From The Scotsman: Town marks the day Napoleon did not invade.

THE 200th anniversary of one of the most bizarre events in Scottish military history - in which thousands of troops were mobilised to fight a non-existent invasion by Napoleon near Berwick-upon-Tweed - will be marked in a special ceremony tomorrow.

Volunteers aged between 16 and 60, and from settlements scattered across 2,000sqm of Scottish countryside, set off to repel Napoleon Bonaparte's invading forces.

From the valleys of Liddesdale and Teviotdale, and across the hills of Berwickshire and Selkirkshire, any man fit enough to fight took part in a forced march across rough terrain after bidding an emotional farewell to their loved ones.

Barely 24 hours into the campaign, and with the massed ranks ready to take on all comers, their officers announced the entire mobilisation had been based on "sexed-up" information, and that Napoleon had never even left France. [continue]

From National Geographic: Rat Radar: Rodent Uses Natural "GPS".

Hikers trekking through unfamiliar territory are well advised to carry a compass, if not a GPS unit, to stay on course. Other animals are lucky enough to have complex navigational equipment in-built. New research reveals that Israel's blind mole rat (Spalax ehrenbergi) uses the Earth's magnetic field on long journeys, much like a compass, to continuously monitor and maintain its course.

But that's not where the burrowing rodent's abilities end. The mole rat also has an uncanny habit of burrowing around obstacles—such as ditches or concrete blocks—without ever coming in to physical contact with them. [continue]

From discovery.com: Incan Counting System Decoded?

The Inca invented a powerful counting system that could be used to make complex calculations without the tiniest mistake, according to an Italian engineer who claims to have cracked the mathematics of this still mysterious ancient population.

Begun in the Andean highlands in about 1200, the Inca ruled the largest empire on Earth by the time their last emperor, Atahualpa, was garroted by Spanish conquistadors in 1533.

Long been considered the only major Bronze Age civilization without a written language, they left mysterious objects that, according to the latest research, would have been used to store units of information.

Recent studies are investigating the hypothesis that elaborated knotted strings known as khipu contain a hidden written language stored following a seven-bit binary code. Nobody, however, had been able to explain the meaning of these geometrical tablets known as yupana.

Different in size and shape, the yupana had been often interpreted as a stylized fortress model. Some scholars also interpreted it as a counting board, but how the abacus would have worked remained a mystery.

"It took me about 40 minutes to solve the riddle. I am not an expert on pre-Columbian civilizations. I simply decoded a 16th century drawing from a book on mathematical enigmas I received as a Christmas present," engineer Nicolino De Pasquale said.

The drawing was found in a 1,179 page letter by the Peruvian Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala to the King of Spain. A simple array of cells consisting of five rows and four columns, the drawing showed one circle in the right cell on the bottom row, two circles in the next cell, three circles in the other one and five circles in the last cell of the row. The same pattern applied to the above rows.

According to De Pasquale, the circles in the cells are nothing but the first numbers of the Fibonacci series, in which each number is a sum of two previous: 1, 2, 3, 5.

The abacus would then work on a base 40 numbering system. [continue]

Related:
Inca used knots to record information - Mirabilis.ca, June 2003

From the Sydney Morning Herald: Pickled dragon mystery.

A pickled "dragon" that looks as if it might once have flown around Harry Potter's Hogwarts has been found in a garage in Oxfordshire, England.

The baby dragon, in a sealed jar, was discovered with a metal tin containing paperwork in old-fashioned German of the 1890s.

Allistair Mitchell, who was asked to investigate the dragon by a friend, David Hart, who discovered it in his garage, speculates that German scientists may have attempted to use the dragon to hoax their English counterparts at the end of the 19th century, when rivalry between the countries was intense. [continue]

You must go see the photo.

From the Scunthorpe Telegraph: Ancient moat holding water.

Historians have admitted they are ‘amazed’ an 800-year-old moat uncovered in North Lincolnshire last year is holding water - just as it should.

Conesby Moat, on the former Normanby Works site, was reclaimed last year, nearly 100 years after it was filled in with molten slag - and was feared lost forever. But boffins were astonished to find the site was not only intact, but also in fantastic condition and home to a number of historic relics and items, including a medieval shoe.

Since it was reclaimed the moat has gathered rainwater, but experts did not expect it to function properly because of its age.

However, three months after excavation work was completed, the moat is acting just as it did 800 years ago, much to the delight of officials.

When it was reclaimed last year, archaeologists claimed the discovery was one of the most important in recent years.

The moat dates back to the 13th century and records show it and the property it surrounded were built by the de Arci family.

It was believed to have been destroyed by molten iron works slag, but in 2000 historians discovered it was still intact.

Work began last year to reclaim it and workers uncovered medieval clothing, keys, coins, shoes and a wooden bowl. [continue]

Today's chuckle comes from Cory Doctorow over at BoingBoing: MSFT: don't click on links, type them in by hand.

Microsoft's crapware browser, Explorer, has more security vulnerabilities than my block has dope-dealers, but this is ridiculous. MSFT now advises its users to not click links, but rather to type them in by hand:

The most effective step that you can take to help protect yourself from malicious hyperlinks is not to click them. Rather, type the URL of your intended destination in the address bar yourself. By manually typing the URL in the address bar, you can verify the information that Internet Explorer uses to access the destination Web site. To do so, type the URL in the Address bar, and then press ENTER.

Hahahahaha!

Or, you could, you know, just Download Moz. Link

Good advice, although I'd go for Mozilla's Firebird browser. Here are some of the reasons why you should switch to Mozilla Firebird.

Anyway, back to BoingBoing. While you're there, see Protect your investment: buy open - another of Cory's entries. I love the stuff Cory posts. He's annoyed about many of the same things that tick me off, and he takes the time to blog about them. Most refreshing.

From The Independent: The Orthodox Church warms the Russian.

All at once there was a surge for the door. The Russian Orthodox priests in their heavy, brocaded vestments of gold and ivory had passed ceremoniously through it, accompanied by altar servers carrying candles, crucifix and an array of icons fixed to flags of solid gold.

Now the packed congregation funnelled itself dangerously after them. The great wooden doors of the monastery church creaked menacingly as their hinges were forced back. A blast of sub-zero air rushed into the incense-heady atmosphere of the tall-vaulted nave. Undeterred, shrunken old ladies - fat little bundles of wool and fur with sharp babushka elbows - pushed their way to the front.

There was, to Western eyes, something medieval about the atmosphere as the huge procession left the monastery cathedral in its solemn stampede. But this is modern Russia, which has in recent years been seized by a spasm of religious revival.

Before the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, there were some 54,000 churches on Russian soil. When Communism fell there remained barely 7,000 throughout the entire Soviet Union. But over the past decade there had been an extraordinary mushrooming of religious institutions. Churches are back up to 24,000 and monasteries, seminaries and theological institutes are springing up everywhere.

Raifa monastery in Kazan in the republic of Tartarstan is one of them. It was closed in 1928, and its monks executed before it was turned into a Soviet labour commune. Its cathedral, four other churches and tall, tiered bell tower fell derelict.

But then in 1991 a group of monks arrived and, using money from local people, began to rebuild it. Last week its 50 monks, who adhere to the old pre-Gregorian calendar, were celebrating Epiphany which in the Eastern church commemorates the baptism of the adult Christ. Which is why the huge congregation was making its way from the cathedral to a nearby lake. For Russia it was, at just minus 5C, considered warm. Even so, the lake was frozen solid and a large hole had been cut - as it has been every year for 400 years - to expose the dark, 30m deep waters beneath. Around had been built an open-air church of solid, clear ice walls, shrines, statues and a 15ft frozen crucifix, on whose transparent frame hung the figure of Christ carved in ice which was clouded and obscure.

As the priests and acolytes moved across the snowy surface a terrible deep thudding crack was heard. A dark fissure shot like lightening across the surface. The congregation, held on the bank by fur-hatted police, let out a collective gasp.

Heh. How's that for a cliff-hanger? You'll want to read the rest, of course.

Related:
Epiphany swim - Mirabilis.ca, January 2003.

Over at Dappled Things I read about a decomposing whale that exploded in Taiwan. This reminds me of another, and most hilarious, exploding whale story. Have you heard about how the Powers That Be dealt with a dead whale on an Oregon beach? Priceless. Here's part of Dave Barry's 1990 article about it:

I am absolutely not making this incident up; in fact I have it all on videotape. The tape is from a local TV news show in Oregon, which sent a reporter out to cover the removal of a 45-foot, eight-ton dead whale that washed up on the beach. The responsibility for getting rid of the carcass was placed upon the Oregon State Highway Division, apparently on the theory that highways and whales are very similar in the sense of being large objects.

So anyway, the highway engineers hit upon the plan -- remember, I am not making this up -- of blowing up the whale with dynamite. The thinking here was that the whale would be blown into small pieces, which would be eaten by sea gulls, and that would be that. A textbook whale removal.

So they moved the spectators back up the beach, put a half-ton of dynamite next to the whale and set it off. I am probably not guilty of understatement when I say that what follows, on the videotape, is the most wonderful event in the history of the universe. First you see the whale carcass disappear in a huge blast of smoke and flame. Then you hear the happy spectators shouting "Yayy!" and "Whee!" Then, suddenly, the crowd's tone changes. You hear a new sound like "splud." You hear a woman's voice shouting "Here come pieces of... MY GOD!" Something smears the camera lens.

