Ave, Caesar

Divers in France have found the oldest known bust of Roman dictator Julius Caesar at the bottom of the River Rhone, officials have said.

The marble bust was found near Arles, which was founded by Caesar.

France's culture ministry said the bust was from 46BC, the date of the southern town's foundation. . .

It said other items had been found at the same site, including a 1.8m (6ft) marble statue of Neptune from the first decade of the third century AD, and two smaller statues in bronze.

Divers taking part in an archaeological excavation made the discovery between September and October 2007.

From the BBC.

Ned Kelly shootout excavation

Archaeologists believe they have found more evidence of the 1880 gun battle between Ned Kelly's gang and police at Glenrowan, in central Victoria.

Bullet fragments were uncovered during excavations at the former Anne Jones Inn site earlier this month.

Now archaeologists have revealed that two bullet cartridges from a Martini-Henry rifle were discovered in the northern section of the site on Friday afternoon.

Article here.

The Martini-Henry mention started me looking at online references to this old British breechloader. Prices have certainly gone up since my friends were collecting them back in the early '80s -- though not nearly so much as gas, real estate, and much else. There is one Martini I owned back then that I do rather regret selling: a Providence-made Peabody-Martini originally sold to the Ottoman Empire, and bearing marks indicating later Japanese military ownership. There's a well-researched article on this model and the history behind it available online here; I read it when it was first published in 1979, but it means much more since I've moved to Providence. Here's an example of some local color:

After traveling to and from Providence Tool as a group on a trolley car, the Turkish inspectors would gather in the bar of a Providence hotel for drinking, gaming, arguing, and, not infrequently, brawling. (One inspector had even shot a woman in a Providence boarding house!) Their antics provided a continual source of embarrassment for the tool company and harrassment for the Providence Police Department. Were it not for Anthony's influence and the importance of the Turkish arms contract to Providence Tool and thereby to the economy of the city (the company was now the largest employer in Providence), many of the inspectors would probably have spent a number of sojourns in the city's lockup. The Porte, however, was not as understanding. One inspector was recalled to Turkey for some infraction and went before a firing squad armed with rifles he had probably inspected. When another inspector received a summons to return, he chose to commit suicide by leaping from the Crawford Street bridge. A third inspector refused to return home and married the daughter of a Providence innkeeper. As the years passed, his bizarre appearance and demeanor became a conspicuous element of the checquered Providence landscape.

More on the present status of the old RI Tool building off River (the armory on Wickenden is long, long, gone) at Artinruins.

US Immigration reform still long overdue

Clearly, plenty of people who don't belong in the USA are still managing to get here. Meanwhile, those who should be made welcome are being treated like this:

He was a carefree Italian with a recent law degree from a Roman university. . .

But on April 29, when Mr. Salerno, 35, presented his passport at Washington Dulles International Airport, a Customs and Border Protection agent refused to let him into the United States. And after hours of questioning, agents would not let him travel back to Rome, either; over his protests in fractured English, he said, they insisted that he had expressed a fear of returning to Italy and had asked for asylum.

Ms. Cooper, 23, who had promised to show her boyfriend another side of her country on this visit -- meaning Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon -- eventually learned that he had been sent in shackles to a rural Virginia jail. And there he remained for more than 10 days, locked up without charges or legal recourse while Ms. Cooper, her parents and their well-connected neighbors tried everything to get him out.

Even a senator couldn't get the bureaucrats to let go; what of those who don't have any connections at all?

Ten days after he landed in Washington, Mr. Salerno was still incarcerated, despite efforts by Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, and two former immigration prosecutors hired by the Coopers.

Salerno's girlfriend was savvy enough to get the NY Times to take an interest, which finally did the trick:

Less than 24 hours later, immigration officials intervened and arranged to deliver Mr. Salerno to Dulles, where last Friday he flew to Rome.

Loving Day is coming

There was an NPR broadcast recently about the celebration of Loving Day; today's NY Times has this column with further background:

Americans born in the 21st century will shake their heads in disbelief on learning that 40 states once had laws prohibiting interracial marriage. The Supreme Court struck down the last of these statutes in the 1967 case of Mildred and Richard Loving, a black woman and a white man who were arrested and banished from Virginia for the crime of being married.

