What if Shakespeare had used PowerPoint? You must see this, really you must.
Link found in the comments section of Jeffrey Veen's Death By AutoContent posting.
Related
The PowerPoint Anthology of Literature: Hamlet - another PowerPoint Hamlet thing
William Shakespeare - Wikipedia
Hamlet - Wikipedia
Rebecca Davidson's Unseen Hands website is about women printers, binders, and book designers. The first page starts off with
Women have been involved in printing and the making of books ever since these crafts were first developed. Even before the advent of movable type, there was a strong tradition of women producing manuscripts in western European religious houses.
Then there's a thumbnail gallery, a timeline, and more. I was fascinated by this part about The Nuns of San Jacopo di Ripoli:
"Incunabula," from the Latin for "swaddling clothes," are the earliest books printed in the West, specifically those dated before 1501. The first documented instance of women actually employed in printing comes from a manuscript kept at the Convent of San Jacopo di Ripoli in Florence. Perhaps because their printing works was supervised by two male friars, the women's contributions have been little noted until recently. [continue]
From csmonitor.com: In Chile, instant web feedback creates the next day's paper.
It was 102 years old, boring, unpopular, and basically, as economist Marta Lagos puts it, "a middle-of-the-road piece of nothing."
Now, it's a phenomenon. Las Ultimas Noticias (LUN) — The Latest News — is Chile's most widely read newspaper today, setting tongues wagging, talk-show hosts chatting, celebrities and politicians denying, serious folks wailing, and advertisers calling.
No, it's not a tabloid, insist the employees at the slightly shabby downtown newsroom. Rather, they say, it's a revolution in journalism, a reader-driven product that reflects the changing values and interests of a postdictatorship public that grew up on a diet of establishment news and now wants more. Or, as some say — because of the often low-brow content — less.
This revolution has occurred, says the paper's publisher Augustine Edwards, thanks to his decision to listen to "the people." Three years ago, under Mr. Edwards's guidance, LUN installed a system whereby all clicks onto its website (www.lun.com) were recorded for all in the newsroom to see. Those clicks — and the changing tastes and desires they represent — drive the entire print content of LUN. If a certain story gets a lot of clicks, for example, that is a signal to Edwards and his team that the story should be followed up, and similar ones should be sought for the next day. If a story gets only a few clicks, it is killed. The system offers a direct barometer of public opinion, much like the TV rating system - but unique to print media. [continue]
From the University of Warwick site: Researchers compost old mobile phones and transform them into flowers.
Researchers at the University of Warwick's Warwick Manufacturing Group, in conjunction with PVAXX Research & Development Ltd, have devised a novel way to recycle discarded mobile telephones - bury them and watch them transform into the flower of your choice. (...)
The University of Warwick team, led by Dr Kerry Kirwan, have worked with hi tech materials company PVAXX Research and Development Ltd and Motorola to create a mobile telephone case or cover that when discarded can simply be placed in compost in such a way that just weeks later the case will begin to disintegrate and turn into a flower. [continue]
From the CBC: Scurvy killed early settlers to North America, scans suggest.
Scurvy killed off nearly half the colonists at one of the North America's first French settlements, according to a new study of their bones.
French colonists established the settlement at Saint Croix island between present-day Calais, Maine and St. Stephen, N.B., in 1604.
Nearly half the 79 settlers died during a harsh winter at the early European outpost. The island is now an international historic site.
To probe what killed the colonists, researchers analysed the disinterred bones from seven burial sites before they were reburied on the island in 2003. [continue]
From NewScientist.com: Endurance running is in east Africans' genes.
The long-distance running prowess of Ethiopia's elite male athletes is partly dictated by their genes.
Researchers have established that such athletes are more likely to have certain variants of four Y chromosome genes compared with other Ethiopians. No one knows what the genes do, or how influential they are, but they are the first to be linked to east Africans' outstanding ability for endurance events.
Ethiopian and Kenyan athletes have run 37 of the 40 fastest times recorded over 10,000 metres. Alongside dedication and training, there is no doubt that social and geographic factors, such as having to run long distances to school at high altitudes, contribute to their success. [continue]
What do you want to do before you die? In case you're short on ideas, the Guardian features Turn yourself into a diamond: tips from science on a good life, and death.
A thinktank of British scientists has come up with a new way of quickening the national intellect — a brain-taxing spin on the old formula of 100 things to do before you die.
The group, which includes the evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins, astronomer Sir Patrick Moore, neuroscientist Susan Greenfield and the inventor James Dyson, urges us all to take samples of our own DNA, measure the speed of light with chocolate, and solve the mathematical mystery of the number 137.
The list, compiled by New Scientist magazine, suggests booking to see Galileo's middle finger (preserved in Florence) or ordering liquid nitrogen to make the "world's smoothest ice-cream" at home.
More complicated options include joining the 300 Club at the South Pole (they take a sauna to 200 degrees Fahrenheit, then run naked to the pole in minus 100 F) or learning Choctaw, a language with two past tenses — one for giving information which is definitely true, the other for passing on material taken without checking from someone else. [continue]
From Payvand: DNA Tests to Detect Iron Age Dwellers' Race, Skin Color.
A group Iranian heritage and academic experts plan to conduct DNA tests on bones of people dating back to the Iron Age to discern their race, complexion color and endemic diseases at that time, in the most daunting project for local archeology in recent memory, Iranian Cultural Heritage News Agency reported.
Studies show the Iron Age people used to dwell in Persia from 2,500 BC to 500 BC, leaving behind a telltale sign in the form of grey potteries. The funerary artifacts unearthed in Iran’s ancient cemeteries indicated those people took pride in their multifaceted and diversified culture and religious beliefs, though the dearth of knowledge on their settlements has frustrated archeologists.
A relatively young scientific approach among local archeologists, DNA tests would hopefully unravel mysteries of one the most intriguing epoch of human history. [continue]
From The Times: The last crusade of the Templars.
The Vatican is giving "serious consideration" to apologising for the persecution that led to the suppression of the Knights Templar.
The suppression, which began on Friday , October 13, 1307, gave Friday the Thirteenth its superstitious legacy.
A Templar Order in Britain that claims to be descended from the original Knights Templar has asked that the Pope should make the apology.
The Templars, based in Hertford, are hoping for an apology by 2007, the 700th anniversary of the start of the persecution, which culminated with the torture and burning at the stake of the Grand Master Jacques de Molay for heresy and the dissolution of the Order by apostolic decree in 1312.
The letter, signed by the Secretary of the Council of Chaplains on behalf of the Grand Master of the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Jesus Christ and the Temple of Solomon Grand Preceptory, with a PO box address in Hertford, formally requests an apology "for the torture and murder of our leadership", instigated by Pope Clement V. [continue]
From csmonitor.com: Chef cooks up a grand social experiment.
"I live in the street" says a diner named Mohammed, who is at a crowded table of four at Carmei Ha'ir (Vineyards of the City), a Jerusalem restaurant. "Yesterday I looked in the garbage for food. I heard they give food for free here."
That kind of comment could be heard at many soup kitchens in Israel, which has moved away from its welfare-state roots.
But this isn't a soup kitchen; it's a restaurant overseen by award-winning chef Moshe Basson, who once counted Israeli cabinet ministers and Jerusalem's mayor among his regular clientele. He and his partner, Rabbi Yehuda Azrad, wanted to create an eatery that caters not only to different tastes, but different classes. [continue].
Related Mirabilis.ca content:
Dining with dignity
Borges' Book of Imaginary Beings is a bestiary, and a fine one at that. Here, this is one of the book's shorter entries, The Monkey of the Inkpot:
This animal, common in the north, is four or five inches long; its eyes are scarlet and its fur is jet black, silky, and soft as a pillow.
It is marked by a curious instinct — the taste for India ink. When a person sits down to write, the monkey squats cross-legged nearby with one forepaw folded over the other, waiting until the task is over. Then it drinks what is left of the ink, and afterward sits back on its haunches, quiet and satisfied.
WANG TAI-HAI 1791
Now there's an online version of this book, complete with illustrations. Proceed to Fantastic Zoology, and have a browse around.
Thanks to felix felix for writing to tell me about this site.
