Free the cathedrals!

This I can only applaud:

Some of Britain’s most famous cathedrals are facing demands from the Church of England to abolish the entrance fees they claim are vital to keep the buildings open.

A motion to be presented to the church’s General Synod next month will claim that charges levied by institutions such as Canterbury Cathedral and Westminster Abbey risk turning them into “touristic commodities”.

The motion has been submitted by Tom Sutcliffe, an opera critic and elected representative of the synod for the Southwark diocese. “They are shrines and part of our national history and should be freely available,” said Sutcliffe, who claims widespread support. “The point about our cathedrals is that they belong to the whole of our nation. They are not the private property of churchgoers only.”

Cathedral authorities, however, say the fees — which range from £3.50 at Canterbury to £6 at Westminster — provide vital income to keep the buildings in repair.

Here's my New Year's post on the lifting of museum admission fees.

Tax breaks for British collectors

Owners of Britain’s most precious art treasures have flocked to take advantage of a loophole that has saved them more than £1 billion in inheritance tax.

An additional 10,000 paintings, sculptures and mementos have been added to the register since Labour promised to stop the “abuse” of the system. It previously held 15,000 items.

But the scheme, which offers tax breaks to private owners of works by Renoir, Constable and Van Dyck if they admit the public to view the art, is now in disarray. Some owners have not admitted a single visitor since Labour tightened the rules.

Tessa Jowell, the culture secretary, is known to be “very concerned” at the antics of some owners, who enjoy the tax breaks at public expense while the British Museum suffers a financial crisis. “The credibility of the scheme depends upon public confidence that it is operated in a fair and entirely open way,” said a source.

One collection of four oils and watercolours by Wassily Kandinsky, the modernist, was spared a six-figure tax bill when it was registered in 1998. The collector agreed to make them available to any member of the public who applied. Only one did. “It was someone with a museum background and I understand he and my client had a very nice afternoon,” said Nicholas Parnell, the unnamed collector’s adviser. The works have, however, been loaned to exhibitions.

Some collections have attracted so little interest that the £1 billion tax relief granted since 1986 is equivalent to a five-figure sum per visitor.

Pompeiian frescoes on display

A series of Pompeii frescoes that came to light during the building of a motorway have gone on display in Rome after two years of restoration.

The painted panels once adorned a substantial palace, thought to have been a luxury hotel, in the southern suburbs of Pompeii, which was overwhelmed by an eruption of Vesuvius in AD79. They were removed for conservation from the site of the motorway under construction between Naples and Salerno.

The restored frescoes have been unveiled at the newly completed Rome Auditorium, or concert hall. In March they will go on permanent display at the Naples Archaeological Museum. . .

Antonio De Simone, the archaeologist who led the motorway excavations, said that the building in which the frescoes had been found had stood 600 metres outside the city walls. It had probably been a restaurant and country hotel, complete with thermal baths. The frescoes had decorated the main triclinium, or dining room. Professor De Simone said that while the frescoes had been rescued, the ruins of the hotel had been reburied so that work on the motorway could continue.

Westwall coming down

The German government has begun tearing down six more bunkers from Hitler's infamous West Wall, also known as the Siegfried Line, against the wishes of some German historians.

War veterans also want the remaining concrete and steel fortifications saved as historic memorials. The leader of the Third Reich built 20,000 bunkers, trenches and tank dugouts along a 940-mile line, stretching along the German border from near Basel, Switzerland to Kleve in northern Germany. . .

Only half of the original 20,000 bunkers fortifying the West Wall remain. Most of the others were destroyed shortly after the Allies broke through the line in the winter of 1944-45 in battles that killed huge numbers of German soldiers.

Federal authorities have been tearing down the bunkers at a rate of 100 to 200 a year, usually at the request of municipalities or landowners.

The government eventually intends to remove all the remaining bunkers, except several hundred individual structures already designated historic monuments and preserved at a cost of $36.7 million. Opponents of demolition want all that remain to be left in place. . .

Of the remaining bunkers and other structures that made up the wall, 6,500 have already been torn down or surrounded by fences to protect the public. Six hundred have been transformed into storage facilities or even museums, such as in Trier and Pirmasens.

Federal authorities estimate 2,500 have yet to be secured in any way.

Germany has started to destroy the giant concrete Siegfried Line, Hitler’s defensive wall against an Allied attack, in a gesture of friendship to the French.

Bulldozers and power hammers were at work yesterday smashing a military bunker overlooking the French city of Strasbourg in the first move to destroy the 400-mile frontier fortifications. . .

There could be no more powerful symbol of French and German partnership than the demolition of the wall. The countries celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the Franco-German Elysée Treaty on Wednesday and the occasion has spurred closer co-operation between the capitals. It will be marked by sending more than 600 German deputies on a day trip to Versailles. A new European initiative is to be announced from Berlin and Paris next week.

Beria files released

From the Times of London:

Russian got a rare insight into one of the darkest periods of Soviet history yesterday when prosecutors presented a 47-volume criminal dossier on Lavrenti Beria, Stalin’s hated secret police chief, which included a list of hundreds of women whom he raped.

The RTR state television network has been allowed to film small extracts from the secret files for the first time to counter accusations that they had been lost. Most of the files will remain closed to the public for another 25 years.

When Beria took over as head of the secret police in 1938, the Great Terror had already engulfed Lenin’s old revolutionary comrades. Beria supervised the wartime massacre of Polish officers at Katyn and the deportations from the Baltic States and Poland as well as of the Crimean Tartars.

The Soviet Armed Forces suffered terribly at the hands of Beria and the NKVD, later to become the KGB; it has been estimated that a third of all officers were arrested. Three out of five marshals and 14 out of 16 army commanders were executed, and Beria so terrified Red Army commanders that they coined a euphemism for being purged: “going to have coffee with Beria”.

After overseeing the Terror, he went on supervise the development of the Soviet nuclear bomb.

Beria has long been accused of luring hundreds of women to his apartment and raping them. Television footage of the dossier showed handwritten lists of dozens of women with their telephone numbers. . .

Beria took over the NKVD from Nikolai Yezhov — who, like his own predecessor, was himself swallowed up by the Terror over which he had presided. Beria oversaw the vast forced labour camp system in which millions died. . .

