1611) translations for words or phrases that had no previous record in the English language. The terms they found—or didn't find—might surprise you. The book includes 131 brief entries that trace the items' origins and how they are now used. [continue]
I'm very fond of the Opera web browser for its mouse gestures, ability to block pop-up windows, the full screen display mode,... oh, I could go on and on. It's an outstanding browser, and a rather addictive one, too.
So when Microsoft goes to special trouble to make it look like Opera doesn't work on their MSN website, this is annoying. Why would they bother? Why don't they play fair, improve their own browser, and leave it at that? Instead, MSN is serving a special stylesheet to visitors who are using Opera 7. And that stylesheet seems to exist only to screw up the screen display for Opera users.
For the details about what's going on, see this page about why MSN doesn't work with Opera.
MSN.com won't play nice with others
MSN deliberately breaks Opera's browser, claims company
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When Baptist minister Dwight Moody visited an Orthodox church, he found himself
. . . in a cloud of incense, trying to figure out what the worshippers were chanting, why they rarely sat down and when the 9 a.m. service was going to end so that the 10 a.m. service could begin.
Everything was a mystery.
"When the main service ended they just kept going and had two more. ... I couldn't figure out what was going on," said Moody. "It was the most in-your-face, retrograde old stuff you could imagine. What fascinated me was that this was the total antithesis of everything that is happening in the contemporary church."
But he looked around and realized he wasn't the only visitor in the multi-ethnic crowd. Afterwards, a cluster of ex-Methodists helped him get oriented.
Moody had toured Orthodox churches in Jerusalem and elsewhere, but had never actually attended a service.
It was while he was driving home that he had a crazy idea.
During his Sunday adventures, Moody has seen his share of megachurches offering "seeker-friendly services" for media-soaked Americans.
These are the ones with shiny auditoriums that seat 5,000 or so people, complete with rock-concert quality sound and lights. Many have been shaped by the work of consulting firms that specialize in church design and marketing.
Moody thought to himself: How would a church-growth professional critique the smells, bells and sacraments he had just witnessed?
Before long, he had written a satirical "Survival Guide" for an imaginary "St. Pachomius Byzantine Orthodox Church."
Read the rest of this article at the Sacramento Bee website.
From the Moscow Times, Orthodox Church Takes On Rasputin.
A heated debate over Russia's first tsar, Ivan the Terrible, and the lecherous mystical healer Grigory Rasputin, who compromised the monarchy in its waning years, is threatening to create a split in the Russian Orthodox Church.
At issue is a campaign to canonize the two men that is rooted in a widely embraced belief that the monarchy fell victim to a plot masterminded by Jews and Freemasons.
Last week, a group of theologians, church historians and official Orthodox journalists de facto proclaimed what has long been discussed privately in church circles -- that the campaign is being carried out by a sect that is undermining the Russian Orthodox Church from within.
For a decade the Moscow Patriarchate has tolerated the canonization drive in order to avoid a schism at all costs. But the drive has now grown so strong that the Patriarchate is considering changing its policy. It is unclear, however, whether it would be able to muster enough strength and moral authority to overcome the canonization forces.
Orthodox Patriarch Alexy II has spoken out against the canonizations in unusually strong terms over the past year, stressing it would be impossible to canonize Ivan the Terrible, who ordered the deaths of several clergymen who were later sainted, and Rasputin, whose debauchery and dubious healing practices compromised the last imperial family of Tsar Nicholas II.
"This is madness!" the patriarch said in his first statement on the subject in December 2001. "What believer would want to stay in a church that equally venerates murderers and martyrs, lechers and saints?" [continue]
From Realbeer.com, Priest brews in washing machine.
A German priest has found a way to brew beer in his washing machine. Michael Fey, of Duisburg, built a computer interface into the machine to let it run an automatic brewing program.
The process includes turning and heating, but not spinning, according to a report in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung.
"A priest without alcohol, that's the wrong combination," he said. "Jesus didn't say, take this healthy camomile tea, he offered wine."
