Number portability blues

If any of you are considering moving a US landline number to your cellphone, think it over very carefully. I put in a request for such a transfer on December 9 (Verizon to T-Mobile), and despite repeated calls it was only three days ago that I saw any action. Unfortunately, the action was the disconnection of my landline -- without reactivation of the number on the wireless account. It's now been three days that the number has been sitting in limbo, and nearly two months since the whole ordeal began.

UPDATE: After five days, I can finally receive calls -- but they go straight to voicemail, which I must retrieve from another phone. The T-Mobile phone (or, rather, the SIM card) which should have been activated on the new number hasn't been -- some problem with T-Mobile's recordkeeping. Now I'm told another 24 to 72 hours. Incidentally, I spotted a thread that suggests that porting a number is likely to screw up your ability to receive text messages from other countries.

FURTHER UPDATE: 80 hours later, it's February 12, and my number's been in limbo for over a week. Earlier today I finally insisted that they just send me a new SIM card, overnight. For which they wanted to charge me $15 -- which I told them flatly they would have to waive. Is this ordeal finally nearing its end?

Ne concerne que les USA

"Only applies to the United States" -- that's the disclaimer on the information sheet for my daughters' new Playmobil fishing dory, right under the box that reads, "WARNING: CHOKING HAZARD - SMALL PARTS/Not for children under 3 years." Presumably the rest of the world doesn't need such cautions, but one still wonders why the disclaimer was written in French (Playmobil is a German company; the sheet was printed in Malta, and is written in no less than twelve languages).

School paper deadlines

Have you been following the flap over the Fulbright applications from Berkeley? FedEx screwed up by missing a scheduled pickup, but the UC folks could have gone and made the postmark deadline easily enough anyway -- and why were they waiting until the last minute to send along those applications, anyway? Looks like the Feds are going to give Cal an administrative appeal now, but as this opinion piece points out, Berkeley itself takes a strict position regarding late applications. Looks like no matter what, the students end up holding the short end of the stick.

May all your plumbing last so long . . .

Archaeologists have discovered a 2,000-year-old water main built by the Romans - which is still working.

The find has amazed experts at the Vindolanda Roman fort in Northumberland. During ongoing excavations at the site, workers discovered a 100ft stretch of wooden mains, which at one time fed the fort with water from nearby springs. The pipes were constructed by drilling large lengths of alder, which were joined together by oak pegs. . .

Experts believe the network of pipes fed spring water to individual buildings within the fort. A spokesman for the Vindolanda site said: "The fact that they were still working is quite incredible, but it was also a nuisance because they flooded the excavation trenches which had to be pumped out every day. . .

The dig has also uncovered a total of 238 boots and shoes - and half of them belonged to women and children. . .

About 800 people lived on the site for 350 years and it is thought the original 13-acre site will take another 150 years to excavate.

From the BBC.

Big Apple street shocks

And I was worried about upgrading the wiring in my house:

Three weeks after Jodie S. Lane was killed by an electrified metal plate while walking her dogs in the East Village, Consolidated Edison as of yesterday had found more than 280 service-box lids, manhole covers and lampposts around the five boroughs and Westchester County with stray current passing through them. The amount of voltage in each, the utility said, ranged from the single digits - which would produce a mild shock - to 140 at a lamppost in Bayside, Queens, which could be fatal.

The inspections have only just begun, however -- a full survey is supposed to take until the end of the month.

A map created by The New York Times shows that the so-called hot spots were found in fairly equal numbers around Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx, with only one on Staten Island and two in Westchester. It also shows that potentially deadly steel service-box lids, manhole covers and lampposts existed for unknown lengths of time at some of the city's busiest intersections, just inches from thousands of daily passers-by.

Reporters found that some of the supposedly repaired locations on the ConEd list were still live. This whole story is no surprise, given all the times I've seen Manhattan lampposts with missing access panels and loose wires (and garbage) visible inside. Others have been aware of the problem for some time:

Sally Haddock, a veterinarian at St. Mark's Veterinary Hospital, said that many clients had told of dogs being shocked by electrified lampposts. Dogs are especially vulnerable, she said, because their paws are exposed, whereas people are protected by their shoes, which ground them.