Unlike contemporary Germany, Russia has made little effort to come to terms with its own crimes of totalitarianism, under which more than 20 million people died. Yuri Luzhkov, Mayor of Moscow, recently proposed that a statue to Felix Dzerzhinsky should again adorn the former KGB headquarters. Under Lenin, Dzerzhinsky founded the terror apparatus that Beria inherited.

Penguins do their laps

From the Times:

For 18 years the penguins at San Francisco Zoo were happy with their lot. Ignoring the gawping visitors, they took the odd dip during summer and beat a long lazy retreat to their burrows during winter — emerging only at mealtimes to gorge themselves on fish.

But then the new kids came to town. On Christmas Eve, six Magellanic penguins arrived from a San Diego theme park, and immediately dived in to show off their swimming skills. Ever since, their pool has been a whirl of “tuxedos in a washing machine”, with 52 birds splashing around non-stop as if engaged in an epic but futile mass migration.

Grave-robbing scumbag may finally do time

Federal authorities charged Grants Pass grave robber Jack Lee Harelson on Friday with unlawful possession of firearms and arranging for someone to loot hundreds of artifacts from Native American cultural sites in Oregon and Nevada.

Investigators hope two skulls seized in the investigation may clear up a mystery that has dogged them since they dug up two headless mummies in Harelson's back yard seven years ago.

The federal charges came a day after state authorities accused the 62-year-old artifacts dealer of soliciting the murder of five people. Three of his targets -- an ex-wife, a detective and a judge -- helped convict him in 1996 of stealing relics and the mummified remains of two Native American children from a cave in Nevada.

Old meets new

A Romanian witch is being sued by a customer after the spells she gave him didn't have any effect.

Vasile Birsan, 72, from Roznov, Neamt county, saw the witch's adverts in a local newspaper and hoped they would solve some of his problems. . .

He paid the equivalent of £250 for the spells, but went to police when the term indicated by the witch expired without any changes.

ADDENDUM: Then there is this unfortunate woman, who is protesting because her church won't give her an exorcism.

Indian burial mounds in Peoria

It's strange how many Americans gladly travel overseas to visit prehistoric sites, but have little to no awareness of those here in the United States. Here's an article on a site in Illinois, planned to become a 122-acre archeological park -- if financial support is forthcoming.

Florida still doesn't get it

From the South Florida Sun-Sentinel:

Several years ago, the Japanese American Citizens League, the nation's oldest and largest Asian-American civil rights organization, researched how many listings using the slur "Jap" they could find in half a dozen states. Florida had the highest number, at more than 2,000.

"My guess is that there's a greater insensitivity to Japanese and Japanese-Americans simply because there have been so few Asians in [Florida] historically," said JACL Executive Director John Tateishi from his office in California. "They're uninformed, and hopefully, once made aware of the derogatory nature, would stop using the word `Jap.' If they continue, then it's a totally different matter."

Still, while Floridians have been told as much through complaints -- and though dictionaries label the term offensive -- some don't think "Jap" is derogatory and refuse to stop using the word.

Old time college fun

While running down an arcane reference, I ran across the Coe College website, which like many has a school history timeline. This is the entry that caught my eye:

1905 - Students are persuaded to stop the freshman-sophomore rivalry tradition of wrestling on the roof of Old Main and trying to throw each other to the ground, three stories below.

Evictions at Mt. Athos

News from Greece:

Monastic authorities on the autonomous Mt Athos community have started serving eviction orders to members of a rebel fraternity who have been excommunicated and declared schismatic for refusing to acknowledge the authority of Ecumenical Patriarch Varthomolaios.

Police officers will deliver papers to each of the 100-odd monks residing in the 1,000-year-old Esphigmenou Monastery, ordering them to leave the premises by January 28. This follows a Dec. 26 decision by the community’s ruling body made public on Saturday.

The ultra-Orthodox Esphigmenou monks have regarded the Patriarchate — which has jurisdiction over Mt Athos — as an abode of renegades since the 1964 Istanbul meeting between Patriarch Athinagoras and Pope Paul VI, whom Orthodox zealots regard as the incarnation of all evil. The Patriarchate excommunicated the Esphigmenou fraternity two weeks ago.

For decades, the monks have shown their opposition to any reconciliation with Catholics by adorning their monastery with black flags and a giant banner reading ``Orthodoxy or death.'' They have referred to the pope as a heretic. . .

It would be the largest-ever known eviction of monks from Mount Athos since the community was founded more than 1,000 years ago. The last eviction, for the same reasons, took place a decade ago and involved five monks living in an isolated hermitage.

Since the eviction order was issued on Dec. 14, authorities have cut electricity to the monastery and prevented the supply of food, heating oil and medical supplies, [abbot] Methodius said.

The monastery's first serious falling out with the ecumenical patriarchate came in the mid-1960's, after Catholic and Orthodox leaders withdrew a series of anathemas - or damnations - issued in 1054.

UPDATE: An article on 25 Jan in the Telegraph; the monks are still unbending.

Unfrozen Stone Age caribou poop

Biologist Gerry Kuzyk was hiking with his wife in the remote reaches of the Yukon when he caught the putrid scent of caribou dung wafting through the chill air.

Then he saw it -- the biggest pile of animal droppings he had ever seen, 8 feet high and stretching over a half-mile of mountainside.

Kuzyk, a researcher with the Yukon Department of Renewable Resources, knew there weren't enough caribou in the entire territory to create such an epic mound. Odder yet, there hadn't been caribou in the area for nearly a century.

"It was like being in the `Twilight Zone,' " said Rick Farnell, a colleague who helped investigate the find. "You could see them from a distance -- big, black bands of feces. I'm talking tons of it."

The mystery was solved by lab analysis: The dung, the product of innumerable migrating caribou herds, had been frozen for thousands of years and only recently exposed by melting ice.

Along with the dung, the scientists soon discovered an arsenal of Stone Age darts, arrows and spears.

UPDATE: Here's more courtesy of NPR (including photos):

. . . the unfrozen life of these artifacts is short. James Dixon, an anthropologist at the University of Colorado, says the objects decay rapidly when exposed to the air. To locate emerging artifacts quickly, Dixon and a colleague developed a digital map covering a portion of Alaska. A computer program matches places where glaciers are melting with likely routes taken by early Americans. The map gives Dixon and his team a good idea of where to look. "We're finding arrows with complete shafts with the arrows still attached, even pouches, nets and hats and trail food," he says.