Related Mirabilis.ca entry:
Borges' Classification of Animals
Elsewhere:
Jorge Luis Borges - Wikipedia
The Jorge Luis Borges Centre for Study and Documentation - University of Aarhus, Denmark
Archaeologists in Germany claim to have found an ancient roadside rest-stop. From The Telegraph: Welcome to the Little Chef of the ancient world.
Deep beneath a bus terminus in the town of Neuss, near Dusseldorf, they have found the 2,000-year-old foundations of a roadside rest-stop complete with forecourt, chariot workshop, restaurant and an area to give horses water and hay.
A Roman traveller would have been able to order a quick meal before setting off on the wide road — which ran the length of Germany — or book a room and spend the night. There may not have been sweets or hamburgers but travellers could buy other essentials such as clothes, preserved meat and olives.
Sabine Sauer, the archaeologist leading the team which spent the past year investigating the site, said: "We've nicknamed it Big Maximus, because people would have pulled their chariots into the forecourt and ordered pork cutlets and wine, before heading back on the road." [continue]
From Wired: Wikipedia Creators Move Into News.
After doing much in recent years to revolutionize the way an encyclopedia can be built and maintained, the team behind Wikipedia is attempting to apply its collaborative information-gathering model to journalism.
Through a new effort, Wikinews, members of the open-source community who write and edit Wikipedia's encyclopedia entries are encouraged to test their skills as journalists. The news site follows a similar set of rules as the encyclopedia, which allows anyone to edit and post corrections to entries, so long as each change is recorded. [continue]
Related:
Wikipedia
From Expatica: France trumpets discovery of Gallic war trophies.
French archaeologists said this week they had discovered an exceptional Gallic war treasure in the south of the country, including rare war trumpets and ornate helmets.
The some 470 objects, or fragments of objects, were found at the end of September during a dig at Naves, in the department of Correze in southern France, in a ditch hollowed out of a Gallic-Roman temple, they said.
"The exceptional character of this discovery lies mainly in the presence of five almost complete carnyx," Christophe Maniquet, an archaeologist at Inrap, France's national institute for Archaeological studies, said.
"They are Celtic war trumpets which were used to scare off the enemy, by confusing the battle," he said. [continue]
What are you doing here when you could be over reading this at Giornale Nuovo?
In Frankfurt in 1592, one Jacob Hoefnagel, then still just nineteen years old, produced a book of fifty-two engravings based on paintings by his father Joris. The book's full Latin title translates as: Archetypes and verses by Joris Hoefnagel, his father, are presented, engraved in copper under the guidance of his genius, and freely communicated in friendship to all lovers of the Muses by his son Jacob. The book comprised four sections, each with its own title-page and a dozen engravings of assorted flora and fauna. There follows a selection of images scanned from a reprint of the book produced by the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich, in 1994. [continue]
Scott Clark blogs from Kiev, Ukraine. Here's an excerpt from something he posted yesterday: My mother-in-law, revolutionary.
"We were told that she went up to the guards in front of the entrance, guards in full riot gear, masks and shield, in ranks twenty deep. She went up to one and said, "I am a babushka [translated roughly as "grandmother" but used for every older woman grandmother age] from the village. I came here to find out how you are. Are you fine? Are you hungry? Maybe your parents are somewhere worrying about you?
"Babushka has come from the village with some warm socks for you. Maybe your feet are cold and you need some socks?" She talked to this fellow in this way and won him over. He lowered his shield to expose his face and he was grinning at her while she spoke to him."... [continue]
What do you want to do with your life? 43 Things is a fine place to start making your list.
From the BBC: The never-ending search.
Fascination with the Holy Grail has lasted for centuries, and now the Bletchley Park code-breakers have joined the hunt. But what is it that's made the grail the definition of something humans are always searching for but never actually finding?
Could an obscure inscription on a 250-year-old monument in a Staffordshire garden point the way to the Holy Grail — the jewelled chalice reportedly used by Jesus and his disciples at the Last Supper?
That is one theory entertained by Richard Kemp, the general manager of Lord Lichfield's Shugborough estate in Staffs.
Kemp has called in world-renowned code-breakers to try to decipher a cryptic message carved into the Shepherd's Monument on the Lichfield estate.
The monument, built around 1748, features an image of one of Nicholas Poussin's paintings, and beneath it the letters "D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M."
It has long been rumoured that these letters — which have baffled some of the greatest minds over the past 250 years, including Charles Darwin's and Josiah Wedgwood's — provide clues to the whereabouts of Christ's elusive cup. [continue]
Not likely, if you ask me. But still, the article is interesting, and it will be fun to see what the code-breakers come up with.
File this under everybody needs a hobby.
From the Beeb: ‘World's smelliest cheese’ named.
Scientists at a Bedfordshire university have found what could be the smelliest cheese in the world.
Vieux Boulogne, a soft cheese from northern France, beat 14 other whiffy varieties in tests.
Experts at Cranfield University — who led the research &mdash used an "electronic nose" to analyse the cheese odours, along with a panel of 19 human testers.
English Cheddar, aged between six and 24 months, was one of the least smelly cheeses tested, along with Parmesan. [continue]
From Expatica: Homeless in Amsterdam advertise ice cream.
Dozens of homeless people have appeared on the streets of Amsterdam sporting warm jackets emblazoned with an advert for ice cream maker Ben & Jerry's.
The scheme is the brain child of the Augustinian nuns of Warmoesstraat to help pay for the food and shelter they provide for homeless people. Warmoesstraat is near the city's main red light district where many homeless people gather.
The nuns say they are offering businesses the opportunity to advertise in a socially responsible way in exchange for a donation to the convent's coffers. [continue]
What you didn't know about sardines, courtesy of The Guardian. Mind boggling.
Related:
Earth's Uncanned Crusaders: Will Sardines Save Our Skin? - New York Times (password here)
Sardines to the Rescue - Biological Research Information Center, Korea
From the BBC: Stone age relics found off coast.
The site of a stone age settlement, preserved under layers of silt, has been discovered off the coast of the Isle of Wight.
Included in the find is a fire pit, presumed to be an oven, which was first used about 9,000 years ago. [continue]
From Scotsman.com: Bronze Age Site Discovered at Gas Company Dig.
Archaeologists have discovered what they believe is the most comprehensively-dated Bronze Age site in Britain, it emerged today.
The 29 cremations pits and a number of artefacts were uncovered by chance during the installation of a gas pipeline in Aberdeenshire.
The pits include 10 pottery urns containing ashes of children and adults and two golden eagle talons.
The talons are of particular archaeological importance as they have never been excavated from this period before. [continue].
From New Scientist: Intensive fishing was an ancient practice.
Intensive fishing by humans may be more ancient than previously thought, suggests a new archaeological study, which shows that significant marine fishing may have started in the UK in the 9th century.
The diminishing levels of marine fish stocks as a result of over-fishing has caused great concern since the mid-20th century. The rapid increase in commercial fishing after World War II has had a devastating impact on the marine ecosystem in the North Sea, Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and caused a number of marine fish species to become endangered.
But new analyses of remains at key archaeological sites in England suggest that the foundations of this recent problem were laid as far back as AD 1000.
James Barrett and colleagues at the University of York looked at fish bones, dating from AD 600 to AD 1600, recovered from a range of archaeological sites across Britain. To their surprise, they discovered a sudden and dramatic change in the intensity of fishing and the type of fish deposited at the sites in just a 50-year period, around AD 1000. [continue]
Related:
No more fish in the sea - The Guardian
A friend wrote to point out this Economist article about The Hive: The Story of the Honeybee and Us.
The author's proposition is that humans have always viewed the beehive as a miniature universe with order and purpose — and have looked to the hive to make sense of human society. In her delightful book, Bee Wilson traces the ideas that humans have had about the hive, and how these ideas reflect prevailing views about the body politic.
In other words, bee politics have been invented to justify human ones. In particular, the hive has been a useful model for believers in a monarchy, providing a natural justification for rulers and the ruled. In 17th-century Europe, advocates of the divine right of kings claimed that a master bee was guarded by generals, marshals, colonels and captains, and that some of the honeybees had special tufts, tassels and plumes to distinguish the several ranks.