The couple became celebrities after the landmark ruling known as Loving v. Virginia. But Mildred and Richard wanted nothing to do with fame. They returned to the tiny, backwoods community of Central Point, in Caroline County, Va., and shunned publicity. Richard died of injuries sustained in a car accident in 1975. Mildred, who died this month, was quiet and self-effacing and maintained all along that they married because they were in love, not to fight a civil rights battle.

But it seems that segregation in Central Point was not really as straightforward as all that:

Many of the mixed-race men and women in Caroline County settled in and around Central Point. They were already thriving by the early 20th century. Their church, St. Stephen's Baptist, was, as one historian noted, "the largest and most costly house of worship in Caroline, white or colored." People in the congregation and community were "as a whole, very nearly white," the historian wrote, "and, out of their community, could not be recognized or distinguished as colored people". . .

By the time that Richard and Mildred had begun to date in the 1950s, they had lived their whole lives in a community that had made an art form of evading Jim Crow restrictions on relationships.

Some accounts suggest that Central Point already had many other interracial unions -- both legal and common law. So why were Mildred and Richard singled out for arrest? It is possible that someone who held a grudge against the couple complained to the sheriff. Such a complaint could have come from one of the local white men who had taken a black lover and used the law as an excuse not to marry.

Record price for living artist

Move over, Midas:

A life-sized Lucian Freud painting of a sleeping, naked woman has set a new world record price for a work by a living artist.

The 1995 portrait, titled Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, sold for $33.6m (£17.2m) at Christie's in New York.

The previous record was held by Jeff Koons' Hanging Heart, which fetched $23.5m (£12.1m) last November.

From the BBC.

Microsoft does online astronomy

Can't wait to show my kids this when they get home from school:

Twirling galaxies, exotic nebulae and exploding stars are now just a mouse click away for amateur astronomers.

Microsoft has launched WorldWide Telescope, a free tool that stitches together images from some of the best ground- and space-based telescopes.

Collections include pictures from the Hubble and Spitzer telescopes, as well as the Chandra X-Ray Observatory.

The web-based tool also allows users to pan and zoom around the planets, and trace their locations in the night sky.

From the BBC; note that the application has to be run with Windows. The article also mentions other online astronomy sites, including Google Sky and Stellarium. The NY Times also has a writeup, that notes:

There are many online astronomy sites, but astronomers say the Microsoft entry sets a new standard in three-dimensional representation of vast amounts data plucked from space telescopes, the ease of navigation, the visual experience and features like guided tours narrated by experts.

Medieval shipwreck find in Barcelona

The wreck of a 13th or 14th century ship has come to light on a construction site in Barcelona's Barceloneta district -- beside the Balaurd del Migdia and behind Francia train station -- that used to be under water.

Full article here.

Coyote attacks

Zoicks! A spate of attacks on children in Los Angeles' eastern suburbs:

An increase in coyote attacks on humans in the past decade is most evident in Southern California, where bedroom communities have quickly pressed into wilderness, allowing the canine scavengers to roam backyards for food.

Since the 1970s, more than 100 coyote attacks on humans in Southern California have been recorded, with half the incidents involving children age 10 and younger.

And coyotes are everywhere now: we've got 'em here in Providence, right on College Hill -- hardly a community recently "pressed into the wilderness". I've not heard of any attacks on humans locally, but this should certainly shake the neighbors' complacence.

Spotted via Instapundit Glenn Reynolds, who expresses skepticism about the LA authorities recommendation that desert suburbanites refrain from coyote hunting themselves. He's certainly right that throwing rocks and shouting won't do much to drive the critters out of one's neighborhood, but as long as there's a concerted ongoing official effort to hunt and trap them, I don't see that it's such a bad thing to discourage private coyote hunts. His concern that coyotes, unhunted, will become increasingly bold and unafraid of humans seems entirely apropos, however, for those more urbanized areas where no official coyote abatement measures are being taken at all.

