Brother, can you spare a (Constantine I) ruble?

A new record for a European coin was set in New York on January 15. . .

The subject of this excitement was a Russian silver rouble. Boldly estimated at $500,000, after spirited bidding it reached $525,000 (£308,823), selling to a Japanese dealer on behalf of a client.

The coin in question is an 1825 pattern struck in anticipation of the succession of Constantine I as Tsar. . .

Five examples are known with a lettered edge and two with a plain edge. Two are in the Hermitage (a plain-edged example surfaced here in 1962), one in the Smithsonian, another in a private collection and one is still unaccounted for.

From the Antiques Trade Gazette. More on the Constantine I ruble here.

Career choice blues

Worried about job security? Outsourcing getting you down? It could be worse. You could be . . . a Michael Jackson impersonator.

Passing the thousand mark

Two thousand posts, and almost simultaneously, one thousand comments. Don't know if that ratio is in any way significant, but I shall use the occasion for a tip of the hat to our most prolific commentator and link-poster, Peter Shriner.

Recreating the Harp of Ur

A harp enthusiast is hoping to recreate the first working copy of the famous Harp of Ur, which was vandalised in Iraq's national museum following the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime.

Andy Lowings, 52, from Cambridgeshire, wants the replica instrument to be as close to the 4,750 year-old original as possible, even down to the source of the wood.

His £25,000 project caught the imagination of a nearby RAF squadron who agreed to collect two pieces of cedar wood from Basra and presented it to Mr Lowings on Wednesday. . .

Remains of three harps were excavated from a royal mass grave in the Mesopotamian city of Ur in 1929. They were shared among museums in Pennsylvania, Baghdad and the British Museum in London.

From the BBC.

Napoleonic "False Alarm" commemoration

THE 200th anniversary of one of the most bizarre events in Scottish military history - in which thousands of troops were mobilised to fight a non-existent invasion by Napoleon near Berwick-upon-Tweed - will be marked in a special ceremony tomorrow.

Volunteers aged between 16 and 60, and from settlements scattered across 2,000sqm of Scottish countryside, set off to repel Napoleon Bonaparte’s invading forces.

From the valleys of Liddesdale and Teviotdale, and across the hills of Berwickshire and Selkirkshire, any man fit enough to fight took part in a forced march across rough terrain after bidding an emotional farewell to their loved ones. . .

The extraordinary sequence of events that took place exactly 200 years ago this weekend - known simply as "the False Alarm" - will be marked at a special ceremony tomorrow evening.

Read more here.

David vs Goliath at Carrickmines Castle

And down goes the big Philistine, at the nth hour:

The High Court overturned the Government’s approval to build on the archaeological site of Carrickmines Castle, Co Dublin, quashing two orders and declaring them unconstitutional.

Campaigner Michael Mulcreevy had appealed against the joint Government decision to destruct the remains in order to build an M50 motorway roundabout over the site.

And, after a long-running dispute, he could eventually claim success today as Judge Nicholas Kearins ruled that there was a “technical glitch” in Government orders passed on the National Monuments Act.

He declared that the Government had acted outside their powers in approving consent of the building work and said new laws must be passed without delay.

From Ireland On-Line; previous post on Carrickmines here.

Disputed El Greco pulled from London exhibition

Last week we noted that a New York judge had declined to prevent the return of an El Greco painting of disputed ownership. Now the BBC reports that it will not now be loaned to London's National Gallery, as had been planned, due to fears of further legal entanglements.

Self-preservation on the road

With all the snow, ice, and chill this winter, I've been paying careful attention to automotive maintenance. And how often little things -- commonly overlooked -- can make such a big difference! Such as fresh wiper blades, and treatment of glass with water-repellant outside and antifog coating inside. What could be more dangerous than not being able to see well? Yet many who swear by their 4WD still don't bother to keep their glass clear.

Which brings to mind another self-preservation-related encounter from many years back. I was involved with a NYU-affiliated martial arts club at the time, and one of the other members invited us to a talk by his ninjutsu instructor. Didn't know what to expect -- among would-be ninjas there are many with, let us say, a rich fantasy life -- but the instructor was one of the most sensible and level-headed martial artists I've ever seen. What really won me over was when he asked if everyone was carrying some change, so as to be able to make a pay-phone call in a pinch. This guy was clearly taking the big-picture approach to self-protection. . . .

18th-century murals uncovered at Mission Dolores

Two young men, one an artist, the other an archaeologist, crawled over the ancient redwood beams of San Francisco's Mission Dolores earlier this month, opened a trap door, lowered an electric light into a space behind the main altar -- and stared into the 18th century.

