Everything you know is wrong

Have you ever learned something when young, only to discover as an adult that you didn't really know it at all?

I've had one of those experiences this week. My 5-year-old is learning to swim, and for the first time in many years I'm spending a lot of time in the pool. Having long been dissatisfied with my swim technique, I started to look into how to improve it -- only to find that my daughter's probably better off than I am, since she doesn't have anything to unlearn.

I was originally intending to sign up for the Masters classes at the local Y, but now I'm wondering if I should just sign up for regular adult swim classes. This time I want to make sure I learn things right.

Paraffin-fuel rockets

Not model rocketry, either -- this is the real thing. Read more about it here (via Instapundit).

Shoring up Bath

Some time ago I saw a documentary on the vast underground network of tunnels under Bath; now the BBC has more news on Bath underground:

The final cost of shoring up the unstable Combe Down mines under Bath could be as much as £90m, new estimates suggest. The mines were declared unstable 11 years ago - putting up to 600 homes at risk.

Plans to support and stabilise the mines had to be drawn up because of the very real threat of collapse in various parts of the mine, leading to houses and roads falling in. . .

Much of Bath's architecture is shaped by stone from the mines.

Seismology and Jerusalem

A geological survey says the heart of biblical narrative - Jerusalem's walled Old City - would be among the worst hit parts of the city in the event of another earthquake because it rests on layers of debris, not solid rock.

A natural disaster in the Old City could also bring devastating political aftershocks because it is the fiery heart of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

Read more here.

Bust of Trajan from Christie's seized as stolen

Not good news for Christie's, as reported in today's NY Times:

ederal authorities yesterday seized a large portrait of the Roman Emperor Trajan that was a centerpiece of a major antiquities auction last month at Christie's, saying it was stolen six years ago from a museum in Rome, a spokeswoman for Christie's said.

Bad enough; but there's also this:

While Christie's represented the piece in its catalog as an antiquity, it now appears that it is probably a reproduction made in the 17th century, according to a complaint filed by the United States attorney's office in Manhattan.

Further background:

The piece, which is 22 inches high, sold for $276,300, bringing the third-highest price at the auction. The successful bidder was not identified.

In a complaint filed on Thursday in United States District Court in Manhattan, Federal officials charged that the portrait of Trajan had been stolen from a storage area at the Capitoline Museum in Rome in January 1998.

Medieval graveyard found under Worcester museum

The discovery of a preserved male skeleton dating from the 16th century lying beneath Worcester’s Commandery Museum is expected to lead to hundreds more human remains being unearthed at the historic site.

A county council archaeological expert believes the significant find proves a graveyard from the medieval period is underneath the former monastic hospital.

James Goad discovered the 6ft skeleton, along with the leg of another skeleton yet to be excavated, on Monday during exploratory work in the staff room of the museum in preparation for a lift being installed.

After digging about one metre down he got a surprise when his pickaxe smashed through a human skull. . .

“I thought it was a pit or ditch but then I hit the skull and it made a soft popping noise and the jaw bone flew up at me,” he said.

From the Worcester Standard; another writeup at the BBC, which notes:

"It is possible that there are further graves on the site, possibly dating as far back as the foundation of the first chapel, on the site in the Saxon period."

Ancient port of Naples uncovered

Missed posting this initially, but now here is a Discovery News writeup with pictures:

Italian archaeologists have discovered the ancient port of Neapolis during excavation work for a new subway in Naples, they announced at a news conference this week.

Extending into the heart of present-day Naples, the second-century port was found 13 meters (43 feet) beneath one of the city's main squares, not far from the 13th-century Maschio Angioino fortress.

Evidence for the ancient Mediterranean port included a 10-meter (33-foot) ship, wooden pieces belonging to piers, and various items.

This is indeed a major find; I don't know how long it will be before Neapolitans are riding their new subway, but it is certainly taking archeologists where they never could go before.

Mummified lion found at Saqqara

Archaeologists have uncovered the first example of a lion mummified by the ancient Egyptians, in the tomb of the woman who helped rear King Tutankhamun.