ADDENDUM: Interesting tidbits from Wikipedia on coyotes:

Researchers studied coyote populations in Chicago over a seven-year period (2000-2007), proposing that coyotes have adapted well to living in densely populated urban environments while avoiding contact with humans. They found, among other things, that urban coyotes tend to live longer than their rural counterparts, kill rodents and small pets, and live anywhere from parks to industrial areas. The researchers estimate that there are up to 2,000 coyotes living in "the greater Chicago area" and that this circumstance may well apply to many other urban landscapes in North America.

And I wonder if this is part of why we don't see many cats running loose in our neighborhood:

Approximately 3 to 5 pets attacked by coyotes are brought into the Animal Urgent Care hospital of South Orange County each week, the majority of which are dogs, since cats typically do not survive the attacks. Scat analysis collected near Claremont, California revealed that coyotes relied heavily on pets as a food source in winter and spring.

For more Rhode Island coyote information, there's the Narragansett Bay Coyote Study website. This page is of particular interest, noting that the packs studied were growing in size and boldness because people were giving them so much food. Some was unintentional -- roadkill left unburied, deer shot by hunters but not recovered, open refuse piles, leaving food in the open for other animals -- but a surprising amount was deliberate:

Invariably people feeding coyotes have good intentions and do not realize it is a really bad idea. For example, one person was feeding coyotes dog food in a neighborhood woodlot with the hope of distracting the resident coyotes from pursuing the neighbors cats which were being left outdoors at night.

Unfortunately it had the opposite effect -- the dog food caused coyotes to be attracted to the neighborhood and the woodlot became a favorite hangout (day and night) greatly increasing the risk to the neighborhood cats. Other people we have spoken with feed coyotes because they enjoy watching them. This too causes coyotes to make regular visits to the feeders' yard. They may take neighborhood pets en route or appear frighteningly bold to neighbors unaware that the coyotes are being, basically, trained to expect food in the neighborhood.

Think of it this way -- if there are four coyote packs on Jamestown and six packs on Aquidneck island it only takes 10 people feeding (one in each coyote pack territory) to tame and train all the coyotes in Newport County to expect food near humans.

As the study group concludes, the management of coyotes appears to be inextricably tied to the management of people. It might be different out West where human settlements are moving into coyote territory, to be sure, but in the long-established urban areas in the East and Midwest where coyotes have made such a dramatic recent arrival, control measures may not be as difficult to implement as all that.

Tax university endowments?

The latest in the inevitable backlash against decades of inflation-outstripping tuition increases:

Massachusetts lawmakers desperate for additional revenue are eyeing the endowments of deep-pocketed private colleges to bolster the state's coffers by more than $1 billion a year, asserting that the schools' rising fortunes undercut their nonprofit status.

Legislators have asked state finance officials to study a plan that would impose a 2.5 percent annual assessment on colleges with endowments over $1 billion, an amount now exceeded by nine Massachusetts institutions. The proposal, which higher education specialists believe is the first of its kind across the country, drew surprising support at a debate on the State House budget last week and is attracting attention in higher education circles nationally. . .

"When is a nonprofit not a nonprofit because of the wealth they are acquiring?" said Representative Paul Kujawski, a Democrat from Webster and chief backer of the legislation.

"It's mind boggling that one entity not paying taxes has $34 billion. How do you justify that?" said Kujawski, who serves on the influential House Ways and Means Committee.

Harvard and its brethren have really brought this upon themselves. I rather doubt that this proposal would ever have been made had there not been such a history of disproportion between the size of the largest endowments and the draw applied to paying educational expenses. When so much institutional income has been directed to institutional growth, one wonders whether the non-profit label is at all meaningful.

In addition to Harvard, the legislation would affect Amherst College, Boston College, Boston University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Smith College, Tufts University, Wellesley College, and Williams College.

Full article in the Boston Globe.

Don't forget the tapeworms

Seven German artists are living with lice in their hair in an Israeli museum for three weeks in the name of art.

The Berliners aim to stretch boundaries of what is art, saying they are toying with ideas about hosts and guests in line with a theme set by the museum.

"The idea is that we live in the museum as their guests, and at the same time we are hosting lice on our heads," said artist Vincent Grunwald, 23.

Now isn't that thought-provoking? From the BBC.

Vivaldi redivivus

A long-lost opera by the Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi has been performed for the first time in 278 years, in the city of Prague.

Argippo was written for the Czech capital and premiered there in 1730.

