From novinite.com: Pre-Historic Farmer Unearthed in Bulgaria.
The skeleton of a pre-historic human believed to represent the first agricultural civilization existing on Bulgarian land was unearthed near the village of Ohoden, Vratsa district, northwest Bulgaria.
Archeologists found the skeleton on the riverbank of the local Skut River. The finding was approximately dated back 9,000 years, which makes the "Bulgarian farmer" five centuries older than the already known humans to have lived on the Balkan Peninsula. [continue]
How many times have you visited some historical site and carried an audio tour headset with you? You've listened to taped explanations and background information as you wandered around.
OK, now imagine having that system replaced with one that provides computer-generated images as you tour the site, so you'd see ancient people walking about the ruins. Could be interesting, although I suspect it would feel like a computer game come to life. Anyway, such a system is under consideration. From the BBC: Pompeii gets digital make-over.
A European Union-funded project is looking at providing tourists with computer-augmented versions of archaeological attractions.
It would allow visitors a glimpse of life as it was originally lived in places such as Pompeii.
The Lifeplus project is part of the EU's Information Society Technologies initiative aimed at promoting user-friendly technology and enhancing European cultural heritage.
Engineers and researchers working in the Europe-wide consortium have come up with a prototype augmented-reality system.
It would require the visitor to wear a head-mounted display with a miniature camera and a backpack computer.
The camera captures the view and feeds it to software on the computer where the visitor's viewpoint is combined with animated virtual elements.
At Pompeii for example, the visitor would not just see the frescos, taverns and villas that have been excavated, but also people going about their daily life. [continue]
After you've read the article, you might want to visit the Miralab website, which includes web specials and films. The Virtual Hagia Sophia Reconstruction is worth a look.
Related:
Hagia Sophia - Wikipedia
From the BBC: ‘Smelly’ mates guide seabirds.
Seabirds called prions, which mate for life, find their nests by sniffing out their smelly partners, scientists say.
The birds make their nests in deep burrows, which are very dark, so they cannot rely on any other sense to find them, Science magazine reports.
The birds also actively avoid their own smell, which could be a way of making sure they do not breed with their kin. [continue]
Considering problems with the iPod like this, and now Cory's observation that "Apple's spending money seeing to it that features are removed from your iPod" — well, why buy an iPod when good alternatives exist? I'm looking around at .mp3 players, and this one looks pretty good.
UPDATE: Apple steals iTunes customers' paid-for rights to stream - BoingBoing, March 16th, 2005.
Related:
Consumer Search: mp3 players - reviews several models
Hey, I was in Prague last month. How did I miss an archaeological dig in the centre of the city? This article from Radio Prague gives some information about the dig, and quotes archaeologist Petr Jurina, who says:
"I would like to mention above all the find of potter's kilns from the fifteen and sixteen centuries. We have discovered about ten of them which is the most that has been found ever. Apart from that we also found a golden ring with a gemstone from the 12th century with a Hebrew epigraph ‘Moses the son of Solomon’."
"What is most important is that it changes our notion of the original inhabitation of Prague, especially the 12th century. It turned out that the Roman palaces were not only on the territory of the so called Old Town, but this housing continued northwards up to what is now Florenc. So we found Roman stone houses and palaces but apart form that we found out that there were also valuable wooden architecture." [continue]
Related:
Prague - Wikipedia
More stuff on Prague from Mirabilis.ca:
Prague Golem
St Wenceslaus
St Vitus, and St Vitus' Cathedral
Prague Astronomical Clock
Prague
Oooh, this is fun: The Language Guesser. Paste in some text, click the button, and the Language Guesser will tell you what language it's in.
Of course you'll want something to use as a test, hmmm? Here's a bit of sample text for you to use:
Ja, vi elsker dette landet,
Som det stiger frem,
Furet, værbitt, over vannet,
Med de tusen hjem.
And here's another sample:
Isten álld meg a magyart
Jó kedvvel, böséggel,
Nyújts feléje védö kart,
Ha küzd ellenséggel;
Bal sors akit régen tép,
Hozz rá víg esztendöt,
Megbünhödte már e nép
A multat s jövendöt!
The above excerpts are from the national anthems of today's mystery nations. Can you guess what languages you're looking at there? The Language Guesser can.
(Link to Language Guesser found here at Idle Words.)
If you've ever wanted to climb Mount Sinai, this article might be enough to change your mind. It's fascinating in an "I'm so glad I don't have to do that" kind of way.
Some set out at 2am to walk the seven-kilometre camel path from St Catherine's Monastery on the valley floor, then leave their camels behind to ascend the 750 stone steps to the summit. Judging by the way the tethered camels stick their tongues out sideways, mocking passersby, they're grateful they don't have to climb any higher.
I left at 4.30am, having walked the camel path the previous day and slept in a camp site surrounded by 1000-year-old cypress trees and huge, ancient boulders.
Named Elijah's Basin, the camp site boasted a shop where the proprietor climbed off his prayer mat to serve customers. There was also a sit-down toilet so filthy that a fellow trekker warned: "Don't even think about it."
This would be good advice to anyone contemplating a third route to the summit — climbing the 3000 steps from the monastery to the camp site and then the further 750 to the top. That journey, aptly named the Stairway of Repentance, would cripple the fittest football team, assuming nobody died first, cartwheeling through the night to the valley floor like the original St Catherine, a virgin who denied a lustful king. [continue]
Related Mirabilis.ca content:
At the Monastery of the Burning Bush
Ancient monastery opens library
Elsewhere:
Biblical Mt Sinai - Wikipedia
Just about ready to carve a pumpkin? You might enjoy the Extreme Pumpkins site, where you can browse through the carving tips, read about power tools for pumpkin carving, fire, light and pyrotechnics, and pumpkin preservation.
The site also includes what to do with a trash can, and a recipe for toasting pumpkin seeds.
Of course there are photos of carved pumpkins, too, like this this collection of photos, and this puking pumpkin.
(Gentle souls please note that parts of the site are not in the best of taste. Gentle souls should visit anyway; it's fun.)
From The Guardian: Scientists dig up family skeletons.
It has been a mystery for more than a century - is a skull in an Austrian basement really that of arguably the greatest composer of all time, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart?
Over the weekend a group of archaeologists began to answer the question by digging up the remains of Mozart's close relatives. [continue]
Related:
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Wikipedia
From Wired: Advent of the Robotic Monkeys.
If a monkey is hungry but has his arms pinned, there's not much he can do about it. Unless that monkey can control a nearby robotic arm with his brain.