The brief abolition of the English monarchy in the mid-17th century saw the arrival of the commonwealth hive. Meanwhile, by 1740 a republican hive was all the rage in France. After the revolution disposed of French royalty, the tricky problem of explaining the queen's purpose was solved by asserting that true power, in fact, lay with the workers. Ms Wilson says that the hive has been, in turn, monarchical, oligarchic, aristocratic, constitutional, imperial, republican, absolute, moderate, communist, anarchist and even fascist. Never democratic, however. [continue]
From The Guardian: Baby remedy is clear as day.
The old-fashioned nannies of the nation were right. The best way to get small babies to sleep well at night is to take them out in the pram for a good airing in the afternoon, a scientific study has concluded.
Those of the older and wiser generation who used to leave the pram outside the back door covered with a cat net may consider this pronouncement from a psychologist at Liverpool John Moores University to be a touch of the blindingly obvious.
But according to Yvonne Harrison, whose study appears in the Journal of Sleep Research today, it is not fresh air that makes all the difference but daylight.
She asked the parents of 56 babies to describe their babies' sleeping habits, and then attach a light-monitoring teddy bear to their clothes and their cots. At six weeks, and then at nine and 12 weeks, she took readings to establish how much light each baby had been exposed to over three consecutive days. One finding stood out: babies who got a lot of light in the afternoon were better sleepers. [continue]
From the Boston Globe: Tomb may shed light on 10th plague.
Luxor, Egypt — Out of the blinding light of a fall morning here in the Valley of the Kings, American archeologist Kent Weeks led the way down a narrow, stone passageway and into the entrance of a tomb.
Weeks peered his flashlight into the enveloping darkness of "the hidden tomb," as he calls it, and pressed on through the damp, winding passages toward what may be his archeological team's most significant find after years of methodical digging, scraping, and brushing.
At the end of a long hallway a human skull rested, propped up in a wooden box, and framed in the bleak light of a bare bulb powered by a generator that rumbled through the stony silence of the tomb.
This skull — Weeks believes, and new scientific evidence suggests — may be that of the oldest son of Rameses II, the pharaoh who most historians agree was the ruler of ancient Egypt more than 3,000 years ago at the time of the biblical story of the Exodus.
If so, this is the skull of a man who the Hebrew Bible says was killed by the 10th of the horrible plagues God sent to convince pharaoh to free the Hebrew slaves. And if so, it contains an important new piece of forensic evidence: The skull has a depressed fracture on the left hand side which pathologists say clearly occurred at the time of death. [continue]
From The Guardian: Chocolate as cough remedy.
It tastes better than cough medicine, and now researchers think it may be better at relieving coughs, too.
Dark chocolate may have health benefits to weigh against fears of tooth decay or putting on weight.
A chemical compound, theobromine, which is found in cocoa, has proved more effective at stopping persistent coughing than codeine. [continue]
Remember reading about augmented reality at archaeological sites? Here's more about that from Swissinfo.org: Swiss help bring Roman Pompeii back to life.
Visitors to Pompeii will now be able to see and hear life as it unfolded in Roman times, thanks to a computer project spearheaded by Geneva University.
The LifePlus programme takes real images of the ruined Italian city and adds the life that is missing, including simulated animals, plants, and humans.The ruins of a bar come to life as visitors wearing 3D glasses watch the waiter pouring out spiced wine for customers. In a nearby room, a beautiful woman reclines on a couch as she is wooed by a handsome centurion. Meanwhile, two women in Roman garb have a heated discussion as they wander through a leafy arbour.
With the prototype, images are supplied by a computer carried in visitors' rucksacks, but eventually they could be sent from a tiny computational device fitted to the headset. [continue]
From The Herald: Moors murders scientist traces buried medieval village.
A lost medieval village has been discovered by a scientist who led a search for Moors Murder victims.
Professor John Hunter and a team of 15 have discovered what is believed to be a buried medieval crofting settlement while carrying out general field survey work in and around a harbour village in the Western Isles.
Artefacts buried under the clachan of Rodel, on south Harris, may provide evidence that the community was once an international trading centre, with vessels arriving from Scandinavia and also the Mediterranean. (...)
Up to 30 houses are understood to be buried on a croft next to St Clement's Church, recognised as one of the grandest examples of medieval buildings anywhere on the Western Isles. Professor Hunter and his team, from the University of Birmingham, used geophysical technology to scan the ground and provide a "footprint" of the hidden village.
Homes were thought to have been arranged around two separate streets with one winding up to the site of the current church of St Clement's. [continue]
From The Tyee: A Salmon Sleuth's Disturbing Find.
"You want to do what?" asked an incredulous plant manager.
"I would like to look through all the guts taken out of the Atlantic salmon, please." By now I was used to being considered odd.
He gave me a chair and a hair net and instructed the forklift operator to place each tote beside me. A wealth of information lay in those heaps of intestines and hearts and I didn't have to go chasing off after it; it was all here, immobile and available. The age and sex of the fish could be read from the condition of the gonads, the crispness of the spleen's edges reported some measure of health, the stomach gave up the fish's last meal and the adhesion of one organ to the other revealed whether that fish had been vaccinated or not. Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) and industry stated that escaped farmed salmon were too domesticated to eat wild food; here was the proof one way or the other. [continue]
From iol.co.za: Prehistoric site found in underwater cave.
A team of international scuba divers have located an underwater cave which reveals "promising signs" of prehistoric human activity.
Maritime archaeologist Dr Bruno Werz described the site in False Bay on the Cape coast as "worthy of international exploration and excavation".
He said: "The cave has the correct overhang and orientation for prehistoric cave dwellers. It would have been raised above the landscape allowing the inhabitants to spot game and command a strategic view.
"There is evidence around the cave of the type of vegetation that prehistoric man would have eaten. These are all promising signs that we may discover traces of human activity in the cave." [continue]
From news.com.au: Mycenaean tomb unearthed.
Archeologists have discovered an intact tomb with various artefacts dating from the Mycenaean period more than 3000 years ago in southern Greece, officials said here today.
The vault-shaped tomb, carved in natural rock, was found during earthworks near Peristeri, about 50km south of the town of Sparta.
Two graves and the bones of eight people were brought to light, the Greek culture ministry said in a statement.
Of particular interest were artefacts neatly placed around the skull and bones of a young person found in the grave. They included a seal and buttons made from soapstone, glass and amber beads, as well as a bronze ring, razor, knife and hairclip. [continue]
From Radio Netherlands: A scholar and a queen.
Was the Egyptian queen Cleopatra just a sexy seductress, or was she in fact a scientist and philosopher? Recent research shows that Arab scholars in the medieval period respected her intellectual prowess, and it challenges some modern preconceptions about the relationship between science and Islam.
It is said that history is written by the winners, which perhaps accounts for our persisting perceptions of Cleopatra as a kohl-eyed man-eater who committed suicide with the aid of a snake; the Romans who defeated her in 31 BC wrote the accounts which now underpin our historical perspectives of the period. But an alternative view has emerged from research to be published in early December: Cleopatra as a woman of superior intellect who actively pursued philosophical and scientific debate with her peers. According to Okasha El Daly, an Egyptologist with the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology at University College London (UCL) in the UK, this was how Arabic scholars perceived the ill-fated queen more than 800 years after her death. [continue]
From ctv.ca: Canadian dig unearths Sinai desert fortress.
A Canadian archeological expedition in Egypt has uncovered the remains of a 4,200-year-old fortress near the Red Sea coast in the Sinai Desert, a discovery that sheds some light on life at the time when the Great Pyramids were built.
Details of the discovery will be published soon in the Bulletin of the American School of Oriental Research, and archeologists say it offers important clues on what was going on during the last years of the period in Egypt called the Old Kingdom (2700-2200 BC).
The team first learned of the site two years ago — and returned this past summer — while mapping archeological sites in the Sinai Desert. Led by a brief report of ruins in the area of Ras Budran and information from local Bedouin, they went south along the Red Sea coast to the remains of the fort.
Project director Gregory Mumford recalls shrieking: "Wow, this is massive!" when the team first surveyed what was on the surface. [continue]
Here's more on that Tudor ship we read about the other day. From The Independent: Trading with the enemy: Tudor ship provides clues to Anglo-Spanish ties.