Although the breeding and burial of lions as sacred animals in Egypt is mentioned by ancient sources, to date no one had found a mummified specimen.

The male lion is amongst the largest known to science and its bones show it lived to an old age in captivity.

From the BBC; the full report appears in Nature (abstract here)

More at Discovery News, too.

Salvaging a medieval salt ship

Archaeologists are preparing to rescue a medieval salt ship that has been buried beneath mud in Cheshire for nearly 700 years. The 26ft-long ship was carved out of a single oak tree and experts say it is of national importance.

The vessel, which was discovered during work on a building site, was originally used to store brine as part of a medieval salt works in the centre of Nantwich. . .

Just two years ago archaeologists working nearby on a similar housing plot found the site of a 2000-year-old Roman salt works.

From the BBC.

Inside Saudi Arabia

Lawrence Wright took a job at a Saudi English-language newspaper. His observations about the experience recently appeared in the New Yorker in an article available online here.

So much for global warming

It will be a boom spring and summer for insulation contractors here in New England. Our cold continues -- though the local paper's website states the record low for the day was -3F back in 1994, our neighbor's outdoor thermometer was showing nearly 10 below when I got up this morning (and, no, I didn't rise with the sun).

Forbes Fabergé eggs at Sotheby's

I remember seeing Malcolm Forbes' egg collection downtown at the Forbes building when I still lived in New York. Didn't expect them to end up being sold like this:

The largest private collection of Fabergé Imperial Easter Eggs is to go under the hammer in April. One piece, The Coronation Egg, presented by Tsar Nicholas II to his wife at Easter 1897, would be the most expensive piece of decorative art to be sold at auction if it realizes the upper end of its estimated sales range of $18 million to $24 million.

The pieces all come from the Forbes Collection, owned by the Forbes family

From Forbes -- last week's news, but better late than never.

UPDATE: The entire collection has been sold en bloc -- auction cancelled.

Suffragette medals at auction

The 1908 silver Honour for Imprisonment Medal was given to suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst by the Women's Social and Political Union, which she founded.

It is one of only three recorded and either Mrs Pankhurst or one of her daughters - Christabel, Sylvia and Adela - gave it to a close friend. It has been passed down through three generations of one family before being offered for sale at specialist auctioneers Spink's, in London.

One bar of the medal, expected to fetch up to £30,000 next April, bears the words "Holloway", while the other is engraved "Oct 8th 08" the date of an incident that led to jail sentences for Emily and Christabel and fellow suffragette Flora Drummond. . .

The Honour Medal for Imprisonment is the earliest metal suffragette award but was superseded by the WS&PU's Medal for Valour, commonly known as the Hunger Strike Medal, and is therefore extremely rare. The only other two are in museums.

Read the full article here. Meanwhile, a comparably significant medal was recently sold, as the Antiques Trade Gazette reports:

This Women’s Social and Political Union medal for valour was awarded to Mary Richardson, the Canadian-born militant suffragette who, in protest at the re-arrest of Emmeline Pankhurst in March 1914, slashed the ‘Rokeby’ Venus with an axe at the National Gallery. . .

The silver medal, hallmarked for Birmingham 1912, is believed to carry the greatest number of award bars given by the WSPU during the hunger strikes – an indication that no one was force-fed more often than ‘Slasher’ Richardson.

On the market for the first time, the medal was sold by London’s Dix Noonan Webb on December 16 for £19,000 (plus 15 per cent buyer’s premium). It was bought by a collector who has expressed a desire to loan it to a museum.

Silver reference library at auction

I inexcusably failed to post anything on the November/December sale at Sotheby's of the reference library and remaining stock of legendary booksellers H.P. Kraus (no, it wasn't to keep it a secret so I could scoop it all up cheaply -- prices were pretty strong, anyway). So here's fair notice of a rather different reference library up for sale in England:

Following his decision to move to France, the silver reference library of long-time London dealer Brand Inglis will be sold by auction in Salisbury at the end of this month. As part of their silver sale on January 28, Woolley & Wallis will offer an enviable working library that has served Mr Inglis for over 40 years.