Archeological cleansing in Jerusalem

This strident article from Frontpage takes on the uncontrolled -- and worse, ideologically-motivated -- "construction" work on the Temple Mount:

The earth on the Temple Mount is filled with priceless artifacts and treasures, whose historic and religious and archeological value to Jews and to all mankind can only be guessed. The King's tablet found recently proves these artifacts go back at least 3000 years and probably go back further. The PLO however is devoted to perpetuating its lies about how there were never any Jewish Temples of Old standing on the Temple Mount, that the Western Wall has no religious nor historic significance to the Jews and is merely a spot where Mohammed supposedly tied up his donkey.

Even worse, the PLO is devoted to systematically destroying any archeological evidence that might be at odds with its Islamist-fascist ideology and its proclamations that there were never any Jewish Temples on the Temple Mount. Since there were no Jewish Temples there, according to Arafat's Mein Kampf, Jesus never tried to purify anything up there either and the place has no Christian significance, which will come as news to the earth's Christians.

In recent months, the PLO has operated wholesale "construction and renovation" operations on the Mount, right under Israel's nose, in which God knows how many priceless antiquities were systematically destroyed.

Doctor disciplined for not giving man pap smear

What next? Hat tip to Medpundit for this one:

A family doctor has been summoned to a formal hearing over his refusal to put a 34-year-old male patient on the list for screening for cervical cancer.

The complaint has caused doctors in the west country practice to spend hours in meetings and writing replies to the local primary care trust over the complaint which began two years ago.

Arctic stone circles

This will probably upset some von Däniken types:

Researchers may have an explanation for the natural near-perfect circles of stones that cover the ground in parts of Alaska and the Norwegian islands of Spitsbergen.

Elsewhere in the far north, stones also form mysterious striking patterns on the ground.

According to scientists, the circles are not the result of ancient art but due to cyclic freezing and thawing of the ground that drives a simple feedback mechanism that generates the patterns.

Petrified wood exhibit

From The Oregonian:

The obsession started with the garage-sale purchase of a rock saw capable of cutting a stone the size of a golf ball. That led Dennis and Mary Murphy to rockhounding, which then lead the Tigard couple to petrified-wood hounding, all of it for fun.

But fun turned to fanaticism during the past quarter-century, something the Murphys whole-heartedly admit. Because the pair -- who spend most vacations scouring for logs -- have accumulated tons of petrified wood.

Now much of the massive collection, which for years has been stored in boxes, has emerged as what may be the largest museum exhibit of petrified wood in the world.

Saturday a grand opening celebration is planned from 1 to 5 p.m. at the Rice Northwest Museum of Rocks and Minerals in Hillsboro. . . .

Moving a museum: high security, low profile

From San Francisco:

Anders Noyes drove through Golden Gate Park at a leisurely pace in his shiny new gray Chevy pickup.

He carried a loaded 9mm semi-automatic pistol, and he was focused on the unmarked white truck in front of him. It was filled with millions of dollars' worth of irreplaceable Asian art.

"I watch what's going around me," said Noyes, a former Pacifica cop who's director of security for San Francisco's Asian Art Museum. For months, he's been trailing trucks moving the prized collection of 14,000 objects -- valued at around $4 billion -- from the old museum in Golden Gate Park to its new $160 million home at Civic Center, which opens March 20 after a four-year renovation of the old main library.

The last few pieces were being moved out Thursday, when a 4 1/2-foot chunk of concrete was bashed out from a second-floor railing so a forklift could remove an 1,800-pound, ninth century Indian stone temple guardian and two other big works.

Peter Pan house gutted by vandals

This kind of stuff gives honest barbarians a bad name:

The house where JM Barrie drew his inspiration for the children’s tale Peter Pan has been ransacked by vandals.

The world famous playwright and novelist was heavily influenced by his childhood memories of Moat Brae house, in Dumfries, after spending his school days there. . .
Groups of youths had been seen congregating outside the building in the town’s George Street before the damage was discovered.
Later, it was discovered furniture had been set on fire, and bathroom suites throughout the imposing red sandstone building had been destroyed.
In addition, windows, lights and mirrors were smashed, leaving floors covered in glass.
The vandals also ripped plasterboard from the walls, exposing huge gaps between rooms and stairwells. . .

Barrie wrote in his memoirs about Peter Pan: "Our escapades in a certain Dumfries garden which was an enchanted land to me was certainly the genesis of this work."
The garden, in which the young Barrie played with two school friends, was described by the writer as the model for the fictional realm of Neverland, where Peter Pan is set.
Barrie fans had hoped to buy the house when it went on the market two years ago and turn it into a museum. However, it was sold at auction to an unnamed Glasgow businessman for £80,000. At the time, he said he had no plans to preserve its heritage and the property has lain empty since then.
The house, which before the sale, had been a hospital and then a nursing home, was first targeted by vandals in September last year.
However, the latest damage is by far the greatest the property has received and councillors estimate it could cost as much a £80,000 to repair.
A spokesman for Dumfries and Galloway Police said they are investigating the incident.
The spokesman added: "We are aware of the vandalism problems at the Moat Brae building and will be keeping a close eye on the situation. "We will make our visits to the site more frequent, and if our officers do find kids around that area they will warn them about the potential dangers of entering the house because the building may not be structurally sound."

Here's the BBC story on the sale of the house a bit over two years ago.

eBay "Diebenkorn" scamster caught

Remember the story of the "garage sale" painting on eBay that credulous bidders ran up over $100,000 in the hopes that it was a Diebenkorn?
The seller went on the run not long after, but has just been caught.

Progress against plague

This may prove useful for time-traveling medievalists (though as the article points out, plague is still very much with us):

A quick diagnostic test for plague has been produced by French scientists.

Antibiotic treatment can make all the difference if plague - still rife in some countries - is spotted swiftly so the test could potentially be a lifesaver. . .

The bacteria involved, Yersinia pestis, could also possibly be used as a biological weapon. . .

There is currently no vaccine for plague, although several research projects are closing in on one. . .

The researchers from the Institut Pasteur developed their test and used it to help tackle an outbreak of hundreds of cases in Madagascar.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in Old English

How did I miss this? Bookmark it for next Xmas. . . .

