BBC TV's Cambridge Spies

No matter where you live, it's surely only a matter of time before this new big-budget series will be broadcast in your area. As this review from the New Criterion notes, its commitment to historical accuracy leaves something to be desired:

The early nineteenth-century prime minister Lord Melbourne is said to have remarked, after he had been persuaded to see a play by Ben Jonson, “I knew it was going to be dull, but I never thought it would be so damnably dull.” Anyone familiar with the current state of the BBC would have been naive not to foresee that Cambridge Spies was going to hold up a distorting mirror to its subject, but just how damnably distorting it was going to be would have been hard to guess.

150-year-old Chinese liquor sells for $700,000

Ninety kilograms of the white liquor distilled in 1845 were discovered during the dismantling of an old workshop in the north-eastern Chinese province of Liaoning. The drink originally held in four ancient containers has been included in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's oldest cellar-stored white spirit.

Zhang Guangxin the director of Lingchuan Daoguang Liquor Company which unearthed the spirits in June 1996 said the money raised at the auction in Guangzhou, south China would be spent on researching and protecting unearthed liquor.

90 kilos is quite a bit of booze, so the price per gram comes out to only $7.78 -- which with the Guinness Book imprimatur, might make for a tidy profit in selling the stuff off by the vial. From the BBC.

Stupid art tricks

Art as spectacle is all well and good, but what happens when museums get into the game, neglecting their mandate to preserve in favor of publicity stunts like this?

Brothers Ben and Alex Haworth turned their north London home into an art gallery on Wednesday when they won a Canaletto masterpiece to hang in their home.

The brothers . . . won the chance to look after Canaletto's Regatta on the Grand Canal (1730-35) in a competition to attract new audiences to art. The painting, worth millions of pounds, shows a crowd enjoying a regatta on Venice's Grand Canal and measures 2.2 by 1.5 metres.

It was moved it to Islington from its usual home at the Bowes Museum in County Durham by the National Art Collections Fund, an independent arts charity. The fund has been running a six-week promotion bringing artworks out of their usual homes. . .

The painting arrived at the brothers' ex-council house at 7.30am - along with a champagne breakfast. It was accompanied by security guards and an expert curator to fill the brothers in on their temporary exhibit.

The Berlin Egyptian Museum allowing its iconic bust of Nefertiti to be used as a component in a modern art assemblage would fall into a similar classification.

More NYC dealers face taxman

First it was Otto Naumann; now Bob Habolt has paid $400,000 to settle charges of not collecting state sales tax on Old Master paintings and drawings.

UPDATE: And Shrubsole, the silver and jewelry dealers, too.

Rembrandt headed for Vegas

The self-portrait sold for nearly 7m pounds in London; this is the same painting whose restoration was noted here.

Clash of the titans

You really have to see the pictures that go with this article:

A pair of youngsters, billed as two of the world's largest pre-schoolers, have met for a wrestling match in the Georgian capital Tbilisi.

Georgy Bibilauri and Dzhambulat Khotokhov had both hoped for victory, but they settled for ice cream instead. Khotokhov, a Russian weighing eight stone 11 pounds [123 lbs/56 kg] and three foot 11 in tall, is the world's largest four-year-old, according to the match's organisers. Tbilisi native Bibilauri, who turned five on Wednesday is four foot tall and weighs eight stone [112 lbs/51 kg].

Armed Europeans

The release of the 2003 Small Arms Survey (which is openly predicated on such arms being an unmitigated evil) has prompted a predictable wave of skeptical commentary.

Though the firearms ownership statistics for the United States have garnered the lion's share of attention, at least in the blogosphere, the figures for Europe are perhaps the more interesting, as is openly acknowledged in the report:

While it is tempting to contrast peace-loving Europe against gunwielding America, careful analysis shows that this is not confirmed by facts. Contrary to assumptions that Europeans are virtually disarmed, the 15 countries of the European Union alone have an estimated 84 million firearms. Of these, 80 percent or 67 million guns are in civilian hands. In countries like Finland, France, and Germany, gun laws are relatively permissive and rates of gun ownership may be about one-half the American level. Regulations tightly limit ownership in only a few European countries, such as the Netherlands, Poland, and the United Kingdom. Across most of the continent public officials acknowledge that unlicensed owners and unregistered guns greatly outnumber legal ones.

The report also notes the incompleteness of available information, and the likelihood that the estimates for Europe are very much on the low side ("Even in countries with traditions of meticulous statistical measurement of their societies, like the Nordic states, statistics on gun registration often cannot withstand rigorous scrutiny. Indeed, several northern European countries have released suspiciously low estimates of illegal gun ownership, which appears to indicate strong bureaucratic resistance to acknowledging the true situation."). Even so, the breakdown of firearms ownership in the EU countries still comes out to 81% civilian, 17% military, and 2% police (Table 2.4).