Fey brews 30 liter every six weeks, the legal limit for homebrewing in Germany. (...) He said he was inspired by the tradition of monks who brewed beer in a cauldron over a fire. To imitate the technique, he opted for a toploader washing machine. Before he started brewing, he ran it about 20 times to remove any soap residue.
The priest brews in accordance with the Reinheitsgebot, the German beer purity law that dictates only water, malt, hops (and now yeast) shall be used in making beer.
Found at Slashdot.
Related links:
Michael Fey's home page (Includes photos of beer making process, beer recipes, etc. In German, but pretty easy to understand.)
Reinheitsgebot - English translation of the German beer purity law, written in 1516.
From Expatica, A desirable pet for every home. [Sorry, linked page is no longer available.]
An octopus called Frieda at the Munich zoo has joined a small and elite but growing number of mollusks that have learned to open jar lids with their tentacles.
The four-month-old female treats visitors of the Hellabrunn Zoo to daily displays of her dexterity and has even learned to discern between empty jars and those containing her favourite snacks of wriggling shrimp, crabs and clams.
Like others of her undulating species that have mastered the feat, Frieda positions her entire body over the lid of a wide-mouthed jar and grasps the sides with the suckers on her 80-centimetre-long tentacles. Then with a mighty full-body twist, she wrenches the lid off.
Since her body almost entirely covers the jar it is difficult for observers to see quite how she does it.
But the results are obvious, as the lid wafts its way to the sandy bottom of her aquarium and Frieda contentedly slurps up the goodies from the open jar. [continue]
Related Mirabilis.ca content:
Strange locomotion
Octopuses have a preferred arm
Searching for ancient Persian warships
Octopus eyes open new electronic vision
Save the tree octopus
Einstein the octopus
Elsewhere on the web:
Octopus: Skills from Pulse of the Planet
Keeping the Octopus Occupied - from Shed Aquarium
From the BBC, Geologists investigate Trojan battlefield.
The whereabouts of Troy had long puzzled scholars. In ancient Greek times, Troy was said to be very close to the sea.
Then in the 1870s, the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann discovered what were believed to be the remains of an ancient city well inland from the coast of what is now Turkey.
Homer's tale relates to a time when a large inlet of the Aegean Sea reached towards Troy.
Scientists now believe that, over the centuries, this inlet became silted up with the deposits from rivers, pushing the coastline back to its present-day position.
Classics expert Dr John Luce said: "At Schliemann's excavation, he took the site of the camp mentioned by Homer to be on the beach which one sees today, but in the course of 3,000 years the great rivers of [Scamander and Simois] have brought down enormous quantities of silt which have advanced the coastline by miles."
Since 1977, Dr Luce has been involved with an international group of researchers who have taken part in a systematic drilling programme in an attempt to document the landscape changes.
Dr John Kraft, from the University of Delaware in the US, carried out the geological investigations, together with Turkish colleagues, drilling out samples of sediment from well below the surface.
"We drilled for 70 metres below the flood-plain surface and we found 70 metres of marine material," he explained.
Further drilling south on the plain revealed what the researchers believe to have been a major marine area, leading them to conclude that the sea had been pushed back to its present location by a build up of silt deposits in the delta.
"It was right in front of Troy that we were drilling a hole and seashells came out," Dr Kraft enthused. [continue]
From the CBC, Ancient feathers bring clues to Yukon's past.
Scientists say ancient artifacts from Yukon's melting glaciers are giving them new insights into the lifestyles of North America's first people.
They have identified feathers in ancient arrows that tell them about hunting practices of Yukoners 8,000 years ago. (. . .) Archeologists found the feathers on ancient arrows and hunting darts over the past few summers. They've been combing high mountain ice patches for evidence of ancient hunters. [continue]
Related info:
Thawing artifacts - Mirabilis.ca entry from January 17th, 2003.
Tour Yukon
The Quackatorium introduces "the fascinating and somewhat creepy world of antique medical quackery and electrotherapy devices." Photos and descriptions included.