Incipit gestis Rudolphi rangifer tarandus

Hwæt, Hrodulf readnosa hrandeor --
Næfde þæt nieten unsciende næsðyrlas!
Glitenode and gladode godlice nosgrisele. . .

Them bones, them bones

From Ha'aretz, an article on the display of the dead in catacombs of Rome and Palermo:

"Burial art" revolving around the display of skulls or bones is not unusual in the Christian world. Here and there, it can be found in the crypts of churches - a reminder of death lurking around the corner, but at the same time, offering hope for the dead, based on the belief that those who have died will be resurrected after the Second Coming.

Another idea conveyed is that all men are equal in death. The brother of Pope Urban XIII, Antonio Barberini, is buried in the church over the Capuchin catacombs in Rome. Barberini was a cardinal, a key position in the religious hierarchy. Yet beside his tomb is the Latin inscription: "Here lies dust and ashes - nothing more."

PS The article calls display of the ordinary dead a Christian practice, but the only examples I can think of are Roman Catholic.

Stolen Etruscan statuette recovered 40 years later

Haven't seen anything in the English-language press about this, but La Repubblica reports that a bronze Etruscan statue stolen from the Museo Civico Archeologico of Bologna in 1963 has been reclaimed after turning up in New York at the Royal-Athena Galleries, where it had been catalogued at $50,000.

NB: The Repubblica article errs in calling Royal-Athena Galleries an auction house, though it seems that the statuette was being sold on consignment. No word yet on the other 19 pieces stolen along with the recovered statuette.

Fakes and Forgeries seminar in London

The focus is on silver:

There are just a few places left for the one-day Fakes and Forgeries seminar at Goldsmith’s Hall in the City on January 22. Silver expert and dealer Alastair Dickenson will be the guest speaker. The other speakers include Dr Robert Organ – Superintendent Assayer and Tim Swann – Senior Assayer, both of the London Assay Office.

Oldest Black Sea shipwreck

The discovery was made at the very end of last summer's expedition, but has only just been announced:

A team headed by [Robert] Ballard, working with the Bulgarian government, discovered the wreck in August.

"This discovery provides historians with the first look at an actual wreck from a key era of trade in the Black Sea known previously only through written records," said Ballard, president of the Institute of Exploration at Mystic Aquarium in Connecticut and a National Geographic explorer-in-residence.

The wooden ship itself was gone, having rotted away through the millennia. But its scattered contents remained on the sea floor in testament to the ship's sinking. . .

By analysing the contents of one of the amphorae, scientists were able to pin down the approximate time frame in which the vessel sank.

The clue came in the surprise find of bones of freshwater catfish in one of the containers. . .

Researchers said the bones were butchered and indicate the fish had been filleted like modern fish steaks and preserved in salt.

They believe this was not a delicacy but a common, well-preserved food that may have fed the Greek army and the general population.

Saxonizing the Bible

An interesting reference to cross-cultural adaptations of the Christian bible over at Geitner Simmons' Regions of Mind, prompted by the Insecure Egotist's discussion of the rather free (but probably necessary) adaptations made to scripture in order to Christianize the Saxons.

Video link helps Customs identify antiques

Very clever, this:

Customs officials at the Pudong International Airport will soon be able to judge more accurately the date and authenticity of antiques travelers want to take outside the country.

The airport will soon install five special cameras that can transfer the image of a suspicious object to the Shanghai Commission of Relics Management, where experts can date and authenticate the item.

"We are short of professional experts, which causes us to either delay travelers' belongings to a later time or let antique smugglers through," said Chen Mingzhi, deputy director of the Customs' supervision and control department, yesterday.

Currently, any antique made prior to 1795 and some artifacts made between 1795-1949 are considered valuable artifacts and thus cannot be taken overseas, according to the relics commission.

Travelers are usually advised to obtain exit certificates for antiques before going to the airport. But if they don't have the certificate and Customs officials have questions about an object's value, experts have to be called in to evaluate the item, a process that can take hours.

Mixed marriages under the Nazis

Though my own mother's family fled Berlin shortly after Hitler came to power, it was still a surprise when I first learned that Jews married to Gentiles continued to live in the city until very close to the end of the war. I confess that I have not had time to look deeper into the Nazi treatment of these mixed marriages, but as a rule, when one runs across a historical fact that doesn't seem to fit, it is one that bears further investigation. Rather than shunting aside the inconvenient fact, it's time to reassess one's idea of the big picture -- in this case, the balance of power between the German people and the Nazi state.

And now, from Munich, courtesy of Expatica.com:

Shooting has wrapped on director Margarethe von Trotta's film Rosenstrasse based on the true story of German women married to Jews whose public protest during Hitler's Third Reich saved their husbands from deportation to Nazi death camps. . .

The movie derives its name from Rosenstrasse 2-4, a Jewish community centre in Berlin where Jewish men married to non-Jews were imprisoned beginning on 27 February 1943.

The little-known chapter in Nazi German history was described in historian Nathan Stolzfus' book Resistance of the Heart: Intermarriage and the Rosenstrasse Protest in Nazi Germany.

Led mostly by women, the center was the site of the protest by the men's wives.

The protest grew from only two or three women until it at one point weeks later reached up to 6,000 women who faced down Nazi security forces and demanded back their husbands.

Rather than inviting more open dissent by shooting down the women in the streets, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels with Hitler's agreement released the men.

Almost all of them survived the war, including 25 who were recalled after already being sent to Auschwitz.

They stole WHAT!?

I'm glad I visited South Africa a few years back, because things there really seem to be getting out of control:

Fifteen approach lights used to guide aircraft in to Cape Town International Airport have been stolen from roads near the airport. . .

Two weeks ago the lights were lifted off their concrete mounts along the N2, Modderdam Road and from a bridge next to Nyanga.

The stolen lights have not been replaced.

Airport officials said the missing lights could affect the approach of incoming aircraft in spite of emergency measures such as auto landing, which allow company officials in the tower to bring in aircraft without a hitch.

There had been four separate incidents of theft of the lights in the past some 12 months.

Censoring Art and Getting Away With It

. . . discusses the recent removal of an artwork from a Seattle exhibition, "Gods and Monsters". Although the show was intended to highlight provocative use of religious imagery, Kurt Geissel's response to the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, "Koran with a Buddha Shape Carved Into It", made the organizers too fearful.