And that's exactly what the monkey in Andrew Schwartz's neurobiology lab at the University of Pittsburgh can do, feeding himself using a prosthetic arm controlled solely by his thoughts. [continue]
From Haaretz: Unknown faces of Tibet.
After seeing the Dalai Lama moving with the clumsy grace of an elephant, his kindly, avuncular face bending toward the crowd with an expression of pure benevolence, and hearing his deep, mellifluous voice explain the purpose of Mahayana Buddhism — to bring all sentient beings to enlightenment and liberation — the monsters in the Tibetan Buddhist temples come as sort of a surprise. Ceramic faces frozen into expressions of horrible rage, fangs extending from wide-open mouths, rows of orange skulls strung like a garland across grotesque heads, huge, weapon-like sexual organs. These are the most frightening idols one can imagine. The paintings on the walls of the temples are no less gruesome. Monsters eat the entrails of a doomed, screaming man. A huge eagle flies away carrying a man's eyes in his beak. Only if you look carefully, amid all the horrors, can you see the image of a man meditating in a cave crusted with snow, an eye of calm at the center of a storm of cruelty.
"This is the protector of the monastery," explains an elderly monk in a dark room in the monastery that lies high above the village of Disket in the remote Nubra Valley region of Ladakh. He has opened the room just for us, and he is motioning toward a particularly frightening statue, whose giant white head has the face of a deranged clown. "A few hundred years ago, a Muslim army tried to conquer the region. The commander came up here to the monastery and immediately fell down dead. The monks threw the body into the river, but it kept mysteriously reappearing in the monastery. Finally, one of the monks cut off the commander's head and placed it in the arms of the idol. After that the body stopped returning." [continue]
From abcnews.go.com: Scientists find ancient hobbit-sized people.
Once upon a time, on an isolated island of Indonesia, there lived a colony of little people — very little people.
Not only did anthropologists find the skeletal remains of a hobbit-sized, 30-year-old adult female, in this fairy-tale-like discovery they also uncovered in the same limestone cave the remains of a Komodo dragon, stone tools and dwarf elephants.
Subsequent finds of other similarly sized, 3-foot-tall humans with brains the size of grapefruits in a cave on the Indonesian island of Flores suggest these 18,000-year-old specimens weren't a quirk of an ancient hominin, but part of an entire species of miniature people whose existence overlapped with that of modern Homo sapiens.
"We now have the remains of at least seven hobbit-sized individuals at the cave site, so the 18,000-year-old skeleton cannot be some kind of ‘freak’ that we just happened to stumble across first," said Bert Roberts, an anthropologist at the University of Wollongong in New South Wales, Australia, and co-author of the study about the find in this week's issue of the journal "Nature." [continue]
Related:
Tiny new species of human unearthed - New Scientist
"Hobbit" Discovered: Tiny Human Ancestor Found in Asia - National Geographic
Hobbit joins human family tree - BBC
From The Guardian: Foil reveals Roman magic.
The Norfolk gardener was quite irritated at finding bits of rubbish mixed with the expensive topsoil he had bought: he picked out what he took to be foil from a champagne bottle and unrolled it - to reveal a lost world of Roman magic.
Experts from the British Museum and Oxford University have been poring over the scrap of gold foil, no bigger than a postage stamp, which went on display for the first time yesterday, with other archaeological finds reported in the past year.
"It meant nothing to me at first, I wondered if it was a scrap of decoration from a garment or a piece of furniture," said Adrian Marsden, the finds officer in Norwich whose desk it first landed on. "Then I suddenly saw the Greek letter A, and I knew what we must have." [continue]
From The Independent: A stitch in time.
In a small, overheated room in Wandsworth Prison, the inmates are gathering for a needlework lesson. First to arrive is Michael. He puts his bag of sewing on the table for the teachers, Cherie and Jackie, to inspect. "That's beautiful work," says Cherie. Jackie agrees. Michael, who is doing four years for GBH, beams and rewards the ladies with pictures of his grandchildren. The women "ooh" and "aah" at the little tykes.
Katy Emck, chairperson of Fine Cell Work, the charity that organises the needlework classes, saunters over and picks up the bag. "This is a beautiful as anything you'd get from the Royal College of Needlework," she says. Although I'm a needlework novice, I have to agree with her.
Fine Cell Work was founded in 1995 by the philanthropist Lady Anne Tree. Her idea was that if you give inmates something purposeful to do in prison — something that can make them a bit of money — they're less likely to re-offend when released into society at the end of their stint. [continue].
Related:
Prison art comes up from the cells - BBC
Fine Cell Work
Now here's an article about an interesting invention. From National Geographic:
A decade ago Rod Sprules was designing a heated suit for search-and-rescue technicians. He was flipping through a reference book to look up the energy content of propane when he came across an interesting tidbit about coffee.
It said coffee grounds release more heat than wood when they're burned. Sprules, a mechanical engineer by training and an entrepreneur by heart, wrote down the fact in a book of ideas that he keeps and went back to work.
A few years later, while Sprules and his wife, Joanne Johnson, were living in Paris, he scoured his notebook for promising business ideas and rediscovered the coffee entry.
He went down from his apartment to a small café to ask the perplexed proprietor for some coffee grounds. Back upstairs, he dried the coffee grounds in the oven, stuffed them into an old cigar tube, added some candle wax, and set it on fire.
"It burned really well," Sprules recalled. [continue]
From the CBC: No trick-or-treating for Churchill polar bears.
Trick-or-treaters in the northern Manitoba town of Churchill will get street protection worthy of a visiting head of state this Halloween.
Come Sunday night, the town of 1,000 will be ringed by about a dozen fire trucks and ambulances, all revving engines and shining spotlights on goblin-filled streets to keep curious polar bears from getting a little too close to roaming children.
Overhead, a helicopter will circle, while a crew armed with immobilizing darts will be stationed around town, just in case the bears don't get the point.
Halloween's polar bear patrol has been a feature of Churchill for 20 years. Bears are regularly spotted in the community from early summer to the end of November, depending on ice conditions. They lope into town because of Churchill's proximity to the world's largest denning area. [continue]
From The Guardian: Jammy little dodger may not be extinct.
A hundred jam sandwich traps have been hidden in remote forests in Yorkshire in an attempt to catch a mammal thought to have been extinct in England for 100 years.
Scientists will discreetly monitor the sticky mixture, squashed into plastic feeding tubes, for hairs and other DNA traces of pine martens, which once roamed the area under royal protection because of their thick, highly-valued fur.