Later, the reporter explains: "The humor of the entire situation suddenly gave way to a run for survival as huge chunks of whale blubber fell everywhere." One piece caved in the roof of a car parked more than a quarter of a mile away. Remaining on the beach were several rotting whale sectors the size of condominium units. There was no sign of the sea gulls, who had no doubt permanently relocated in Brazil.

You'll find that excerpt from Dave Barry's article at the Exploding Whale page. Better yet, they have the television news report of the explosion for you to watch.

Archeologists discover evidence of ancient culture in Mexico City. From the CBC:

Archeologists announced Wednesday they have discovered an ancient Teotihuacan settlement on a hill in central Mexico City, dozens of kilometres from the pyramids where Teotihuacan - long regarded as a mother culture of central Mexico - flourished nearly 2,000 years ago.

The discovery in December of structures and tools on a hill just behind the city's landmark Chapultepec Castle suggests Teotihuacan spread and influenced Mexico City even earlier than previously thought. Teotihuacan, 50 kilometres north of Mexico City, remains largely a mystery today, and it was so even for the Aztecs, who are credited with founding Mexico City in the 1300s.

One of the largest metropolises in the world around the time of Christ, Teotihuacan had an estimated 150,000 inhabitants, and influenced art and architecture as far away as the Yucatan peninsula, but had been abandoned and crumbling for centuries by the time of the Aztecs.

The artifacts may push the date of Mexico City's founding back to the classic Teotihuacan period of between AD 300 and 600. [continue]

Here's another article about Aramaic in Cyprus: Aramaic, language of Jesus, lives on in Cyprus.

KORMAKITI, CYPRUS – If the people of this remote village were to travel back to Jesus' time and hear him preach, they wouldn't need an interpreter to understand the Sermon on the Mount or the parable of the prodigal son.

Spoken in the Middle East during Jesus' time, Aramaic is still used in everyday life by most of the 130 elderly Maronite Catholics in Kormakiti, which overlooks the Mediterranean Sea.

This could be good news for Mel Gibson. If the megastar has trouble finding an audience for "Passion," his upcoming movie about the final hours of Jesus' life on Earth with dialogue mostly in Aramaic, due to be released next month, the folks here should have no trouble with the original biblical tongue.

Still, Kormakiti's unique diluted version of Aramaic, called Cypriot Maronite Arabic, is in danger of extinction. Once the thriving center of the island's Maronite community, Kormakiti now has the eerie atmosphere of a ghost town. [continue]

More about Aramaic:
Aramaic language - Wikipedia
Where the language of Christ lives - Mirabilis.ca, December 2003
Aramaic: almost extinct, but still spoken in Maalula - Mirabilis.ca, March 2003

The Passion of Christ movie:
The Passion of the Christ - thepassionofthechrist.com
Passion of Christ - passion-movie.com

From the Designer Snowflakes page at caltech.edu:

While studying the physics of how snow crystals form and grow, I also became interested in the art of growing synthetic snowflakes. These are basically identical to what falls from the sky, except they are made in the lab under controlled conditions. I also like to call them designer snowflakes, since in principle one could design whatever shape one wanted ... within the bounds of the crystal-growing physics, of course.

Why make designer snowflakes? Partly it's the challenge of reproducing what's found in nature, and perhaps doing better than nature. There's also a sound scientific motivation for making designer snowflakes, since often the best way to understand a phenomenon is to try and reproduce it in the lab. One might even learn something interesting about crystal growth along the way. [continue]

Fascinating information and photos. And who can resist sections like Better Snowflakes through Chemistry?

From the BBC: Artefact recalls witches' shadow.

A chilling reminder of our superstitious past has been unearthed from a rural farmhouse.

The "witch bottle" was discovered buried in old foundations in the Lincolnshire village of Navenby.

Containing bent pins, human hair and perhaps urine, the bottles were supposed to protect a household against evil spells.

Dated to about 1830, it is evidence the fear of dark forces persisted far longer than previously thought.

Discovered by accident during building work, the artefact initially sat unrecognised in a cupboard. Jo Butler, the house's owner, described what they found.

She said: "The builder was breaking up foundations with a pick and he came across the bottle.

"We saw it contained metal bits and this kind of strap but had never heard of witch bottles and put it under the stairs."

It was only recognised when taken to a open evening held by the archaeology department of Lincolnshire County Council. [continue]

Related:
The Reigate witch bottle - archaeology.co.uk

Dear God, give us a flood of water. Let it rain tomorrow and always. Give us plenty of little slugs and other luscious things to eat. Protect all folk who quack and everyone who knows how to swim. Amen.

The little ducks' prayer often comes to mind here, as it rains so very much in Vancouver.

The prayer was written by Carmen De Gasztold, and I've never known any more about it than that. (Somehow it wound up in my commonplace book years ago.) A web search suggests that the excerpt above is probably from Prayers from the Ark and The Creatures' Choir.

From Eurekalert: Earliest evidence of humans affecting aquatic ecology in Canada, United States.

(Kingston, ON) – New findings from Canadian scientists dispel the belief that European settlers were the first humans to cause major changes to Canadian and U.S. freshwater ecosystems.

A University of Toronto-led, multidisciplinary team including researchers from Queen's, McGill, and University of Ottawa show for the first time that prehistoric Inuit whalers dramatically altered high Arctic pond ecosystems through their hunting practices eight centuries ago – a legacy that is still evident today. [continue]

From The Telegraph: Repair clue links Kingmaker to medieval ship.

Britain's sole surviving medieval ship may have belonged to Warwick the Kingmaker, one of the most powerful figures of the 15th century, according to new evidence.

Historians working on the Newport ship, recovered in South Wales two years ago, believe it was owned by the Earl of Warwick during the War of the Roses.

A letter by the Earl reveals that he ordered repairs on an ocean going ship in Newport in 1469.

The date and place match repairs being carried out on the medieval boat, which is regarded as the most important maritime find since the Mary Rose.

Bob Trett, a historian and former curator of Newport Museum, who made the connection, said evidence linking the ship and Warwick was circumstantial but persuasive.

He believes the medieval boat is one of Britain's most important historical treasures.

"Not only was it found fairly intact, but it comes from a period where no other ships of this type have been recovered," he said. [continue].

Related:
Medieval ship's ‘pirate’ past - BBC

From nature.com: Pollen traces shipwrecks' roots.

How do you work out where an ancient ship was originally built? Try looking at the pollen caught in the joints of the wreck, suggests a French ecologist.

Serge Muller, of the University of Montpellier II in France, says the range of pollen found on a shipwreck gives a snapshot of the plant species local to the boat's birthplace. The sticky resin used to seal a boat's hull can catch and trap pollen, giving the boat a biological ‘birth certificate’.

"I see tremendous potential for this method," says Robert Hohlfelder, an archaeologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder. "We're always searching for new ways to investigate shipwrecks. At the moment it's almost impossible to do."

Muller has used the method to trace the origins of a shipwreck off the south coast of France. The Baie-de-l'Amitié, a 2,000-year-old wreck that now lies near the port of Cap d'Agde, was constructed east of Italy, he concludes. [continue]

Here's the latest on the Voynich manuscript, from The Guardian: Secret of historic code: it's gibberish. Is anybody surprised?

... now a British academic believes he has uncovered the secret of the Voynich manuscript, an Elizabethan volume of more than 200 pages that is filled with weird figures, symbols and writing that has defied the efforts of the twentieth century's best codebreakers and most distinguished medieval scholars.

According to computer expert Gordon Rugg of Keele University, the manuscript represents one of the strangest acts of encryption ever undertaken, one that made its creator, Edward Kelley, an Elizabethan entrepreneur, a fortune before his handiwork was lost to the world for more than 300 years. (...)

‘The manuscript exhibits so much linguistic structure that a hoax appears to require almost as much sophistication as an unbreakable code,’ says Rugg in his paper.

But now the computer expert and his team believe they have found the secret of the Voynich manuscript.

They have shown that its various word, which appear regularly throughout the script, could have been created using table and grille techniques. The different syllables that make up words are written in columns, and a grille - a piece of cardboard with three squares cut out in a diagonal pattern - is slid along the columns.

The three syllables exposed form a word. The grille is pushed along to expose three new syllables, and a new word is exposed.

Rugg's conclusion is that Voynichese - the language of the Voynich manuscript - is utter gibberish, put together as random assemblies of different syllables.

‘People thought the manuscript had great meaning - some form of alchemy, perhaps,’ said Rugg.

‘In fact, it was created by Kelley as a deception to make him money. He succeeded. The Voynich manuscript was the Elizabethan equivalent of the Hitler diaries.’ [continue]

From foodnavigator.com: Basil and thyme oils combat foodborne bacteria.

Previous research has shown that thyme and basil have antimicrobial potential. Building on this research, scientists at Ghent university in Belgium opted to investigate the antimicrobial impact of thyme and basil essential oil and their major constituents towards Shigella.

According to the researchers who published their findings in the February issue of Food Microbiology, thyme essential oil and its major constituents thymol and carvacrol decontaminated Shigella inoculated lettuce.

They also found that thyme and basil essential oil, and their major compounds thymol, estragol, carvacrol, linalool and p-cymene, inhibited Shigella in an agar diffusion method. [continue]

This ranks right up there with the use of vinegar as a disinfectant in medieval times. Who knew?

Related:
Shigellosis
FSNET April 2, 2003

From Pigeons and Pottage, an article about the dawn of Tudor cooking:

Think of Tudor times, and an image of Henry VIII might come to mind, feasting on huge sides of meat and slinging them over his shoulder after stripping them to the bone. His table would be laden with roasted exotic birds being torn roughly by revellers, their leather flagons overflowing with ale and cider.