There, in a space thick with the dust of centuries and dark as a tomb, is a wall of nearly forgotten religious murals, painted in red, black and yellow by Native Americans in 1791 and hidden from public view for 208 years.

Read the full story here; the murals were covered by a massive altar screen in 1796 -- I grew up in the Bay Area, and never knew about them, though the article notes:

The murals were never really lost. They were always there, like a forgotten treasure. Information about them surfaced from time to time, most notably in the 1980s, when historian Norman Neuerburg made his way up the wooden spiral staircase to the choir loft, climbed a ladder into the attic, crossed over the interior roof of the mission to the trap door, and lowered himself on a rope ladder to see the murals. He had black-and-white sketches made.

Digital images of the hidden murals are being projected inside the modern church next to the old mission. Haven't been able to find any pictures online as yet.

US funding for the arts

Pop quiz: has the federal government's direct financial support for the arts -- that is, the budget of the NEA -- gone up, down, or sideways under the current administation?

And the answer is -- from the NEA's own factsheet -- up. In fact, the only significant cuts in the NEA's funding in recent years were under Bill Clinton, with steady cutbacks from 1993 to 2000, with a major cut between 1995 and 1996.

Thanks to Random Observations for bringing our attention to this, with a post that also notes how this has sometimes been spun. Once again, image vs substance . . .

ADDENDUM: David Bernstein further discusses this topic over at the Volokh Conspiracy:

Remind me again of why liberals are so hostile to George Bush? Give him a phony Haavaad accent instead of phony Texas twang, a wonky college life, a less religious persona, and an attorney general other than John Ashcroft, and George Bush, in theory, would be a dream president for many liberals, judging by their ex ante policy preferences. But the dirty little secret of American politics, as explained so well by Michael Barone, is that cultural cues are more important than policy and ideology.

Slooow mail

Went to my PO box this morning, and a surprise was waiting: a small insured airmail parcel from Australia -- sent at the beginning of May! No indication of where it had been the last 8 1/2 months, either.

Whether this was a USPS screwup or something Down Under, I cannot say. But just last week I got a package sent domestically (from Michigan, I think), that had taken a full two months to arrive -- even though it had been sent by Priority Mail. Again, no indications of where it had been.

I do a lot of mailing of small parcels, and over the last few years the loss rate has been negligible, maybe one or two items in a thousand. Yet every month or two, something ends up taking an inordinately long time to arrive. Is this the result of some post-9/11 (or post-anthrax) measure? I don't know, but I doubt that's the entire explanation. In too many ways the Post Office screws up things in entirely visible ways -- such as their policy of returning undeliverable Express Mail packages by the slowest possible means (I recently got back two such parcels over a month after they'd been sent), or of subcontracting delivery of Global Express Mail to foreign partners chosen more on cost than competence (ParcelForce in the UK, GLS for much of continental Europe).

Cellphone gun video

Nothing new here, despite the recent Time Magazine coverage -- but Gizmodo just pointed out this video clip showing a four-shot phone gun in action.

For previous mentions, look here.

Locus of infection sweet locus of infection

Always worried about the disease du jour? Maybe you should be looking first at your own kitchen:

. . . most people don't seem to worry about what experts say is a petri dish for food-borne illness: the home kitchen.

"Everybody is so acutely aware of mad cow disease," said Janet Anderson, a clinical associate professor of nutrition and food sciences at Utah State University, "but people aren't aware of the fact that they don't even wash their hands when they enter their kitchens, which is a much greater risk."

Professor Anderson filmed more than 100 people preparing dinner and found that only two did not cross-contaminate raw meat with fresh vegetables.

The article then passes along a useful tip: a minute or so in a microwave will effectively sterilize (cellulose) sponges (be sure they are damp first) -- though I'll probably keep bleaching them every so often just to make sure. There are also a lot of people out there who don't change their kitchen towels nearly often enough.

And though many are probably now aware that wood cutting boards are more sanitary than synthetic, this will likely be news to most:

. . . in a study Professor Cliver conducted, he found that cellulose in wood absorbs bacteria but will not release it. "We've never been able to get the bacteria down in the wood back up on the knife to contaminate food later," he said.

Plastic absorbs bacteria in a different way. "When a knife cuts into the plastic surface, little cracks radiate out from the cut," Professor Cliver said. The bacteria, he said, "seem to get down in those knife cuts and they hang out. They go dormant. Drying will kill, say, 90 percent of them, but the rest could hang around for weeks". . .