Marine archaeologists have found in the mudflats of the Thames estuary the remains of an Elizabethan merchant ship which may have been carrying out a secret trading mission.
The 100ft-long vessel, one of the few Tudor merchant vessels ever found around Britain's coast, is of immense archaeological and historical importance. The ship was built of East Anglian oak at an east coast ship-building centre, probably Ipswich or Aldeburgh, around 1575 and its cargo and armaments suggest it may have been illegally trading with England's arch enemy, Spain. [continue]
From This is Bath: Remains of food shed light on ancient ways.
Exotic spices unearthed beneath the Bath Spa show military administrators lived in the lap of luxury in the city's early days. Food and architectural remains found preserved beneath the remains of Roman buildings provide new evidence of the high living enjoyed by the military rulers of what was then Aquae Sulis in the first century AD.
The remains were discovered in 1999, but have only just finished being analysed.
The ancient grapes, figs, coriander and a peppercorn — along with highly decorative architectural fragments — are believed to come from a military administrator's building, which was demolished when the city passed from military to civilian use in the second century AD. [continue]
From the BBC: Church air is ‘threat to health’.
Air inside churches may be a bigger health risk than that beside major roads, research suggests.
Church air was found to be considerably higher in carcinogenic polycyclic hydrocarbons than air beside roads travelled by 45,000 vehicles daily.
It also had levels of tiny solid pollutants (PM10s) up to 20 times the European limits.
The study, by Holland's Maastricht University, is published in the European Respiratory Journal.
The researchers say that December, with churches lighting up candles for Christmas, could be an especially dangerous month for the lungs. [continue]
Who knew? Time to open some windows. But nothing, absolutely nothing, could keep me away from midnight Mass on Christmas Eve.
Related:
European Respiratory Society
European Respiratory Journal
Cabbaged and fabaceae, each eight letters long, are the longest words that can be played on a musical instrument. Seven letter words with this property include acceded, baggage, bedface, cabbage, defaced, and effaced.
Aegilops, eight letters long, is the longest word whose letters are arranged in alphabetical order. Seven letter words with this property include beefily and billowy. Six letter words include abhors, accent, access, almost, biopsy, bijoux, billow, chintz, effort, and ghosty.
Spoonfeed, nine letters long, is the longest word whose letters are arranged in reverse alphabetical order. Trollied is an eight letter word with this property. Seven letter words with this property include sponged and wronged.
Cimicic and Cimicid, each seven letters long, are the longest words that are exclusively made up of Roman Numerals. [continue]
That's from the word oddities page at rinkworks.com. For more fun, check out their other pages about words.
(Thanks to my friend David for telling me about this site.)
From The Guardian: Tudor cannon recovered.
One of the earliest iron cannons cast in England has emerged from the shattered hull of a Tudor ship, wrecked off the Kent coast near Gravesend.
The gun, probably made in the early 1570s, is of international importance. Only one earlier English cast-iron gun survives, in a private collection: this new find will probably be housed at the Royal Armouries' artillery museum, at Fort Nelson in Hampshire.
The gun was made, and the ship may have been part-owned, by Thomas Gresham, Kent entrepreneur, iron founder - and fixer and probably spy to both Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.
The wreck was found by chance last year when a Port of London dredger hit what was first assumed to be a sunken Thames barge. It was only when the first of the guns surfaced that the archaeologists were called in. [continue]
From scotsman.com: Raising haul from richest wreck is an international battle at sea.
More than 300 years ago, the flagship of the Royal Navy set sail on a secret mission to deliver a vast bribe to a wavering ally in the war against France.
But HMS Sussex never arrived, prompting the Duke of Savoy to switch sides in exchange for French gold. A violent storm off the coast of Gibraltar had swamped the ship, which sank with its precious cargo and the loss of all but two of its crew in 3,000ft of water.
However, an American salvage company and a Scottish archaeologist now believe they have found what could be the world's richest wreck.
In the next few weeks they will begin survey work to establish whether it is the Sussex, before beginning a pioneering underwater excavation — the deepest ever attempted — and, they hope, recovering the "million pounds in money" sent by King William in 1694, which could be worth as much as £600 million today. [continue]
From the BBC: Historic ship remains recovered.
Parts of a medieval ship thought to have lain under the Thames Estuary for the past 500 years have been recovered near Gravesend.
The remains, thought to have been part of an armed merchant vessel, were found during dredging of the estuary.
The Port of London Authority recovered the bow section of the ship relatively intact - virtually unheard of for a ship of this age.
Divers also found artefacts including cannons and even a leather shoe sole. [continue]
Link found at Cronaca.
There are some striking old photos you'll want to see over here, all taken by Frank Meadow Sutcliffe [1835-1941]. A bit about Sutcliffe's work:
Sutcliffe's equipment was unwieldy and cumbersome. His full plate cameras were constructed from brass and mahogany, complete with hand bellows. Sutcliffe worked in Whitby from the beginning of his career in 1875, using a technique that employed wet collodian, but he soon had to move with the times, turning to the use of dry plates.
Despite his awkward equipment, Sutcliffe was able to create images of unsurpassed elegance and sensitivity. His photographs, almost all of Whitby and its environs, captured a truth not available to those working with brushes or pencils. More than any other artist of his time Sutcliffe was able to illustrate real life. Unlike a modern photographer who can snap off rolls of film and choose the best image, each of Sutcliffe's shots had to be carefully composed. [continue]
The (British) National Museum of Photography, Film and Television has 83 Sutcliffe photos for you to browse through. Some of them are stunning; go grab a glass of something nice and dream your way through the lot of them.
Thanks to Mick Hartley for telling me about Frank Sutcliffe's photos, and directing me to a few of them on the web.
Related:
Whitby Musuem
Sutcliffe Gallery, Australia
Spotted at here at Metafilter:
Stand on the shoulders of giants. Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research.
From the Globe and Mail: Medieval harvests reveal climate change.
Leave it to the French to measure global climate change through the archives of 600 years of harvesting the pinot noir grape in Burgundy.
A group of French climatologists and ecologists has pored over records squirrelled away in parish papers and obscure municipal files to find which day the fabled grapes were picked in each year stretching back to 1370.
That harvest date falls precisely at the moment the grapes achieve perfect ripeness — and therefore the most glorious taste — and is tightly controlled by temperature, said Isabelle Chuine, a scientist at the Centre for Evolutionary and Functional Ecology in Montpellier, whose paper on her findings was published today in the journal Nature.
In homage to the splendour of this grape, which was developed in Burgundy many centuries ago, these dates have been reverently recorded year after year since the Black Death stalked the French countryside in the 14th century.
That means the harvest dates, worked backward through complex mathematical models, can be used to figure out variations in temperature, compared to the reference period of 1960 to 1989 — and not just for a few years, but in the longest uninterrupted line known in which the actual dates are written down. [continue]
From Reuters: New Bible translation returns to Hebrew roots.
It is considered the most magisterial opening in English literature: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."
But now a major revisionist translation of the Bible would have the cosmos begin with a more conversational clause: "When God began to create heaven and earth...."
And where the King James translation of Genesis had the earth begin "without form and void," the new translation of the Hebrew Bible says that the earth was "welter and waste."
Biblical scholar Robert Alter's major new English translation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible — alternately called the Five Books of Moses, the Torah or Pentateuch — has some critics manning the barricades while others are applauding his efforts to return the work to its original Hebrew meanings and majestic repetitions. [continue]
From novinite.com: Exotic Life of Ancient Thrace.
A series of spectacular discoveries at three sites in central and eastern Bulgaria has highlighted the exotic lifestyle of the ancient Thracians as never before.
Georgi Kitov, a veteran Thrakologist who has excavated more than 30 tombs built for the ancient warrior elite, says that the Thracians were known for drinking undiluted strong red wine and were famous for their martial skills. They were the most successful gladiators in ancient Rome. [continue]
From discovery.com: Gutenberg Printing Method Questioned.
Johannes Gutenberg may be wrongly credited with producing the first Western book printed in movable type, according to an Italian researcher.