But the image is a false one, with table manners 500 years ago absolutely exemplary for both the rich and the poor. Much importance was placed on ‘aping your betters’ so monarchs would have to be the best behaved of all when it came to eating and drinking. Henry and his like may have the reputation of being oafish at mealtimes, but it is thoroughly undeserved, according to Ian Pearce of the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum. "That awful Hollywood image of throwing bones over shoulders is a load of rubbish," he said. "Table etiquette was very particular and Henry would have had to behave better than anyone."

In fact the Tudors took every aspect of food and drink seriously; moving on hugely from the more basic medieval practices. For example, ‘plates’ made of slabs of stale bread were replaced with wooden platters for the less well-off houses and pewter ones for the wealthy. Though forks were still not in use, with people eating mainly with their fingers, knives were put to good use. Breads, puddings and pies were always cut up in a particular way, and people were very careful to ‘mind their fingers’ when dishing out food. "Say there was pie for example - when you were cutting it up you wouldn't let your fingers touch anyone else's slice. You would wash your hands before and after eating with rosewater too," added Ian. [continue]

So, Windows users. Would you like to try Linux, just for a few minutes, and without installing anything on your computer? Here's your chance. From A Taste of Linux at ExtremeTech.com:

...there are Linux versions out there that let you just pop a live CD in, boot your computer, and go. They give you a chance to use Linux without the headache of installing everything. If you're totally unfamiliar with Linux, these offerings are a great way to get a taste of Linux and use some Linux-based applications. If you decide you don't like Linux, just take the CD out, reboot your machine and you'll be back in Windows once more. [continue]

From scotsman.com: Life on earth began in... Stonehaven.

It has gone down in history as the town that invented the deep-fried Mars bar and the fountain pen, but now it appears a windswept Scottish coastal town is no less than the cradle of civilisation.

Scientists have been left slack-jawed with wonder at the discovery that life as we know it began in Stonehaven after a fossil picked up in the town last year was confirmed as the oldest air-breathing creature ever discovered.

The millipede is less than 1cm long but lived around 420 million years ago, when Aberdeenshire was part of a giant continent spanning the equator.

The find is enormously significant because it is the earliest evidence of a creature living on dry land rather than in the oceans. The Stonehaven millipede is 20 million years older than anything previously found on terra firma and has forced scientists to adjust their understanding of when life forms crawled from the sea and land life as we know it began.

It is also a welcome boost to the collective self-esteem of Stonehaven, whose 10,000 residents were resigned to being forever blamed for giving the world deep-fried confectionery. [continue]

I love dramatic cloud days, don't you? Here is the view from downtown Vancouver this afternoon, looking north across the harbour.

From the Globe and Mail: Go ahead and eat the pie — just work it off.

Forget the Atkins diet. Try the Amish diet.

New research shows that Old Order Amish -- a religious group who shun technology -- have an obesity rate of only 4 per cent despite a meat and potatoes (and pie) diet.

Their secret: physical activity in the form of hard work and walking. Lots of walking.

The study, published in this month's edition of the journal Medicine & Science & Exercise, found that Amish men walk an average of 18,425 steps daily, and women an average of 14,196 steps. [continue]

Walking and pie. What better plan?

(Thanks to the Dominion Weblog for the link.)

This entry used to link to a really fun Quicktime video thing. Unfortunately, the item is no longer available. Sorry, kids. It was fun while it lasted.

A Guardian article for logophiliacs: From OED to poetry.

Take the spines of encyclopedias and dictionaries. Sometimes the summaries they give of their contents are flatly austere: A to Auto, Turk to Zygo, and so on. But where more of the first and last words are revealed, there are sometimes conjunctions that create a kind of poetry. The Encyclopaedia Britannica that was still around in the 1960s, with its Daisy to Education and its Sarsaparilla to Sorcery, has been superseded, but the new one has its pleasures too: Chicago to Death, Menage to Ottawa, and even Excretion to Geometry. Nor is the Encyclopedia Americana outdone, with its Egusquiza to Falsetto; Photography to Pumpkin; Sulphur to Tramways, aerial; and its gloriously evocative Trance to Venial sin.

Even that is surpassed by the Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, which gets into its stride in volume 2 (BBC to Calypsography), picks up the pace with volume 7 (Hat to Intervacuum) and then offers in the space of eight volumes Poise to Quelt, Quemadero to Roaver, Soot to Styx, Su to Thrivingly, Thro to Unelucidated and, most intellectually stimulating of all, Unemancipated to Wau-Wau.

Logic tells us that in each case the first and last words have nothing to do with each other. Yet the sense that there must be a connection persists. Surely the BBC, with its all-seeing eye on the world, must dabble from time in calypsography? (Perhaps; perhaps not. Calypsography has nothing to do with calypsos but means, the OED says, steel engraving; it's a "bad formation" from Greek). Yet Thro seems a solid example of something that's unelucidated, at least until you get round to looking it up, while the Wau-Wau sound like a race ripe for emancipation. [continue]

From the International Herald Tribune: A master pursues the secrets of cheese.

PARIS — Mother Noella Marcellino likes cheese a lot, though what intrigues her most is not its middle but its rind. And on the rind her delight is the Geotrichum candidum fungus, Gc for short, that flourishes on the Bethlehem cheese made by her abbey, Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Connecticut.

Strains of Gc are also found in such cheeses as Reblochon and Brie, doing good work in enhancing flavor and repelling pathogens. They are so diverse that they even vary from one cheese cave to another in the Auvergne - Mother Noella found 14 different strains among seven St. Nectaire-cheese makers - and all in all they testify to the richness of creation, as Mother Noella summarized in her doctoral dissertation, "Biodiversity of Geotrichum candidum Strains Isolated from Traditional French Cheese." She is popularly known as The Cheese Nun.

Mother Noella doesn't much like the sobriquet, finding it, well, a bit cheesy, and wasn't terribly happy that it is the title of Pat Thompson's excellent TV documentary soon to be shown on the Public Broadcasting Service in the United States. It was the prioress of her convent who told her to go with The Cheese Nun because it is catchy and fungi alone are not immediately appealing. The prioress knows about such things because as Dolores Hart she was a Hollywood star famed for giving Elvis his first screen kiss. "I think it's great," Mother Dolores told her. "No one's going to watch a film about biodiversity." [continue].

Related:
Abbey of Regina Laudis
Nun has cheese down to a science
Nun's cheese expertise wins blessing of French

Remember the story of Percy Schmeiser, the Saskatchewan farmer who is fighting Monsanto? Percy's case is now before the Supreme Court of Canada. From the Globe and Mail: Small Canadian farmer fights biotech giant.

OTTAWA — The case of a small-time farmer from the remote Saskatchewan plains, now before Canada's highest court, may represent the best chance yet for foes of the global biotech revolution to get the law on their side.

Agribusiness giant Monsanto Co. sued the farmer, Percy Schmeiser, after its agents found biotech canola growing in his fields in 1997. It contends he replanted seeds from those plants without paying a technology fee of about $12 an acre.

But Mr. Schmeiser says the Monsanto canola, originating from neighbours' fields, got onto his 1,400 acres without his involvement or knowledge. The 73-year-old farmer says the contamination of his crops destroyed a lifetime of work improving them, so it's hardly right that he would have to pay for Monsanto's seed. [continue]

Related:
PercySchmeiser.com
More Monsanto stupidity - from Mirabilis.ca, August, 2003
Blowin' in the Wind - shared-vision.com. ("In 1997, wind blew Monsanto’s genetically engineered Roundup Ready canola seeds onto Percy Schmeiser’s farm. His life has been a living hell ever since.")
Percy Schmeiser vs. Monsanto - commonground.ca

My friend Lawrence pointed out an interesting article on the economist.com site: Putting animals to good use.

Attempts to control coyotes have concentrated on culling them. But coyotes have earned the respect they get from those who know them best: despite all efforts to slaughter them, they survive across a huge swathe of North America, munching on sheep with abandon. The country they share with the sheep is often open prairie, and hard to police. (...)

More effective solutions are clearly needed, and a new application of the ancient role of domestic animals as guardians provides one. It turns out that alpacas, llamas and donkeys have plenty of coyote-scaring power. Being herbivores, they eat the same fodder as sheep, and have no desire to dine out on their charges. Llamas and alpacas are naturally inquisitive, and intolerant of intrusion into their space. And the wily coyote is actually a small creature, easily intimidated, which usually hunts alone. Any old llama or alpaca is more than a match for it.

This is no isolated example of the imaginative use of animals in an age that usually seeks a technological solution to even the simplest of problems. In Florida, for example, attempts have been made to press the local manatees into service to devour the water hyacinths that choke the waterways. These amiable sea-elephants, which eat about 10-15% of their weight each day, can be used instead of herbicides, which can do great damage in an environment already fragile and much-abused. It is not a perfect solution: water hyacinths grow faster than the manatees can eat them, they sprout compensatory leaves for every leaf consumed and, alas, they are not the manatees' favourite food. Even so, with proper management, the manatees can do a lot of good.

In other places, too, local creatures have been recruited to do some of the work more usually done by men or machines. In Mozambique a Belgian charity called Apopo has deployed African giant pouched rats to help clear some of the 500,000 landmines that litter the landscape after the country's long years of civil strife. Elsewhere dogs have sometimes been used to clear the detritus of war. But rats are lighter, so less likely to detonate a buried mine, and smaller, so easier to transport. They also work harder and learn faster than dogs. [continue]

From the Guardian:

It is Burns Day this Sunday and a good many Scots will be honouring the world's greatest bard with a trip to the chippie for the world's greatest fast food: the deep-fried haggis. [continue]

And I bet you thought regular haggis sounded disgusting enough.