Local naturalists have logged 35 suspected marten sightings on the densely-wooded fringes of the North York Moors since 1990, but none gave much more detail than a swift, brown shadow moving swiftly through the trees. Then, in July, an experienced wildlife photographer gave an accurate description of a marten which triggered the current rethink of English Nature's extinct species status. [continue]
From the 24 Hour Museum: Have archaeologists found 14th century button industry in Coventry?
Archaeologists have discovered the remains of what they think might be a small-scale 14th century button industry in Coventry.
Working on the site of an old Salvation Army building in Upper Well Street, the team from the University of Birmingham found pottery and bone in medieval hearths and rubbish pits.
But what caught their eyes was a number of bone button blanks. This suggests that rather than being used for decorative metallic buttons, the blanks would have been for the manufacture of buttons for practical use. [continue]
From Reuters: Ancient Language Clings to Life at Tip of Britain.
Lisa Simpson, the spiky-haired U.S. cartoon character, may just be the spark that revives an ancient language and fuels a tiny political movement at the tip of Britain's southwest coast.
The sister of bad-boy Bart and daughter of bumbling Homer will appear in a special episode of "The Simpsons" shouting out support for the independence of Cornwall in the nearly dead language of ancient Cornish as an alternative broadcast to British Queen Elizabeth's traditional Christmas address.
Matthew Clarke, Lisa Simpson's translator and a member of the Cornish Language Fellowship, told Reuters that news of the Christmas special has ignited more than the usual mocking interest in a language which some say was the lingua franca of such British legends as King Arthur and Boadicea. [continue]
Related:
Lisa puts cool into Cornish cause - BBC, July 2004
From the BBC: Pandas benefit from wireless net.
The world's dwindling panda population is getting a helping hand from a wireless internet network.
The Wolong Nature Reserve in the Sichuan Province of southwest China is home to 20% of the remaining 1,500 giant pandas in the world.
A broadband and wireless network installed on the reserve has allowed staff to chronicle the pandas' daily activities.
The data and images can be shared with colleagues around the world. [continue]
And speaking of images, the article includes a photo of a baby panda being bottle-fed. You can't resist that, can you?
From the BBC: Sea damaging Roman burial site.
There are concerns for part of Cumbria's Roman heritage, which is being damaged by erosion.
Roman invaders buried and cremated their dead at Beckfoot, which lies north of Maryport.
Now the site is being badly damaged by the sea and work is being done to try to save its relics.
Local volunteers have been gathering artefacts which are being found on the beach and an underground survey of the site has now started.
Community archaeologist from the Portable Antiquities Scheme, Faye Simpson said: "Some of the problem is quite serious. Beckfoot is actually quite amazing and we think quite a large cremation cemetery. [continue]
From The Scotsman: Rabbits may cause fall of Roman forts.
Legions of rabbits are threatening to destroy dozens of Scotland's most important Roman remains.
The rabbits have already burrowed deep beneath the defences of the 60 Roman forts and watchtowers built across Scotland to keep the marauding Picts at bay.
Archaeologists say many of the ancient structures are in danger of collapsing completely. [continue]
From The Guardian: Who knows?
There have been no shortage of insane, over ambitious ideas on the internet. Most of them never make it further than the pub they are conceived in. Some generate hype but quickly fall flat on their face. Others survive, but prove to be minnows rather than the giants they set out to be. However, every so often, one sneaks through.
Wikipedia is one of the rare ones that made it. Even by the admission of its founder, the 38-year-old technology entrepreneur Jimmy Wales, it was a "completely insane idea": a free online encyclopedia that anyone can contribute to and anyone can edit. There is no editor, no army of proof readers and fact checkers; in fact, no full-time staff at all. It is, in other words, about as far from the traditional idea of an encyclopedia as you can get.
There are dozens of reasons why it shouldn't work, and it is still far from perfect, but in less than four years, it has grown to have more than 1 million entries written in 100 languages from Albanian to Zulu. [continue}
Related:
Wikipedia
From Ananova: Germany's most beautiful words.
Habseligkeiten - which means ‘property’ — has been voted the most beautiful word in the German language.
And rhabarbermarmelade — ‘rhubarb jam’ — has been singled out as Germany's coolest word.
Germany's Goethe Institute and the German Language Council, which are the guardians of the language, organised the contest to highlight beautiful German words. [continue]
Related Mirabilis.ca content:
Hunting Germany's linguistic gems
Elsewhere:
German's Beautiful ‘Belongings’ - Deutsche Welle
From the (Lebanon) Daily Star: The cave of Lot's seduction and the monastery it inspired.
Amman: The ruins were first discovered during an archaeological survey at the south-east end of the Dead Sea in 1986, near a spring named Ain Abata. After further investigations it was evident that the site — near today's Ghor al-Safi, the biblical city of Zoara — was none other that the Sanctuary of Agios ("Saint") Lot. Biblical scholars and archaeologists have sought the site for decades.
Within a year of the discovery and identification of Deir Ain Abata ("Monastery of the Abbot's Spring") an international team of archaeologists was assembled to excavate and study the site. After more than 10 years of excavations and research, the final report is about to be published.
The site is located on a steep mountain slope 3 kilometers southeast of the Dead Sea. At its archaeological center (and historic religious focus) is a cave, discovered in the north aisle of the basilica later erected on the site. Early Christians — drawing on Genesis chapter 19 of the Old Testament — believed Lot and his two daughters lived here after their flight from sinful Sodom and their brief stop at Zoar.[continue]
Related
The Sanctuary of Agios Lot, the City of Zoara and the Zared River - Christusrex.org
From the Jerusalem Post: The cloistered among us.
Lying on the cold stone floor under a shroud, as fellow community members intoned the Prayer for the Dead around him, he wasn't frightened.
Though he knew it would be traumatic for his family, the celebration of his symbolic death brought him great inner peace. He lay there for one hour, enveloped in darkness and prayer, daydreaming of the fragrant incense and the spiritual tranquility he had always found inside his local monastery as a child in Egypt.
He loved his family and old friends, and he enjoyed his work as a public service attorney, but at age 28, after a dozen years of consideration, he was finally ready to withdraw from his attachments to a "higher calling." From that moment onwards, he would be known as Father Antonios. This ceremony marked his rebirth as a Coptic Orthodox monk, and marked the break, or "death," from his old life as an active member of family and community.
Today, strolling around St. Helena's Coptic Orthodox Monastery in Jerusalem's Old City, where he was sent by church elders, Father Antonios reflects fondly on his initiation ceremony in Cairo eight years ago.