Mount Athos is the centre of Eastern Orthodox Monasticism. Set in an area of outstanding natural beauty, it is a treasury which houses and guards many artefacts and monuments of religious, national and artistic value. It is also a ‘workshop’ where religious arts and crafts are still practised to this day, and where deep and genuine spirituality is allowed to flourish and bear fruit. As an institution Mount Athos is, and has been, the chief standard bearer of Orthodox Christianity.
That's from the Mount Athos site hosted by the National Technical University of Athens. The site includes a variety of information (sections on history, monasticism, etc) but the best part is the photos. Take a look at this vestibule (at Megisti Lavra), this lobby (at Xiropotamos), this church interior (at Iviron). Stunning.
Want to see more? The hyperlinked monastery names on this page lead to thumbnail image galleries. Perhaps you'd like to start with photos from the Holy Monastery of Megisti Lavra.
From Australia's ABC News online: Chocolate beer satisfies the best of both worlds.
A Danish beer brewer has launched a chocolate-flavoured dark beer which is a hit among tested beer drinkers and candy-lovers alike.
The drink is brewed with 10 grams of Valrhona dark chocolate per bottle; a dash of liquorice; and six different kinds of malt and has an alcohol content of 6.8 per cent.
The beer was first tested at 30 of Copenhagen's top restaurants in 2000.
It has been so well received, the company has decided to develop the project further, adding more chocolate to the mix.
The beverage reportedly goes down well with just about everything, complementing fish, meat and sweets.
The company has yet to decide whether it will export the product.
Last year the BBC ran an article about a chocolate beer that Meantime Brewing planned to launch in London. I wonder how that beer's selling, and whether our local liquor stores are likely to carry the British or the Danish chocolate beer. (Assuming the Danish brewer will export that beer after all.)
I love chocolate and beer, but . . . together?
From Kathimerini, Greece guards sunken treasures.
Hidden somewhere in an anonymous Athens office building lies an adventurer's ultimate dream - a modern-day map charting in detail more than 1,000 ancient shipwrecks still submerged in Greek seas.
For centuries, generations of treasure hunters have explored the depths around the Greek mainland and its offshore islands, but only since the development of new technologies have marine archaeologists been able to track down the hundreds of wrecks hidden in the idyllic waters. And they don't want to share the information with amateurs out for a quick buck. "These (shipwrecks) have been recorded electronically, they are everywhere," said Aikaterini Dellaporta, director of the Culture Ministry's Department of Underwater Antiquities. "If we ever publish the map, I fear that a lot of areas will have diving restrictions," she said.
The Greek authorities reward those who stumble across something of historical value by chance. Many treasures found in the past were discovered by fishermen or sponge divers. Treasure hunting is illegal in Greece and scuba diving is allowed only in a few restricted centers alongside 500 kilometers (310 miles) of the country's 15,000-kilometer coastline.
The authorities are concerned that antiquities found by amateur divers could end up on the black market, scooped up by shady collectors around the world. Greek marine archaeologists have documented and mapped more than 1,000 shipwrecks - the oldest near the island of Dokos in the Gulf of Argos - dating back to 2200 BC, as well as sunken cities, many submerged in ancient times by powerful earthquakes. [continue]
Have you ever dreamed of floating into the sky with a giant bouquet of colorful toy balloons? That's the idea behind cluster ballooning. The pilot wears a harness, to which a cluster of large, helium-filled balloons are attached. Control is achieved by releasing ballast to ascend, or by bursting balloons to descend.
The most famous cluster balloon flight took place in 1982. Larry Walters, with no prior ballooning experience, attached 42 helium weather balloons to a lawnchair, intending to go up a few hundred feet, but instead soaring to 16,000. Surprisingly, Walters survived his flight. However, both before and since Walters' adventure, experienced balloonists have experimented with helium balloon clusters, some rising to even greater heights.
This is from clusterballoon.org, where there are more details and photos. I still can't believe people actually do this. (Thanks to linkfilter for the URL.)
Related links:
Lawnchair Larry's honorable mention from the Darwin Awards.