Presenting his findings in a mock trial of Gutenberg at the recent Festival of Science in Genoa, Bruno Fabbiani, an expert in printing who teaches at Turin Polytechnic, said the 15th-century German printer used stamps rather than the movable type he is said to have invented between 1452 and 1455. (...)
According to Fabbiani, Gutenberg printed his bible not with movable type, but with a brilliant metallographic invention. [continue]
It glided like no paper airplane I have ever seen before, it was acting like a REAL airplane. It gently curved into the slight breeze and began to rise vertically without moving forward. The craft then began to lower as if it were a helicopter and gently came to rest on the asphalt below.
Is this really the best paper airplane in the world? There are detailed assembly instructions, so grap a piece of paper and try it out. Flying directions included.
I often think of the Monks of New Skete, as this story about their dogs delights me. Today TimesUnion.com has an article about these monks; here's the first bit:
The sun drops from sight, and a big bell inside the tower clangs three times — loudly, deeply, solemnly — enough to make the trees tremble atop this mountain where nine monks live in search of God.
Then a series of smaller bells peal in a pitter-patter rhythm used for centuries by bell-ringing monks, from the deserts of Egypt to the wilderness of Russia.
The clattering ceases after a moment and fades into black silence.
A lone figure dressed in a full-length habit steps out from the bell tower. It's Brother Stavros — short, goateed, with piercing dark eyes, and a brain pan sizzling with the wisdom and deeds of scores of saints and martyrs who came before him. If Trivial Pursuit had a "History of Saints" edition, Brother Stavros would run the table. [continue]
Related links
New Skete Monks -NewSketeMonks.com
Raising Your Dog with The Monks of New Skete - DogsBestFriend.com
The monks and dogs of New Skete - TheWitness.org
Some of the monks' books at Amazon.ca:
How to be your dog's best friend
How to be your dog's best friend: a training manual for dog owners
The art of raising a puppy
I and dog
Celebrate dogs
From Science Daily: Tone Language Translates To Perfect Pitch: Mandarin Speakers More Likely To Acquire Rare Musical Ability.
Could it be that cellist Yo-Yo Ma owes his perfect musical pitch to his Chinese parents? While we may never know the definitive answer, new research from the University of California, San Diego has found a strong link between speaking a tone language — such as Mandarin — and having perfect pitch, the ability once thought to be the rare province of super-talented musicians. [continue]
Related Mirabilis.ca content:
A two-lobe language
From the History of Passports page on the Canadian government website:
One of the earliest mentions of passports dates back to about 450 BC. Nehemiah, an official serving King Artaxerxes of ancient Persia, asked permission to travel to Judah. The King agreed and gave Nehemiah a letter "to the governors of the province beyond the river", requesting safe passage as he travelled through their lands.
Today's Canadian passports still carry such a letter of request. Inside the front cover is a letter issued in the name of Her Majesty the Queen. Like Nehemiah's letter, this also requests safe passage and protection for the bearer.
Not until the reign of King Louis XIV of France did these "letters of request" become popular. The King granted personally signed documents to his court favourites. The letter was dubbed "passe port", literally meaning "to pass through a port", because most international travel was by sailing ships. Hence the term "passport".
Within 100 years of Louis XIV's reign, almost every country in Europe had set up a system to issue passports. Besides needing passports from their own countries, travellers also had to have visas issued by the countries they wanted to visit, much as we have travel visas today.
The rising popularity of rail travel in the mid-19th century led to an explosion of tourism throughout Europe, and caused a complete breakdown in the European passport and visa system. In answer to the crisis, France abolished passports and visas in 1861; other European countries followed suit, and by 1914, passport requirements had been eliminated practically everywhere in Europe. However, World War I brought renewed concerns for international security, and passports and visas were again required, as a "temporary" measure. [continue]
Whitby Abbey was founded in the seventh century on cliffs by the sea; its haunting remains can still be seen from the sea and are a testament to the Golden Age of Northumbria.
Although Whitby later became well-known as a sea port associated with Captain Cook and for the stairway to the parish church and monastery which inspired portions of Bram Stoker's Dracula, its legendary history began with the seventh-century abbey whose monks and nuns included such illustrious figures as Hild, Caedmon, and other of the most well-known churchmen of seventh-century Northumbria.
That's from Deborah Vess' Whitby Abbey website, which includes lots of historical information and plenty of photos.
The Catholic Encyclopedia's Abbey of Whitby page has more details:
(Formerly called Streoneshalh). A Benedictine monastery in the North Riding of Yorkshire, England, was founded about 657, as a double monastery, by Oswy, King of Northumberland. The first abbess was St. Hilda, under whom the community seems to have reached a considerable size, the conventual buildings being large enough to accommodate the council, held in 664, to determine the controversy respecting the observance of Easter. On St. Hilda's death, about 680, Aelfleda, daughter of King Oswy, succeeded as abbess, and the Monastery continued to flourish until about 687, when it was entirely destroyed by [continue]
Whitby Abbey holds one of the top spots on my "to see in England" list. Hmmm. Maybe next spring....
Related:
3D Panorama of Whitby Abbey - e-sbc.co.uk
Images of Whitby and the Abbey - whitby-uk.com
Whitby Abbey - Wikipedia
From The Guardian: British farming? Thank the French.
No individuals have shaped Britain's landscape more profoundly than its farmers. They turned a forested wilderness, peopled by hunter-gatherer tribes, into a land of hedges, fields and orchards.
Yet the identity of the first people to begin this land-shaping has been shrouded in mystery. Scientists once thought farming was brought by invaders. More recently, some argued it was imported as an idea that only gradually spread across the country.
But now scientists are putting together evidence that paints a surprising picture: that farming arrived as an already sophisticated set of practices imported by continental entrepreneurs. [continue]
From Reuters: Egypt Hopes to Solve Riddle of Tutankhamun Death.
Egypt plans to X-ray the mummy of Tutankhamun to find out what killed the king who ruled Egypt more than 3,000 years ago and died while only a teenager.
Archaeologists will move Tutankhamun's body from its tomb, which was discovered packed with treasure in 1922, to Cairo for tests which should resolve the mystery over whether he died naturally or was murdered.
"We will know about any diseases he had, any kind of injuries and his real age," Egyptian antiquities chief Zahi Hawass told Reuters. "We will know the answer to whether he died normally or was he killed." [continue]
From The Guardian: Let them eat cake.
Bofinger, in the rue de la Bastille, is the oldest brasserie in Paris, the haunt of presidents and ministers, Chiracs and chevaliers. It is also my favourite place to dine in the whole world. Bofinger is a shrine to food, staffed by mustachioed waiters in black waistcoats and white aprons, waltzing around the various rooms bearing platters of fruits de mer, wobbling crème caramels, great tureens of bouillabaisse. Bofinger is noisy and vivid, thick with the stew of soupe à l'oignon, foie gras, steak frites, choucroute, butter sauces, andouillette, sticky confit de canard, towering coupes des glaces topped with turrets of crème Chantilly.
It is also one of the best places in the world to lose weight. According to established lore and several new books (the latest is French Women Don't Get Fat by Mirielle Guiliano), if you really want to kiss your ass goodbye, you should take a lesson from the French.
Despite a diet stuffed with cream, butter, cheese and meat, just 10 per cent of French adults are obese, compared with our 22 per cent, and America's colossal 33 per cent. The French live longer too, and have lower death rates from coronary heart disease — in spite of those artery-clogging feasts of cholesterol and saturated fat. This curious observation, dubbed ‘the French paradox’, has baffled scientists for more than a decade. And it leaves us diet-obsessed Brits smarting. [continue!]
(Link found at Arts and Letters Daily.)
Related article:
Brasserie Bofinger, Paris - The Guardian
Related book:
French Women Don't Get Fat: the Secret of Eating for Pleasure - Amazon.ca
Update:
I enjoyed Mick Hartley's response to the Guardian article quoted above. An excerpt from his blog:
For the Guardian-reading classes, it's an article of faith that the French do things better. They're more civilised, they eat better......they know how to live. These articles write themselves. Anglo-Saxons: MacDonalds...tasteless...constant snacking...driven...joyless...zombies. French: leisurely meals...slow cooking...eating with the family...laughter...joie de vivre...sophistication. [continue]
From Reuters: Atlantis Hunt Reveals Structures in Sea Off Cyprus.