[continue with print version or graphic version of this article]
(You may need a password to read the rest of the article.)
From the BBC: Oasis women fashion their own freedom.
Embroidery lies behind a peaceful revolution in the very traditional Egyptian oasis of Siwa.
The small patch of green near the Libyan border currently holds dates as the mainstay of its economy.
But the income of the palm tree is slowly being eclipsed by the efforts of the women of the oasis.
Women — married and unmarried — are able to earn more than twice the average Siwan agricultural wage earned by men by skilfully wielding a needle.
Outside the home they are totally covered, from head to toe, and have no contact with the outside world. But their symbolic stitches are on show on the catwalk in Milan. [continue]
From the BBC: El Greco art discovered in Spain.
A 16th Century painting by artist El Greco, valued at £500,000, has been discovered in an envelope in Spain.
The Spanish family that has owned the oil-on-wood portable altarpiece, The Baptism of Christ, since the mid-19th Century, did not know what they had.
It was only discovered when they took it to a routine Christie's valuation.
The auctioneers said it was a "wonderful, vibrant work" and came as a "complete surprise". It will be sold by Christie's in London on 8 December.
El Greco, born in Crete, had a unique style, characterised by elongated forms and bright colours, that inspired 20th Century painters such as Cezanne, Picasso and Jackson Pollock. [continue]
From novinite.com: More Ancient Gold Sees Sunlight in Bulgaria.
About 400 pieces of gold applications have been found so far during the excavations at an Early Bronze Age village in Bulgaria, the archeologists announced Thursday.
Archeologists from the expedition, organized by the National History Museum, admitted that each day some 10-15 new items are discovered, including gold applications for clothes, beads, rings and many other objects, some of which with unclear purpose. [continue]
From the Jerusalem Post: Dig reveals more of ancient Albanian shul.
Excavations at an ancient synagogue in Albania have uncovered additional sections of the impressive structure.
The dig, now in its second season, is being conducted under the auspices of the Hebrew University and the Albanian Academy of Sciences at a synagogue that dates from the 5th or 6th century CE and is located in the coastal city of Saranda, opposite the Greek island of Corfu.
The synagogue underwent various changes, including transformation into a church in the late 6th century CE, before it was destroyed by Slavic raids into the region in the 7th century. [continue]
From The Scotsman: Forest excuse ‘pure Roman spin’.
When the all-conquering armies of ancient Rome failed to subdue the northern end of Britain, there had to be a good reason.
So the Romans decided it was not the primitive barbarians known as the Caledonii who had defeated them, but the vast impenetrable forest covering the country now known as Scotland.
However, a new book to be released next month on the history of Scotland's woods claims this idea was invented by Roman writers to preserve the image of the empire's "invincible" legions.
According to Professor Chris Smout, the Historiographer Royal, it was an early example of political spin used to explain failure, and a tactic used by the Romans to cope with defeat against the German tribes.
Prof Smout, of St Andrews University, said: "The great Caledonian forest? I don't think it ever existed. I think it was a story the Romans put about to explain why they didn't conquer Scotland. [continue]
From the Globe and Mail: Foodies' next frontier.
Snail porridge? Parsnip cornflakes? Bacon-and-eggs-flavoured ice cream? British food sounds more disgusting than ever, and people are flocking from around the world to try it. The Fat Duck, a small restaurant a few kilometres from Heathrow airport in the village of Bray, has been enticing a steady stream of adventurous diners across the Atlantic.
Some make it part of a business trip or a vacation, others drop by on a tour of the top restaurants in Europe. Some even make the trip specially. As one diner (writing on a website http://www.london-eating.co.uk) put it, "My friend and I flew in from the States just for dinner at the Fat Duck. We could have saved money on our return flight and just flew home on the pure joy the whole experience filled us with."
They come to eat salmon coated in licorice jelly, sardines-on-toast sorbet, red-cabbage gazpacho and chocolate dessert with popping candy (that sugary delight rarely enjoyed by anyone past the age of 12). [continue]
Related:
Fat Duck -fatduck.co.uk
From Wired, bless them: Inventor Rejoices as TVs Go Dark.
...TV-B-Gone, a new universal remote that turns off almost any television. The device, which looks like an automobile remote, has just one button. When activated, it spends over a minute flashing out 209 different codes to turn off televisions, the most popular brands first. [full article]
Do you want one? I do.
From the BBC: Colombia's bullet-proof tailor.
There may be few advantages to living in a country with an international reputation for violence, kidnapping and murder, but a Colombian tailor appears to have found one.
Based in Bogota, Miguel Caballero's eponymous company constructs clothes which help protect the wearer against bullets, knives and other weapons. [continue]
From The Guardian: Forget meat and moons. To give birth to a boy you need a live-in man.
The old wives' tale has it that women who want to have sons should eat meat and salty food or make love standing up during a quarter moon. But the real answer for women could be a lot simpler than that: just make sure you are living with your partner.
An American doctor has found that women are more likely to give birth to boys if they are married or living with a man at the time of conception. The results are the first evidence that living arrangements can affect the human sex ratio at birth, and could explain the fall in the number of boy babies in some developed countries in the past 30 years. [continue]
From csmonitor.com: Developer world: Poor nations on front line of computer wars.
Until two weeks ago, Vanusa Pereira had never used a computer. The uneducated, unmarried, and unemployed mother of two did not know a PC from a CD-ROM or a blaster worm from a Trojan horse.
Today, thanks to a government-sponsored course that has taught information-technology skills to more than 100,000 of São Paulo's poorest citizens, she knows how to write e-mail, surf the Internet, and create basic documents.
The fact that so many people like Ms. Pereira are taking the first tentative steps toward computer literacy is remarkable, but it is not the reason these classes are newsworthy. The unusual thing here is that the students are using Linux, an inexpensive, open-source software platform increasingly popular with governments, especially in the developing world, who see it as a cheaper, safer, and more flexible alternative to Microsoft Windows. Experts say countries from Brazil to Russia to China are shunning Bill Gates's proprietary operating system in favor of open source, mounting a major challenge to Microsoft's global dominance and making the executives in Redmond, Wash., sweat. [continue]
Related:
Linux info - Mirabilis.ca
From the BBC: Kiln's ‘ancestor’ found in Greece.
Archaeologists have discovered the oldest clay "fireplaces" made by humans at a dig in southern Greece.
The hearths are between 34,000 and 23,000 years old and were almost certainly used for cooking by prehistoric inhabitants of the area.