The local boosters who had been trumpeting Seattle's daring in embracing artwork deemed too offensive elsewhere have not distinguished themselves here. These events have also cast a rather unpleasant light on artists who play at iconoclasm by selectively offending those who won't hit back. I've never much liked their mock revolutionary heroics, but this really makes them look like children taunting a caged dog.

NOTE: Lest we get too serious ourselves, there's always this:

Miguel Nunez, a Brooklyn-based artist, has sparked protest and outrage within the art community with his "Jesus Rising #4," a non-controversial, non-feces-smeared painting that in no way defiles or blasphemes Jesus Christ.

Medieval ship update

More from the BBC on what would appear to be the final excavation of the 15th-century ship found last summer in Wales:

Archaeologists have been given permission to examine the bow and stern of a medieval ship in Newport ending months of uncertainty about the excavation. . .

. . . there were concerns that two ends of the vessel would not be saved after it emerged at a £3.5m Welsh Assembly Government grant only referred to the restoration of the main hull.

But, officials at Newport Council have agreed to allow the Glamorgan-Gwent Archaeological Trust to examine the bow and stern areas when building work is made secure. . .

However, Mr [Andrew] Marvell [of the Trust] does not believe that either end will be found in a complete state.

"We think that the stern end may well have been damaged by a river wall built in the 17th century," he said.

"We believe that only half a metre or so will have survived.

"We know that two piles have been driven through the bow, and think that there will only be a metre or so left at the most," he said. . .

Excavated pieces of the 65ft ocean-going vessel are being stored in special water tanks at the Corus steelworks at Llanwern until it can be reconstructed and put on public display.

Dictators, disarmament, and paperwork

Again and again, one hears that no hard evidence has yet been found of continuing Iraqi programs to manufacture chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons.

Those who are skeptical of the UN inspections protest that absence of proof is not proof of absence, and point out the difficulty of finding a deliberately hidden needle in a very large haystack.

I would argue, however, that the strongest evidence of continuing weapon development programs lies in the Iraqi failure to document their termination. The UN inspectors’ previous work documented the existence of such programs, which were vast in scope. If they no longer exist, their shutdown would have left a huge paper trail. Yet the Iraqis have offered no such evidence – which would be trivially easy to provide, if it existed.

Centralized authoritarian states run on paperwork. Their vast bureaucracies obsessively document everything they do, in an all-consuming exercise in collective back-covering. To presume that Iraq is in any way different flies in the face of history.

ADDENDUM: A fine illustration of this is available through the Iraq Research and Documentation Project at Harvard; their website publishes translated selections from government papers seized in the wake of the Gulf War (along with more recent smuggled documents). The litany of horrors, all recounted in business-as-usual officialese, is an exact counterpart to the records left by Hitler and Stalin's enforcers. Here is a precis of one Iraqi document on Dealing with Demonstrations:

Set of instructions for dealing with opposition demonstrations. The memorandum, dated March 6, 1991, is from Baghdad Security Headquarters to the Director General of the Dohuk Governorate Security Directorate and his subordinates. The detailed instructions state that the location of a demonstration should be surrounded, the elevated points occupied, and demonstrators should be shot at with the aim of killing 95 percent of them and saving the rest for interrogation. Another instruction calls for the technical unit [euphemism for chemical weapons] to be kept in reserve.

We UNSCOM inspectors simply did not have the resources to win a game of hide and seek. The same is true today. The number of inspectors was always terribly small -- seldom more than 300 in the country at any one time. And we were totally outclassed by Iraqi security, which had managed to infiltrate the United Nations in Vienna and New York, as well as the Bahrain office of UNSCOM. In late 1991, when we seized more than 100,000 pages of information on Iraq's nuclear weapons program, we found one particularly surprising document. In it, the head of Iraqi security warned the chief security official of the facility holding the documents that in 10 days I would be leading a team to search his building and he should remove all sensitive material from this facility. The document was dated less than 48 hours after the decision had been made that I would lead this team! At the time fewer than 10 people in the United Nations and IAEA knew about this mission.

Much has been made of the value of surprise inspections, but little has been said about how hard they are to conduct. Between 1991 and 1998, UNSCOM conducted almost 500 inspections. Of those, only about six truly surprised Iraq. Then as now, the inspectors operated in an environment that was thoroughly monitored by Iraq. Hotel rooms, restaurants, offices and cars were all bugged. We understood that only with the most extraordinary measures could any of our conversations or documents elude Iraqi security officials.

15th-century wall painting uncovered in Wells

A 15th-century wall painting, described as “slightly risqué” for a bishop’s private quarters, has been uncovered by workmen at the Bishop’s Palace in Wells.

The well preserved image of a woman in a low-cut gown, thought to date from the 1470s, had been hidden from view within a 3ft void created when a ceiling was lowered in the 19th century.

Jerry Sampson, an historic buildings archaeologist, suggested that the figure could belong to a narrative sequence or could even be a depiction of Mary Magdalene.

The painting was found by chance by workers renovating accommodation for the family of the new bishop, the Right Rev Peter Price. The painting is above his son’s bedroom. Experts expect more of the painting to emerge when a post-medieval limewash is removed from the wall.

Pronouncing "Van Gogh"

Following up on Leonardo vs “Da Vinci”, here are a few words on the pronunciation of “Van Gogh”.

“Van Go” isn’t how old Vincent’s family would have said it, but it’s good enough for those of us who don’t live in the Netherlands. And it’s a hell of a lot better than “Van Gog” or "Van Gock", which is equally distant from original pronunciation and guaranteed to mark you out as an ignorant poser.

So what is original pronunciation? For an approximation, you can start with the German “hoch” and make it begin and end with a fine gutteral “h”, but you will do much better by simply downloading this MP3 (more MP3 files of various Dutch names are listed here), which will also let you hear the Dutch pronunciation of Rembrandt, Vermeer, Huygens, Van Leeuwenhoek, Leeghwater, Van 't Hoff, Van der Waals, Kamerlingh Onnes, Oort Den Uyl, and Kok.

And if you are really curious about the fine points of regional accents (Van Gogh grew up in Brabant), you might want to look at this.