An American researcher on the trail of the lost city of Atlantis has discovered evidence of man-made structures submerged in the sea between Cyprus and Syria, a member of his team said Saturday.
Robert Sarmast, who is convinced the fabled city lurks in the watery depths off Cyprus, will give details of his findings Sunday.
"Something has been found to indicate very strongly that there are man-made structures somewhere between Cyprus and Syria," a spokesperson for the mission told Reuters. [continue]
Related Mirabilis.ca content:
Is Ireland Atlantis?
Atlantis?
Searching for Atlantis
From Scotsman.com: Hill dig yields treasure from 5000 years ago.
Rock art dating back 5000 years and an ancient jewellery workshop are among the treasures discovered in a Lothians excavation site ravaged by fire last year. [continue]
From Novosti: Archaeologists uncover Russian ‘Stonehenge’.
Russia now has a Stonehenge of its own. In the summer, a 4,000-year-old megalithic structure was uncovered at a Spasskaya Luka site, in the central Russian region of Ryazan. This structure, which, archeologists believe, was built as a sanctuary, sits on a hill overlooking the confluence of the Oka and the Pron rivers. The surrounding area has always been seen as an "archeological encyclopedia," a kaleidoscope of cultures ranging from the Upper Paleolithic to the Dark Ages.
If we look at this archeological site as represented on a map, it will be a circle seven meters in diameter, marked with pillars, half a meter thick and the same distance apart from each other," says the expedition leader Ilya Akhmedov, who works in the Moscow Historical Museum's Archeological Monuments Department. "Here's a large rectangular hole and a pillar in the center of the circle. The wooden pillars have not survived, of course, but the large holes from which they once stuck out can be seen pretty clearly. Along the edges of the site there are two more holes. Originally, there may have been four of them, but the bank over here is being destroyed by a ravine, so the temple has caved in partially." [continue]
Tonight I happened to catch CBC Radio's Ideas program. Well, best luck! This week's show was Kubilai Welcomes Marco, which recreated part of a meal that Kubilai Khan served to Marco Polo in 1275.
The program's website offers background information:
Marco Polo was a storyteller, among the most gifted and successful ever, as proven by the enormous popularity of a series of tales that he casually dictated to his cell-mate in a Genoan jail, just a few years after abandoning the high court position that he ultimately attained with Kubilai Khan. Seven hundred years later, various versions of The Travels of Marco Polo — A Description of the World are still in print. In fact, the book still sells very well in at least a dozen languages. But in 1275, when Marco Polo first approached the Dragon Throne at Xanadu, the wannabe author was only twenty-one years old. He had travelled as far as anybody could travel back then; from west to east, across most of the then known world. And he'd definitely unearthed a tale or two along the way. [continue]
And then there are 6 recipes, which have a happy amount of detail, like this:
Salt was simply too precious and too expensive to be used indiscriminately beyond the kitchen door. Kubilai Khan commanded a small army of salt-tax officials who controlled salt distribution throughout his Celestial Empire. (Marco Polo himself served time as the salt-tax collector in Yang-Chou Province. In his book, he actually made the mistake of bragging that he'd been governor of the province, but because the salt-tax collector was in fact more powerful than the governor, he might be retroactively forgiven the apparent vanity of his boast.) Expert chefs then controlled the more micro-cosmic use of salt, which was employed in Chinese households essentially and almost exclusively as a preservative. Salt-beef and salt- pork were then as common in China as they were in Europe. Salted-Mustard Cabbage (aka Red in Snow) is still the Chinese equivalent of sauerkraut. There were even salted oranges.
Thanks, CBC.
Related:
Marco Polo - Wikipedia
From The Scotsman: Tuscan truffle museum on the scent of Italy's ‘white diamonds’.
Italy's warty white truffles, once aphrodisiacs for the Romans and now the most expensive funghi in the world, are getting their own museum.
The Tuscan village of San Giovanni d'Asso, one of the main producers of the "white diamonds of Italy", will throw open the doors of Italy's first truffle museum tomorrow.
"It's going to be more than a museum, it's going to be an assault on the senses," said Enzo Francini, the head of finances for the medieval village of 950 people.
A pharmacist, a botanist and a chef were called in to help create the museum in a 13th century castle, where exhibitions, videos and interactive programmes will explain the history of the prized fungus and recreate the modern-day hunt for it.
But creators are most proud of the "odorama" exhibition, where visitors can drink in the heady aromas of dozens of different kinds of truffles. [continue]
From ekathimerini.com: Theban dig yields rich finds.
Archaeologists in Thebes have uncovered important building remains and artifacts from the ancient city that lies under the center of the modern town, including nearly 400 intact vases, the Culture Ministry said yesterday.
Excavations that started in February on a private plot close to the ancient Electran Gate revealed finds dating from the third millennium BC to late Byzantine times. Here and there, the eras mingled, as was the case with late medieval walls into which sixth-century BC architectural fragments, sculpture, ceramics and even bronze vessels had been built.
One of the most interesting discoveries was what is believed to have been a huge ancient altar on which the carcasses of animals sacrificed to a god were burnt. Worshippers also dedicated terracotta vases which were deposited among the ashes. [continue].
From nature.com: Classic English and French composers influenced by their language.
Would Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance or Debussy's Clair de Lune have sounded the same if the composers had been born in different countries? Probably not, according to researchers who have found that the melodies composers write are influenced by the language they speak.
The team's analysis shows that fluctuations in pitch in music written by classic French composers vary much less than in British music. The difference mirrors the patterns of pitch found in the corresponding languages. [continue]
The Battle of Crysler's Farm, fought on muddy ploughed fields beside the St. Lawrence River on November 11, 1813, was a crucial moment in the history of Upper Canada and marked the end of the most serious attempt to that time to invade Canada.
The campaign of 1813 focused on the St. Lawrence frontier with two powerful American armies poised to meet at Montreal and cut British lines of communications on this lifeline into the heart of the continent. [continue]
That's from From CryslersFarm.com, where you'll find more information about the battle and the site.
From National Geographic: Toxic Frogs, Birds May Get Their Poison From Beetles.
The Colombian poison-dart frog and six Papua New Guinea birds, mostly jay-sized songbird species commonly known as pitohui, live almost at opposite ends of the Earth. But the animals share one thing in common: They use batrachotoxin, a rare neurotoxin that is 250 times more potent than strychnine.
Researchers believe the creatures use the poison, which laces their skin and/or feathers, as a type of biodefense that protects the animals from predators and parasites.
One enduring mystery, however, has been the source of the poison: Scientists suspect the birds and amphibian can't manufacture batrachotoxin naturally.
Now researchers say they may have discovered how the animals obtain the toxin: They eat beetles riddled with the stuff. [continue]
Remember reading about the Duchess of Northumberland's poison garden? Here's an update from The Guardian:
The Duchess of Northumberland has been given permission to grow drugs in her world famous public garden.
Cannabis, opium poppies, tobacco and the coca plant — the source of cocaine — are to feature in the Alnwick Garden, in Northumberland after the Home Office approved a licence for the garden's charity to grow the plants for educational purposes.
The drugs will be grown alongside more than 50 dangerous plants in the country's largest public poison garden.
Magic mushrooms will also be grown in the garden, which has been designed by the Belgian Peter Virtz.
Also planned is the poisonous foxglove, the tobacco plant and wild lettuce, which can be used as a tranquilliser. [continue]
Related site:
Alnwick Garden - alnwickgarden.com
Related news articles:
Duchess to grow cannabis, opium and cocaine -Ananova
Duchess grows opium and cannabis - BBC
Duchess's garden of cannabis, cocaine and opium -Times Online
Duchess to grow opium and cannabis in educational public garden - Scotsman
Duchess is allowed to grow illegal pot plants - Telegraph
Drug baroness: Cannabis and poppies will grow at Alnwick - Independent
From Wired: Patron Saint of the Nerds.
Here in the oldest church building in New Orleans, tucked into a dark corner by the door as far away from the main altar as possible, stands the statue of St. Expedite — the unofficial patron saint of hackers.