Researchers found remnants of wood ash and phytoliths - a type of plant cell - in these hearths and lab tests show the clay was burnt. [continue]
From The Times Online: Want to win at Pooh Sticks? It's all in the throw.
Parents like to think of it as a harmless game. But anyone below the age of eight knows that Pooh Sticks is a highly competitive art form, a precision skill that requires not only near-perfect hand-eye co-ordination and a plentiful supply of the proper equipment (sticks) but, crucially, the will and ability to cheat.
Now cheating at the game invented by A. A. Milne for his son Christopher Robin has become significantly easier thanks to research by Ben Schott, the author of Schott's Miscellany, a bestselling trivia book.
In the third miscellany, Schott's Sporting, Gaming and Idling Miscellany, which is published this week, Schott reveals the game's secret. On page 17 of the book, alongside a diagram illustrating his controversial method, Schott has pinpointed an ideal "drop zone".
Throw your stick or pine cone from this vantage point, he says, and you can "reduce a stick's waiting time for up to five seconds". He also suggests an ideal racing line for Pooh Sticks. Armed with this information, rivals at Pooh Sticks heading to Ashdown Forest, Sussex, where Milne invented the game, may find themselves transformed from frustrated amateurs to champions. [continue]
Thanks to my friend Brian for writing to tell me about this article.
From csmonitor.com: A night on the beach ... with some busy turtles.
Our guide, Castor, is serious when he tells us, "No camera. No flashlight. No cigarette." It's 10 o'clock at night, and we've been stumbling along behind him and his wife, Maria, on the beach in complete darkness for half an hour, hoping that every shadowy form is a giant green sea turtle that has emerged from the Caribbean to lay her eggs on Tortuguero Beach. [continue]
From The Guardian: What does your body shape say about you?.
Fretting about your long-term health prospects? Worried about whether you are going to succumb to heart disease and cancer? According to new advice from scientists, the answers to your questions could be as close as your nearest full-length mirror. Take a long, hard look at your body shape, they say, because it could reveal a whole host of clues about your longevity and your risk of serious illness. [continue]
From kplctv.com: Fisherman nets statue of ancient Greek athlete.
A Greek fisherman has made the catch of the day — or maybe the century.
He snagged a 24-hundred-year-old bronze statue a few days ago, near the Aegean Sea island of Kythnos.
The Greek Culture Ministry says it's missing a head, an arm and a leg, but it's still quite a find. Experts think the statue is of a young athlete — given the fact that it is naked, its stance indicates movement, and that there's a great deal of anatomical detail. [continue]
National Geographic has an interesting article about cowbirds: Raised by Others, Birds Use Code to Find Their Kind.
The animals are one of the more than 90 known parasitic bird species, so called because they lay their eggs in the nests of other bird species and leave the chick-rearing to other parents.
The fact that the bird is raised to independence by unrelated foster parents prompts biologists to ask the question: How does the cowbird learn what it is and successfully find its way back to the flock to mate with its own kind?
Mark Hauber, a behavioral ecologist at the University of California, Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, is in search of an answer. His findings so far suggest that parasitic birds employ secret passwords of sorts to identify their own kind. [continue]
Ever wanted to ride a penny farthing bicycle? The original model would be horribly daunting, as well as uncomfortable. But look, somebody has made a modern version! From the BBC: Penny farthings go back on sale.
A Derby cycle shop has taken delivery of a batch of Penny Farthings.
The originals were manufactured between 1870 and 1878 and were among the first cycles to be made.
The new ones being stocked by Hawks Cycles on London Road are replicas that have been updated to meet the standards expected of modern bikes.
Manufactured at the firm's factory in Birmingham it has lighter aluminium parts and a sprung saddle making it easier and more comfortable to ride. [continue]
If you'd rather have an old-style penny farthing, take a look at the Mesicek HiWheel.
Additional links found at Cronaca:
Penny Farthing - HawkCycles.co.uk
Rideable Replica Bicycles
Penny Farthings - http://www.wuk.at/fahrrad/
From the New York Times: Italian Woman's Veil Stirs More Than Fashion Feud.
The immediate issue is how one woman in one tiny town in northern Italy dresses, so it made a certain kind of sense for Giorgio Armani to weigh in. His opinion? A woman should wear what she likes, even if what she likes is a veil that hides her face completely.
"It's a question of respect for the convictions and culture of others," Mr. Armani, the fashion designer, said in a statement released late last month. "We need to live with these ideas."
He was speaking out in defense of Sabrina Varroni, a Muslim woman from this town near the Swiss border who has been fined 80 euros, about $100, for appearing twice in public wearing a veil that completely covered her face. Her punishment has won cheers from some Italians and has horrified others. [continue]
You'll need a password if you want to read the rest of the article on the NYT website.
Here are copies of the article for which you will not need a password:
Veils stir controversy in Italy, Europe - Newszine (iml.jou.ufl.edu)
A lone Italian uncovers rift on veils - International Herald Tribune
From nature.com: Paralysed man sends e-mail by thought.
An pill-sized brain chip has allowed a quadriplegic man to check e-mail and play computer games using his thoughts. The device can tap into a hundred neurons at a time, and is the most sophisticated such implant tested in humans so far.
Many paralysed people control computers with their eyes or tongue. But muscle function limits these techniques, and they require a lot of training. For over a decade researchers have been trying to find a way to tap directly into thoughts.
In June 2004, surgeons implanted a device containing 100 electrodes into the motor cortex of a 24-year-old quadriplegic. The device, called the BrainGate, was developed by the company Cyberkinetics, based in Foxborough, Massachusetts. Each electrode taps into a neuron in the patient's brain. [continue]
From discovery.com: Michangelo's David Missing a Back Muscle.
Michelangelo's David, the towering sculpture acclaimed for its depiction of male physical perfection, has a "hole" in the back, two anatomy professors announced at a recent conference in Florence.
Computer measurements of David's body taken by professors Massimo Gulisano and colleague Pietro Bernabei of Florence University show a hollow instead of a muscle on the right side of the back, between the spine and the shoulder blade.
"Michelangelo's David is the result of intense anatomy studies. Here the artist achieved an absolute perfection except for that muscle in the back," Gulisano said.
But it wasn't really a mistake. Michelangelo was aware of the flaw.
"In one of his letters, he wrote that a defect in the marble block made it impossible to reproduce the muscle," the researchers said. [continue]
From the Sunday Times: Mary Rose gives up secrets of gambling gourmets.
The archeologists who successfully raised the Mary Rose have returned to the site to recover a host of artefacts that cast new light on life on board the Tudor warship.