Note that this is in error: shoes protect by insulating, not grounding.

A block from Times Square, on 43rd Street off Eighth Avenue - among the city's busiest areas - Con Ed found and corrected a street lamp with 110 stray volts.

Read the full story here (surely to be continued).

Another Sutton Hoo?

Very exciting news:

Archaeologists have unearthed the spectacularly rich tomb of a Dark Age Anglo-Saxon king - the most important discovery since the Sutton Hoo ship burial 65 years ago.

Excavations at Southend-on-Sea revealed the intact tomb of an early seventh century Saxon monarch - almost certainly either Saeberht or Sigeberht, both kings of Dark Age Essex.

Saeberht - England's second Christian king - died around AD617. His kingdom included London and St Paul's Cathedral was almost certainly founded in his reign. . .

The tomb and its contents were discovered in almost perfect condition. The spectacular grave goods were found still "hanging" from iron pegs which had been hammered into the walls of the tomb.

Read more in the Independent.

Also a bit more detail in the Scotsman, while the BBC has pictures; the Times notes:

The dead man’s Christianity is revealed by the two gold foil crosses found in the grave and by the remarkably small amount of jewellery apparently found on the body itself . . .

The crosses, which are well known from burials in south Germany and northern Italy in the later 7th century and early 8th century, have never before been found at an English site. . .

The Prittlewell site has been known for more than 70 years and a series of warrior graves featuring swords, spears and shields, and several with the seaxe curved sword now used for Essex’s county coat of arms, had been reported in the early 1920s.

More Leonardo hooey

This time it's the claim that Leonardo invented natural plastics. Read the article, though, and you'll find what he recommended was to preserve various items by coating them with layers of pigmented animal glue. Not exactly a breakthrough -- and a hell of a lot less sophisticated than what had been being done with lacquer in Asia for centuries previous.

For more on plastics history, a link here.

Graf Spee to be salvaged

A multimillion dollar, several-year effort to raise large parts of the German [pocket] battleship the Graf Spee - scuttled off Uruguay in the opening days of World War II - should begin late this week. . .

Scuttled by its captain who feared losing the ship in a battle with the larger British force, the Graf Spee has remained for decades in waters less than 25 feet deep only miles outside the port of Montevideo. . .

Hector Bado, a spokesman for the salvage team, said the recovery team first would try to remove a 27-ton communications tower equipped with an early radar and what was then sophisticated sighting equipment for its 11-inch guns.

"The radar was one of the first to be used in that era,'' said Bado, whose group has private funding and Uruguayan government backing for the operation which could take years.

From the Guardian. And a bit more in the Scotsman:

. . . a consortium led by Hector Bardo, a 43-year-old German financier and enthusiastic diver, has raised the money to attempt to bring the ship to the surface and turn it into a museum piece in Montevideo, Uruguay. . .

"We aim for a total restoration, with the ship then going on display for all time in the National Marine Museum. "The front of the ship is broken off and lies in a 39-metre segment. The rest of the ship is in a 146-metre piece". . .

Many of the German survivors from the ship stayed on in Argentina and Uruguay after the end of the war and one has been invited to witness the start of the salvage operation, which is expected to take several months to complete.

Friedrich Adolph, 84, the last of the surviving German seamen, said of Captain Langsdorff: "He didn’t want us to be killed. But we respected his decision to take his own life. It’s the tradition, a captain dies with his ship."

Leaving their pasts behind

It's strange how easily American politicians who make it onto the national stage manage to leave their regional records behind. Talk to those who knew them back home, and you may find out all sorts of things that seldom get picked up by national media (although local media can be prone to cooption: when I was growing up, Willie Brown had the SF papers eating out of his hand -- reading about him in the LA Times was a revelation).