Pause for just a moment and look at this incredible 360 degree view of the interior of St Basil's Cathedral, Moscow. (Requires Quicktime.) Isn't that just amazing?

Here's a bit about the cathedral, from moscow-taxi.com:

The famous St. Basil's Cathedral was commissioned by Ivan the Terrible and built on the edge of Red Square between 1555 and 1561. Legend has it that on completion of the church the Tsar ordered the architect, Postnik Yakovlev, to be blinded to prevent him from ever creating anything to rival its beauty again. (He did in fact go on to build another cathedral in Vladimir despite his ocular impediment!) The cathedral was built to commemorate Ivan the Terrible's successful military campaign against the Tartar Mongols in 1552 in the besieged city of Kazan. Victory came on the feast day of the Intercession of the Virgin, so the Tsar chose to name his new church the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Virgin on the Moat, after the moat that ran beside the Kremlin. The church was given the nickname "St. Basil's" after the "holy fool" Basil the Blessed (1468-1552), who was hugely popular at that time with the Muscovites masses and even with Ivan the Terrible himself. St. Basil's was built on the site of the earlier Trinity Cathedral, which at one point gave its name to the neighboring square.

St. Basil's is a delightful array of swirling colors and redbrick towers. Its design comprises nine individual chapels, each topped with a unique onion dome and each commemorating a victorious assault on the city of Kazan. In 1588 the ninth chapel was erected to house the tomb of the church's namesake, Basil the Blessed. The church's design is based on deep religious symbolism and was meant to be an architectural representation of the New Jerusalem - the Heavenly Kingdom described in the Book of Revelation of St. John the Divine. The eight onion dome-topped towers are positioned around a central, ninth spire, forming an eight-point star. The number eight carries great religious significance; it denotes the day of Christ's Resurrection (the eighth day by the ancient Jewish calendar) and the promised Heavenly Kingdom - the kingdom of the eighth century, which will begin after the second coming of Christ. The eight-point star itself symbolizes the Christian Church as a guiding light to mankind, showing us the way to the Heavenly Jerusalem and it represents the Virgin Mary, depicted in Orthodox iconography with a veil decorated with three eight-pointed stars. The cathedral's star-like plan carries yet more meaning - the star consisting of two superimposed squares, which represent the stability of faith, the four corners of the earth, the four Evangelists and the four equal-sided walls of the Heavenly City. [continue]

Related:
St Basil's Cathedral - Wikipedia
Declan McCullagh's photos of St Basil's Cathedral

From newscientist.com: Big chill killed off the Neanderthals.

It is possibly the longest-running murder mystery of them all. What, or even who, killed humankind's nearest relatives, the Neanderthals who once roamed Europe before dying out almost 30,000 years ago?

Suspects have ranged from the climate to humans themselves, and the mystery has deeply divided experts. Now 30 scientists have come together to publish the most definitive answer yet to this enigma.

They say Neanderthals simply did not have the technological know-how to survive the increasingly harsh winters. And intriguingly, rather than being Neanderthal killers, the original human settlers of Europe almost suffered the same fate. [continue].

An Ontario museum has used forensic reconstruction techniques to reveal the face of a mummy. From the CBC: Scans help reveal mummy's shrouded face.

CHATHAM, ONT. - A museum in southern Ontario unveiled the mysterious face of a mummy on Friday.

The Chatham-Kent museum waited 60 years to put a face to the mummy. (...)

Until recently, little was known about the woman in the sarcophagus. X-rays showed she was likely in her 30s when she died. Her small size suggested a childhood illness, but she was otherwise in good health.

Last spring, researchers at the University of Western Ontario in London conducted more sophisticated tests. CT (computed tomography) and laser scans unravelled more of the mystery.

"Our job is to work on this historically anonymous person to create what we call an osteo-biography," said UWO anthropology Prof. Andrew Nelson.

Researchers first tried to piece together the story of her life through her bones.

The next step involved reconstructing the face without unwrapping the mummy – as far as the team knows it is the first time this has been done. [continue]

Thanks to Cynthia for writing to tell me about this story. (Oh, and Cynthia: my reply to your email bounced. I did try!)

Related:
Technology reveals mummy - London (Ontario) Free Press
Ancient Egyptian ‘reborn’ in London - London (Ontario) Free Press

From discovery.com: DNA Results Could ID Columbus.

The long-standing cultural dispute over Christopher Columbus' final resting place could take a new turn as further DNA tests are carried out by an Italian university.

DNA technology will be applied by the University of Pavia's laboratories to fragments of bones now kept in a box in the university's library. The remains come from Santo Domingo, one of Columbus' debated burial places.

"They were given by the bishop of Santo Domingo to Pavia University in 1880, as it was thought that Columbus studied here. They could be enough to conduct DNA tests," Anna Maria Campanini Stella, director of the university library, told Discovery News.

Though the analysis would destroy the remnants, the Italian investigation could solve forever Columbus' riddle. Is Columbus buried in the Gothic cathedral of Santa Maria in Seville, the city from where he set sail in 1492, or is he resting under a cross-shaped lighthouse in Santo Domingo, where he made his historic landfall in the New World?

The man who discovered America travelled as much after his death as in his life. In his testament, Columbus requested his remains to be taken to what is today the Dominican Republic. Yet he was initially buried in the Castilian city of Valladolid, where he died on May 20, 1506. [continue].

From the Moscow Times: Secrets of the Past Lie Beneath the Baltic Sea.

TALLINN, Estonia -- Vello Mass leans across a wood-spoked ship's wheel and scans the horizon of the Baltic Sea -- where, he says, the wrecks of thousands of ships from throughout the ages lie beneath the cold, gray waves waiting to be found.

"There are hundreds of Viking ships out there, hundreds of old trading ships, hundreds of warships," muses the captain turned researcher, called the Baltic's Sherlock Holmes in his native Estonia for locating so many sunken ships. "The Baltic's an archaeological paradise." [continue]

Bid to find lost Persian armada. From the BBC:

Archaeologists have embarked on an epic search for an ancient fleet of Persian ships that was destroyed in a violent storm off Greece in 492 BC.

The team will search for sunken remains of the armada - sent by Persian king Darius to invade Greece - which was annihilated before reaching its target.

Waters off Mount Athos in northern Greece, the site of the disaster, have yielded two helmets and a spear-butt.

Experts will return to the site in June to look for more remains of the fleet.

"This is an extraordinarily target-rich area for ancient shipwrecks," Dr Robert Hohlfelder, a maritime archaeologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, US, told BBC News Online.

"Usually, when shipwrecks are found, the archaeologists are asked to create the history around them. We have the history, now we've got to find the shipwrecks." [continue].

What you need now is a glass of grappa, to sip while you listen to Luciano Pavarotti singing Elephants, yeah! Requires Flash; turn up speakers.

From BBC: Historic finds halt £2.4m road.

A 17th Century coin and the remains of an ancient cobbled street and tower have been found during a road building worked in the mid Wales town of Brecon.

Work near Market Street and Watergate Street has been temporarily suspended by Powys County Council while investigations are carried out.

The Queen Anne coin was found as work was carried out on the third phase of the town's £2.4m inner relief road.

The tower is believed to date from the 14th or 15th Century. [full article]

You'd think somebody would have photographed the coin for the BBC article, wouldn't you? Apparently not, but the links below provide photos of other Queen Anne coins.

Related links:
Queen Anne shilling coin - coinoftheyear.com
Queen Anne full gold guinea, 1711 - historyincoins.com
Replicas of Queen Anne crown coin - jastown.com
British coinage - wikipedia.org

From Popular Mechanics: How To Control A Runaway Camel.

You're about to park your camel (your car's in the shop) by a meter on Seventh Avenue in Manhattan. But, before you can dismount and feed your pocketful of quarters for 10 minutes' parking, your camel is startled by a bus and bolts. What should you do? [continue]

How can you start your week without knowing this?

Similarly essential answers are waiting for you at the Worst-Case Scenarios website, where you can learn how to wrestle free from an alligator, how to jump from a building into a dumpster, and how to fend off a shark.

Related:
More worst-case scenarios - popularmechanics.com

From SFGate.com:Olympic work sends archaeologists on treasure hunt.

A cloud of white dust drifts over Athens' former international airport as a crew using heavy equipment builds facilities for this summer's Olympics.

A few paces away, another team -- with only brushes and garden tools -- carefully digs into the past.

The 2004 Games have been a boon for archaeologists, bringing the biggest single antiquities treasure hunt in Athens and surrounding areas. Experts rushed in trying to beat the bulldozers at dozens of Olympic-related sites -- from sports venues to highways.

The finds so far range from prehistoric settlements to 2,500-year-old cemeteries to ruins from the Roman period, when Emperor Theodosius abolished the Olympics in A.D. 394. Christianity had taken root, and he deemed the games to be pagan. [continue]

Ancient roots of cream tea discovered. From The BBC:

Historians in Devon have unearthed evidence which they claim proves the traditional cream tea originated in the county some 1,000 years ago.

Local historians have been studying ancient manuscripts as part of research leading up to next year's 900th anniversary of the granting of Tavistock's Royal Charter by King Henry I in 1105.

After piecing together fragments of manuscripts, they have discovered that the monks of Tavistock's Benedictine Abbey could have created the famous dish to reward workers who helped to restore the building.

The Abbey was established in the 10th Century, but was plundered and badly damaged by Vikings in 997 AD.