UPDATE: The AP story about the survey is rather confusingly written, leaving the impression that the survey is an official UN document, which it is not.

More-than-monthly ovulation not uncommon

Eye-opening findings (especially for users and advocates of the rhythm method):

Women may ovulate more than once a month, suggests a Canadian study that overturns conventional views on the human menstrual cycle. . .

Ten per cent of the women studied released two eggs in the same month. And all the women examined by researchers at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada showed at least two waves of maturing eggs in their ovaries in the same month. . .

"It's been assumed until now that women have just one wave per monthly cycle, leading to one ovulation, but nobody has actually carried out detailed analysis before," said Roger Pierson, who led the study. "In fact, all the women in our study had at least two waves and 30 per cent of them had three."

From New Scientist.

Computing en français

From a Times of London article on French efforts to coin substitutes for English-language tech terms comes this word list:

Successful French terms
Ordinateur: computer
Numérique: digital
Informatique: information technology
Logiciel: software
Télécharger: to up/download
Puce: chip
Bogue: bug
Agenda électronique: personal organiser
Site: website
Amorcer: to boot
Fenêtre: window
Planter: to crash
Moteur de recherche: search engine

Unsuccessful French terms
Toile: web
Courriel: e-mail
Arroser: to spam
Incendier: to flame
Causette: chat
Gestionnaire de périphérique: driver
Cédérom: CD-ROM
Fouineur: hacker
Frimousse: smiley
Logiciel de navigation: browser
Diffusion systématique sur la toile: webcasting
Numériseur: scanner
Souris: mouse

U-boat wreck survey in Gulf of Mexico

Here's an article from Louisiana on a forthcoming survey by remote submersible:

The U-166 was the only German submarine to be sunk in the Gulf of Mexico during World War II. On July 30, 1942, the underwater boat sank an American transport, the SS Robert E. Lee and in turn was attacked by U.S. Navy Patrol Craft 566.

Apparently there was some confusion over the identity of the U-boat, which was clarified only a few years ago.

Gardener gets castle

Shades of Being There. I haven't been able to find the story in the major Italian newspapers, but this English-language report from AGIonline tells how a gardener ended up owner of the castle whose grounds he tended, gaining title by right of occupancy (Italian law specialists may wish to help fill out the picture).

Cathedrals go corporate

Up to 500 business people are paying £50 each to dine at candlelit tables in the nave of Ripon Cathedral, founded by the aristocratic St Wilfrid, while the choir sings.

This new enterprise by the increasingly wordly guardians of the Church of England's increasingly costly cathedrals is aimed at raising funds for Ripon's leaking roof. Success is likely to lead to further commercial hiring, including perhaps such events as the annual Entrepreneur of the Year awards.

From the Guardian.

Quite a contrast to the situation further east, where a recent concert at Haghia Sophia drew heated denunciations from Muslim and Orthodox clerics alike (and wouldn't you know it -- I can't find the link!)

Hot spots in Africa organic, not volcanic

Scientists investigating hot spots in Mali have found them to be caused by underground peat deposits, which appear to spontaneously ignite through bacterial action during dry spells. Read all about it here.

Solar sails: will they work?

New Scientist is reporting that a Cornell physicist is calling the viability of solar sails into question. Note that the author of the article seems not to understand how a Crookes radiometer actually works.

English folly linked to Adam

The Ruin was built as a picturesquely knackered landscape ornament on the brink of a gorge in Hackfall Wood, in Grewelthorpe, near Ripon, now a Grade I listed garden. . .

The romantic gardens were designed by William Aislabie, and the folly was assumed to be his creation. But research for Roman Bob, an exhibition about the work of Robert Adam which has just opened at the Sir John Soane Museum in London, revealed a large watercolour at the V&A.

Capriccio on Ruins, now in the exhibition, shows a Roman fantasy made of elements from different buildings: a central dome based on Hadrian's Baths and two side vaults based on sketches of ruined temples made by Adam when he was in Rome. It was instantly familiar to Colin Briden, the archaeologist researching the history of the Ruin for the trust. The sketch is unmistakably the parent of the folly, which has two faces, one Gothic, one mirroring the Adam painting.

From the Guardian. The article is a bit confused, however, since much of it leaves the impression that the folly was actually designed by Adam -- yet at the end, refers to it as a "plagiarism". So it would seem that this is in fact a work after Adam, which might well leave the traditional Aislabie attribution intact.