It's not just politicians, either. Remember the William Kennedy Smith rape trial? In all the press coverage, I never saw any mention of the fact that he was not pre-med as an undergraduate, but rather went through the Bryn Mawr post-bacc pre-med program. My then-girlfriend was there at the same time, and her roommate hung out with WKS. And reports were that he was an aggressive drunk, who had gone after at least one of his female classmates in a manner very similar to that reported from Florida later. But no reporters ever came around to ask -- nor did any of his post-bacc classmates speak up, even though not one I talked to doubted his guilt. It was as if those terms at Bryn Mawr never existed. (Nor did any reporter ever ask why, when his classmates had to sit out a year after Bryn Mawr in order to take the MCATs, apply, and interview, WKS went straight to med school; when his erstwhile peers were discussing where they were applying, he simply stated, "I'm going to Georgetown" -- and so he did).

So to pursue this theme of past as prologue just a bit further, we have a couple of short pieces worth reading in full. One is on John Kerry; the other is on George W. Bush. The latter is particularly intriguing -- how many are aware (or have given any thought to the fact) that GWB is a Harvard MBA?

Another WW2 obit

This obit from the Telegraph deserves to be read in full. Yet another instance where no one would believe it were it fiction:

Lieutenant-Commander Peter Williams, who has died aged 91, ran agents, stores and stolen German plans between France and Britain in scores of operations during 1943 and 1944.

As commanding officer of Motor Gun Boat 502 and senior officer of the 15th MGB Flotilla, based at Dartmouth, he led a select band which included David Birkin, husband of Judy Campbell (the singer of A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square), and father of the actress Jane Birkin; Guy Hamilton, who directed four of the early James Bond films; and Mike Marshall, the England rugby player.

The campaign to end slavery in the British Empire

Recommended reading, in Mother Jones:

. . . picture the world as it existed in 1787. Well over three-quarters of the people on earth are in bondage of one land or another. In parts of the Americas, slaves far outnumber free people. African slaves are also scattered widely through much of the Islamic world. Slavery is routine in most of Africa itself. In India and other parts of Asia, some people are outright slaves, others in debt bondage that ties them to a particular landlord as harshly as any slave to a Southern plantation owner. In Russia the majority of the population are serfs. Nowhere is slavery more firmly rooted than in Britain's overseas empire, where some half-million slaves are being systematically worked to an early death growing West Indian sugar. Caribbean slave-plantation fortunes underlie many a powerful dynasty, from the ancestors of Elizabeth Barrett Browning to the family of the fabulously wealthy William Beckford, lord mayor of London, who hired Mozart to give his son piano lessons. One of the most prosperous sugar plantations on Barbados is owned by the Church of England. Furthermore, Britain's ships dominate the slave trade, delivering tens of thousands of chained captives each year to French, Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese colonies as well as to its own.

If you had proposed, in the London of early 1787, to change all of this, nine out of ten people would have laughed you off as a crackpot. The 10th might have admitted that slavery was unpleasant but said that to end it would wreck the British Empire's economy. It would be as if, today, you maintained that the automobile must go. . .

Looking back, however, what is even more surprising than slavery's scope is how swiftly it died. By the end of the 19th century, slavery was, at least on paper, outlawed almost everywhere. Every American schoolchild learns about the Underground Railroad and the Emancipation Proclamation. But our self-centered textbooks often skip over the fact that in the superpower of the time slavery ended a full quarter-century earlier. For more than two decades before the Civil War, the holiday celebrated most fervently by free blacks in the American North was not July 4 (when they were at risk of attack from drunken white mobs) but August 1, Emancipation Day in the British Empire.

Walking the straight and narrow

British Transport Police say they want to interview Noel Gallagher after The Sun newspaper pictured him walking along a railway line.

Basic romantic loner shot, I'd venture. None of that in today's Britain, though:

Inspector Kevin Marshall of the British Transport Police said Gallagher faces a fine of up to £1,000 if it can be proved he's been trespassing. . . "The message needs to be clear that people should not step foot on the railways. If he is found to have broken a law he could face a fine of up to £1,000."

From Ananova. Next thing you know there will be loo-cams, so they can fine those who don't wash their hands after using the toilet. Public spitting and nose-picking can be dealt with using security cameras already in place.

Driving to Miami . . . from Cuba

No word yet on whether they've made it this time, in their modified 1959 Buick. Read all about it in the Miami Herald (with a picture).

6th-century crop failures: comet collision?