Specialist at the Salisbury rooms Alex Butcher estimates there are something close to 2500 books that will be offered in around 300 lots. . .

A familiar face on the Antiques Roadshow and a past president of the BADA, Mr Inglis was admired by museum curators for his eye and has sold material to, among others, the V&A, Colonial Williamsburg and the Toledo Museum of Art that houses his favourite ‘deal’, a Nuremberg ewer and basin c.1580.

From the Antiques Trade Gazette, which also notes that Mr. Inglis is planning to use the proceeds to, among else, start a bed & breakfast near Montpellier.

Can't use banknotes for Photoshopping

It's recently come out that Adobe inserted special code in their latest version of Photoshop that prevents scanning banknotes. The Register has more -- apparently there are already legitimate users who are being tripped up, such as advertising agencies legally using images of money, but Adobe has yet to provide a workaround.

Tyger, tyger, counting right

Sporting work, this:

More than 450 game wardens, medical workers and volunteers wearing fiberglass protective vests and carrying nets, ropes and guns set out Wednesday to conduct a tiger census in the Sundarbans delta in eastern India.

The 6,000-square-mile delta, the world's largest mangrove forest, is divided roughly in half between India and Bangladesh. For the next week, 23 teams will scour the forest and collect tiger footprints, traveling mostly by boat and doing their best to avoid attack.

"Tigers here are more aggressive because they have to live in a harsh habitat of water and mud," Predeep Vyas, field director of the Sundarbans tiger reserve, said Wednesday in a telephone interview. "We have to be very careful in doing the work". . .

Mr. Vyas said the workers, traveling in boats in teams of 8 to 10, use binoculars to spot tiger tracks. When the boats approach shore, two armed guards jump off first. As medical teams stand by in case of an attack, other workers erect safety nets to prevent tigers from lunging out of the dense underbrush.

From the NY Times.

Whitney collection up for sale

Not the Whitney Museum, but nearly as good:

More than 40 Impressionist and modern paintings from one of the last great American collections in private hands are to be sold at Sotheby's in New York on May 5, the auction house announced yesterday. Sotheby's estimates the sale could bring $140 million to $190 million.

The collection includes works by Manet, Degas, Monet and Sargent as well as a rare Rose Period Picasso, "Boy With a Pipe." It was formed over two generations beginning with Payne and Helen Hay Whitney, heirs to a fortune made from oil, tobacco, street railways and real estate and then by their son, John Hay Whitney, the sportsman, financier, publisher and former ambassador to Britain, and his wife, Betsey Cushing Roosevelt Whitney.

Experts say the Picasso, which Sotheby's estimates to sell for $70 million, could well become the most expensive painting ever sold at auction

From the NY Times, which also notes:

The Whitneys. . . formed their collection with the advice of John Rewald, the curator, teacher and expert on Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art who died in 1994, and John Richardson, the Picasso biographer.

It takes more than money to form a great collection; although it is common to praise wealthy collectors' acquisitional acumen, it is too seldom emphasized how often this is based on knowing how to select and listen to the right advisors.

Another film vs digital item

Remember the story about the JFK photo archive that was reduced to ashes at 5 World Trade Center? Today's NY Times reports that a number of the photos are now being successfully reprinted from contact sheets, using a very pricey scanner and, in many cases, significant digital enhancement (some of the contact sheets were not in the best of condition).

OK, these were medium format images, not 35mm, but still this shows how much detail one can get with good old film and paper technology -- enough, in this case, for a glossy coffee-table book.

Last American WW1 wounded combat veteran dead

The Great War is now fading out of living memory:

Alfred Pugh, the last known combat-wounded U.S. veteran of World War I, has died. He was 108, only 10 days short of his 109th birthday, when he died Wednesday.