School lunches: mostly bad to worse

From yesterday's New York Times, a distressing report on the state of cafeteria cuisine in America:

In six . . . schools visited recently, in New York City and Montgomery County, Md., where hundreds of students were eating lunch, only five children took a green vegetable with the main course. Faced with bad-tasting canned green beans provided free by the federal government, children in New York City and Montgomery County opted out.

Most children who took a vegetable chose French fries. . .

Many school cooks are so used to dropping prepared foods into frying pans and ovens that it would be impossible for them to serve fresh fruits and vegetables today. Yet over a week's time, as the Agriculture Department calculates the standards, 86 percent of the basic school lunches met the federal nutritional guidelines, on paper.

The problem is that with so much choice, only half the children choose the nutritious meal and then many do not eat all of it, leaving the vegetables.

"I've been in school kitchens where they haven't the simplest tools like knives or equipment to store fresh fruits and vegetables, much less processors for shredding and chopping or containers and utensils for salad bars," said Thomas Forster, of the nonprofit Community Food Security Coalition, a group concerned about nutritious food.

The department buys surplus commodities from farmers, many of which are high in fat, especially saturated fat, and turns them over to schools. For school meals in 2002 the Agriculture Department spent $338 million on surplus beef and cheese but only $159 million on fruits and vegetables, mostly canned and frozen, like the tasteless green beans.

They provide money for 98 percent of public high schools, 74 percent of middle schools and 43 percent of elementary schools, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than half of those machines operate in direct competition with the school lunch hour.

Why We Won’t Invade North Korea

. . . is the title of Orson Scott Card's essay at RhinoTimes.com. Sorry, no excerpt -- just read it all. It's a good example of how much one can figure out just by being able to read a map (and apply a little common sense).

Thanks to Asymmetrical Information for the reference.

Emma Goldman at Berkeley: smoke, no fire

Today's NY Times has an article about what at first glance appears to be a case of university administrators' heavy-handedness, bordering on censorship. On closer inspection, however, it seems to be something rather more banal: a fundraising appeal (for the Emma Goldman Papers Project) edited so as not to alienate potential donors.
Simple pragmatism? Not for the protesting academics, who really should learn to pick their fights.

Missing masterpieces

For those who have registered at the Times of London (see this for non-UK readers), this past Sunday there was an entertaining article on some major works of art that have gone missing. A long time ago, admittedly, but one can always imagine one of them suddenly turning up (this is what antique-hunting art historians dream of, rather than winning the lottery).

A quick list: the younger Palma's Jupiter and Antiope; Caravaggio's portrait of Alof de Wignacourt; Titian's portraits of Suleiman the Magnificent and his consort Roxelana; Michelangelo's bronze David; and Rembrandt's Circumcision.

Rest assured, there are many, many more. . . .

Who is buried in Napoleon's tomb?

Quite a long piece in the Sunday Times Magazine, on the various theories about what killed Napoleon, or whether it was a double who died at St. Helena, or if his body was disturbed at some time between interment and exhumation in 1840.
I am not well acquainted with this material, so there may be quite a bit of wild speculation there. It does seem certain, however, that the man who died in 1821 at St. Helena was the victim of arsenic poisoning.

What the article does not mention in its discussion of the hair evidence is whether any of the many samples (Napoleon was fond of giving locks of his hair as souvenirs, the dates of which are often recorded) have been subjected to DNA analysis. That would surely answer the question of a possible double once and for all.

Windsor depravity

If anyone still thinks of the late Duke and Duchess of Windsor as figures of tragic romance, just wait. As last Sunday's Times of London reports:

The depth of the treachery and debauchery which forced Edward VIII to abdicate is to be revealed in documents held back during the life of the Queen Mother.

New claims about the pro-Nazi sympathies of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor are to be disclosed in British and American government files.

The papers will also confirm the “gut hatred” felt by the Queen Mother for the duchess, whom she blamed for the premature death of her husband, George VI.

An internal memo to J Edgar Hoover, the FBI director, released under American freedom of information laws, states baldly that the duchess was “maintaining constant contact” during Britain’s darkest hours with Hitler’s foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop.

The memo, dated September 13, 1940, was sent soon after the duke was dispatched to the Bahamas as governor to remove him and his wife from political intrigue in Europe.

The FBI document states: “The British were and are always fearful that the duchess will do or say something which will indicate her Nazi sympathies . . . it was considered essential that the Windsors be removed to a point where they would do absolutely no harm.”

The debauched behaviour of the Windsors came in for scathing assessment. One FBI report said: “The duke is in such a state of intoxication most of the time that he is virtually non compos mentis”. . .

Another FBI document took seriously an informant’s claim that, prior to her elevation to duchess, Wallis Simpson had slept with von Ribbentrop on 17 occasions. He was said to have sent her 17 carnations each day while ambassador in London in 1936. The FBI’s suspicions led to a five-year period of surveillance. An agent monitored the duke on his visit to Palm Beach, Florida, in April 1941, gathering the guest lists at his cocktail parties and checking his telephone calls. There were even suspicions that the duchess concealed secret messages in clothes she sent for dry-cleaning to New York.

In April 1942 Hoover informed the State Department of the duke’s fears of “being kidnapped by the Germans and being traded for the release of Rudolph Hess” — Hitler’s deputy who was captured when he crash-landed in Scotland.

The prospect of him falling into Hitler’s hands was a persistent source of concern at the highest levels of British government. Papers to be released by the Public Record Office this month show the Foreign Office verdict that Hitler was distressed by the abdication “since he had looked upon the . . . King as a man after his own heart and one who understood the Fuehrer-prinzip and was ready to introduce it into this country”.

Keith Middlemas, joint author of the biography of Stanley Baldwin — prime minister at the time of the abdication in December 1936 — says new documents will lead to a reassessment of the “huge” ramifications for the British Empire of the decision.

“The support of the dominions in the looming war was vital and could not be taken for granted,” he said. “Edward had to abdicate because a marriage jeopardised the support of the Canadians.”

The duke was constantly at the centre of intrigue. Documents will reveal that in 1936 Ramsay MacDonald, the former prime minister, feared Edward might appeal directly to the people and set up a dictatorship, possibly with the support of Winston Churchill.

In 1937 the King gave an interview to a Daily Herald journalist in which he indicated his willingness to become president of an English republic. The report was suppressed.