But the opera - a tale of "passion, love and trickery" in an Indian maharaja's court -- later disappeared without trace.

Most of the score was discovered in Germany by a young Czech musician who completed the missing parts.

Full story here.

Lingua latina cyberspatiae

The Vatican didn't have a Latin version of their official website? Apparently not until now, according to the BBC. The Documenta Latin may be viewed here.

Startling headline

This is probably turning a lot of heads over at the BBC.

Spain vs Odyssey Marine

Spain demanded the return of sunken treasure worth an estimated half a billion dollars yesterday, accusing Odyssey, the deep-sea exploration company that discovered it, of looting its shipwrecks.

Spanish archaeologists said that they had determined "with complete certainty" that the record haul had come from the Spanish colonial-era galleon Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes, sunk by a British fleet off the southern coast of Portugal in 1804. . .

Mark Pizzo, a US judge, ruled against Odyssey last month, ordering it to share information about the find with the Spanish. Yesterday Spain said that coins from the haul were documented to have been on the Mercedes, while the location of the find also indicated that it came from the galleon.

"The sinking of the Mercedes was a pivotal event in Spanish and European history, and the site and its contents are the inalienable historical heritage and patrimony of Spain," the Government said in court papers due to be filed today as part of a continuing trial to determine who owns the treasure. It added that it never authorised Odyssey to disturb the "gravesite of hundreds of Spanish sailors and their family members" who died when the ship sank.

From the Times of London.

Diving lessons for whales

Ancient whales were not master divers like their modern descendents. Biologists have discovered signs of decompression syndrome -- the bends -- in several different whale fossils, a finding that could revise the evolutionary history of deep diving.

A team of paleobiologists surveyed hundreds of modern and ancient whale skeletons for decompression syndrome, which occurs when quick pressure changes force air or fat bubbles out of blood vessels.

The full article is here; what is intriguing is the extent to which whales' ability to avoid the bends might be a matter of learned (and, implicitly, taught) technique.

Japan faces the abyss

Forget Godzilla -- it's the demographics:

Japan celebrated a national holiday on Monday in honor of its children. But Children's Day might just as easily have been a national day of mourning.

For this is the land of disappearing children and a slow-motion demographic catastrophe that is without precedent in the developed world. . .

Japan, now the world's second-largest economy, will lose 70 percent of its workforce by 2050 and economic growth will slow to zero, according to a report this year by the nonprofit Japan Center for Economic Research.

Population shrinkage began three years ago and is gathering pace. Within 50 years, the population, now 127 million, will fall by a third, the government projects. Within a century, two-thirds of the population will be gone.

In what is now being called a "super-aging" society, department and grocery stores have recorded declining sales for a decade -- and new car sales have fallen for 18 consecutive years.

From the Washington Post.

Colossal squid dissection begins

Technicians in New Zealand have begun to thaw a rare colossal squid specimen.

The operation to defrost the 10-metre (34 feet) long, half-tonne squid began on Monday afternoon in Wellington following a postponement of 24 hours.

And that's not all:

The Te Papa scientists are also defrosting a smaller, damaged colossal squid specimen, and two giant squid. The defrosting and dissection are being shown in a live webcast.

From the BBC. More discussion here, including a video link. For the official NZ site with many more news, photo, and video links, look here; particularly recommended is the blog. Ever wondered about what the hooks on these squid's arms and tentacles look like? Check out this picture.

Server transfer woes

Cronaca was transferred to a new server a few days back, at relatively short notice, and with no support to speak of. I only just got everything (mostly) working again this evening. There seems to be a glitch with the search function, when one tries to do a second search from the search results page; if you find any others, please let me know in the comments section.

At least the new server appears to be running much faster than the old one. Searches are still much too slow, but that's going to take some further efforts that I cannot invest the time in now.

Ancient jewelry find in Fiji

Archeologists have discovered a 3000-year-old pot in Fiji containing jewellery believed to have been made by the South Pacific's original settlers -- the Lapita people. . .

The Lapita people were the first colonists of Pacific Island groups, including the eastern Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji, Tonga and Samoa.

The descendants of the Lapita people, who disappeared as a distinct cultural group around 550 BC, live in these countries today.

Full article here.