Professor Cliver found that running plastic boards through the dishwasher only spread the bacteria around. The bacteria in the cracks remained. He said that the water in dishwashers must get hotter than 140 degrees or all sorts of bacteria can survive.

Realistically, however, does one have to extirpate bacteria, or simply reduce their number to a level where they cause no mischief? Most public health experts, after all, advise that ordinary folks should stick to soap and water for hand-washing -- not at 140F, I'm certain -- and not bother with antibacterial soaps and detergents. Then there's the following:

Chuck Gerba, a professor of environmental microbiology at the University of Arizona who has studied bacteria in home kitchens, said that he found that people who had the cleanest-looking kitchens were often the dirtiest. Because "clean" people wipe up so much, they often end up spreading bacteria all over the place. The cleanest kitchens, he said, were in the homes of bachelors, who never wiped up and just put their dirty dishes in the sink.

ADDENDUM: This story has been picked up elsewhere in syndication (no links available as yet -- I just saw it in our local paper's print edition), with the addition of some less-than-good advice -- such as that one should have one's hot water heater delivering water at over 140F (120F max is the recommendation to prevent burns) in order to kill bacteria in the dishwasher (and anyway, most dishwashers heat their own water).

Canadian sniper on the Western Front

Colby Cosh has been poking around the digitized records from the National Archives of Canada, which has prompted an interesting post on "Lance-Corporal Henry L. Norwest, MM and Bar, a Métis sharpshooter and sometime rodeo performer from Hobbema, Alberta, who became one of the most feared snipers on the Western Front. He certainly did in more Germans, at any rate, than the much better-known Billy Bishop."

eBay and the price of misspelling

How is it that identical items can fetch such widely divergent prices on eBay? Sometimes it is a matter of timing, or just luck -- especially for things for which there are not many buyers. Quite a bit, however, has to do with the quality of the description, as this article in today's NY Times explains:

When Holly Marshall wanted to sell a pair of dangling earrings, a popular style these days, she listed them on eBay once, and got no takers. She tried a second time, and still no interest.

Was it the price? The fuzzy picture? Maybe the description: a beautiful pair of chandaleer earrings.

Such is the eBay underworld of misspellers, where the clueless — and sometimes just careless — sell labtop computers, throwing knifes, Art Deko vases, camras, comferters and saphires.

They do get bidders, but rarely very many. Often the buyers are those who troll for spelling slip-ups, buying items on the cheap and selling them all over again on eBay, but with the right spelling and for the right price.

I've long wondered why teachers don't take a more aggressive stand in support of good spelling, arguing strictly in practical terms. As the Times article illustrates, if you can't spell it, you can't find it (or insure that it can be found).

UPDATE: For those for whom revelling in the (financial) downfall of careless spellers seems too negative, Glenn Reynolds has an MSNBC column celebrating spelling bees, prompted by the 2002 documentary, Spellbound.

Austria lays claim to the kilt

Tartan kilts have become fashionable in Austria after archaeologists claimed the country invented them. Many Austrian stores are now selling "traditional Austrian" kilts and sporrans as well as lederhosen.

The Austrian claim is based on the discovery of what they claim is the oldest piece of tartan in the world. . .

Thomas Rettl, whose clothing company is based close to where scraps from the original Celtic kilt were found, said: "Ever since we found out that Austria was the true home to tartan we have been doing a roaring trade. It was found not in Scotland but in a place called Molzbichl in Carinthia in Austria". . .

"We worked with a Scottish firm in the Borders to get the necessary expertise but the kilt is an Austrian design and we use the best materials from around the world - our kilts are better quality than many in Scotland.

"The success of the Carinthian kilt in particular has surprised even me. I am hoping to sell more in Scotland as well and in recognition of our shared Celtic past with the Scots I am making a deer leather kilt - a mixture of a tartan cloth and a pair of lederhosen."

From Ananova.

Witch bottle find

The "witch bottle" was discovered buried in old foundations in the Lincolnshire village of Navenby. Containing bent pins, human hair and perhaps urine, the bottles were supposed to protect a household against evil spells. Dated to about 1830, it is evidence the fear of dark forces persisted far longer than previously thought. Discovered by accident during building work, the artefact initially sat unrecognised in a cupboard.

From the BBC.

In fact, the persistence of such ritual deposits has been appreciated for some time, as noted in Ralph Merrifield's 1987 The Archaeology of Ritual and Magic (recommended reading!). And the initial failure to recognize the significance of the find is also typical -- one of Merrifield's central points was that many deposits found when demolishing or excavating old structures had been ignored as odd bits rather than recognized as traces of unwritten and mostly pre-Christian apotropaic traditions.