A collision between Earth and a passing comet in the 6th century AD may have caused the collapse of agriculture, mass famine and indirectly led to the bubonic plague in Europe, a study has suggested.

I'm not certain that there is any solid evidence that the epidemics here mentioned were in fact bubonic plague; in any event, this is beside the main point of the reported hypothesis.

Scientists have calculated that a relatively small comet, or fragment of a comet, could have caused huge amounts of dust and debris to be ejected into the atmosphere, blocking the sun for months at a time. . .

Studies of tree rings - from preserved oaks retrieved from Irish bogs to ancient American pine trees - have shown that plant growth around the world almost stopped between about 536AD to 545AD. Chinese records from this time refer to a "dust veil" obscuring the skies. Mediterranean historians record a "dry fog" that blocked out much of the sun's heat for more than a year. . .

One idea is that a super-volcano erupted, but neither the volcano nor its acidic deposits have been identified, Derek Ward-Thompson, who carried out the latest study at Cardiff University, said. The other proposal involved a collision with a big asteroid or comet, but there was no direct evidence such as a crater.

However, Dr Ward-Thompson and his colleagues Mel Symonds and Emma Rigby believe a much smaller comet which exploded in the atmosphere could easily have generated the dust and debris in the 6th century catastrophe. "The surprising result of these calculations is just how small a comet fragment we have estimated was needed to cause the observed effects," Dr Ward-Thompson said.

Read the full story here.

To boldly go . . . home?

The captain of the USS Enterprise thinks people should stay on Earth instead of going into space.

Patrick Stewart, who plays Captain Jean-Luc Picard in the TV series Star Trek, says he thinks interplanetary travel for humans is a bad idea. "I'm a bit of a wet blanket when it comes to the whole business of space travel," Stewart told the BBC.

"I would like to see us get this place right first before we have the arrogance to put significantly flawed civilisations out onto other planets - even though they may be utterly uninhabited," he said.

So presumably we should all stay home until we're perfect. And for consistency's sake, we should of course apply the same principle here on Earth -- which would certainly simplify immigration policy, though it might be a bit rough on the travel industry. From Ananova.

Big donation to V&A for Islamic art

The Victoria and Albert Museum is to open a new gallery of Islamic art with a £5.4m donation from a Saudi company. . .

It will allow the London museum to transform a gallery to show thousands of artefacts including carpets, glass, ceramics and woodwork, from 2006.

The museum said it was one of the most generous gifts it had ever received.

The gallery will be named The Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art after Abdul Latif Jameel, late founder of the Saudi parent company. . .

The donation will also fund a touring exhibition of the artworks which will visit the US and Japan before returning to the UK in Sheffield ahead of the gallery's scheduled opening in 2006.

From the BBC. The V&A's Islamic collection is outstanding; it will be interesting to see how the reinstallation takes shape.

Malevich heirs sue Stedelijk

The heirs of . . . Kazimir Malevich, are suing the city of Amsterdam to recover 14 of his paintings. They claim the city bought the works of art illegally, for a pittance in 1950. They are now said to be worth at least $150m. . .

Now 31 relatives of the artist have taken a case to the district court in Washington - claiming that the Stedelijk museum in Amsterdam should hand back the paintings. They say Malevich left them behind after an exhibition in Berlin. Because his work was denounced by the Russian government and the Nazi regime, he was not able to recover the paintings . . .

Lawyers for the relatives said the city of Amsterdam knew the children of a German friend of Malevich had no right to sell the paintings 20 years later.

Other works from the same Berlin exhibition ended up at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and at Harvard University. Both have made settlements with the Malevich heirs.

The New York museum gave the relatives $5m and a painting worth $10m in exchange for keeping 15 other paintings.

From the BBC.

Fighting the fascists

Had it not been for Hitler, Tojo, and crew, I would not have been born -- for which I feel not the slightest gratitude. They destroyed my parents' world, and damn near destroyed my parents as well.

Which helps to explain why I have little tolerance for those who bandy about the label "fascist", and great impatience with those who dismiss the worst possible calamities as unthinkable -- as if "unthinkable" meant "impossible"; were it only so!