Unofficial because the Roman Catholic Church doesn't know what to do about St. Expedite. He's too pagan to be a proper saint, and too popular for his statues to be simply tossed out the door.
Statues of St. Expedite seem to appear at some churches, a puzzling phenomenon. Where do the statues come from? Who sends them? No one really seems to know who St. Expedite was in life or even if he ever existed.
But whatever St. Expedite may or may not be, geeks, hackers, repentant slackers, folks who run e-commerce sites and those who rely on brains and sheer luck to survive have all claimed the saint as their own. [continue]
Have you walked past the management section in the bookshop lately? Maybe you've noticed Winnie-the-Pooh on Management, or Shakespeare on Management. Whatever next?
St Benedict of Nursia on management, that's what. Forbes.com has an review of a book entitled The Benedictine Rule of Leadership: Classic Management Secrets You Can Use Today. Here's a bit from the Forbes article:
Benedict was born into a wealthy, noble family in the corrupt final years of the fading Roman Empire. He was exposed to the empire's greatest achievements, as well as its failures. He studied leaders, systems of organization and the writings of early monastic leaders, and was groomed for a job in the Roman bureaucracy. However, he eventually chose to leave his world of privilege for an ascetic life of spiritual contemplation. Persuaded to become abbot of a neighboring monastery, Benedict then founded a series of semi-autonomous collectives. In time, as he managed these groups, he developed his own system of leadership and organization. He called it the Rule of Benedict.
The authors have done an excellent job of examining the development of Benedict's system in light of personal and historical circumstances. They provided numerous examples of successful, enduring organizations that clearly demonstrate the system's value and continuing relevance.
I wonder what St Benedict would think of that book.
Anyway, you don't need the management book to get at St Bendict's rule. It's here on the Catholic Encyclopedia site, and here at osb.org.
From iol.co.za: Rare wooden sarcophagus found in Egypt.
Cairo — German archaeologists have discovered a rare wooden Pharaonic sarcophagus in the southern city of Luxor, the first such find in nearly two centuries, the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities said on Tuesday.
Halil Ghali, a senior antiquities official for southern Egypt, said the empty sarcophagus, from the 13th Dynasty (1785-1680 BC), "is believed to be the biggest of its type". [continue].
From news.com.au: Don't mess with a drunk moose. [Update: sorry, article no longer available.]
A drunk moose staggering through your backyard and nibbling on apples fallen from your tree may sound like an amusing anecdote to tell your friends, but for those Swedes who each autumn come face to face with the angry beasts, it's no laughing matter. (...)
About 300,000 moose, or elk as they're known in Europe, roam Sweden's woods. But every northern autumn at least a few of the normally timid animals end up astray, trudging out of the woods and into cities and suburbs where they gladly munch on fermented apples that have fallen from trees. (...)
Traffic accidents with moose are well-documented: there were 4204 of the animals killed on Swedish roads in 2003, to be exact.
Less documented, but no less terrifying, are the reports of drunken moose jumping through living room windows, bellyflopping into empty swimming pools or violently attacking people. [continue]
Related:
Moose breaks into grocery store
Strange 911 calls
So you know I'm addicted to Firefox, yes? Firefox is the free web browser I use constantly — I love features like popup-blocking, tabbed browsing and improved security.
Today is the official release date of Firefox 1.0. If you haven't already tried this amazing program, take a moment to go and get Firefox.
Related Mirabilis.ca content:
Firefox 1.0 PR
Browse happy
Urgent: dump Internet Explorer
Firefox 0.9
News articles about the Firefox 1.0 release:
Web power to the people - Boston Globe
Firefox browser takes on Microsoft - BBC
Firefox browser fully released - Reuters
Mozilla Firefox 1.0 Released - MozillaZine
Mozilla releases Firefox 1.0 - CNET
Firefox 1.0 fans clog Mozilla site - CNET
From the Telegraph: Giant hail killed more than 200 in Himalayas.
For 60 years the skeletal remains of more than 200 people, discovered in 1942 close to the glacial Roopkund Lake in the remote Himalayan Gahrwal region, have puzzled historians, scientists and archaeologists. Were they soldiers killed in battle, royal pilgrims who lost their way and succumbed to hypothermia, or Tibetan traders who died of a mysterious illness?
Now, the first forensic investigation of one of the area's most enduring mysteries has concluded that hundreds of nomads - whose frozen corpses are being disgorged from ice high in the mountain - were killed by one of the most lethal hailstorms in history.
Scientists commissioned by the National Geographic television channel to examine the corpses have discovered that they date from the 9th century — and believe that they died from sharp blows to their skulls, almost certainly by giant hailstones. "We were amazed by what we found," said Dr Pramod Joglekar, a bio-archaeologist at Deccan College, Pune, who was among the team who visited the site 16,500ft above sea level. [continue]
You'll need a password if you want to read the rest of the article. Here's one!
From Radio Nederland: A scholar and a queen.
It is said that history is written by the winners, which perhaps accounts for our persisting perceptions of Cleopatra as a kohl-eyed man-eater who committed suicide with the aid of a snake; the Romans who defeated her in 31 BC wrote the accounts which now underpin our historical perspectives of the period. But an alternative view has emerged from research to be published in early December: Cleopatra as a woman of superior intellect who actively pursued philosophical and scientific debate with her peers. According to Okasha El Daly, an Egyptologist with the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology at University College London (UCL) in the UK, this was how Arabic scholars perceived the ill-fated queen more than 800 years after her death. [continue]
From The Himalayan Times: Male keeper of secret female language.
In China's Hunan province lives a 79-year-old man who is the keeper of an ancient, enigmatic language used only by women. "People say I'm the first male in the world to inherit a female language," jokes Zhou Shuoyi. Behind him are scrolls he has written in a mysterious script of characters made up of soft dots and simple, elegant strokes. [continue]
Related:
Nushu - Mirabilis.ca
From the Times Online: Plundered treasures of ancient world end up on London market.
Ninety per cent of the major archaeological sites in Pakistan and Iran have been looted and the spoils are flooding into London, a leading British archaeologist said yesterday.
After completing a six-year survey of the ancient sites in the region, Robin Coningham, Professor of Archaeology at the University of Bradford, said: "Although the illegal destruction occurs abroad, much of the looted material is channelled here to Britain and is sold in London. The best material is coming to London." [continue]
From newsandstar.co.uk: Medieval mystery under the Maltsters.
AN 800-year mystery surrounding medieval Carlisle has been solved after a major discovery under a city pub.
Archaeologists uncovered a 12th century bronze-working complex complete with workshop and furnaces under the former Maltsters Arms in John Street, Caldewgate.
And they suspect that the city's medieval church is buried under a pay and display car park next-door. [continue]
From economist.com: Scientific treasure hunters.
...there is still a glimmer of the grave robber in many archaeologists, and the search for a juicy royal tomb can stimulate more than just rational, scientific instincts.
Few tombs would be juicier than that of Lars Porsena, an Etruscan king who ruled in central Italy around 500BC. Porsena's tomb has been sought for centuries in the rubble under the Tuscan city of Chiusi, which is believed by most authorities to stand on the site of Porsena's capital, Clusium. No sign of it, however, has ever been found. And that, according to Giuseppe Centauro, of the University of Florence, is because everybody is looking in the wrong place.
Lars Porsena's place in history was ensured by his interference in the revolution that made Rome a republic. The last Roman king, Lucius Tarquinius, nicknamed "Superbus" because of his arrogance, was Etruscan. When he was deposed by the revolutionaries, he appealed to Porsena for help. There are conflicting accounts of whether Porsena succeeded in capturing and ruling Rome, or was forced to make peace with the revolutionaries. Either way, most of those accounts agree that he was eventually buried in a fabulous tomb near his home city of Camars, or Clusium as the Romans called it. [continue]
From a Worth 1000 words contest:
The prototype is the first draft of an invention or product: How it looked before it was time to head back to the drawing board. In this contest your task is to show us the prototype of all famous musical things, items and products
Some of the images people submitted in response are amazing and wonderful. Go look!
Thinking about getting a new backpack? Gizmodo points to a solar powered backpack, which can re-charge all those electronic things you carry about.