Mr. Pugh, who often told visitors the key to a long life is "keep breathing," joined the Army in 1917 and fought in France with the 77th Infantry Division.
In 1918, he was wounded during the Meusse-Argonne offensive, one of the war's bloodiest battles.

He died at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center at Bay Pines. VA officials said he was the oldest wounded U.S. combat veteran, and one of fewer than 1,000 remaining American World War I veterans.

Read the rest here.

Canadian chemical weapons victims speak out

Bill Tanner was just 18 years old when he was recruited for a secret mission during the Second World War. . .

Mr. Tanner was among 2,500 young recruits who swore an oath of secrecy and were shipped to the Suffield forces base in Alberta, where they were to participate in hazardous chemical experiments. . .

Mr. Tanner can remember being taken to a field where mortar rounds were exploding in the distance. He was ordered to crawl through a bomb crater on his belly, right through a pool of mustard gas. "My hands, arms, neck and forehead were burned into huge, oozing blisters," he said of that day in July 1945.

Mr. Tanner was then exposed to chlorine gas and landed in the infirmary, where he was diagnosed with pneumonia. . .

Mr. Tanner has been contacted by 500 veterans or their relatives regarding the case. "We never heard of them before. A lot of them, sadly, are widows," said Mr. Tanner. Kelowna lawyer Rod Pacholzuk said many of the men never received any medical treatment after being exposed, because officials wanted to see the results of the newer forms of gas agents. . .

Mr. Pacholzuk said this is the first time in Canadian history the government has been challenged on this type of case. The veil of secrecy surrounding the testing was lifted only in the last decade.

From the Globe and Mail.

Still a lot of WW2 munitions lying about

Nearly 1,800 pieces of munitions dating back to the time of World War Two were destroyed in Crimea in 2003, a source in the press center of the Ukrainian Naval Command told ITAR-TASS on Tuesday.

According to the source, “artillery shells, mines, grenades, detonators and rounds of ammunition made before the war were destroyed.”

The mine clearing process was particularly dangerous in the premises of the Great Fortress in Kerch, where sappers found and rendered harmless over 600 explosive devices, the press center source said.

From ITAR-TASS.

Art historian interviews chef: Cole & Batali

An interview that may be of interest; here's the intro:

[NEH] Chairman Bruce Cole talks with Mario Batali about the ways in which food conveys culture. Before becoming a chef, Batali studied medieval Spanish theater, witnessed the California food revolution, and lived in Italy to learn about its culinary traditions. Founder and owner of Babbo in New York, Batali also appears on his own television show on the Food Network and has written five books on cooking.

Major riverbed find in Croatia

Not a lot of detail in this note from England, but something worth keeping an eye on:

A team of experts from the University of Birmingham has discovered what may be one of the most important archaeological sites of the last 50 years, in a riverbed in Croatia.

Items recovered from the river include more than 90 swords, a Roman legionnaire's dagger complete with sheath, more than 30 Greco-Illyrian helmets, plus numerous items of jewellery, axes and spearheads.

It is believed a large number of objects were thrown into River Cetina deliberately, possibly as offerings to gods.

Initial surveys of the site indicate that the remarkable finds span a period of history from 6,000 BC onwards. These include 33m long timbers, clearly visible from the riverbank, which show evidence of late Neolithic or early Bronze Age wooden settlements.

Polluting Celts

Here's another instance of environmental degradation in antiquity, reported in Nature:

Scientists have reconstructed the environmental history of a Celtic mining town by digging through a peat bog near Dijon in France in search of lead residues and pollen grains. . .

But the results also serve as a sobering reminder about how long pollution lasts. [Fabrice] Monna's team concludes that about 20% of the lead pollution in the peat today was introduced before the eleventh century, and about 50% before the eighteenth century. . .

"Today, the area is absolutely green, there is no industry there at all," Monna notes. Yet the fingerprint of human activity is still obvious in the peat bogs. Lead that was mined in the nineteenth century, for example, is still around at levels of about 80 micrograms per gram of peat. "That's quite a lot," says Monna.