Modern architecture, harrumph

A meritoriously critical essay on architecture and modernism (postmodernism included) chez Blowhards, with resident court jester Felix Salmon playing the foil.
The condemnation of modernist architects for their role in the disaster known as "urban renewal" is on target, as is the general portrayal of modernism as another failed top-down enterprise, arrogant utopianism run amok.
This was a follow-up on another worthwhile post, on Mies and modernism. An extract:

. . . modernist buildings are probably best thought of as great big abstract sculptures. As such, they're often impressive, dazzling, exciting, and chic. But they're often lousy as buildings, fall out of fashion in a matter of years, and they often do terrible things to neighborhoods.

And what a strange conception of architecture! In such fields as poetry, painting and movies, playing abstract, avant-garde, highly-aestheticized games is a pretty harmless activity. Why? Because no one has to read a poem or see a movie. But when it's a question of apartment buildings and office buildings, hundreds if not thousands of people have no choice but to interact with them, often on a daily basis. Modernist (po-mo, etc) architecture is telling these people that they've got to live with (and often live in and work in) buildings that are essentially aesthetically-driven. Ie.: "I am obligating you to live in, work in, and walk by my piece of sculpture."

The fact is, the modernist pioneers still almost always get a free ride by art historians. You generally don't study something if it doesn't appeal to you, and when you get to more recent art and architecture, everything comes wrapped up in theories and manifestos, escorted by legions of acolytes. The idealism of the modernists comes through, but not the monomania.
As an undergraduate, however, I studied with P. Reyner Banham (how I wish I had recordings of his lectures!), who memorably told us that the Bauhaus really should be looked at as a cult, and that what modernist architects put out about their own history was almost all self-serving lies. He was there. He knew.

WW2 internments

Having grown up in California, and being of partially Japanese ancestry, I'd long been quite familiar with the mass internment of Japanese-Americans during WW2. What I was not aware of was the Canadian equivalent, which turns out to have been much, much worse (including separation of families, forced labor, confiscation and liquidation of all personal property, and deportations which continued even after the end of the war). For more, see this post at Instapundit, which also links to this documentary site.

While wrestling with our balky broadband connection, this story expanded; in a classic illustration of how blogs gather in references, Instapundit follows up with a host of links that discuss the wartime internment (and sometimes deportation) of other suspect minorities.

Roman city found in Jordan

News from Jordan:

The Department of Antiquities (DoA) on Sunday reported the discovery of an entire ancient Roman city in Beit Ras in the northern Irbid Governorate.

Announcing the significant find, DoA Director General Fawaz Khreishah said archaeologists digging in the area had unearthed 20 per cent of a Roman amphitheatre dating back to between the second and third centuries AD, which indicated the presence of a city surrounding it.

Work to excavate the rest of the city is proceeding as planned and could take up to three years to complete, according to Khreishah.

He said until excavation work on the site started last year nothing was known about the city, nor was it mentioned in old records written by travellers, usually used as sources to locate ancient sites. . .

Referring to other recent finds, the official said churches were found by excavators at Um Quttain dating to the fourth and fifth centuries AD, and buildings at Al Jaloul near Madaba dating back to the early Islamic era of the 14th century AD (sic).

No, no more elephants, please!

And one more tidbit from the subcontinent:

Authorities at a Hindu temple in southern India are considering a ban on the donation of elephants by devotees.

The Krishna temple at Guruvayur temple in Kerala says it can't afford to have any more because it can't pay for their upkeep.

The temple now has 62 elephants and says donors will have to pay about £5,194 for the upkeep of the elephant they donate. . .

Businessmen, politicians and film personalities are now competing with one another in donating elephants at Guruvayur.

Cleaners discard painting after exhibition

Quite a memorable way to take down a show:

Cleaners have mistakenly thrown out a 10-foot painting by India's most famous contemporary artist, thinking it was a poster.

A painting by Maqbool Fida Husain, 87, and another by a lesser-known artist were missing after workers took down the tents at the end of a five-day event promoting harmony between religions and ethnic communities.

Indian sandpit wrestling

Globalization, this time in the world of sport:

India's wrestling authorities have banned the ancient sport of sandpit wrestling in an attempt to help its wrestlers keep pace with the rest of the world.

The popular spectator sport has been abolished so athletes will train on mats according to world standards.

Rajender Gulia, executive secretary of the Wrestling Federation of India said: "The decision to ban competitive sandpit wrestling is a drastic step toward modernising the traditional sport."

He says the federation has communicated the decision to wrestling schools, called "akharas", which are wedded to sandpits and traditional training methods such as pulling ploughs. . .

The sport dates back to 3000 BC in India. Wrestlers are shown on temple carvings and in antique miniature paintings.

Major Bronze Age hoard in Austria

Europe's biggest-ever discovery of Bronze Age weapons and jewellery has been made in Austria.

Archaeologists believe the hoard could prove Bronze Age Europe rivaled Greece in terms of early society and technology.

The scientists from the University of Innsbruck and the Austrian National Memorial Office have so far found 360 pieces buried at the side of a crevice in Moosbruckschrofen am Piller in Tyrol.

It is thought they were laid there as part of a ritual offering sometime between 1550 and 1250 BC.

As well as swords, axes, spearheads, sickles and jewellery the historians also found part of a bronze helmet.

Julius Held obituary

One of the great names of 20th-century art history is no more. The New York Times seems to have the only obituary so far, though I would expect more from the English papers before long.

UPDATE: It took until the 22nd, but here is the Times of London's obit.

Technical difficulties

Our broadband connection has been getting wonky lately, and today was completely out. Apologies for the lack of posts -- we have a lot to catch up on tomorrow (the cable tech is due in the morning; keep your fingers crossed).

UPDATE: Just a corroded connector and a leaky seal in the junction box. Time to catch up now.

Another controversial inscription from Israel

Just in from Ha'aretz:

An inscription attributed to Jehoash, the king of Judea who ruled in Jerusalem at the end of the ninth century B.C.E., has been authenticated by experts from the National Infrastructure Ministry's Geological Survey of Israel following months of examination. The 10-line fragment, which was apparently found on the Temple Mount, is written in the first person on a black stone tablet in ancient Phoenician script. The inscription's description of Temple "house repairs" ordered by King Jehoash strongly resembles passages in the Second Book of Kings, chapter 12.