Whale bomb in Taiwan

A dead sperm whale being transported through Tainan City on its way to a research station suddenly exploded yesterday, splattering cars and shops with blood and guts.

Certified by authorities as the largest beached whale on record in Taiwan, the 17-meter 50-ton carcass was being transported by a flat-bed trailer-truck to a special research location after National Cheng Kung University officials and security guards refused to allow the whale on campus. . .

"The animal was close to death when someone found it beached on shore on Saturday... Because of the natural decomposing process, a lot of gases accumulated, and when the pressure buildup was too great, the whale's belly just exploded and spilled blood and the innards on the street," [marine biologist professor] Wang [Chien-ping] said. . .

Local news reports showed a number of people who had gathered to take photographs of the whale before it exploded in Tainan City, as well as residents and shop owners following the explosion. Many were wearing gauze-masks and trying to clean up the spilled blood and the entrails with brushes and brooms.

More gory details here.

Cretaceous mammal tracks

Scientists have found rare mammal tracks from the dinosaur age at two sites in Colorado.

The tracks were found at a Golden, Colo., golf course known for fossil findings, and at another site often associated with dinosaur tracks 65 to 75 million years old.

Although fossilized dinosaur tracks are relatively common, mammal tracks from the same period are very rare, scientists said. One reason is mammals of the late Cretaceous era were about the size of rats and their footprints were small, inconspicuous and almost never register clearly.

From the Washington Times; a slightly more extensive writeup in the NY Times.

Diving deep

The LA Times has an article on technical scuba divers exploring the wreck of a WW1 German submarine off the California coast (it became US Navy property after the war, and was eventually used for live-fire target practice and sunk). These are the guys who use special gas mixtures and decompression routines to go deep -- like three times as deep as what normal divers regard as their limit.

Antique electric tablecloth

A bit of the unusual, over at the 24 Hour Museum:

London’s Science Museum has a similar tablecloth in its collection, on display in the Domestic Appliances Gallery until 1990 but now in storage. They date their tablecloth, made by Henry Cooper of Bakewell, around 1902 to 1905.

The museum's file notes state that it was an "unusual novelty item" that would have been "lethal if liquid were spilt on it".

Probably not, given that it seems to have been used with low voltage DC, but one still might have had a nice light show.

Another major Surrealist sale in Paris

This time it's the collection of Daniel Filipacchi, up at Christie's at the end of April. Coverage has been pretty much entirely in French, but for a good overview in English see Ionarts.

Dunkirk warship name plaques raised

Two name plaques from a warship torpedoed at Dunkirk have been returned to Britain at a ceremony in Ypres today.

The crest and footplate from the destroyer HMS Wakeful were presented to Britain’s ambassador to Belgium, Richard Kinchen, by Flemish transport minister Gilbert Bossuyt. They are destined for a final home at the Royal Naval Museum in Portsmouth.

The vessel from which they came remains an official maritime war grave, 13 miles off the Belgian coast, in just 57ft of water. . .

HMS Wakeful was torpedoed on May 29 1940 while carrying 650 soldiers being evacuated from the Bray dunes near Dunkirk. Wakeful broke in two and sank in 15 seconds. Only 25 crew and one soldier were saved.

In 2002, as larger modern ships with deeper drafts regularly passed above, the prospect of moving the maritime war grave dismayed the few survivors and relatives of those who died.

Instead it was decided to remove part of HMS Wakeful’s superstructure, including funnels and navigation equipment, and secure them to the ship’s side

From The Scotsman.

WW2 vet reunited with his mess kit

When 79-year-old Hank Arend, a decorated veteran, tossed aside his heavy mess kit during one of the deadliest battles in World War II, he thought little of it.

But 60 years later, as Arend's grandson surfed a computer Web site, he stumbled across a posting by a collector with a photograph of the modest aluminum pot. Arend contacted the Belgian collector, who agreed to send the pot - replete with Arend's name and serial number, 36738409, scratched into the bottom.

Read all about it here.

Great Lakes shipwrecks

Like tourists in an underwater museum, divers in the Great Lakes explore shipwrecks searching for remnants of clothes, containers of food or even floating human remains.

Divers say it's becoming a popular hobby to journey into the thousands of schooners, steamers and other sunken ships embedded in the depths of the Great Lakes.

"It's kind of like exploring a haunted house underwater," said Michael Haynes, who teaches diving lessons in Menomonee Falls, Wis. "You start to imagine what it was like aboard that ship. You're touching history."