The task of restoring the Abbey was undertaken by Ordulf, Earl of Devon whose father had been responsible for establishing the Abbey.

Ordulf was helped by local workers who the monks fed with bread, clotted cream and strawberry preserves.

The cream teas were so popular that the monks continued to serve them to passing travellers. [continue]

Now you see, that's just one more thing to thank monks for.

Related:

Tavistock Abbey - from the Catholic Encyclopedia
Clotted Cream -definition from allrecipes.com
Traditional English Afternoon Tea - from myhouseandgarden.com

Feel like baking? I've tried lots of scone recipes; the best come from the Ballymaloe Bread Book. You'll find links to a few of the recipes from Ballymaloe here. Oh, and don't miss the Ballymaloe Orange Butter Scones recipe. Yum.

From the CBC: More than 1,000 bronze artifacts retrieved from sea off Egypt's north coast.

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - A French archaeological team has retrieved more than 1,000 bronze artifacts, including statues and busts of Pharoanic gods and goddesses, from the Mediterranean sea floor off Egypt's northern coast, Egyptian antiquities officials said Sunday.

The artifacts found during archaeological surveys last month date to the 3rd through 5th centuries B.C., and also include tools and containers used in religious rituals, Mohamed Abdel Maqsoud, a senior official in the Supreme Council of Antiquities said. (...)

"The most impressive and beautiful item is a diorite bust of an unidentified person with long hair, which some believe (could be) the Nile god, Hapy," Zahi Hawass, head of the Supreme Council for Antiquities, said in a statement. [continue]

From Alertnet.org: Ancient ship seeks to prove Africa-Asia ties. [Update: sorry, article is no longer available.]

CAPE TOWN, Jan 18 (Reuters) - It looks more like a giant spider than a boat, yet the Borobudur has already sailed more than 8,000 miles, retracing an ancient trading route stretching from Asia to the bulge of Africa.

The strange craft with its muddle of beams and gangly outriggers seems somewhat out of place moored outside Cape Town's opulent Cape Grace Hotel, wedged between the gleaming yachts of millionaires.

The 19-metre-long (57-foot) wooden vessel, based on an 8th century Indonesian design, left Jakarta in August and is on its way to Ghana -- seeking to prove that trade links between Africa and southeast Asia were thriving more than 1,000 years ago.

Apart from some modern safety features such as radar, global positioning system and a satellite phone, the boat is an almost flawless replica of a carving on the wall of Java's Borobudur Temple.

Briton Philip Beale, 42, left his job as a fund manager in London two years ago to live out a decades-long dream to test the ancient design, an ambition he has had since visiting the Indonesian temple as a 21-year-old.

Related content on Mirabilis.ca:
Borobudur Ship Replica
Borobudur Ship replica, July '03 update

From nature.com: Saving Venice. [Update: sorry, this article now available only to nature.com subscribers.]

Venice could be going up in the world - by 30 cm in 10 years.

Venice could be saved from sinking into the sea by using oil-industry technology to pump fluid underneath the city, says a team of geomechanical engineers.

Led by Giuseppe Gambolati of the University of Padua, the group published its proposal in a paper last month. The idea revisits a proposal first mooted in the 1970s, but Gambolati's team claims that advances in technology would now allow Venice to be raised safely. [continue]

Related Mirabilis.ca content:
Venice sank this much in 300 years
If Venice is sinking

From the Moscow Times: Relics of Ancient Burial Rites Reveal Siberian Trade Route.

YEKATERINBURG, Russia -- In a medieval Siberian graveyard a few miles south of the Arctic Circle, Russian scientists have unearthed mummies roughly 1,000 years old, clad in copper masks, hoops and plates -- burial rites that archaeologists say they have never seen before.

Among 34 shallow graves were five mummies shrouded in copper and blankets of reindeer, beaver, wolverine or bear fur. Unlike the remains of Egyptian pharaohs, the scientists say, the Siberian bodies were mummified by accident. The cold, dry permafrost preserved the remains, and the copper may have helped prevent oxidation. [continue]

Remember at summer camp when you snuck out in the middle of the night to wrap somebody else's cabin in toilet paper? I bet you never thought of doing something like this.

Rescue for medieval salt ship. From the BBC:

Archaeologists are preparing to rescue a medieval salt ship that has been buried beneath mud in Cheshire for nearly 700 years.

The 26ft-long ship was carved out of a single oak tree and experts say it is of national importance.

The vessel, which was discovered during work on a building site, was originally used to store brine as part of a medieval salt works in the centre of Nantwich.

The brine would have then been boiled to extract the salt, which was a highly prized commodity at the time.

Examination of the tree rings will give a true age of the ship but experts are confident about their initial estimate that it dates back to the 1300s. [continue]

From The Guardian: Computer's chips turn into potatoes.

Staff at a department store in the German city of Kaiserslautern called detectives after an angry customer tried to return a computer stuffed with potatoes to the shop twice on the same day.

The man berated sales assistants in the store, complaining that the computer he had bought only hours before did not work, according to police reports.

The store's staff opened the machine and discovered it was not functioning because its working parts had been replaced with small potatoes. The bemused shop assistants gave the man a new computer free of charge.

But bemusement turned to suspicion when the shopper returned a short while later with another computer - again potato-filled. [continue]

Spotted at csmonitor.com: The History of Robots in the Victorian Era.

HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA – Robots have been making significant inroads into our culture over the last few years. They're roaming on and around distant planets, building cars, vacuuming the rug and even serving as surrogate pets. But it may surprise you to learn that sophisticated androids have been walking the earth since at least the late 1800s - achieving feats that still haven't been equalled in the 21st century. (One prototype actually took part in World War One.) The History of Robots in the Victorian Era follows the careers of these early automatons, and at the same time, tests the limits of human credibility.

Launched in July 2000 to tell the amazing story of "Boilerplate" (history's first mechanical soldier created in 1893), the website has since expanded to include three other milestones of robotic engineering - The Electric Man (1885), The Steam Man (1865), and the Automatic Man (exact date unknown). And while these Victorian marvels might have benefited from some more imaginative names, their exploits (from Antarctic exploration and circumnavigation to foiling train robberies) would put Honda's new robot ASIMO to shame. One can only imagine why so few of us know about these extraordinary machines today.

Unless, of course, it's because they never existed.[continue]

From discovery.com: Ancient Port Found Below Naples.

Italian archaeologists have discovered the ancient port of Neapolis during excavation work for a new subway in Naples, they announced at a news conference this week.

Extending into the heart of present-day Naples, the second-century port was found 13 meters (43 feet) beneath one of the city's main squares, not far from the 13th-century Maschio Angioino fortress.

Evidence for the ancient Mediterranean port included a 10-meter (33-foot) ship, wooden pieces belonging to piers, and various items.

"We have gathered hundreds of them, all very well preserved. They had probably fallen off the ships while being unloaded. These objects will help us to shed light on the ancient city's everyday life, not to mention the possibility of studying the circulation of goods. We have found ceramics from various areas in the Mediterranean," Daniela Giampaola, the archaeologist in charge of the excavation, told Discovery News.

Among the items are coins, glass bottles still uncorked with the organic material perfectly preserved, intact amphorae and soles of seafarers' shoes, probably tossed away when they were no longer good. [continue]

There's a new cafe in my neighbourhood (downtown Vancouver), and yesterday they started offering free wireless Internet access to customers. Such happy news! This place is the Cicchetti Bar Caffe, and they're on Georgia Street, just west of Burrard.

If you stop in, order a bit more than you usually would (martinis? wine? pie? extra cappuccino?) and tell them the free wi-fi lured you to the cafe. They seem to be wildly busy around lunch hour on weekdays, but other times (especially evenings) have been quieter.

UPDATE: Cicchetti went out of business. They've been replaced by the Lupo Caffe, which also has free wireless.

If you're looking for other free wireless acceses points in Vancouver, try this list.

From the Globe and Mail: Researcher cuts the cheese, high-tech style.

A researcher from the University of Wisconsin at Madison has figured out a better way to slice cheese — just use a laser.

"At any other university, people would have just laughed. But this is Wisconsin. It's cheese. And this is no laughing matter," said Xiaochun Li, a mechanical engineering professor and laser expert. [continue]

There's lots more detail in an article from optics.org, Lasers turn cheese into art.

(Thanks to Fr. Jim Tucker for mentioning cheese-cutting lasers on Dappled Things. I never would have thought to search for information about this before reading his blog today.)

A related suggestion:
Laser cut pizza - from halfbakery.com

Egyptian Lion Mummy Found in Ancient Tomb. From National Geographic:

French archaeologists have unearthed the first mummified lion ever found in an Egyptian tomb.

The spectacular discovery was made in the tomb of King Tutankhamen's wet-nurse, Maïa, at Saqqara, south of Cairo. Although the tomb dates from 1330 B.C., the researchers believe the lion was probably mummified and buried during a later Egyptian dynasty in the final centuries before Christ.

The discovery confirms the lion's sacred status in ancient Egypt. The archaeologists say the lion itself may have been a dedication to Mahes, the son of the cat goddess Bastet.

"This is very special," Alain Zivie, who led the team that made the discovery, said in a telephone interview from Paris. "We knew from pharaonic inscriptions that lions existed in ancient Egypt and were buried in these tombs, but we had never found one until now." [continue]

Related:
Mummified lion unearthed in Egypt - BBC

On a long wilderness trip far from electical outlets, how're you gonna keep your techno-gadgets charged up? A gadget jacket charged by the sun might be the answer. From Wired:

Seemingly aimed at the technophile environmentalist on the go, the jacket has integrated solar panels that charge cell phones, PDAs, Game Boys, MP3 players and most any other mobile device its wearer slides into its multitude of interior pockets.