Dr. Gabriel Barkai, a leading Israeli archaeologist from Bar Ilan University's Land of Israel Studies Department, says that if the inscription proves to be authentic, the finding is a "sensation" of the greatest import. It could be, he says, the most significant archaeological finding yet in Jerusalem and the Land of Israel. It would be a first-of-its kind piece of physical evidence describing events in a manner that adheres to the narrative in the Bible. . .

Detailed research findings about the inscription are to be disclosed in a collection of articles published by the Geology Survey of Israel, a government research institute. Research studies have been prepared by Dr. Shimon Ilani, Dr. Amnon Rosenfeld and Michael Dvorchik, the institute's chief technician who carried out electronic microscope tests of the inscription that, the three say, were largely responsible for the finding's authentication.

Apart from noting that the discovery was made in Jerusalem, the researchers do not disclose where the inscription was found. But sources have indicated that the writing surfaced in the Temple Mount area as a result of widescale excavation work done in recent years in the area by Muslims, and that Palestinians relayed the fragment to a major collector of antiquities in Jerusalem. . .

Officials from the Geology Survey said that results of the battery of examinations that were carried out must be taken as conclusive: It's inconceivable that such extensive testing would fail to reveal a forgery, they said. The inscription is authentic, they insisted, and the finding is an archaeological sensation that could have global repercussions and that effectively vindicates Jewish claims to the Temple Mount. . .

Dr. Barkai noted that "the problem here is that circumstances of the finding are not clear... We should wait for the official scientific publication, at which time we will be able to probe this finding carefully. Right now, of course, we can't rule out any possibility. It's too bad that a matter of this sort was kept under wraps, apparently due to business concerns."

UPDATE: A commission set up by the Israel Antiquities Authority has concluded that the tablet is a modern fake.

Cutting off your Raphael to spite your face

The Sunday Times of London is reporting that efforts to keep Raphael's Madonna of the Pinks in the UK may founder, not over the purchase price, but over to whom it would be paid:

“If this painting is sold overseas it will be the greatest loss of any work of art from Britain since the 1970s,” said Charles Saumarez Smith, director of the National Gallery. “There was a clear understanding with the previous duke that if the painting were ever sold it would be offered to the National.”

Although the gallery will ask for the £20m, the lottery fund is preparing to spurn the plea in what is likely to be one of its most controversial decisions. Insiders say the lottery fund believes it will be face criticism if it gives such a large sum to a member of the landed gentry. . .

The gallery believes the Heritage Lottery Fund, which has recently spent £17m on Falmouth Maritime Museum and £12m on a museum in London’s Docklands (built but not yet open), has enough spare funding to give £20m towards the Raphael. The lottery board has been criticised by the culture department for having over-large reserves.

But a £20m grant for one painting is £5.4m more than it gave for all its art grants last year. Previously its largest single award for any painting was £8.2m for George Stubbs’s Whistlejacket, which went to the National. The gallery already has eight other Raphaels in its collection.

The Heritage Lottery Fund, which has about £300m for grants each year, is now more inclined to renovate inner cities and regenerate the regions. When it began in 1994 a greater proportion of its budget went to galleries, museums and collections, notably the £12m for the Churchill archives. That grant prompted criticism for handing over lottery money to one of Britain’s wealthiest families — a charge that could be repeated over the duke.

Four years ago the National Heritage Memorial Fund, which is part of the lottery fund, gave £5m towards the purchase by the British Library of another of the duke’s heirlooms, the Sherborne Missal manuscript. The deal enabled him to escape an inheritance tax bill of £5m.

For the gallery, the sale of the Raphael is particularly galling because without its expertise identifying the work as genuine the duke could not have commanded such a high price for it.

Here's another article from the Guardian.

It’s Leonardo, not “Da Vinci”

OK, time for our first class of How to Sound Like An Art Historian 101.

Often as not, the average English-speaker (especially if he is American) will refer to Leonardo da Vinci as “Da Vinci”. Though this may be intended as a mark of respect – calling such an eminence by his first name might seem a bit presumptuous – there is a bit of a problem in that “da Vinci” isn’t a last name, and really isn’t a name at all: it simply means “from Vinci” (Vinci is the town near Florence where Leonardo was born). Which is why his fellow Italians refer to him informally as “Leonardo” – as do art historians.

In general, this same rule applies for Renaissance artists even if they did have family names of the modern sort. Michelangelo is called Michelangelo, not Buonarroti; Raphael is called Raphael, not Sanzio. Lorenzo Ghiberti, however, is known by his family name, as is Filippo Brunelleschi – perhaps because their given names were simply too common to stand alone without causing confusion.

Some later Italian artists became known by nicknames based on their place of origin, analogous to “Tex” or “Frenchy”: for instance Correggio (Antonio Allegri), Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), Parmigianino (Girolamo Francesco Mazzola), and Veronese (Paolo Caliari). This was never the case with Leonardo, however – and if it had been, he would have been known as “Vinci” (or perhaps ''Vincese"), not “da Vinci”.

Stupid car names

My wife was agog at all the ads for Nissan’s new Murano SUV. Does it shatter if you bump into it?

Murano, of course, is the Venetian island where the glass is made (which is itself often called simply "Murano").

Ancient Chinese chariots unearthed

Some exciting finds in Zhou Dynasty tombs in Hubei province:

The China Daily reports the legend of a great general who died at the battlefield has been passed down through generations along the Gunhe River in Hubei province.

It was said nine tombs were built and his body placed in one of them.

The survey showed a ridge beside the river and nine tombs were subsequently found. . .

In one of the tombs. . . a 52-metre by 12-metre cart pit was found, containing 33 bronze battle carts and 72 horses.

"The cart pit has been the largest and best preserved one ever excavated in China," Wang Hongxing, director of Hubei Provincial Archaeological Research Institute, said.

"In the pit was a battle chariot pulled by six horses.

"Only the emperor of the eastern Zhou Dynasty (770-256 BC) could use that kind of cart."

According to the paper, another pit close by revealed seven more well-preserved chariots.

While a body was found in a coffin with a sword in a sheath by its side, there were no inscriptions to indicate it was a king.

State of the Blog

Cronaca logged its 10,000th page view yesterday, only a week or so into its third month online. The best is yet to come. . . .