Although shipwrecks are often associated with oceans, the Great Lakes hold an estimated 6,000 to 10,000 sunken ships. About 1,000 Great Lakes shipwrecks have been identified, and about 10 new ships are discovered annually.

From the Indianapolis Star.

More Lewis & Clark news

For only the second time, historians and scientists have found physical evidence that pinpoints a famed campsite used by the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Meriwether Lewis named it in his journals: Travelers' Rest.

The five-year study may persuade the National Park Service to correct the location it listed years ago -- off by 1 1/2 miles -- in the National Register of Historic Places. . .

Historians and scientists used a variety of methods to prove the exact location of Travelers' Rest.

Aerial infrared photography showed evidence of tepee rings. Historical research matched coordinates of latitude and longitude recorded by Lewis and Clark. Archaeological digs turned up a latrine, a late-18th century button and lead.

Vapor analysis verified the presence of mercury beneath the old latrine. Mercury, which does not decompose, was the major ingredient in a powerful laxative carried on the expedition.

Read the full article here.

Major Stone Age find in Niger

Dinosaur hunters in the Sahara stumble across a major Stone Age site -- in tomorrow's NY Times:

In search of pieces of the 110-million-year-old Cretaceous puzzle, Dr. Sereno's team had found what archaeologists in Niger say is a large Neolithic, or Stone Age, burial and settlement site tentatively dated at 5,000 years old.

"It's a very important site," says Dr. Abdoulaye Maga, an archaeologist with the Institute of Research in the Human Sciences in Niamey, Niger, who visited it in 2000, shortly after the discovery. "It's the largest site that has been found and not pillaged." Though he has discovered and excavated a few dozen new species of African dinosaurs, Dr. Sereno has no experience with prehistoric human sites like this. He said his team counted 130 skeletons, including one with the remains of a stone bead necklace and innumerable stone and bone tools. He suspects, he says, that much more lies buried. . .

Dr. Sereno thinks the sediments suggest that the settlement may have been on the shore of a lake. "I found some catfish skulls, a bunch of them, and there was a little tail, and I'm blowing the sand off and then I run into the edge of a ceramic bowl that was around them," Dr. Sereno said. "I was looking at a bowl of fossilized catfish. Someone in the middle of a meal abandoned this bowl, and it got fossilized."

Modified plants detect landmines

Scientists in Denmark have developed a genetically modified plant that warns of landmines by changing colour from green to red.

According to the team at Aresa, a bio-technology company in Copenhagen, the GM plant changes colour when its roots come into contact with nitrogen-dioxide - a chemical used in explosives.

From Ananova, which also notes:

The scientists have also ensured that the plant cannot spread without the help of a human hand.

Reassuring from the ecological point of view, but wouldn't one have to blanket vast areas with the stuff if it is to work as promised? I wonder how this is to be done?

Talking, not just parroting

. . . or so it appears, as reported at the BBC:

The finding of a parrot with an almost unparalleled power to communicate with people has brought scientists up short. The bird, a captive African grey called N'kisi, has a vocabulary of 950 words, and shows signs of a sense of humour.

He invents his own words and phrases if he is confronted with novel ideas with which his existing repertoire cannot cope - just as a human child would do.

N'kisi's remarkable abilities, which are said to include telepathy, feature in the latest BBC Wildlife Magazine.

N'kisi is believed to be one of the most advanced users of human language in the animal world.

As one of my professors used to say, "interesting if true." The telepathy claim sets the old BS detectors jangling, however.

Oldest land animal?

Scientists have decided that a fossil found near Stonehaven is the remains of the oldest creature known to have lived on land. It is thought that the one-centimetre millipede which was prised out of a siltstone bed is 428 million years old.

Experts at the National Museums of Scotland and Yale University, US, have studied the fossil for months. They say the specimen is the earliest evidence of a creature living on dry land, rather than in the sea.

The discovery on the foreshore of Cowie Harbour was made by an amateur fossil hunter, Mike Newman. To recognise his role in the significant find, the new species - Pneumodesmus newmani - has been named after him.

From the BBC. Thanks to reader Chris Simmons for the pointer.

Death in Roman Cumbria

The victim of a murder in Carlisle in the 3rd Century AD is to be part of an exhibition looking at the Roman way of death.

His skeleton was found in a well in the city during the 1980s - he had been shot in the head and attacked with a sword.

Archaeologists named him 'Duncan', and a £24,000 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund will fund a reconstruction of his face and exhibition at the Tullie House Museum in Carlisle.

From the BBC. The exhibition is to be titled, "Into the Hands of the Shades - Death in Roman Cumbria".