Today the Jerusalem Post has a fascinating article about Father Yaakov Willebrands, a Dutch monk in Galilee who is "trying to recruit local Catholic Arabs into his contemplative order, while trying to merge Eastern Christian traditions into his European ways."
And so he began his life's project: to carve a monastery church from the limestone cavern. For three years, with a pick and shovel and a few volunteers, he worked daily to widen and shape the cavern into a house of prayer.
He was considered an anomaly by all. The Muslims were suspicious that he was a Zionist agent trying to steal land; the Jews thought he was a missionary; the Christians were perplexed as to why a European trained in the Latin tradition wanted to pray in Hebrew and Arabic, he says.
In the end, the Melkite Bishop George Hakim, who later would became patriarch, accepted the proposal to incorporate Hebrew into prayers. Yaakov says: "I told him I love all people equally and that Arabic is a beautiful language but, as a foreigner, Hebrew is the language of the country and of the Bible. I wanted to open local Christians for the presence of the Jewish people."
Eventually, everyone started coming around to visit. [continue]
You'll need a password to read the rest of the article. Here's one.
Related:
The cloistered among us
From discovery.com: Antarctic Forests Reveal Ancient Trees.
A quarter-billion years ago, forested islands flashed with autumnal hues near the South Pole — a polar scene unlike any today, researchers say.
Geologists have discovered in Antarctica the remains of three ancient deciduous forests complete with fossils of fallen leafs scattered around the tree trunks. The clusters of petrified tree stumps were found upright in the original living positions they held during the Permian period. [continue]
From Wired: Progress in an Ancient Tongue.
For centuries, its letters have covered the pages of goatskin manuscripts, illuminated Bibles and the chronicles of ancient kings.
Now one of the world's oldest living alphabets could be about to make its debut on a mobile phone, if a group of Ethiopian academics gets its way. [continue]
From Ananova: Insurers advise clients to eat chocolate.
A German insurance firm has written to clients urging them to eat more chocolate if they want to cut the risk of heart attacks.
Many scientists now accept the antioxidants found in cocoa have been shown to decrease the risk of coronary artery disease. [continue]
Related Mirabilis.ca content:
Dark chocolate helps blood flow
Chocolate for heart health
Chocolate in pregnancy good for babies
From the Sydney Morning Herald: Urban design.
Students at a Rome design school have come up with a folding cardboard home for use by street people.
The Quasar Institute's director, Orazio Carpenzano, says the relatively lightweight "living box" has been inspired by origami, is easy to stow when folded and can be made without scissors or glue.
(Password required for the Sydney Morning Herald.)
The Australian site cathnews.com has more information: Rome Catholic charities to receive cardboard shelters for homeless.
Costing around $A20, the structure is a long rectangular box big enough to lie down in and tall enough for a three-year-old child to stand in. The upper surface is inclined and there is a panel at one end that substitutes for a door.
Mr Carpenzano says cardboard was chosen for its flexibility and a capacity for insulation that is "more effective than a blanket". [continue]
From the BBC: Cathedral revives beer tradition.
Canterbury Cathedral is reviving the ancient monastic tradition of making beer available within its precincts.
The Kent cathedral is selling a bottled bitter which is made by local brewer Shepherd Neame according to a 300-year-old Kentish recipe.
Canon Richard Marsh said beer was made on site by the monastic community in Canterbury between 1100 and 1538. [continue]
From Reuters: Moroccans Spend More on Food in Month of Fasting.
Moroccans spend 28 percent more on food during Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, a government study showed Tuesday.
Ramadan is the holiest month of the Islamic calendar when practicing Muslims must abstain from food, drink and sex from dawn to dusk — a discipline intended to better their souls and bring them closer to God. [continue]
From nature.com: Recreating a 2,000-year-old cosmetic.
A sealed Roman pot, unearthed at an archaeological dig in London, caused much speculation about its 2,000-year-old contents when it was opened in front of the media last summer.
Initial guesses about the function of the white cream inside ranged from toothpaste, to a pharmaceutical product, to something that was smeared on goats before they were killed. But chemists who have analysed the cream now conclude that it was probably a high-class cosmetic, with a function similar to that of modern foundations. [continue]
Related:
Roman cosmetic secrets revealed - BBC
Related content from Mirabilis.ca:
Found: pot of Roman skin cream
From The Independent: The Temple Of The Tigers.
The bass rattle beneath the monotony of the Buddhist chanting at the Luangta Bua temple is a deep feline purr. Pacing on all fours alongside the shaven-headed monks are the temple's tigers, their tawny fur mingling with the flowing saffron robes as the big cats are led through the grounds on a lead by their unlikely guardians.
A century ago, the high Buddhist lamas would meditate on tiger skins to symbolise their conquest of fear and desire. Now, Abbot Acharn Phusit Khantitharo has taken a more direct approach to conquering one of man's most primeval fears and, in doing so, has created a rare sanctuary for the endangered great cats. [continue]
Related Mirabilis.ca content:
Buddhist temple and wildlife sanctuary
From News in Science: Pompeii artists painted the town red.
The formula of the red, shiny and intense colour that dominated Pompeii's wall paintings 2000 years ago has been discovered by an Italian researcher.
Buried in the catastrophic eruption in 79 AD, the brilliant Pompeian red has been preserved forever by the lava of Mount Vesuvius and still makes an impressive show in several frescoes. [continue].
From Engadget.com: The Why Knot? tie-tying machine.
If you're too lazy to tie your own ties, but not too lazy to build your own robot, you might want to hit up Seth Goldstein for instructions on building the Why Knot?, a necktie-tying contraption he built in his spare time. Ties a tie in a mere 562 steps, amazing! [there's a photo, too!]
Related:
This page includes a video (flash) of the machine in action.
From The Independent: Rhapsody in red: how children of China came to lead the world in Western classical music.
On any given day in China, 38 million children are practising the piano, in a country that produces more such instruments than any other.
Chinese pianists regularly win more prestigious international music prizes than British, Italian or French children. Last year 21-year-old Lang Lang, a former child prodigy, was the world's best-selling classical pianist. Three years earlier his rival, Li Yundi, won first prize in the Warsaw International Chopin Competition. There is probably not a conservatory in the West lacking a roster peppered with Chinese names, nor a major American orchestra without Chinese musicians. (...)
Just why these oriental nations have taken to Western classical music with such a passion when other cultures in Africa, South Asia or the Arab world have not, is a mystery. How did Western classical music take such deep root in this alien soil? (...)
The famous Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci presented a clavichord to the Ming emperor Wan Li in 1601 and even taught his eunuchs to play a few pieces. When Lord Macartney led his embassy to the court of the Qing Emperor Qianlong, in an attempt to open China to direct trade, he brought a German band with him, hoping to impress his hosts. The Qing court liked Western music, and several emperors employed a Western-trained orchestra. One or two studied how to play Western musical instruments, but the knowledge imparted by the Jesuits and others never spread beyond the Summer Palace. [continue]
From Wired: Don't Knock the Birdbrains.
Three decades after researchers first fathomed the unusual brain power of songbirds, scientists are devoting big chunks of their careers to finches and canaries, hoping to understand how they manage to be among the only species that learn how to make new sounds.
Even though their brains range from just the size of a grain of rice to peanut-size, some types of songbirds can still pick up hundreds of songs during their lives. They improvise the songs like miniature jazz singers and even develop regional accents depending on where they live. [continue]
From Aftenposten: Svalbard takes over ice golf.
Temperatures around minus 30C (-22F), the danger of snow blindness and the possibility of a tragic meeting with a polar bear - if these strike you as exciting instead of terrifying, then you should consider signing up for the Ice Golf Championship 2005 on Svalbard, golf.no reports.
Are you tempted?
Armed guards keep the polar bears at bay while the golfing takes place, and specialist equipment is highly recommended. Tinted goggles are needed to prevent snow blindness, and colored golf balls are advisable if you want to have a chance of making a second shot. Clubs should have shafts of steel, since graphite shatters when exposed to extreme cold and force. [full article]
Related:
Not your usual round of golf - athropolis.com
From the CBC: Keen taste buds linked to svelte figures.
People with an unusually keen sense of taste tend to be thinner than other people, a new study suggests. [continue]