The finds — ranging from intact longbows and poisonous arrows to powerful cannons and a sophisticated oven — reveal a healthy, well-fed crew with the capability to destroy an enemy up to a mile away.
Remnants of a shawm — a form of oboe — dice, draughts and backgammon show that the warship's officers were not short of entertainment after they had feasted on beef, venison, pork and fish.
The archeologists have been particularly excited by clues suggesting that the 40ft high wooden castle, which was attached to the ship's bow, has been preserved in silt 12ft under the sea bed. [continue]
Related Mirabilis.ca content:
Mary Rose divers' exciting find
The Mary Rose
Found: bow of Mary Rose
Elsewhere:
MaryRose.org
Mary Rose - Wikipedia
From Ananova: Meatloaf sees off wild boars.
Serbian villagers are blaring out rock music 24 hours a day in a bid to stop wild boars destroying their crops.
People in villages in the Sokolovica mountains say they started playing rock music as a deterrent after one farmer who played Meatloaf as he worked said his fields had never been raided by pigs. [continue].
Related Mirabilis.ca content:
Pigs in Berlin
Hairdressers help drive away wild boar
From discovery.com: Medici Family Murders Debunked in Italy.
Scientists now exhuming the remains of several members of the Medicis, the family that dominated the Florentine Renaissance, have conclusively dismissed the theory of family murders, putting to an end to more than four centuries of speculation about a series of mysterious deaths in the clan.
Since 1562, when Cosimo I's sons Garcia and Giovanni died five weeks apart, it has been rumored that Garcia stabbed the other and was himself run through with a sword by his furious father.
Their mother, Eleonora of Toledo, died soon afterwards of a broken heart, it was said.
"The murder story was probably spread by the Medici rivals, who accused the family of the most horrible crimes. We can now put this murder theory to rest. We have been able to reconstitute the skeletons and there are no cut marks," project leader Gino Fornaciari, professor of forensic anthropology and director of the Pathology Museum at the University of Pisa, told Discovery News. [continue].
Related Mirabilis.ca content:
Exhuming the Medici family
Medici murder plot solved
Medici assasination solved
Bad blood flows as Medicis go digging up their past
The Jews and the Medici
Medicis' secret crypt unearthed
From Yorkshire Today: Iron age horse burial unearthed.
A rare ritual burial of four horses has been discovered in an area experts regard as a sacred landscape surrounding one of the most important prehistoric sites in the North of England.
Carbon dating shows the horses — lying nose to tail at Nosterfield Quarry close to Thornborough Henges, north of Ripon — were buried around 50AD, shortly after the Romans arrived in Britain.
The burial pit, or barrow, was found earlier this year as a team from Field Archaeological Specialists, based at York University, watched over the removal of topsoil at the sand and gravel quarry.
Zoo-archaeologist Steve Rowland, who uncovered them, said: "Two of the skeletons were virtually intact, but the other two had been accidentally damaged through ploughing of the land in previous years.
"It was only after further investigation that we were able to confirm the full extent of the burial and understand its ritual significance." [continue]
From Scotsman.com: Police play cat and mouse with new French underground.
Deep beneath the streets of Paris, police are playing a game of cat and mouse with a band of explorers who have turned the city's underground tunnels and chambers into their personal playground. The so-called cataphiles, equipped with waders, torches and rucksacks, drop in through manholes to explore disused medieval quarries and catacombs, spray graffiti and throw parties.
"You can just as easily come across the chairman of a big French company as a scruffy punk," said Alex, a 24-year-old history student who has been sneaking in for three years.
In the pitch-black corridors 65ft below ground, everyone goes by a pseudonym.
"It's part of the idea, not knowing what people do in real life. It's like living a double life," said Alex.
Below street level the temperature is a constant 15C and the humidity 100 per cent. [continue]
From an Associated Press article on the Seattle PI website: Comic book artist recreates ancient Rome.
ROME — Imagine ancient Rome before its fall: The some 1,350 fountains still trickle with water, the 1,790 palaces haven't fallen to ruins and the 240 public latrines are still in business.
In painstaking detail, French comic book artist Gilles Chaillet has brought the ancient city back to life with an immense map based on a lifetime of research and a touch of artistic license.
Chaillet dreamed up the project when he was 9 years old. Nearly 50 years later, he came to the Eternal City to show it off to the Romans.
"This was an idea I could never get out of my head," Chaillet told The Associated Press on Thursday. "It was a bit of an obsession." [continue]
From the BBC: Medieval teeth ‘better than Baldrick's’.
Think of medieval England and you are likely to conjure up an image of a wizened hag with black stumps for teeth.
But although that might have been the unfortunate state of some people's teeth, others had much better care.Documents show that, not only were the educationally elite aware of the importance of keeping their teeth clean, but they also knew how to fill cavities and deal with facial fractures.
They could recognise oral cancer and even knew the rudiments of teeth whitening. [continue]
From The Globe and Mail: Giving thanks with chilies and basmati.
The turkey stuffing is made with green chilies and curry spices. Hold the bacon. Dessert isn't pumpkin pie, but kulfi, homemade Indian ice cream. The extended family gathers around a tablecloth rolled out on the living room floor, with a Bollywood movie playing in the background.
Welcome to the new Canadian Thanksgiving in which an influx of newcomers from abroad is spicing up an old and much-loved holiday. Some still think of it as a Christian tradition and take a pass altogether, while others embrace it as a time to reflect on their new lives in a new land. [continue]
Related Mirabilis.ca content:
Canadian Thanksgiving history
Unusual turkey-cooking methods
Happy Thanksgiving, Canada!
Scotsman.com reports that the : remains of ancient wall have been found in Edinburgh.
Workers building dozens of flats on a site beside Old Fishmarket Close in the Cowgate have unearthed the one metre-high structure, which is thought to be part of the "King's Wall".
Although historians are divided over the wall's origins, it is believed that James II ordered the construction of the King's Wall in 1450 as a defence against English forces.
But some experts claim the wall was actually built by English forces more than 100 years earlier when they occupied Edinburgh Castle around 1335. [continue]
Those of you who've been reading Mirabilis.ca for a while know I'm interested in alternative fuels, and you might remember that I once blogged about biodiesel in Vancouver. Well, more news on that front. Mike McArthur wrote to say:
Ecofuels Canada has opened Vancouver's Biodiesel Coop:
www.straight.com/content.cfm?id=4877
www.ecofuels.caI personally am a member, and use biodiesel in my car. So if you or your blog's audience have questions, let me know.