And despite its gadget-oriented accommodations, the jacket's style resembles those worn at the slopes or on the hiking trails. Fashionista outdoorsy types are assured of cloaking their geek status as they lug Palms, iPods and cell phones into the wilderness without losing power.

"As we move to an always-on environment, how can people depend on their device if in three to four hours they are going to lose their charge?" said Scott Jordan, CEO of ScotteVest, which designed the jacket and its wiring technology.

The jacket has two small snap-on photovoltaic panels that fit onto its shoulders. These charcoal-gray solar panels convert the sun's rays into energy, which then feed a hidden battery pack about the size of a deck of cards. The batteries are wired to all the pockets, which can have almost any mobile devices plugged into them.

The PAN, or Personal Area Network, used by ScotteVest's Technology Enabled Clothing division provides jacket-pocket holes and fabric conduits that connect all the gadgets to each other without exposing any wires. So what appears to be an unassuming anorak jacket is really a web of wires and technology in disguise.

Inspector Gadget, James Bond and GI Joe fans: Please convene in the outerwear department. [continue]

Related:
Scott eVest sports jacket

Simple Computers for Hard Lives. From wired.com:

HYDERABAD, India -- Postal workers in the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan will bring modern technology to remote villages by carrying an Indian-designed handheld computer on their rounds, the manufacturer said Monday.

The project is part of an International Telecommunication Union plan to use the Simputer to spread the benefits of computer use in poor countries, said Vinay Deshpande, founder and chairman of Encore Technologies.

Desphande said his company had signed an agreement with the Telecommunication Union, a U.N. agency, and the project would start in a couple months.

The first initiative will be in Bhutan, where 50 Simputers will be given to postal workers who will take the computers on their delivery rounds. People living in remote villages, who have little access to information, will be able to look up things like the crop prices and health information on the computer, Deshpande said. [continue]

Here's more info about the Simputer.

From ICBirmingham.co.uk: Historic find is pure gold!

A team of experts from the University of Birmingham has discovered what may be one of the most important archaeological sites of the last 50 years, in a riverbed in Croatia.

Items recovered from the river include more than 90 swords, a Roman legionnaire's dagger complete with sheath, more than 30 Greco-Illyrian helmets, plus numerous items of jewellery, axes and spearheads.

It is believed a large number of objects were thrown into River Cetina deliberately, possibly as offerings to gods.

Initial surveys of the site indicate that the remarkable finds span a period of history from 6,000 BC onwards.

These include 33m long timbers, clearly visible from the riverbank, which show evidence of late Neolithic or early Bronze Age wooden settlements. [continue]

From discovery.com: Ancient Roman Building Methods Revealed.

Italian archaeologists have uncovered startling evidence of ancient Roman building techniques by bringing to light a deposit of white, perfectly-preserved slake lime.

Sealed for almost 2,000 years by the collapse of a floor, the lime occupied an entire room at the ground floor of the huge Villa dei Quintili in Rome, once the residence of the emperor Commodus.

Commodus confiscated the villa in AD 182, after he sent its owners, the wealthy Quintilius brothers, to death for supposedly plotting against him. He then began a renovation plan by adding rooms, baths, a heating system, and a thermal bath complex.

"The large quantity of lime, along with other materials such as bricks, sand, and fragments of marble, indicates that this part of the estate was a well-equipped building yard," Rita Paris, the state archaeologist responsible for the excavation, told Discovery News.

The lime deposit was covered with a layer of "opus sectile," a sort of marble marquetry used for luxury floor pavements. Once they removed it, archaeologists found the slaked lime in perfect condition. They decided to use a part of it to restore the marble floor of another room of the villa. [continue].

From IsraelNationalNews.com: Roman Anchor Found In Dead Sea.

An archaeologist from Kibbutz Ein Gedi has probably made one of the biggest finds of his career - and it happened just as he was walking along the nearby beach of the Dead Sea. He found a lead-and-wood anchor - without the lead - that probably dates back to the Roman period, 2,000 years ago. The anchor found by Dr. Gideon Hadas is 1.8 meters by 0.9 meters wide (6 by 3 feet), and weighs some 500 kilograms (1,100 lbs.). Dr. Hadas informed the Antiquities Authority of his find, and received permission to research it.

Many similar anchors from the Roman period have been found in the Mediterranean Sea area, but never has one been found in the Dead Sea, nor has one been found with the wood intact. This case is the opposite of all previous anchor finds: here the lead was eaten away by the salt, but the wood was preserved. The anchor will be put on public display after the research is completed.

Related:
Could Dead Sea Anchor Be from Herod's Royal Yacht? - Ireland On-line
Raising the anchor - haaretz.com

From the CBC: Melting ice in Yukon reveals ancient hunting artifacts.

WHITEHORSE - Archeologists working in the Yukon's melting snow fields say they've found some of the oldest evidence of human habitation in the territory.

Last year's warm summer further melted the territory's alpine snowfields, which have become a rich source of artifacts from the territory's pre-history.

The sites have been the subject of worldwide attention since scientists discovered the snowfields were once favourite summer hunting grounds. In 1997, a sheep hunter found the first artifacts near caribou droppings that had melted out of the ice in an alpine meadow.

The ancient weapons, tools and equipment used by the hunters still litter the sites, perfectly preserved by the ice. [continue]

Related articles at Mirabilis.ca
Thawing artifacts
Ancient Yukon feathers, thawed
Fur coat, 550 years old

Time for Secrets and Spies, my dears. The codes and ciphers sections offers information about "some of the codes and codebreakers that have sealed the fate of queens and of wars throughout British history." Then there's the Codemaster section, where you can "send and receive messages using a real French cipher." I loved the pigpen cipher flash thing.

You once learned about the Periodic Table of the Elements. Here's the Table of Condiments That Periodically Go Bad.

From the Guardian: Return of the damned after 400 years.

Archaeologists have uncovered a mass grave which may throw lights on one of the strangest and most gruesome events of the Elizabethan age: the curse of Roland Jenks.

More than 60 skeletons have been discovered between Oxford's former prison and its old castle. It is thought that many of them could be related to the fate of Jenks, a ‘foul-mouthed and saucy’ bookbinder who was convicted in 1577 of supporting the Pope. For his temerity he was sentenced to be nailed by his ears to the local pillory and responded by laying a curse on the courtroom and city.

‘It appears to have been a very effective curse,’ said archaeologist Dan Poore of Oxford Archaeology, which carried out the dig. Contemporary reports indicate that within several days hundreds of local men - but no women or children - had dropped dead.

Among the victims were two judges, a clerk, the coroner, the sheriff and many jury members who had been standing in the courtroom - which then stood just outside the castle - when Jenks shouted out his curse. The court proceedings become known as the Black Assizes and were reckoned either to be a judgment by God on Protestants, or a fiendish Papish plot, though most archaeologists now believe the deaths were the result of an outbreak of typhus.

The discovery of the skeletons of between 60 and 70 people, many dating from Elizabethan times, provides the first palpable evidence that the story has physical roots and may help in discovering the truth behind the legend of Roland Jenks. [continue]

This afternoon I went in search of Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky poem. One click towards the land of distraction led to Hebrew-wocky, - a Hebrew translation of Jabberwocky. Who knew?

The poem has been translated into lots of other languages, too... you can read Dromeparden (Jabberwocky in Norwegian), Siaberwoci (Jabberwocky in Welsh), or Il Ciarlestrone (Jabberwocky in Italian). And there are three Latin translations: Gaberbocchus, Mors Iabrochii, and Gabrobocchia.

Just the thing for a bit of polyglot fun. Many more Jaberwocky translations here.

(Oh, and those who enjoy Indian food should not miss Chapatiwocky.)

What's the most interesting thing you've seen in your front yard lately? Nothing like this, I bet. (It's a photo posted on PeteBevin.com.)

An article at Al-Ahram Weekly describes the restoration work done at the Cave Church at the Monastery of St Paul, one of the oldest monasteries in Egypt.

A team of Italian conservators specialising in restoring wall paintings has been painstakingly revealing, through layers of grime, magnificent images in what has become known as the Cave Church at the Monastery of St Paul near the mainland Red Sea coast. Restoration of this monastery is being carried out by ARCE (American Research Centre in Egypt) with funding from USAID in collaboration with the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) and with the blessing of the Coptic Church.

Work started in 1999 with detailed photography of the visible standing remains and some structural consolidation. Three years later the project is in its final stage. A team of workmen is renewing the crumbling plaster on the external domes and restoring the walls of the church, together with the stonework and windows, under the supervision of Father Maximus, himself a professional conservationist of portable icons.

Truly remarkable images have come to light during the restoration of the Cave Church. The 18th-century Dome of the Martyrs at the entrance revealed saints on horseback, with fresh light cast on them though windows hitherto plastered over. Earlier paintings dating from the 13th and 14th centuries, including the figure of Christ depicted against a pale blue sky raising his hand in blessing, appeared in the formerly blackened dome in the sanctuary of St Antony. [continue]

Roman treasures unearthed during subway dig. From iol.co.za:

Naples, Italy - Italian archaeologists have discovered a Roman ship and hundreds of amphorae dating to the second century AD during excavation works for a new subway in the southern city of Naples.

The discoveries, which were detailed on Thursday, will help shed light on ancient life in the Mediterranean port city, the archaeologists said.