Iraq cultural losses update

I've been a bit remiss in keeping up with the news from Iraq over the past few weeks -- so here are some bits and pieces by way of update.

The issue of "blood for artifacts" has largely been danced around to date, but as reported in today's Guardian one American archeologist has taken a stand:

Professor Elizabeth Stone, of Stonybrook University, New York, said that massive damage was being done by gangs of hundreds of armed looters and urged the coalition forces to protect the sites with helicopters.

"I think you've got to kill some people to stop this. The looters are armed and they are going to shoot people. This is a major problem." All the sites she visited in the south of Iraq in May were being looted, except one at Ur - and that was inside an American compound.

The same article also contained the following statements about the looting of the Baghdad archeological museum:

Dr Donny George, the director of research at the Iraqi board of antiquities, said: "There were no objects taken by staff of the museum to their homes, even for protection. We had objects distributed here and there. We have had a lot of experience of hiding things during three wars." In other cases local people had taken precious objects for safe keeping and later returned them, he said.

Dr Muayad Damerji, senior adviser to the Iraqi ministry of culture, said five staff "under oath" had removed objects from the museum at night and hidden them in a safe place - not even the minister of culture had been informed. Only when security had been restored by the American troops did the museum admit to the existence of these caches of antiquities.

There seem to have been quite a few reports of museum staff taking items home for safekeeping; I will have to check the sources of those reports.

And though it is not exactly breaking news, it should also be noted that the loss of some 5000 cylinder seals from the museum's storerooms has been confirmed. While some may dismiss these small items as not being major, exhibition-grade pieces, they are nonetheless archeologically important, as well as being of significant cumulative value to collectors.

Better news, however, regarding the National Library in Baghdad, via the IraqCrisis newsgroup:

1) The library building has been rendered unusable by two successive fires . . .

2) It is estimated by library employees that between 30%-60% of the collection is safe and held in three separate locations:

A: Behind a large steel door that has been welded shut by members of the Haq Mosque's Hawza Group. The welded doors essentially seal off a wing of the library's ground floor.

B: The Haq Mosque's Hawza Group was able to take what they claim to be 300,000 volumes to their mosque in Revolution City (nee Saddam City.) A visual inspection conducted by Hanssen and Watenpaugh confirmed that they have this collection well in hand and that it occupies aprx. 150-200 cubic meters. Earlier reports of books in Hebrew are true; what was also found were 50+ 50 liter sacks of archival materials from the Mandate period through the Revolution of 1958.

C: The library staff also evacuated parts of the rare/forbidden books collection to a "secret safe location." They informed the CPA of the location of this stash two days ago.

3. We were unable to locate any Ottoman archival material whatsoever.

4. While we were able to find books stolen from several Iraqi libaries for sale openly in the Suq, it is unlikely that the collection faces any immediate danger of continued loss and or theft.

A longer report is to be distributed shortly, on July 10th; the above excerpts are from a preliminary report.

As yet, there seems to have been no attention given these findings in the mainstream press, and the popular belief that almost all the library's contents were destroyed by fire remains widespread. Interestingly enough, the role of the Haq mosque crew in salvaging material from the library was reported back in mid-May, but for whatever reason the story was never widely picked up or followed.

UPDATE: Donny George also weighs in on the proper penalty for looting. It should be noted that while Elizabeth Stone was talking about deterrence at archeological sites, George is referring to punishment for those who steal from museums:

''These people are stealing material from the whole of mankind. If they steal from mankind I would say it is fair they should be shot,'' Donny George, head of research at Iraq's Board of Antiquities and Heritage told Reuters in an interview.

This is not the first time George has expressed such opinions. Further quote, same article:

The ransacking of Baghdad Museum, in which at least 13,000 items were stolen, had shown that many of the robbers had been heavily armed and well organised.

''They had guards with heavy machine guns and mortars patrolling outside while the looters were at work inside the museum. It would have been no good walking up and asking them to stop. They would have killed you.''

Oddly enough, many previous reports included moving accounts of museum employees pleading in vain with looters not to plunder their common heritage. This account also seems to contradict George's earlier statements that coalition forces could easily have safeguarded the museum -- likely in response to recent revelations concerning militarization of the museum complex. Finally, the claim that the looters had "guards with heavy machine guns and mortars patrolling outside" does not score high on the truth detector. One does not patrol with a mortar; a more absurd choice of weapon for such a purpose could hardly be imagined. And heavy machine guns would also be unlikely, unless mounted on vehicles.