Excavations at Monticello

Excavators have found thousands of artifacts while shoring up a 200-year-old wall along the north terrace of Monticello. The discovery of the items might help researchers learn the extent of Thomas Jefferson's activities in leveling the mountaintop to build his mansion.

From the Washington Times.

Fingerprinting academics; or, when in Rome . . .

The Cranky Professor comments on a NY Times story about an Italian academic, who:

. . . was scheduled to teach at New York University this semester [but] has decided not to do so, as a protest against the new American policy of fingerprinting arriving visitors and employees from other countries.

He has been loudly protesting this supposed outrage in a number of places, including notably Le Monde. But as our good professor correctly and crankily points out:

In order to stay in Italy (or anywhere in the EU) longer than the 90 day tourist visa one must have not only a visa but leave fingerprints.

Country house selloff

It is being billed as the country house sale of the century. Eight historic mansions go on the open market next month in what land agents say is the biggest single dispersal of stately piles since the ravages of the English civil war.

Estate agents are expecting a rush to buy the houses at up to £5m each. All are grade I or grade II listed, most have rich historical connections and each comes with its own “porcelain collection”: there are up to 50 lavatories in every house.

The sale has been forced by a financial crisis at the Country Houses Association (CHA), a charitable trust that owned the houses and divided them into rented apartments. . .

The houses include Aynhoe Park on the border of Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire, which dates from Jacobean times and was landscaped by Capability Brown. Great Maytham Hall at Rolvenden in Kent was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and is the former home of the novelist Frances Hodgson Burnett. It was the inspiration for her book The Secret Garden.

Others with former famous residents are Swallowfield Park near Reading in Berkshire, which dates from the 17th century. It was later the home of the Pitt family, which produced the prime ministers William Pitt the Elder and the Younger.

Gosfield Hall, near Halstead in Essex, was built in the reign of Henry VIII and at different times was the home of Samuel Courtauld, founder of the family textile business, and Sir Adrian Boult, the conductor.

Danny Park, which is set on the Sussex Downs, was used as a secure location for meetings of Lloyd George’s war cabinet during the first world war, while Flete in Devon is a castellated Gothic mansion built for one of the directors of Barings Bank during Queen Victoria’s reign.

Pyt House in Tisbury, Wiltshire, is a Regency seat built by John Bennett MP. Albury Park, near Guildford in, Surrey, was worked on by the designer AWN Pugin.

From the Sunday Times.

ADDENDUM: The Art Newspaper is also reporting this news, adding:

Meanwhile, an interim report by the Commissioners of the Church of England has proposed to cut costs by selling of a number of historic episcopal palaces, such as Auckland, Hartlebury, and Rose Castles. A bishop’s residence costs about £50,000 to maintain annually.

Crime and punishment in the UK

Remember the recent flap when a BBC show's organizers promised to have a participating MP introduce a new law of the viewers' own choosing, only to backpedal, howling with outrage, when the choice fell on giving homeowners the right to use deadly force against intruders?

Perhaps this shouldn't have been such a surprise; as we've noted before, polls have repeated shown that British attitudes towards crime, punishment, and self-defense are very close to what one finds in America, despite very different national policies.

In any case, there's another survey now being reported in the Sunday Times Review that would seem to point in the same direction:

To date, 1,432 readers have responded to the hypotheticals at The Sunday Times website or by mail. Their responses are extraordinarily weighted towards the Number Three answers that define what I refer to as the Cops as opposed to Progressives: the same Three answers that the criminal justice elites I interviewed so seldom gave.

For six out of the seven hypotheticals, the Threes had an outright majority, sometimes amounting to more than 80% of the responses.

Nothing too ambitious can be made of these results, because they are not produced by a representative sample. But The Sunday Times’s readership is notably well-educated and affluent, which should give pause to those in the elites who try to argue — with breathtaking condescension towards ordinary people — that tough opinions about justice are a matter of a moral panic stirred up by the tabloids.

There is one area, however, where the Brits play for keeps, as another Times article notes:

The sharp flash from the camera caught Ernie Harbon by surprise and he glanced down at the speedometer on his dashboard. He was only travelling at 38mph and it was a quiet country road. He scanned the wide, empty carriageway ahead of him but could not see a road sign telling drivers the speed limit.

When the £60 penalty fine for exceeding the 30mph limit dropped through his letter box some days later the 62-year-old painter and decorator decided to challenge the decision. He would not pay up and nor would he accept the three penalty points on his licence. It was, he argued, unfair to penalise him when the speed limit on the road in his home county of Derbyshire was not clear.

Little did he realise that by last weekend he would be serving time in Leicester jail for his minor transgression, imprisoned for the non-payment of his fine.