"They will help us understand the circulation of goods in Naples and the city's every-day life," said Daniela Giampaola, an archaeologist in charge of the excavations.

The 13-metre deep digging turned up wooden pieces belonging to piers in the one-time port, as well as intact amphorae and other crockery pieces, believed to have fallen off the ships while being unloaded.

Amphorae are slender, two-handled terracotta storage containers popular in Roman times to ship or store wine, condiments and other popular items. [continue]

Sweden's Convicts Find Peace in Monastery. From Reuters:

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (Reuters) - Red drapes billow from the ceiling, tea lights flicker in front of an altar and chants play softly -- it is easy to forget the setting is Sweden's top security prison and the men meditating are hardened convicts.

Kumla prison, 125 miles west of Stockholm, runs a unique project where inmates serving long sentences can apply for contemplative retreats in a prison wing turned into a monastery.

The project, initiated by the Swedish Prison and Probation Service, is based on the teachings of Saint Ignatius Loyola, who founded the Jesuit order in the 16th century. Loyola's spiritual exercises lay the foundation for programs used by groups like Alcoholics Anonymous.

"It is like a cleaning process which aims to make you aware of what you covet. Only then you can leave such things behind," said Father Truls Bernhold, in charge of the project. [continue]

What do Dueling Banjos have to do with Debian Linux? Taint.org has kindly blogged this hilarious excerpt from a Debian newsletter.

Some of the most bizarre mails on debian-devel over the years have been repeated requests by various people for the sheet music for dueling banjos. Several list subscribers have been eager to assist the posters in their search. Jim Penny called this the Dueling Banjo Effect and explained that this has become a self-perpetuating Google-flop. People use Google which points them to Debian to get this sheet music, and the act of asking reinforces Google's notion that Debian is a good place to get the music.

This part made my evening.

Did "Little Ice Age" Create Stradivarius Violins’ Famous Tone? From National Geographic:

Instruments crafted from the late 17th century onwards by revered violin maker Antonio Stradivari sell for millions of dollars today, and musicians and scientists have long sought to explain their superb sound quality.

Now, American scientists have come up with a possible explanation: A dramatic European cold spell may have enhanced the quality of wood from which the instruments were crafted.

A sharp dip in temperatures between 1645 and 1715 coincided with a reduction in sunspots and the sun's overall activity known as the Maunder Minimum. Researchers say those factors may have slowed tree growth, thereby creating the ideal building material for violins later manufactured. [continue]

From The Economist: Babel's children.

It is hard to conceive of a language without nouns or verbs. But that is just what Riau Indonesian is, according to David Gil, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, in Leipzig. Dr Gil has been studying Riau for the past 12 years. Initially, he says, he struggled with the language, despite being fluent in standard Indonesian. However, a breakthrough came when he realised that what he had been thinking of as different parts of speech were, in fact, grammatically the same. For example, the phrase "the chicken is eating" translates into colloquial Riau as "ayam makan". Literally, this is "chicken eat". But the same pair of words also have meanings as diverse as "the chicken is making somebody eat", or "somebody is eating where the chicken is". There are, he says, no modifiers that distinguish the tenses of verbs. Nor are there modifiers for nouns that distinguish the definite from the indefinite ("the", as opposed to "a"). Indeed, there are no features in Riau Indonesian that distinguish nouns from verbs. These categories, he says, are imposed because the languages that western linguists are familiar with have them.

This sort of observation flies in the face of conventional wisdom about what language is. Most linguists are influenced by the work of Noam Chomsky—in particular, his theory of "deep grammar". According to Dr Chomsky, people are born with a sort of linguistic template in their brains. This is a set of rules that allows children to learn a language quickly, but also imposes constraints and structure on what is learnt. Evidence in support of this theory includes the tendency of children to make systematic mistakes which indicate a tendency to impose rules on what turn out to be grammatical exceptions (eg, "I dided it" instead of "I did it"). There is also the ability of the children of migrant workers to invent new languages known as creoles out of the grammatically incoherent pidgin spoken by their parents. Exactly what the deep grammar consists of is still not clear, but a basic distinction between nouns and verbs would probably be one of its minimum requirements.

Dr Gil contends, however, that there is a risk of unconscious bias leading to the conclusion that a particular sort of grammar exists in an unfamiliar language. That is because it is easier for linguists to discover extra features in foreign languages—for example tones that change the meaning of words, which are common in Indonesian but do not exist in European languages—than to realise that elements which are taken for granted in a linguist's native language may be absent from another. Despite the best intentions, he says, there is a tendency to fit languages into a mould. And since most linguists are westerners, that mould is usually an Indo-European language from the West. [continue]

From the BBC: Top UK dish ‘hooked French first’.

It is thought to be the quintessential British meal, but new research claims the original idea for fish and chips came from Jewish and French dishes.

A study of the multicultural nature of UK cuisine suggests the meal was influenced by immigrants 150 years ago.

Professor Panikos Panayi of Leicester's De Montfort University has begun a £6,000 research project to investigate the global influence on British food.

He said fish and chips mixed "French frites with Jewish fish dishes". [continue]

Another twist in the tale of the Voynich manuscript. From The Economist:

The Voynich manuscript, once owned by Emperor Rudolph II in 16th-century Bohemia, is filled with drawings of fantastic plants, zodiacal symbols and naked ladies. Far more intriguing than its illustrations, however, is the accompanying text: 234 pages of beautifully formed, yet completely unintelligible script.

Modern scholars have pored over the book since 1912, when Wilfrid Voynich, an American antiquarian, bought the manuscript and started circulating copies in the hope of having it translated. Some 90 years later, the book still defies deciphering. It now resides at Yale University.

The manuscript is written in "Voynichese", which consists of strange characters, some of which look like normal Latin letters and Roman numerals. Some analysts have suggested that Voynichese is a modified form of Chinese. Others think it may be Ukrainian with the vowels taken out. But Voynichese words do not resemble those of any known language. Nor is the text a simple transliteration into fanciful symbols: the internal structure of Voynichese words, and how they fit together in sentences, is unlike patterns seen in other languages.

Another possibility is that the text is written in code. But the best efforts of cryptographers over the past 30 years have failed to crack it. This resilience is unusual, given that other ciphers from the period have yielded their secrets.

On the other hand, the text could just be gibberish and the book — which may have been passed off to Emperor Rudolph as the work of Roger Bacon, a 13th-century natural philosopher, in exchange for the princely sum of 600 gold ducats—a grand hoax. But Gabriel Landini, a Voynichese enthusiast at the University of Birmingham, in England, argues against this theory. Given the complex structure of Voynichese words, writing hundreds of pages of internally consistent gibberish would be a tough task for a fraudster to pull off. [continue]

Related:
Voynich Manuscript update - Mirabilis.ca, January 2004.
Voynich Manuscript - voynich.nu
Images from the Voynich manuscript - voynich.net
Voynich Manuscript - museumofhoaxes.com

From Ananova: Archaeologists mistake 1940s patio for Viking village.

Archaeologists have admitted to having been made to look "very silly" after mistaking a 1940s sunken patio for a 9th century Viking village.

Fife County Archaeologist Douglas Spiers says his team concluded the slabs found in the back garden of a Buckhaven home had originally been hauled by Norse settlers from a nearby beach. [continue]

More at The Herald and at the BBC.

Afghan bread rises to any occasion. From csmonitor.com:

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – From before dawn until long after dusk, there's always a line outside the bakery in my neighborhood in Kabul. Presumably, everyone in this line is there actually to buy bread, although watching an Afghan baker at work has its own entertainment value.

First, there's the matter of where the baker, Nasrullah, sits: right on top of the oven. It's a tandoor oven, basically a large clay pot with a hole in the top and a wood fire inside. Nasrullah squats as close to the lip of the oven as he can without becoming a long-lost brother of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

Every few minutes, he takes a two-foot-long slab of dough and slaps it to the inner wall of the oven. Almost immediately, the dough gets puffy, turns tan, and emits an exquisite odor that draws Afghans from blocks around. Minutes later, the baker picks up two long iron tongs and gently tugs the bread from the tandoor wall and plops it in the waiting arms of his customer.

After burning myself a few times, I started bringing a light cloth to cover my arms, and to wrap over the bread to keep it warm until I got home. [continue]

For sale: prehistoric French cave with original decorations. From Expatica:

PERIGUEUX, France, Jan 5 (AFP) - Looking to buy in southwest France? A retired farmer in the Dordogne region is selling his prehistoric cave adorned with drawings for just EUR 1 million (USD 1.3 million dollars).

"I'm 76 years old and I can't show people around anymore. I can't go up and down the steps," Ernest Paluzzano, who has shown his "Grotte du Sorcier" to thousands of tourists over the years, told AFP on Monday.

In 1969, Paluzzano, a farmer of Italian descent, bought the site in the town of Saint-Cirq, which owes its name - "the sorcerer's cave" - to a drawing of a human figure detailing the face, back and limbs.

The cave, discovered in 1952 by a dentist and amateur archeologist, is home to drawings dating back to the Magdalenian period, or between 22,000 and 15,000 years BC, according to French experts. [full article]

From Scotsman.com: Stone Age Homes Found in the Gulf.

Archaeologists have discovered the remains of Stone Age houses going back 7,000 years on an island off the coast of the United Arab Emirates.

The foundations of three dwellings were found on Marawah island, 60 miles) west of the UAE capital, Abu Dhabi.

The site also yielded a flint spearhead about three inches long, a flint arrowhead and a grinding stick, said Mark Beech, the senior resident archaeologist of the Abu Dhabi Islands Archaeological Survey.