The finding isn't particularly surprising to environmental chemists. Once lead is locked up in organic material such as peat, it tends to stay put rather than being washed away by water. But the study emphasizes that researchers should pay more attention to where pollution comes from, says Monna. In particular, he says, environmental surveys should consider the history of sites when looking at current pollution levels so that the impact of modern activities is not overestimated. . .

Lead pollution peaked in the first century BC, after a Celtic tribe settled the area to exploit the rich deposits of lead, silver and zinc in the surrounding hills, and once again in the nineteenth century at the height of the Industrial Revolution.

"Spiral Jetty" reemergent

For nearly three decades Robert Smithson's "Spiral Jetty" lay underwater in the Great Salt Lake. Since 1999, as drought has lowered the water level, this famous American earth sculpture — a 1,500-foot coil of black basalt rocks — has slowly re-emerged. Now it is completely exposed; the rocks encrusted with white salt crystals are surrounded by shallow pink water in what looks like a vast snow field.

In 1970, when Smithson built the "Jetty," which is considered his masterpiece, the giant black coil contrasted starkly with the dark pink water of the lake. But time and nature have left their marks.

Thousands of people have visited this once-elusive artwork while an argument is brewing 2,000 miles away about whether to leave it as is or restore it.

"The spiral is not as dramatic as when it was first built," said Michael Govan, the director of the Dia Art Foundation in New York City, which owns the work. "The `Jetty' is being submerged in a sea of salt."

To ensure that "Spiral Jetty" is accessible to future generations, Dia, which exhibits and preserves art made since the 1960's, has discussed raising it by adding more rocks. Dia is also studying whether nature will restore the contrast the "Jetty" originally had with its surroundings by dissolving some of the salt crystals when the lake's waters rise, or whether the foundation needs to do something more.

From the NY Times.

Nottingham Castle stonework accusations

Experts have accused the custodians of Nottingham Castle of failing to protect rare stonework from going missing. The city council blames a lack of funding and practical difficulties

It seems much has been left out in the open, vulnerable to theft and erosion. The full story is here.

Masonry secrets of the Romans

Italian archaeologists have uncovered startling evidence of ancient Roman building techniques by bringing to light a deposit of white, perfectly-preserved slake lime.

Sealed for almost 2,000 years by the collapse of a floor, the lime occupied an entire room at the ground floor of the huge Villa dei Quintili in Rome, once the residence of the emperor Commodus. . .

"The large quantity of lime, along with other materials such as bricks, sand, and fragments of marble, indicates that this part of the estate was a well-equipped building yard," Rita Paris, the state archaeologist responsible for the excavation, told Discovery News.

Read the rest here.

No magic, please -- we're Dutch

Who says Americans are the only ones who take antismoking measures to extremes?

A Dutch magician had to cancel his new trick with a burning cigarette because of new laws banning smoking in public.

Kortini, from Rotterdam, had hoped to make an impression with the trick which involves making the cigarette disappear and then reappear again.

I guess the problem was when he made the cigarette reappear. . . .

Free Willy star's body: toxic waste?

Norwegian authorities are reviewing the burial of Free Willy star Keiko over fears the killer whale may be full of toxic substances.

Children helped build a stone monument to the celebrity last week, but now officials are worried about the possible environmental effects of burying him on land.

PCBs are the issue, which are known to build up to frighteningly high levels in carnivorous marine mammals. From Ananova.

Saddam's Jewish library

This has been out for some time, but if you haven't seen it yet, take a look at the Art Newspaper's coverage of the story of the hoard of Jewish books and documents found in the headquarters of Saddam's secret police.

Manga judged obscene

Monotori Kishi, a 54-year-old publisher, was handed a one-year prison sentence, suspended for three years, for violating Japan's penal code on the sale and distribution of obscene literature.

Presiding Judge Yujiro Nakatani said Misshitsu, or Honey Room, was too graphic. . .