Also, the City of Vancouver is switching to biodiesel in an effort to reduce their emissions.
www.city.vancouver.bc.ca/sustainability/coolvancouver/
Mike is at triton-env.com, by the way; the first part of his email address there is mmccarthur. Thanks, Mike!
Related Mirabilis.ca content:
Automobile fuel from french fries
The power of leftovers
Biodiesel powers coffee delivery
Imagine these adverts
Tidal power in Norway
VW on biodiesel
Chicken-powered car
Bio cars
Biodiesel for Brampton buses
Cooking oil fuel in Wales
Trees could fuel cars
Denmark's eco-car
Biodiesel in Candada
Biodiesel for boats
Fill 'er up with Krispy Kreme
Anything into oil
Electricity from grapes
Biodiesel in Canada, update
Race car runs on alternative fuel
Sunflower oil to boost car future
Bananas could power Aussie homes
Elsewhere:
New Association Launches a Sustainable Energy Vision for BC - Globe.ca
BC Sustainable Energy Association
Triton Environmental Consultants: Mike McArthur
Triton Environmental Consultants: contact
From Nature.com: Mice unlock mystery of Spanish flu.
Disease experts have come a step closer to understanding the deadly secrets of the Spanish flu virus, which killed around 20 million people in 1918-19. By reconstructing genes from the killer and introducing them into a modern virus, researchers have recreated some of its disease-causing power.
The resulting virus makes mice very ill, even though they don't normally get flu. Learning how exactly they get sick might help health experts to contain future outbreaks of deadly flu in humans. [continue]
From the BBC: Monks seek homes for St Bernards.
Wanted: Home for 64kg-worth of shaggy, doe-eyed dog, used to long walks in the Swiss Alps, brandy keg optional.
Monks at the St Bernard's Hospice in the Swiss Alps are planning to sell the world-famous rescue dogs to devote more time to needy people.
The skills of the 18 dogs, renowned for saving avalanche victims from snowy graves, have long been overtaken by helicopters and heat-seeking equipment.
But the new owners must promise to bring the dogs back each year.
The hospice, run by Augustine monks, stands at 2,438 metres (8,000 ft) - the highest point of the pass where the Swiss Entremont and the Italian Buthier valleys meet.
The monastery was founded in 1050 by Saint Bernard of Montjou. The first record of dogs being used there dates back to 1703, with stories of dogs being involved in rescues from then on. [continue]
Related:
Dog days catch up with St Bernards - The Independent
St Bernards headed off at pass as monks now put people first - The Herald
St Bernard - Catholic Encyclopedia
From National Geographic: Chimps Shown Using Not Just a Tool but a "Tool Kit".
Anyone who has tried to replace a punctured tire or fix a leaky faucet knows the importance of having the right tool for the job. Chimpanzees, it turns out, are also very particular about their tool choice, especially when it comes to digging into termite mounds to get a tasty snack.
Using infrared, motion-triggered video cameras, researchers have documented how chimpanzees in the Goualougo Triangle - a region within the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park in the Republic of Congo - use a variety of tools to extract termites from their nests. The "tool kits" are among the most complex ever observed in wild chimp populations. [continue]
From itar-tass.com: Archeologists discover ruins of Genghis Khan mausoleum in the central areas of Mongolia.
A Genghis Khan mausoleum has been discovered in the central areas of Mongolia by a joint Japanese-Mongolian archeological expedition, the press here reported on Tuesday.
The scientists hope the discovery will help them find a place where Genghis Khan was buried. Genghis Khan was the founder of the Mongol empire that was established at the beginning of the 13th century and that put a yoke on vast territories of Asia and Eastern Europe. Genghis Khan's grandson Khubilai Khan conquered China and became the first emperor of the Yuan Dynasty. [continue]
Related:
US scientists ‘track Genghis Khan’ - BBC
Burial Site May Reveal Secrets That Died with Genghis Khan - National Geographic
Genghis Khan - Wikipedia
From National Geographic: Canada's Rain Forest Wolves a Link to Past.
From the inland fjords to the windswept outer islands, the north and central archipelago of British Columbia in Canada has been largely untouched by time. In the thick temperate rain forest, wolves reign supreme, just like they have for millennia.
To Chris Darimont, a University of Victoria Ph.D. student, the rugged and remote islands are "the home of the truly wild." Since 2000 he has been studying, among other things, the foraging behavior of wolves in the Great Bear Rainforest to learn more about the little-known ecology of the islands. [continue]
From The BBC: Curry toothpaste ‘a future taste’.
A new report looking at the innovations of the future contains food for thought for many staples of British life.
Curry-flavoured toothpaste, banana mayonnaise and smelling CDs could be the future, according to Mintel.
The research, from its Global New Products Database's Innovations Club, claims every area of day-to-day life is ripe for change - and nothing is safe.
Other promised novelties include an alarm clock which wakes you up with a gentle waft of your chosen scent. [continue].
Looks like the submarine Canada bought from the UK is not such a bargain. From The Guardian:
With due pomp and ceremony the Royal Navy handed over the submarine HMS Upholder to the Canadians at the weekend. The vessel was renamed HMCS Chicoutimi - after the city on the edge of Quebec's vast northern wilds - and the maple leaf flag was hoisted. Then after its final preparations, it began to chug towards Nova Scotia. [continue].
And then it promptly caught fire, due to an electrical problem. Thanks, Britain! What a deal.
I think we should make our own submarines. Considering the two articles I found on homemade submarines (first, second) ... well, how hard can it be?
Related:
Weather hampers rescue of Canadian submarine - CBC
Rescue ship heads for submarine - BBC
Updates:
Stricken sub under tow to Faslane - The Guardian, Oct 8th, 2004
Crew tell of sub terror - The Guardian, Oct 12th, 2004
From The Guardian: Skull found at Anglo-Saxon site shows evidence of surgery.
The history of brain surgery is being rewritten after the discovery of a skull which shows that complex operations were performed in Anglo-Saxon England.
A century before the Norman invasion of 1066, a doctor or itinerant healer was delicately removing scraps of skull from a 40-year-old Yorkshire peasant who had been whacked on the head.
It was such a skilful operation that a large depression on the man's brain was relieved and fractures in the bone healed. According to English Heritage archaeologists, the patient lived for many years after the operation, finally dying of unrelated causes. [continue]
From Ananova: Hairdressers help drive away wild boar.
Hairdressers in a German town have started collecting their customers' hair to drive away wild boar.
The spa town of Bad Saarow, between Berlin and Frankfurt on the Oder, has been plagued by boar roaming the town. [continue]
What are the chances of this article appearing on Ananova, just after I posted about wild boars in Berlin?