Beech said the team suspected there were more house remains to be found.

"These structures are amazing in terms of historic importance. They are the best and most complete structures found in the whole (Gulf) region," Beech said. Less well-preserved remains of houses have been found in Kuwait and Qatar.

Samples examined at Glasgow University showed the houses date to 6,5000-7,000 years ago, which is about 2,000 years before the earliest Pharaoh in Egypt. [full article].

There's more info at the Khaleej Times, and links to photos at the Abu Dhabi Islands Archaeological Survey site.

From the British Library: Illuminating the Renaissance.

From 1400 to 1550 European manuscript painting enjoyed a glorious final flowering – particularly in Flanders (part of modern-day Belgium and Northern France).

Here, a selection of high-quality images from some of the finest Flemish manuscripts in the British Library accompanies a time line of contemporary European events. Some of these images have never been reproduced before. [continue]

Weird, wonderful, awful, hilarious. Yes, it's recordings of Dylan Thomas, reading his poems... um, and somebody has set them to music. "You could play those in a nightclub," my husband notes. I can just imagine Dylan there with his backup band. Oh my. The music page of the Dylan Thomas Project offers these .mp3s:

No Dominion
Do Not Go Gentle
Exit US
Rub of Love

UPDATE: This entry used to link to the Dylan Thomas Project website. Unfortunately, that site doesn't seem to be around anymore. How sad.

A while ago we read about the medieval fresco uncovered in Coventry. Here's a bit more about it, from The Guardian: Sinners back on show in medieval church.

So vivid is the restoration that you can see a tear on the cheek of a sinner. One of Britain's most extensively preserved medieval frescos has been returned to life after 150 years.

All that visitors could see of it until recently was a face and part of a foot dripping with blood in a blackened area in Holy Trinity church, Coventry.

These were a glimpse of a hidden gem known as the Doom Painting, done some 570 years ago by an unknown artist commissioned to terrify sinners into righteousness.

It was concealed with whitewash in the 1560s by Protestants who are thought to have felt that the painter enjoyed the contours of flesh too much. The Victorians found it but put on varnish which turned black. [full article]

Related:
Medieval ‘Doom’ Fresco Returned to Glory - from The Scotsman
The Doom Painting Story - from Sarah and Andrew Price's website

Oh look, BBC Wales has a Dylan Thomas random poem generator!

It's said that if an infinite number of monkeys were each given typewriters for an infinite number of years, they'd come up with the complete works of William Shakespeare. We wondered if the same would apply to the works of Dylan Thomas.

However, being sceptical about the idea of monkey literature, we looked instead for a more efficient way to amuse ourselves. And so the Dylan Thomas random poem generator was born. [continue]

Here's an article about the revival of an ancient Arabic word in Iraq. From the Mercury News: Ancient word insults, greets U.S. troops.

College students whisper the word when they spot U.S. troops in Baghdad streets. Vandals scrawl the word across military vehicles. Sneering taxi drivers mutter it when convoys block their cabs.

"Ulooj," they say, and while some use it with disdain and others more lightheartedly, it's unmistakably not a nice reference - though what precisely the ancient term from Arabic literature means depends on whom you ask. Among the translations offered: pigs of the desert, foreign infidels, little donkeys, medieval crusaders, bloodsuckers and horned creatures.

While no one can quite pin down the original definition, Iraqis agree on the modern definition: "It's the American military," said Maria Hassan, a 23-year-old history major at a university in Baghdad. "We use this word from the past for our occupiers of the present."

The revival of "ulooj" (pronounced oo-LOOZH) is the handiwork of Mohammed Saeed al Sahaf, the alternately comical and caustic information minister from the former Iraqi regime.

In the first days of the war, Sahaf sent Iraqis running for their dictionaries when he used the word in a speech to describe advancing U.S. forces. Today, "ulooj" lingers as the unofficial national nickname for American soldiers, even among many who profess support for the U.S. presence. (...)

Salah al Qureishi, a linguistics professor at al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, said he consulted four dictionaries when he first noticed his young students casually using a word he last recalled seeing in yellowed texts describing the conquests of a seventh-century Islamic ruler.

"I was astonished," Qureishi said. "I thought, ‘Where on earth did they get this word?’ " [continue]

From Ivan the terribly rude, an article in the Telegraph about the correspondence between Czar Ivan the Terrible and Queen Elizabeth I:

In a barely literate rant that would have landed him in the Tower had he been an Englishman, the Russian ruler railed against the Queen's "boorish" advisers and likened her to an old maid.

The letter, discovered at the National Archives at Kew, south-west London, was especially inadvisable since at the time it was written, on Oct 28, 1570, the tsar was involved in a courtship of England and in particular English trade.

But, historians will speculate, perhaps it was the failure of a courtship of a different kind that prompted the venomous note penned in his own hand. It has long been suspected that Ivan had proposed marriage to England's "Virgin Queen" and been rejected out of hand.

Fearful that he was surrounded by enemies plotting his death, he had also urged the Queen to allow him political asylum if he were forced to flee his country. She evidently reacted coolly to the request, replying that he could come if he paid his own way. [continue]

Related book:
Elizabeth I - Her Life in Letters

This Magical Book is a virtual exhibit of the Osborne Collection of Early Children's Books. From the exhibit's intro page:

Everyone loves pop-up books and movables, the books with more than just pages and pictures. These ingenious publications have hidden surprise illlustrations or messages. They have twirling centres, pop-up to reveal three-dimensional scenes, or turn from one view to another with the pull of a tab.

The exhibit celebrates the history of children's movable books from 1771-2001, from early moral and instructional movables and elaborate Victorian creations, to modern fairy tales and stories, and the striking large-scale pop-ups of today.

Link found at Metafilter.

From The Scotsman: The 400BC Ferrari.

An Iron Age chariot unearthed at an Edinburgh building site has been proved the oldest in Britain.

Radiocarbon tests on the wheels of the chariot, which has been described as a "Ferrari of the Iron Age", have proved it dates back to 400BC - 200 years earlier than the previous oldest British find.

Archaeologists studying it have also discovered ancient Scots were more in touch with continental Europe than was previously thought. (...)

The discovery is the first of its kind in Scotland and believed to be the burial place of a nobleman, or warrior, whose chariot was placed with him as a mark of respect.

The style of the burial has shown experts that Scots must have had strong links with Europe and been in tune with continental fads during the Iron Age. [continue]

Kleptography has a set of lovely mantis photos. Choose the low-resolution images (faster loading, smaller) or the high-resolution images (slower, but bigger images) and browse away. Here's the story behind the photos.

From The Scotsman: Music man's bid to restore harmony in Middle East.

A Scottish musicologist is bringing a little harmony to the Middle East by recreating an instrument that has not been heard since the days of the Old Testament.

John Kenny was part of a team of scientists and musicians who resurrected the Pictish instrument known as the carnyx, a 2,000-year-old metal trumpet in the shape of a boar's head which was used by ancient Scots in their battle against Roman invasion.

Using this experience, Kenny, a teacher at Glasgow’s Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, is now working with Israeli and Palestinian academics to recreate an ancient horn instrument described in the Old Testament.

Using traditional methods, Kenny joined forces with musicologist John Percer, metalworker John Creed and archeologist Fraser Hunter to reconstruct the carnyx in 1998 from the fragile remnants of an original instrument discovered in the Moray Firth in the 19th century. [continue]

Link found at Cronaca.

From Philip F. Gura's article at common-place.org, How I Met and Dated Miss Emily Dickinson: An Adventure on eBay.

This is the story of how I stumbled on something rare almost beyond comprehension. On April 12, 2000, I purchased in an eBay online auction what may be the second known photograph of Emily Dickinson. In the last ten seconds of the eBay auction I placed a very high maximum bid on what was called a "Vintage Emily Dickinson Albumen Photo" and won the item far below that amount. But the story had only begun. Over the next six months I experienced what it really meant to possess, and be possessed by, a picture that may show Emily Dickinson at the height of her creative powers. [continue]

Scientists link 1700 earthquake to legends. From Canada.com:

On a still mid-winter night, long before Europeans first landed on Vancouver Island, native legend tells of a great disaster. The sea rose in a heaving wave, and landslides buried a sleeping village.

"They had practically no way or time to try to save themselves. I think it was at nighttime that the land shook ... They simply had no time to get hold of canoes, no time to get awake," the late Nuu-Chah-nulth Chief Louie Clamhouse told Alan McMillan, an anthropologist at Simon Fraser University. "I think a big wave slammed into the beach. The Pachena Bay people were lost."

Over time, Indian storytellers began to speak of dwarfs in the mountains, mythic creatures who would dance around their great wooden drum, causing the earth to shake and the waters to rise.

Myth was resolved with science in 2003 when government research proved that an earthquake, the most intense Canada has ever seen, hit the sea floor off the British Columbia coast at 9 p.m. on January 26, 1700. [continue]

From the Globe and Mail: Find puts humans in Arctic 30,000 years ago.

An extraordinary archeological find in Siberia shows that early modern humans lived in the High Arctic in the thick of the most recent Ice Age, not after it had begun to retreat as had previously been thought.

The findings by Russian archeologist V. V. Pitulko mean that early examples of Homo sapiens were able to live above the Arctic Circle 30,000 years ago -- at the same time that a land link across the Bering Sea connected the Asian continent with North America.

While falling short of actual proof, Professor Pitulko's study lays out a plausible scenario describing how and when Homo sapiens could have made the move first to North America and then to South America. The study is being published today in the journal Science. [continue]