About 45% of all books and periodicals sold in Japan are manga. They often contain sexual material.

"Given what's available it seems an extraordinary decision," said the BBC's Tokyo correspondent, Jonathan Head. "There is so much pornography available in Japan in every form - in films, computer games, cartoons and famously manga and anime - those books of cartoons you can see men reading openly on the train everyday," he told the East Asia Today programme.

From the BBC, which also notes that this is the first prosecution of its kind in Japan (and likely the last).

I will refrain from providing links to similar material, but I'm sure it's readily Googleable.

More OS reinstallation notes

I promise I'll get back to the good old stuff soon. . .

Anyway, wanted to pass along a few notes regarding the commonly heard recommendation to divide up OS, applications, and data, placing each on a separate partition (or, better, a separate drive).
The idea, of course, is that one can then reinstall the operating system as necessary while minimizing the amount of other reinstallation required. The problem, however, is that even if you install the OS on C: and applications on D:, most apps still install chunks of themselves on C: -- enough to break them if C: is wiped clean.
Nonetheless, I've found that some apps are better behaved, and stick to their own partitions. Some members of the honor roll: Pegasus Mail; Opera (but not the Opera Customizer & Profile Maker plug-in, oddly enough); Password Safe; and Macro Express (at least the old version I'm still using). Nothing by Microsoft, I'm afraid.

AND BSPlayer works, too -- freeware that's a lot better than the bundled Windows Media Player. Being a bit smarter this time around, I'm using Norton Ghost to make a mirror backup of my basic configuration -- which should obviate having to reinstall the OS again.

Saving MS Office settings

On top of everything else going on around the house, it's come time to reinstall the OS on my main desktop. Without going into the painful details, I'll simply note that I wish I had known beforehand about Microsoft's Save My Settings Wizard -- a free download that lets you save, restore, and transfer your personal settings in Office 2000 applications (XP has this feature built in, though many don't know about it). A review is here; I wonder, though, how the MS utility stacks up next to products such as the BackRex offerings, which cover a much broader range of Windows settings.

UPDATE: Looks like the wizard now only works with XP -- for Windows 2000 and earlier, it is configured to save to an external server MS no longer maintains. No option to save the configuration files locally. Of course, MS doesn't tell you this. And this article on backing up Word settings suggests that the wizard wasn't so magical after all.

King Herod's anchor?

Not much available on this yet, but it seems a very large Roman-era anchor has been found in the Dead Sea. Don't know about the likelihood of the Herodian connection.

UPDATE: Here's more at The Scotsman:

Archaeologist Gideon Hadas said he would like to believe – but has no proof – that the anchor came from a royal yacht of biblical King Herod who ruled Judea at the time of Jesus’ birth and had a palace on nearby Mount Masada.

The 2000-year-old anchor, about six feet tall, was found last month when it was protruding from the banks, revealed by the receding waterline.

Other wooden anchors from that period have long since disintegrated, but the unique conditions of the Dead Sea – with its high concentration of salts and minerals – have helped to preserve this anchor, said Hadas.

The attribution is wishful thinking, it appears -- especially inasmuch as the finder admits there is no record of Herod owning a boat, let alone a ship requiring a half-ton anchor.

The Black Assizes: mass grave in Oxford

Archaeologists have uncovered a mass grave which may throw lights on one of the strangest and most gruesome events of the Elizabethan age: the curse of Roland Jenks.

More than 60 skeletons have been discovered between Oxford's former prison and its old castle. It is thought that many of them could be related to the fate of Jenks, a 'foul-mouthed and saucy' bookbinder who was convicted in 1577 of supporting the Pope. For his temerity he was sentenced to be nailed by his ears to the local pillory and responded by laying a curse on the courtroom and city.

'It appears to have been a very effective curse,' said archaeologist Dan Poore of Oxford Archaeology, which carried out the dig. Contemporary reports indicate that within several days hundreds of local men - but no women or children - had dropped dead.

From the Guardian, which also notes that a number of the bodies had been dissected.