So easy to play the hero in the daydream of hindsight; so hard to see clearly in the present day. And so well illustrated by this evening's recommended reading, Paul Berman's A Friendly Drink in a Time of War, in Dissent.

More vandalism at the Temple Mount

An Israeli archaeologist charged that Muslim authorities are excavating a disputed holy site in Jerusalem in a way that endangers what she says may be remains of the biblical Jewish Temples. . .

An Israeli photographer said he secretly took pictures two weeks ago in an underground area that has been renovated by the Islamic Trust and turned into a mosque. The area is off limits to visitors. The photographer said that on the ground, next to a large red carpet, he saw two large stones with a grape leaf design.

Hebrew University archaeologist Eilat Mazar said the design was unique to the Second Temple period. The Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D. . .

"There is no archaeological supervision (of the work) and no plan or survey to see what is real condition of the Temple Mount is," she said.

Read the full story here.

Whoops

A Brazilian football referee is facing divorce proceedings after he pulled a pair of [red lacy] knickers out of his pocket instead of a red card during a match. . .

Mr Ferro's wife, who was watching the match, reportedly started divorce proceedings after the match.

From Ananova.

Surrealism sale results

Only report so far on yesterday's sale at Christie's London, The Art of the Surreal, is in Italian at La Repubblica. Apparently Dalì's "Echo of the Void" didn't make its reserve, and his "Venus de Milo" of 1964 was pulled from the sale. Two other Dalì paintings did sell, "Tour des heures aux papillons" for 321,420 Euros, and an untitled work from 1939, for 35,356 (sale prices were in pounds, but not yet available from Christie's).

A female portrait by Modigliani, billed as a highlight of the sale, also failed to sell, perhaps due to an overoptimistic estimate.

Giant ancient insects

They were the giant arthropods of the Carboniferous.

There were extra-large mayflies, supersized scorpions and spiders the size of a healthy spider plant. There was an array of giant flightless insects, and a five-foot-long millipede-like creature, Arthropleura, that resembled a tire tread rolled out flat.

But perhaps the most remarkable of all were the giant dragonflies, Meganeuropsis permiana nd its cousins, with wingspans that reached two and a half feet. They were the largest insects that ever lived. . .

Scientists have long suspected that atmospheric oxygen played a central role in both the rise and fall of these organisms. Recent research on the ancient climate by Dr. Robert A. Berner, a Yale geologist, and others reinforces the idea of a rise in oxygen concentration — to about 35 percent, compared with 21 percent now — during the Carboniferous. Because of the way many arthropods get their oxygen, directly through tiny air tubes that branch through their tissues rather than indirectly through blood, higher levels of the gas might have allowed bigger bugs to evolve.

Read the full article in the NY Times.

The Jerusalem Syndrome

If it's too good to be true, it probably isn't -- but when it comes to objects of potentially staggering religious significance, due skepticism often goes flying out the window. Yuval Goren's The Jerusalem Syndrome in Archaeology: Jehoash to James should be required reading for anyone with any interest whatsoever in biblical archeology. Reference via Jim Davila's Paleojudaica, which has been an invaluable guide to the controversy over the so-called James Ossuary (and other dodgy bits). Note that there is now an (unidentified) Israeli archeologist who claims to have seen the ossuary for sale without the "brother of Jesus" portion of the present inscription. Apparently he is keeping a low profile until he can give formal testimony in court.

WW2 aerial recon archives online

In their own words:

Evidenceincamera has been created by The Aerial Reconnaissance Archives (TARA) at Keele University. Our aim is to make the aerial reconnaissance photographs, deposited by the UK Ministry of Defence at TARA, accessible via the internet. For the first time you can access 5.5 million photographs taken over occupied Western Europe, by the Allies during World War II. Work is continuing to make millions more photographs taken throughout the world during World War II and later conflicts, accessible.

The site is here; if it is running slowly, be aware that it just launched and has been getting a lot of traffic.

Ancient carved rock find in Panama

An ancient rock covered in carved symbols has been discovered in a South American jungle by an archaeologist from Cornwall. Julien Chenoweth, from St Mawes, said a date test showed the carvings were as old as ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.