Lawnchair Larry - truthorfiction.com
When you arrive at the door and see that the sanctuary knocker looks like this, you know that the rest of Durham Cathedral is bound to be interesting.
Durham's Cathedral Church of Christ and Blessed Mary the Virgin is the last resting place of: St Cuthbert - the greatest of the early English saints; St Bede - the finest scholar of his age; and the head of St Oswald - the warrior king and martyr. In addition, it was for centuries both home for a community of Benedictine monks and seat of the mighty Prince Bishops of Durham. (. . .) The cathedral building - a large part of which dates back some 900 years - is widely regarded as one of the most complete and perfect examples of Romanesque architecture still in existence.
That's from the introduction page of the Durham Cathedral and Castle website. The cathedral tour at that site is a treat: decently well organized and detailed. (There's even a glossary!)
Durham Cathedral contains the tombs of St Bede and St Cuthbert. There was a monastery at Durham for 450 years, until England's eternally annoying reformers forced the monastery's dissolution in 1540.
Related links:
Durham Cathedral (official website)
Durham Cathedral - great buildings online
photos of Durham Cathedral
Durham Cathedral History - from North East England History Pages
Interactive map of Durham Cathedral
The Venerable Bede - from the Catholic Encyclopedia
St Cuthbert - from the Catholic Encyclopedia
Next time you need a bedtime story, visit fairy tales for the erudite. Three re-worded fairy tales; much fun.
Years ago I read about Steve Roberts' bicycling adventures, in which he equipped a recumbent bicycle with a computer and satellite internet connection, then became a technomad. A friend mentioned that Steve has now taken to the water with his microship project. From the Microship FAQ page:
The Microships are a pair of canoe- scale amphibian pedal/solar/sail micro-trimarans, intended for open-ended exploration of coastal and inland waterways. Extensive computing and communication gear allows them to be connected more or less continuously to the Internet and to each other, as well as controlled by wireless handheld computers when the pilots are not on-board. Each boat is designed to carry one person, and with a brief conversion can enter "road mode" for human-powered overland transport.
An outdoor adventure with a constant internet connection would be quite pleasant, I think, particularly if one could hang out with sea otters.
Related links
photos of Steve with his bikes and boat
The Microship runs on Debian Linux.
From Behemoth to Microship: A Technomadic update - from mbari.org
Tech Nomad - from Wired.com
It turns out that Jesuits have been commemorated on postage stamps all around the world. The philatelic display of the Jesuit mission displays many of these stamps, neatly sorted into "what type of Jesuit?" categories:
Jesuit Mathematicians, Scientists and Astronomers,
Jesuit Artists and Jesuit Scholars,
Jesuit Founders and Schools, and
Jesuit Missionaries and Saints.
A very interesting browse.
From How Chinese Dishes Were Named page at the Chinese Imperial Cuisines website:
During the period of the Qin and Han Dynasties dishes were named for their major ingredients and cooking methods, During the Southern and Northern Dynasties, some dishes received fancy names.
When ordinary dishes were given beautiful names, it raised the attractiveness of the dishes and made diners happy. For example, sliced fish mixed with orange was called "powdered gold and minced jade," camels' foot simmered with hearts of rape was called "desert boat sails on green," quail and its eggs cooked together was called "mother and children get together," chicken cooked with bear's paw was called "palm controls the land," a dish of shrimp, sliced tender bamboo shoots and mushrooms was called "leaves of wind, frost and snow," a dish of sea cucumber, prawns, chicken breast, white fungus, and water chestnuts was called "butterflies swarm the peonies," and a dish of chicken and soft-shelled turtle was called "Xiang Yu the Conqueror says goodbye to his concubine." Fancy names reminded people of other things during the banquets and created a pleasant dining atmosphere.