Finally, George stated that items stolen from the Baghdad museum had turned up in New York and Rome. A few similar hearsay reports have been circulating, but hard facts are still lacking. Once again, George repeated his short list of villainous buyers, which is significantly at odds with other authorities (Japan does appear to be a major destination for Mesopotamian antiquities, but otherwise the main customers are in Europe):

''The major buyers are the Americans and Japanese -- who have the money -- and Israelis who have the history,'' he said.

Airport security stories

In the litany of security screening madness, this account from autumn of 2001 must rank high:

''As I was waiting in line to go through the screening myself, several Guardsmen were permitted to cut to the front of the line as they were about to take their place on the other side of the magnetometers,'' recalled Mr. Bace, a research director at Gartner Inc. in Chicago.

What happened next astonished him. One by one, the men placed their loaded M-16 rifles and their pistols on the conveyer belt, sending them through the X-ray machine to be scanned, and then meekly walked past the security guards to retrieve the weapons. ''I started to say, 'But why?' '' Mr. Bace said. ''But a sergeant just said, 'Don't ask. They were told everything had to be scanned.' The look on his face said it all to me: 'You just have to pass through here. I stay here and work with these people.' ''

Dying for some . . .

Spider news from Discovery.com:

For the first time, scientists have identified a member of the animal kingdom that dies spontaneously during sex.

While other animals, such as salmon and mayflies, die shortly after mating, the male Argiope aurantia is the first known species for which mating is an instantaneous trigger for death. . .

Jutta Schneider, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Bonn in Germany, said the surprising fact about Argiope aurantia males is that they "kill themselves, while in other species they have the females do the job for them."

I presume the last observation must be taken in context.

Fake paintings for real money

Just spotted this profile of Christophe Petyt in the Telegraph. Petyt offers high quality reproductions of paintings by famous artists; I haven't seen any myself, so will reserve judgement on issues of quality. Interestingly enough, it's apparently all perfectly legal under French (and European Community) law:

. . . as the law now stands, the works - and signatures - of any artist who has been dead for 70 years can be freely copied. The main proviso is that the copy cannot be "passed off" as the real thing.

One thing that should be pointed out is that fakes or reproductions or whatever you wish to call them have a tendency to age badly. Not necessarily due to deterioration of the materials used, although that can certainly be a problem, but because each moment has both a unique "look" and a corresponding blind spot that largely prevents self-recognition of that look. Van Meegeren's fake Vermeers were enthusiastically received in the 1930s and '40s, but now appear very much products of the 20th century, not the 17th. Similarly, many "medieval" ivory carvings that fooled scholars and connoisseurs of the 19th century are now betrayed by their decidedly Victorian aesthetic -- obvious now, invisible through omnipresence then. And if you want an example closer to everyday life, consider fashion: drag out some old pictures of yourself wearing the most cringe-inducing outfits and hairstyles, and ask yourself if you saw then what you see now. . .

New analysis of ancient American sculptures

From Science Daily:

Thanks in part to new spectroscopic technology, researchers have solved a great mystery concerning some of North America's oldest pieces of sculpture. With the use of PIMA -- a non-invasive Portable Infrared Mineral Analyzer -- an interdisciplinary team of scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has identified the source and meaning of "spectacular late prehistoric" figurines found in several locales in the South and the Southeast -- in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Tennessee.

According to lead researcher Thomas Emerson, an archaeologist and the director of ITARP (Illinois Transportation Archaeological Research Program), the figurines were made of Missouri flint clay from quarries near St. Louis. Artisans at Cahokia, the earliest and largest North American mound society, which was centered in southern Illinois, in all likelihood produced the iconic figurines in the 12th century during an "artistic explosion," but the objects were moved at various times and to various places, where they eventually were found.

There now is evidence that after they were moved, some of the flint clay icons were recarved and retrofitted as smoking pipes, indicating a radical change in their significance. "There is a vast difference between bowing to an ancestral being and smoking one," Emerson said. . .

In their research, Emerson and his team analyzed 13 museum specimens originally found in the South and Southeast to identify the mineral composition of the raw material. Figures included a resting and a conquering warrior, various squatting and kneeling men, frogs and frog pipes and a "chunky" game player. Cahokian-style figurines are characterized by a highly developed realistic portrayal of human or near-human figures; they are dressed in specific costumes and shown carrying out specific deeds. Occasionally, however, they seem to portray mythical acts or beings.

The findings have been published in American Antiquity.

Ancient inscription commemorates father of John the Baptist

The discovery was a stroke of luck: the light of the setting sun hit an ancient tomb at just the right angle and revealed hints of a worn inscription, unnoticed for centuries, commemorating the father of John the Baptist. ``This is the tomb of Zachariah, martyr, very pious priest, father of John,'' the inscription of 47 Greek letters reads.