Two weeks this hardened malefactor received.

Harbon’s story, although extreme, is not as unusual as one might think. Last Sunday Martin Narey, the head of the prison service, admitted that jails are now overwhelmed by motorists locked up for minor violations. . .

Underlining his point, it emerged last week that in 2002 15,059 people were jailed for motoring offences, compared with 10,184 for burglary.

And if you don't get locked up, there are other ways to make you pay:

Last week Sunday Times Driving carried out an international survey that highlights how the British motorist is punished more harshly (not to mention taxed more) than those in Germany, Holland, Spain and France. Fines can vary from state to state in the US, so we picked Ohio as a typical example and again found figures that made Britain’s fines regime seem brutal. . .

Travelling at 36mph in a 30mph zone here would result in a fixed penalty fine of £60 with three penalty points on the offender’s licence. Of the other countries surveyed, only in France would the licence be endorsed for travelling 6mph over the limit. In Germany, the fine is just £10, and in Spain travelling 6mph over the limit carries no fine at all.

This month in Britain, a new automated fixed penalty fines system went live to ensure that everyone whose road tax disc expires is fined £80. In France, Spain, Germany and the US there is no comparable fine. In Holland the charge for the equivalent offence is just £66.

A parking fine in London will set a motorist back £80, or £60 elsewhere, compared with £31 in Holland, £8 in France, a maximum of £24 in Germany and £20 in Ohio.

The article also links to a few horror stories, where motorists were fined for eating or drinking while driving, having an empty windshield washer fluid tank (on a parked car, no less!), and leaving the engine running while stepping out to kiss the wife goodbye.

Rabbie Burns, uncut

From today's Times of London, some commentary on the bowdlerization of Burns' legacy:

Ever since the first Burns celebrations in 1801, the emphasis has been on celebrating his life in a dull, formalised way that seems at odds with the way he chose to live. . .

While the good folk want their Burns, they only want the stuff fit for the shortbread tin; they don’t want the cask-strength Burns that brought rude uproar to many a fireside. We are left with the “nice poems” that allow people to say they like Burns without having to admit that most of what he attacked and loathed lives on in their person. Burns Night as we know it has become little more than a gesture, like vegetarian haggis. . .

Many good Scots remain untroubled by such works as Nine Inch Will Please a Lady. Fewer still will know of the activities of Cooper O’Cuddy and how a meeting with him might affect your ability to sit down. . .

The Gard’ner Wi’ His Paidle is a case in point. While for the gentile it is a delightful evocation of the work involved in tending a garden, it is also a dirty tale of a man who seems to fertilise everything he comes in to contact with. Without both sides to its story this poem is little more than a ditty.

Who really killed Colin Campbell?

It is not simply Scotland’s most famous unsolved murder — it is also a painful symbol of Scottish repression and injustice set against the lost Jacobite cause.

Now it is claimed the 250-year-old mystery that inspired the opening to Kidnapped, Robert Louis Stevenson’s epic novel, was cracked by an academic just before her death.

A posthumous book by Lee Holcombe, late professor of history at the University of South Carolina, says the wrong man was hanged for the 1752 murder and names the real culprit.

It was six years after the battle of Culloden, which signalled the end of the Jacobite uprising against the English crown, when Colin Campbell of Glenure, a government appointed factor, was shot in the back as he rode through Lettermore wood, south of Ballachulish, Argyll.

He had been on his way to Appin to evict members of the Stewart clan, who had fought on the side of Bonnie Prince Charlie at Culloden.

From the Sunday Times.

Mengele's North Korean heirs

Don't know if this Sunday Times story has been picked up widely yet:

Chilling testimony about chemical weapons experiments on North Korean prisoners has emerged as a key element in potential indictments of members of the Kim Jong-il regime for crimes against humanity.

The accounts connect North Korean scientists and factory managers with chemical warfare programmes to produce mustard gas and to test it on human victims along with decontamination techniques, protective masks and suits. . .

One woman who escaped from captivity has given US congressmen an account of female prisoners lying motionless with blood trickling from their mouths while guards in gas masks examined them.

The statement by Lee Sun-ok, who endured many years in the North Korean gulag, has been compared with some of the most graphic testimony at war crimes trials after the second world war. . .

She testified that the guards selected 150 prisoners, most of them disabled and weak women who were less valuable as labour. Then Lee, who worked as an administrative clerk, was ordered to tell the canteen to make the usual number of meals for male prisoners but 150 fewer for the women. . .