Naming dishes is an artistic expression of the inventors' ideas. Often, dishes are named for natural phenomena and things that exist in nature: The four seasons, wind, flowers, snow, plants, gold, jade, gems, animals, and the moon have all been used in naming dishes to add beauty and appeal, to attract customers, and to increase diners' appetites. Some examples are the "wind lulling cake" (a pan-cake first baked on a pan, then deep-fat fried before eating), "snowflake shortcake" (similar to the sweet and salty square available in Beijing today), "snow-box vegetable" (a green vegetable steamed with milk cakes), "snowflake bean curd" (stir-fried minced bean curd). "lotus flower sliced chicken" (a chicken dish made of quick stir-fired egg white, sliced chicken breast and corn starch), "100-flower chess pieces" (flat noodles cut into pieces and served with soup), "squirrel-shaped croaker," and "black dragon spitting pearls" (sea cucumber braised with quail eggs). These names stress the taste, bright color, flavor, thick aroma and shape of the dishes.
If you've got a bit of time to browse, take a look at the rest of the Chinese Imperial Cuisines site. There are sections on the history of Chinese Imperial food, Chinese food and health building, nine different cuisines. . . . They've got a learn to cook Chinese dishes section, too.
More good news for Linux fans today from the Inquirer: Red Hat Linux to certify schoolkids.
A good Linux administrator can be hard to find but Red Hat has announced a cracking solution. Red Hat Academy is designed to allow schools, colleges and universities to teach an academic version of the Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) training and certification.
The scheme allows educators to deliver courses and administer the Red Hat Certified Technician (RHCT) exam. The certificates will count as a genuine Red Hat qualification, the sort of thing that students could find very useful when out looking for a job. The courses allow students to gain certified experience in subjects such as system administration, network engineering, C or C++ programming, databases, web development, PC repair and forensic computing.
Red Hat has set itself on a collision course with Microsoft's MSCE training program that the latter will find hard to compete against. "The costs and legal burden of proprietary software for education are becoming unsupportable" says Red Hat. The idea of school leavers starting their first job with an RHCE certificate already under their belt is sure to give Microsoft sleepless nights.
Red Hat hasn't stated how much it would cost per student to run a course but, given that the schools and colleges can give students free copies of Linux, the cost is likely to be low. From a teacher's point of view, the whole idea should seem wonderful, all the course materials are there already. The scheme is open to non-profit education establishments.
What a brilliant plan, and one that'll be very helpful for so many cash-strapped schools.
Related links:
Redhat.com
Red Hat Academy
From news.com: Study: Office surfers aren't slackers.
A new study finds that employees may waste time surfing on the job, but they tend to make up for it by working from home in their off hours. (...) The survey found that people with Web access at home and at work spend an average of 3.7 hours per week surfing sites for personal use at work. But they spend more time, 5.9 hours per week, logging on from home so they can work.
"The survey suggests companies should accept some personal use of the Internet at work as not only inevitable, but as positive to the organization," Roland Rust, director of the business school's Center for e-Service, said in a statement. "Totally segregating work from personal activities might result in a net decline in work performed, not to mention lower workplace morale." [continue]
From the CBC, Montreal English called a 'linguistic laboratory'.
Charles Boberg, who teaches linguistics at McGill University, has just finished a study on English spoken in various parts of Canada. Many of the regional differences are unsurprising to those who travel from sea to sea. On the Prairies, for instance, "chesterfield" is more common than "couch" or "sofa." In the East, "see- saw" rides above "teeter-totter."
Some people prefer "sneakers" to "running shoes," others "soda" to "pop." But it's in Montreal – where many people use "soft drink", perhaps because it is a literal translation of the the French "liqueur douce" – that some Canadian language scholars are really bubbling with enthusiasm over the nature of English. "It's so special because it's the only major city in North America where English is a minority language," says Boberg. A Montrealer, for instance, might say she's looking for "a three-and-a-half close to a dépanneur" instead of a "one bedroom apartment near a corner store."
"You had the same sort of intimate contact between English and French in 11th century England as you do today in Montreal," according to Boberg. "And that was responsible in the 11th century for the conversion of English from a basically pure Germanic language to a kind of a hybrid language."
Mumbai on the web has an article about the popularity of text messaging amongst the local deaf population.
Those little ‘msgs’ that flash across your mobile probably don’t thrill you the way they once did. But for Mumbai’s deaf population, Short Messaging Service (SMS) has become the single-most efficient form of communication.