The inscription probably does not mean that the father of the biblical figure is actually buried in the 60-foot-high funerary monument at the foot of the Mount of Olives, say the text's discoverers. But it does give new insight into the local lore surrounding the early figures of the Christian Church.

Read more here.

Temple Bar returning to London

Temple Bar is coming home. London's last surviving gate, a Grade I listed building, has spent more than a century buried in Hertfordshire woodland, drowning in nettles and brambles, targeted by pigeons and vandals. Its days in the countryside are now numbered and it will be on the road again as soon as its more than 1,000 stones are numbered and dismantled.

By the end of next year it should be standing once more in the capital, relocated from its original site in Fleet Street to form a gateway into the new piazza at Paternoster Square beside St Paul's Cathedral.

Read all about it here.

Cold War bunkers for sale in Scotland

Highland castles and Edinburgh townhouses may soon have a new rival for the last word in property chic. Estate agents are hoping to sell cold war nuclear bunkers, complete with their own radiation filters and Geiger counters, to Scotland’s aspiring homeowners.

Seven underground bunkers, built by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) in the late 1940s as observation posts in the event of a nuclear attack, are being put on the market for up to £5,000 each. The bunkers . . . come with a plot of land of up to a quarter of acre. They are 12ft below ground and some come equipped with bunk beds, table and chairs, air conditioning, and special filters originally designed to prevent harmful radioactive particles entering the bunker. The shelters, roughly the size of a small caravan, were built on hilltops and command spectacular views across the Scottish countryside.

Interest has been so strong it is thought the bunkers could sell for up to four times the asking price. Last month, a similar building in Louth, near Lincoln, sold for £22,000 and another in the Lake District was snapped up for £15,000.

From the Sunday Times.

London restaurants serve "mineral water" fresh from the tap

The Sunday Times has done a bit of investigative reporting, and the London restaurants they visited didn't come off too well:

Thousands of consumers who order mineral water in restaurants are given filtered tap water and charged up to £4 a litre. It happens in top restaurants as well as in mid-ranking establishments. Diners who like still water are hit as hard as those who prefer it sparkling.

Restaurants serving tap water in place of mineral water include Antony Worrall Thompson’s London eatery and 192, the brasserie in Notting Hill. Chains such as Belgo, the Belgian mussel house, and Jamie’s bars are also cashing in. . .

The restaurants install a filtration system to the mains water supply in their kitchens and the water is often served in flip-top reusable bottles stamped with their logo.

In all the restaurants visited by The Sunday Times last week, tap water was served after a specific request for “mineral water” and was charged at similar rates. Although none of the restaurants labelled the bottles as “mineral water”, which is a legally protected category, it is illegal not to tell customers that they are drinking tap water if mineral water has been requested. There was no such explanation in the restaurants visited, although the bottles were labelled “pure still water” or “pure sparkling water” with “table water” in small print.

British Library sells animal ringtones

Downloadable ringtones are not nearly as big in the USA as in the rest of the world, where nearly everyone seems to be offering customized sounds for mobile phones:

The British Library . . . has the world’s largest animal sound archive, which is regularly used for research purposes and some have been issued on CD. Now they are being made available to two companies that sell ringtones.

The first animal ringtones will be available on the Internet later this week for the latest “polyphonic” mobiles. The sounds are downloaded for between £1.50 and £4 each . . .

The innovative use of the archive could prove to be an important moneyspinner for the British Library. Downloading ringtones is already very big business, generating £2.5 billion a year. However, some of the sounds could prove as irritating as the existing tones: besides the raucous screeches of the Amazonian parrot, the grunts of pigs and the thuds of a gorilla beating its chest will also be available.

From the Times of London.

Shoe poisoning

Do you ever wear leather shoes without socks? Medpundit explains how this has sometimes led to poisoning by chromium left over from the tanning process (she doesn't mention it, but woe betide any dog so unfortunate as to chew on such a shoe).

Museum reproductions, reproduction museums

Once upon a time, museums proudly displayed reproductions. Galleries of casts were integral to museums' mission of education and enlightenment, allowing visitors who might never have a chance to travel abroad to behold everything from Roman reliefs to canonical masterpieces of Renaissance sculpture. Most museums have long since sold off their casts, but one of the greatest collections is still intact in the Victoria & Albert's Cast Courts.

Far less well known is the Mesopotamian Museum in Chicago, profiled
here. Founded in 1997, its collection mostly consists of 110-year-old casts after objects in the British Museum, which are now on permanent load from Harvard's Semitic Museum.