Norbert Vollertsen, a German doctor who treated famine victims in North Korea and who campaigns for regime change in Pyongyang, has won support in Washington for his argument that the way to get rid of Kim’s weapons is to end his rule.

“North Korea is a real terror state and therefore the leadership of this country has to face the international criminal court,” Vollertsen said. “As a German born after the war I know too well the guilt of my grandparents’ generation for remaining silent.”

MEANWHILE, new testimony revises our knowledge of the extent of Nazi "medical" experimentation.

UPDATE: The Feb. 1 Sunday Guardian has yet more:

In the remote north-eastern corner of North Korea, close to the border of Russia and China, is Haengyong. Hidden away in the mountains, this remote town is home to Camp 22 - North Korea's largest concentration camp, where thousands of men, women and children accused of political crimes are held.

Now, it is claimed, it is also where thousands die each year and where prison guards stamp on the necks of babies born to prisoners to kill them.

Over the past year harrowing first-hand testimonies from North Korean defectors have detailed execution and torture, and now chilling evidence has emerged that the walls of Camp 22 hide an even more evil secret: gas chambers where horrific chemical experiments are conducted on human beings.

Isandlwana commemoration

About 4,000 people gathered in the eastern town of Isandlwana on Saturday to commemorate the 125th anniversary of one of the Anglo-Zulu War's most brutal battles.

About 1,500 British soldiers and 2,000 Zulu warriors were killed in the eastern province of Kwa-Zulu Natal in 1879 -- the most crushing defeat of the war for the British -- after they attempted to disperse the Zulu army.

On the same day, 145 South Wales Borderers held off another Zulu army attack at nearby Rorke's Drift where 17 Britons and 450 Zulus died.

Full article here; there is also a much more extensive article in the Telegraph:

A few years ago Isandlwana - a Zulu name for the shape of a cow's second stomach, which the craggy mountain is said to resemble - was in danger of being lost as a historic site.

A school and shop had been built on the battlefield and unscrupulous traders were providing metal detectors to local Zulus to dig up artefacts like British bullet cases, Zulu blades and the buttons from British tunics.

One night two of the mass graves on the battlefield were desecrated, leaving the bones open to the elements. But with the involvement of the local tribal authority, the battlefield has been fenced off and is now protected.

While various British units erected memorials to the fallen in the years after the battle on Jan 22 1879, it took until the 120th anniversary for a memorial to mark the Zulu war dead.

International interest, mainly from Britain, has been rekindled in the battlefield by local historians such as David Rattray who set up a battlefield tour from his nearby farm in the early 1990s.

Further Zulu War news from earlier this week, in the Times of London:

Thousands of Zulu warriors interred in mass graves are to be given a proper burial 125 years after their deaths in the Anglo-Zulu War.

Agreement to exhume the bodies coincides with the 125th anniversary today of the Battle of Isandlwana. . .

Even today, the descendants of the warriors who fought at Isandlwana, Rorke’s Drift and elsewhere in what is now the province of KwaZulu-Natal can be seen sacrificing a goat or chicken to the memory of their forefathers at the spot where they were believed to have met their deaths.

Large numbers of Zulus killed in the battles were carried away on warriors’ shields and given a traditional burial in family cattle kraals, but many were left lying under the African sun for months until their bones were unceremoniously disposed of by British troops cleaning up the sites

The article also notes, for those whose knowledge of these events is derived from the popular but not exactly accurate film Zulu:

Despite the bravery of British soldiers, the real story of the Anglo-Zulu War was one of deception, dishonour, incompetence and dereliction of duty by Lord Chelmsford, and the British establishment rallying round to cover up for one of their own.

Lord Chelmsford invaded Zululand without the knowledge of the British Government in the hope that he could capture Cetshwayo, the Zulu King, before London discovered that hostilities had begun. He had such contempt for the native warrior that he did not bother to fortify his headquarters at Isandlwana, believing a direct attack to be “unthinkable”. Duped by decoys into leading almost half his 5,000-strong force into a futile search for the enemy across the 100-square mile Isandlwana plain, he was unaware that his main camp had been overwhelmed. He then tried to blame the fiasco on Colonel Anthony Durnford, one of his subordinates, who was later eulogised for gallantly fighting to the death. . .

As a close friend of Queen Victoria, he was never held to account for the disaster he presided over at Isandlwana.

It is also worth mentioning that for a long time, histories of Rorke's Drift and Isandlwana alike completely ignored accounts from Zulu sources (just as historians for many years ignored Mexican accounts of the battle of the Alamo).

That's different

Magazine cover headline spotted at the supermarket checkout counter this morning: "Yoga for girls in jail."