Tilden Park carousel news

Having grown up in Berkeley, I had to follow up this link to Carousel News' account of the recent renovation work at the Tilden Park carousel. Apparently, California has not been content to leave historic rides alone. As an earlier article noted:

California just has "red-tagged" the historic 1911 Herschell-Spillman carousel at Tilden Park in Berkeley after over 90 years of safe operation with no accidents. This is yet another in the long line of attacks by California's DOSH (Division of Occupational Safety and Health) against the landmark carousels in the state.
This ridiculous closure follows the numerous major alterations forced to be made to the antique carousels at Golden Gate Park, The San Francisco Zoo, Seaport Village in San Diego, Disneyland and many others in the state, all in the effort to try and make antique, historic carousels meet modern standards. This is destroying the original historic value of the carousels.

This latest closure in Berkeley was due to the fact that the carousel operates without a fence. Never mind that in the 90-plus years of operation there has never been a problem, while fences have a long history of causing accidents. That doesn't seem to matter, according to the state. Nor does destroying the layout of a historic building that just underwent a major restoration last year using tax payers' dollars. . .

Of California's 22 historic carousels, all were well intact just 5 years ago. Sadly, most have dramatically changed since then and two major carousels are gone. With this view of carousels, the list of lost carousels will continue to grow.

Follow-up here.

Tomb of Antony and Cleopatra to be opened

Archaeologists have revealed plans to uncover the 2000 year-old tomb of ancient Egypt's most famous lovers, Cleopatra and the Roman general Mark Antony later this year.

Zahi Hawass, prominent archaeologist and director of Egypt's superior council for antiquities announced a proposal to test the theory that the couple were buried together.

He discussed the project in Cairo at a media conference about the ancient pharaohs.

Hawass said that the remains of the legendary Egyptian queen and her Roman lover, Mark Antony, were inside a temple called Tabusiris Magna, 30 kilometres from the port city of Alexandria in northern Egypt.

Until recently access to the tomb has been hindered because it is under water, but archaeologists plan to drain the site so they can begin excavation in November.

Full article here.

Cretaceous mantis in amber

An 87-million-year-old praying mantis found encased in amber in Japan may be a "missing link" between mantises from the Cretaceous period and modern-day insects. . .

Kazuhisa Sasaki, director of the Kuji Amber Museum, found the fossil creature in January buried 6.5 feet (2 meters) below the surface in an amber mine in Japan's northeastern Iwate Prefecture.

"This part of Japan is famous for producing large amounts of amber, but it was very fortunate for me to find this specimen," Sasaki said.

"I found it in a deposit that had lots of other insects—ancient flies, bees, and cockroaches—but this was the only praying mantis."

Full story here; more recent news of finds in amber here and here.

Regalia of Alexander

An ancient Greek tomb thought to have held the body of Alexander the Great's father is actually that of Alexander's half brother, researchers say.

This may mean that some of the artifacts found in the tomb -- including a helmet, shield, and silver "crown" -- originally belonged to Alexander the Great himself. Alexander's half brother is thought to have claimed these royal trappings after Alexander's death. . .

"[Archaeologists] announced that the burial in the main chamber of the large rich [tomb] was that of Philip II, father of Alexander the Great, who was assassinated in 336 B.C," said Eugene N. Borza, professor emeritus of ancient history at Pennsylvania State University.

But recent analyses of the tombs and the paintings, pottery, and other artifacts found there, suggest that the burials are in fact one generation more recent than had previously been thought, Borza said.

Full article at National Geographic.

Not cricket?

Indian police say the organisers of the new tournament transforming world cricket could be fined if cheerleaders are deemed to be dressed indecently.

The cheerleaders have been introduced into the Indian Premier League as part of moves to add glamour and entertainment to the game.

From the BBC. Previous story here.

American folk sculptor, Asa Ames

Well put:

The art, artifacts and objects produced in America during the first half of the 19th century constitute something of an artistic golden age, but a highly disorganized one that is still yielding surprises.

This from a NY Times review of the Asa Ames exhibit now at the American Folk Art Museum. And indeed -- as this slide show demonstrates -- Ames' carved figures have a presence all their own, even for those who profess indifference to folk art as a whole. The museum exhibition website is here.