Meher Sethna-Dadabhoy, coordinator of the Indian Sign Language at the Ali Yawar Jung National Institute for the Hearing Handicapped, Bandra, says a mobile phone has become essential for hearing-impaired, working people. "Once they begin working, their priority is not food or entertainment, it’s getting a mobile phone," she says.
The popularity of the SMS is easily explained: text is short and understood even by those not used to the English language. It’s also quick, and since most mobiles can be set on vibrator mode, the deaf user is easily alerted to a message.
"Once they start working, there is the need to use a mobile for communication. If they cannot afford to buy one, many try to at least share a phone," Sethna-Dadabhoy says. [continue]
From the BBC, EU backs poor farmers' seed use.
The European Union is proposing two far- reaching curbs on the power of the biotechnology industry.
It says companies seeking patents should have to say where they found any natural product they are appropriating.
The EU also says poor farmers should be free to continue their traditional practice of saving and exchanging seeds, even ones already patented. [continue]
I should certainly hope so. The absurdity of having some stooopid biotech company patent seeds, then forbid farmers from growning the same strains of crops those farmers have been growing for generations. . . well, it's outrageous.
"As humans emerged from the Stone Age, they built little cities. The discovery in central Italy of a 7,800-year-old settlement reveals the dawning of Western civilization." Discover Magazine's article about this underwater stone age city, La Marmotta, is now online.
The Times of India has a fascinating article about the history of coins. Here's one tidbit from Money talks: Ancient coins refute myths.
When Mohammad bin Tughlaq introduced copper currency in the 14th century, he made a critical mistake—he failed to put an official stamp on the coins. Soon, every housewife was melting her copper vessels, every mohalla had sprouted a mint.
"In those times, the face value of a coin was the same as its intrinsic value. Tughlaq’s idea of substituting silver coins with token copper ones was good, except that he was naive," explains Shailendra Bhandare, a numismatist with the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. Adds Subhadra Anand, history professor and principal of National College, "People paid their taxes with copper coins, but demanded their wages in silver. The treasury overflowed with counterfeits, and the economy eventually collapsed." Even today, it’s possible to stumble upon these 700- year-old fakes at Chor Bazaar—and with them a chapter of history. [continue]
Related links:
The archaic Indian punch marked coins - approaches to classification by Shailendra Bhandare
Tughlaq dynasty
Medieval India Coinage - from the Reserve Bank of India Monetary Museum. (Scroll about half way down the page. Under the "Coins of the Khiljis" header you'll find a section on Muhammed bin Tughlaq and his monetary experiments.)
The contribution of coins to the history of India
Indian coinage
Coin India: The Virtual Museum of Indian Coins
Coining a life-long passion - article about Sennen Duorado and his collection of Indian coins
Do you ever wonder how fast your Internet connection really is? The Internet connection speedometer will tell you.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Glory of Byzantium is exactly the right sort of website: a combination of information, and beautiful, beautiful images. Explore the works of art or the themes in Byzantine art. Then there's the history section, and a Byzantium through the ages timeline, too. Lovely.
From news.com.au, Vatican steps up Pius XII defence
The Vatican is stepping up its defence of World War II-era Pope Pius XII, criticised by Jews for failing to speak out against the Holocaust, as it prepares to release documents on pre-war Vatican-German relations next month.
An influential Italian Jesuit magazine close to the Vatican has published an article describing Pius' willingness to help members of the German resistance to the Nazis, supported by newly discovered Vatican documents in its own archives.
The magazine, Civilta Cattolica, also plans to publish a second article in coming weeks on the 1944 plot to kill Adolf Hitler, using more of the documents, said the articles' author, the Rev Giovanni Sale.
In addition, amid the increasing threats of a new war against Iraq, Pope John Paul II and his foreign minister, Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, have both quoted Pius in recent weeks, recalling his opposition to World War II and the "appalling" toll war takes. [continue]
Related Mirabilis.ca entry:
Vatican pre-WW2 archives