Who knew there were so many wild boars roaming about in Berlin? From The Walrus: Pigs in the City.
Somewhere between five thousand and seven thousand now live among the 3.4 million human denizens in Berlin, and Ehlert is the man who facilitates the relationship between the two species. In his capacity as Jagdreferent [hunt adviser] des Landes Berlin, he commands the city's network of fifty volunteer hunters, who are charged with regulating the city's boar population. Ehlert's team killed five hundred of the creatures last year and will likely do the same this year as part of the ongoing facilitation. Hours earlier, Ehlert arrived at a street near Olympic Stadium just as a thirty-year-old man threw himself in front of one of the marksmen, shrieking "You don't shoot my pig!" The boar weighed 230 pounds and possessed five-inch tusks, and was known as "the traffic pig" for the way it would cross a street - always between cars - where hunters can't shoot. Despite his job (or perhaps be-cause of it), the Jagdreferent has developed a soft spot for the very population he is supposed to control. Those boars that have adapted most completely to Berlin impress Ehlert the most and, thus, get names. As we close in on "Sophie," he is still sad about signing off on the order to shoot the "traffic pig." [continue]
Related Mirabilis.ca content:
Meatloaf sees off wild boars - October, 2004
Hairdressers help drive away wild boar - October, 2004
Wild boar the ground force team to revive forest - August, 2005
So we're not in Prague any more. Here it's sunny and hot, and I've been swimming and skin diving in warm water. This is the life! If I show you just three photos, will you know where we are?
This first photo should do it for the linguists. The second photo is a big fat clue, and so is the third. Have you guessed?
From The Guardian: Arab scholar ‘cracked Rosetta code’ 800 years before the West.
It is famed as a critical moment in code-breaking history. Using a piece of basalt carved with runes and words, scholars broke the secret of hieroglyphs, the written ‘language’ of the ancient Egyptians.
A baffling, opaque language had been made comprehensible, and the secrets of one of the world's greatest civilisations revealed - thanks to the Rosetta Stone and the analytic prowess of 18th and 19th century European scholars.
But now the supremacy of Western thinking has been challenged by a London researcher who claims that hieroglyphs had been decoded hundreds of years earlier - by an Arabic alchemist, Abu Bakr Ahmad Ibn Wahshiyah. [continue]
From The Seattle Times: Scientific dig unearths 2,500-year-old fruit .
A scientific dig has uncovered four pomegranates believed to be 2,500 years old preserved inside a woven basket nestled in a bronze vessel, a Greek archaeologist said yesterday.
The fruit was found at an archaeological dig in the area of ancient Corinth, about 63 miles west of Athens.
"They were preserved because the vessel was closed very well. The oxidization of the bronze functioned protectively, so no microorganisms developed and destroyed them," said Panayiota Kasimi, the archaeologist in charge of the dig. [continue]
I've become quite fond of háčeks. Don't you wish we had some in Engliš?
Related:
Czech language
From The Guardian: Missing page reunited with Sforza Hours.
A mere 514 years after 16 pages of the Sforza Hours were stolen by a murdering Milanese duke, the British Library has reunited one of its greatest treasures with the last of the three missing pages known to survive.
The tiny page could not be more topical: a man and woman hunting on horseback, in the golden month of October. Behind the glittering image lies a story of greed and treachery.
The couple may be an idealised Bona of Savoy and her murdered husband, Duke Sforza of Milan. The page certainly ended up in the hands of her brother-in-law, chief suspect in the killing not only of the duke but also of his son. [continue]
The British Library site has more information about the Sforza Hours, and they've even got a digital copy of the book available for you to see.
From nature.com: Popcorn gets poppier.
Next time you go to the movies, look out. If the popcorn vendors have read this article, your cup of popcorn might contain fewer pieces than it used to. That's because the pieces could each be up to twice the volume they were previously.
On the other hand, that's good news if you make your own popcorn at home, because you'll be able to get two cups' worth from the number of kernels that previously gave you just one. What's more, there will be fewer of those annoying, crunchy unpopped kernels.
How is it done? The trick is simple: just pop the kernels at a lower pressure. [continue]
Here's a bit about the Prague Golem, from this page of Prague legends.
In the 16th century, during the reign of Rudolf II, an old Jewish man named Rabbi Judah Loew lived in Prague. During that time, the Jewish people of Prague were being attacked and lived their lives in fear. Rabbi Loew decided to protect the Jews against pogroms by creating the Golem, a giant who according to the Cabala could be made of clay from the banks of the Vltava. Following the prescribed rituals, the Rabbi built the Golem and made him come to life by reciting a special incantation in Hebrew. The word "emet", meaning "truth", was placed on the Golem's forehead.
The Golem would obey the Rabbi's every order and would help and protect the people of the Jewish Ghetto. However, as he grew bigger, he also became more violent and started killing people and spreading fear. Rabbi Loew was promised that the violence against the Jews would stop if the Golem was destroyed. The Rabbi agreed. By removing the first letter from the word "emet", thus changing it to "met" (meaning "death"), life was taken out of the Golem. According to legend, the Golem was brought back to life by Rabbi Loew's son, and may still be protecting Prague today.
And here's how to create a golem from the comfort of home.
Related:
Legend of the Golem - appstate.edu. (This version is written for children. It's got more details than the version above.)
The Golem -JewishMag.com
From Scotsman.com: After 550 years, mystery death of French king's lover may be solved.
She was one of the most beautiful women of her time, who won the heart of a king to become France’s first officially recognised royal mistress.
But when Agnes Sorel died in agony at the age of 28, rumours began to circulate that she had been murdered.
The lover of Charles VII, Sorel enraged the king’s son and heir, the future Louis XI, with the influence she exerted over his father’s court.
Rumour has it the dauphin paid one of the king’s officials to poison Sorel, who died in 1450 shortly after giving birth. Now French historians hope to clear up what has become one of their country’s most enduring mysteries, by exhuming her body to discover how she died. [continue]
From EDP24.co.uk: Hi-tech bid to find ancient treasures.
There is something missing from the ornate church in one of Norfolk's most picture-perfect villages.
Twelve stone apostles and one stone Jesus Christ were stripped from it during Henry VIII's Reformation, so folklore goes, before being thrown into the nearby harbour in a bout of religious fervour.
Now the residents of Cley, in North Norfolk, want them back. But instead of relying on divine inspiration, the very traditional village is turning towards rather hi-tech methods to sniff them out. [continue]