This is rather suspect; I cannot think of any scientific test that would provide such dating.

The rock was discovered by Mr Chenoweth after he led an expedition through the Darian area of the Panama jungle. . .

A previous archaeologist had been told about the sacred stone by a native Indian, but until now attempts to locate it had failed.

From the BBC. Seems the Cornwall angle outweighs the merits of the discovery, at least in this writeup.

Some interesting tidbits

Geitner Simmons has been cutting back on his posting lately in anticipation of a new project, but there are still plenty of goodies over at his Regions of Mind. A few recent bits: 19th-century proposals to annex Cuba (abolitionists were in the forefront); West African roots of Appalachian banjo music; Franklin Pierce (only US president from NH); North vs South, in China.

Another gratuitous tit reference

An unexpectedly popular search word in our traffic logs led us to this discovery: www.nice-tits.org -- the website of:

The Royal Tit-Watching (Ornithological) Society of Britain. . . the oldest of the British Tit-Watching Societies . . . formed in 1824, by Lord Roylott of Stoke Moran, Surrey. . . a distinguished ornithologist, and author of 'A Comparison Of The Short-Distance Migratory Patterns of the Blue, Long-Tailed & Bearded Tits' - a book which Sir Charles Darwin acknowledged was "of immense importance in the formation of my theory of natural selection."

Newport ship and the Earl of Warwick: the connection strengthens

Followup on a hypothesis we first reported on here:

Britain's sole surviving medieval ship may have belonged to Warwick the Kingmaker, one of the most powerful figures of the 15th century, according to new evidence.

Historians working on the Newport ship, recovered in South Wales two years ago, believe it was owned by the Earl of Warwick during the War of the Roses.

A letter by the Earl reveals that he ordered repairs on an ocean going ship in Newport in 1469. The date and place match repairs being carried out on the medieval [ship], which is regarded as the most important maritime find since the Mary Rose.

From the Telegraph. UPDATE: A bit more at the BBC, stressing the possible ties with the Earl's ventures into piracy.

Sikh soldiers exhibit

From Jawans to Generals: Loyal Allies, Proud Britons, takes a photographic look at the contribution of Sikh soldiers during the two world wars and is on at Doncaster Museum & Art Gallery until March 21.

As a highly visible minority, Sikhs are instantly recognisable throughout the world, yet little is known of the huge sacrifices made by brave Sikh soldiers fighting on behalf of Britain. . .

From the Anglo Sikh wars of 1845-49, to the sweltering swamps of Burma in the Second World War, the display traces the 200-year-old military relationship Britain has had with Sikhs.

From the 24 Hour Museum.

Policing the brothels in Jersey

Although reports that a New Jersey police chief was caught inadvertently in a stakeout of a local brothel appear to be inaccurate, caught he nonetheless was. Ouch.

Outsourcing, Scottish style

Bemused workers in Indian call centres are being given lessons in Chewin’ the Fat catchphrases to help them understand Scottish customers.

“Gonnae no dae that”, “get it right up yiz”, and “gie’s a gonk, ya dobber” have been put on the training syllabus for phone operators in Bangalore and Bombay to attune their ears to the Scottish brogue and encourage an appreciation of the country’s popular culture. . .

The course includes lessons in national cuisine — in particular haggis, neaps, mince and tatties and egg and chips. Saltires, Jimmy hats, sporrans and the sgian dubh (an ornamental dagger) are also explained.

The young Indian graduates who man the centres, often through the night because of the time difference with Britain, are also learning about the Scots’ fascination with the weather and to understand the meaning of a “gey driech day”.

The course has been devised by Mary Rose Graham, a grandmother from Glasgow who works for Oceans Connect, a British firm that runs a call centre in Pune, south of Bombay. . .

“When we were discussing Aberdeen I told them about my mum and aunt queuing up for the cinema when they were young. If it was busy and they got separated in the queue my mum would shout: ‘Ye offa crushed up thair Mags?’ She would shout back ‘Nae offa’. The Indians all found that very amusing.”

From the Sunday Times. Nations separated by a common language. . . .