Better living through pesticides

California has released a compilation of ten examples of what can happen when bad judgment and potent poisons cross paths. Most rather predictably involve failure to heed instructions followed by massive exposure to neurotoxins, but #1 was this:

A Contra Costa homeowner discovered sewer rats were entering his home through a toilet. He bought an incendiary device intended for gophers and other burrowing pests, and dropped it down a plumbing vent on his roof. The device melted a plastic elbow in the pipe and the roof caught fire, causing $80,000 in damage before firefighters could extinguish the blaze.

Hilltop fortification found in Buckinghamshire

Archaeologists believe they have unearthed an ancient fortified settlement at a hilltop paddock in Buckinghamshire. A dig on the site of a new £30m Thames Water main near Taplow has uncovered finds thought to date to the Bronze and early Iron Ages. Pieces from Roman and mediaeval times have also been found. The finds suggest it would have been a settlement on a key route to the centre of the country between 700BC and 400BC.

From the BBC.

Roman mosaics in Besançon

Once again, Ionarts is on top of a French story that hasn't made it into English: the ongoing excavation in Besançon of a major Gallo-Roman structure of undetermined purpose, richly adorned with mosaics. Here's one more article not linked in the Ionarts writeup, with black & white photo of a large stretch of mosaic floor.

Medieval manuscripts of Timbuktu

In popular imagination, the word Timbuktu is a trip of three syllables to the ends of the earth. Today this West African city is a slumbering and decrepit citadel at the southern edge of the Sahara, in Mali, one of the poorest countries in the world.

Yet it is here that some of the most astonishing developments in African intellectual history have been occurring. In recent years, thousands of medieval manuscripts that include poetry by women, legal reflections and innovative scientific treatises have come to light, reshaping ideas about African and Islamic civilizations. Yet even as this cache is being discovered, it is in danger of disappearing, as sand and other grit are abrading many of the aging texts, causing them to disintegrate. . .

When the Renaissance was barely stirring in Europe, Timbuktu was already the center of a prolific written tradition.

An absurd comparison, that seeks to counter a stereotype of African culture as nonliterate with an equally false stereotype of the European middle ages. No "prolific written tradition" in Europe before the Renaissance? I think not.

By the end of the 15th century, Timbuktu's 50,000 residents thrived on the commerce of gold, salt and slaves, and hundreds of students and scholars convened at the city's Sankoré mosque. There were countless Koranic schools and as many as 80 large private libraries. Wandering scholars were drawn to Timbuktu's manuscripts all the way from North Africa, Arabia and even Persia.

The bulk of these texts have remained buried for years in Timbuktu's mud homes. Many owners are the descendants of the skilled craftsman class, and the manuscripts often represent a family heritage passed on from generation to generation. . .

Some scholars believe there are up to one million manuscripts in Mali, about 100,000 of which are in the Timbuktu region. These texts — possibly the most ancient to survive in sub-Saharan Africa — offer a window into the ways black Muslim scholars thought and imagined the world around them over centuries.

But in addition to the problem of preservation, there is the lure of the market:

Those that make it out of family trunks have other problems. Human handling by researchers and visitors, as well as a robust black market, are further chipping away at this historical trove. Chris Murphy, a Near East specialist at the Library of Congress who was a co-curator of an exhibition of Timbuktu manuscripts last summer, said in an interview that trafficking was now common practice. "Poverty is such that you can buy these for $2 to $5," he said. "Then they are taken to Switzerland, often, where their provenance will be forged. And they get moved to auction houses where they will be sold for up to $1,000. Sometimes, they can even reach five figures." Often unaware of their bogus provenance, oil sheiks and university collections alike become potential clients.

In today's NY Times.

NYC taxi medallion auction

Want to operate a New York City taxi? Licenses (medallions) are limited in number, though more are occasionally issued. Read about the latest city auction of new medallions here, where the average price paid was just under $300,000.

More on deaccessioning

We have written before on why it can make sense for museums to sell. Alas, there are still those cases where the sales don't make sense. Here's a likely example:

The Museum of Modern Art is offering nine works from its permanent collection for sale at Christie’s New York on 4 and 11 May. The auction house estimates that the paintings, which include works by Chagall, De Chirico, Léger, Magritte, Picasso and Pollock, could sell for as much as $27.9 million.

The museum is ostensibly raising funds for new acquisitions to display when it moves back into its expanded, midtown building next year. But the decision to sell paintings by artists whose works fit squarely within the museum’s collection will meet with some controversy. . .

One thing is certain: MoMA’s sales are not a one-off. In 1998 the artist Michael Asher published a pamphlet listing the thousands of works the museum had deaccessioned since its founding in 1929. The inventory includes eight works by Cézanne, four by Kandinsky, and nine by Matisse, among others. Since then, director Glenn Lowry has been pruning the collection regularly. His deaccessions include: George Bellows’s painting “Polo crowd” (1910) which sold for $27.5 million at Sotheby’s in 1999, a record for an American painting at auction; Picasso’s “Man with a guitar” (1913) which was placed with Larry Gagosian and acquired by MoMA board member Si Newhouse Jr in 2000, reportedly for $10 million. He was then obliged to leave the board. In 2001 MoMA sold 350 photographs at Sotheby’s for $4 million, a record for a single-owner photo sale, and last year Picasso’s “Houses on the hill, horta de Ebro” (1909) was sold to Berlin dealer Heinz Berggruen, and Francis Bacon’s “Dog” (1952) was sold to London dealer Gerard Faggionato.

From the Art Newspaper.

Undermining morale: wartime propaganda leaflets

From H.D. Miller's Travelling Shoes:

Today, I just stumbled onto something remarkable, a collection of German propaganda leaflets designed to sap the will of American soldiers fighting in Europe during WWII.

Leaflet link here; Miller notes one leaflet follows a similar format to that of a recent Andy Rooney challenge to American soldiers in Iraq -- compare and contrast for extra credit.

Fried waterlilies

The claim to fame of Las Vegas' Bellagio casino is its art gallery, so it is more than a bit surprising to hear that the gallery space isn't better protected -- as became apparent when the entire complex had to go on emergency standby power earlier this month. The power outage lasted a couple of days at least; it was unclear if the backup juice was sufficient to keep fire sprinklers functional, but as noted by Tyler Green at the time, the bland reassurances that the artworks were in no danger from the heat were not convincing. The big issue being, of course, that the Bellagio is hosting a for-profit loan exhibition of Monets from Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, which was controversial enough without the paintings getting baked in the bargain (see "Renting art for profit"). In fact, flying artworks around incurs not only risk of loss, but also exposure to considerable climatic changes. A handful of extraordinarily prominent works may be shipped in containers that incorporate their own climate control systems; most, however, travel in ordinary crates as they move from museum to truck to airport to airplane and back again (with stops in customs added in for international loans). And any museum insider will be able to regale you with tales of items temporarily lost in transit, usually at the destination airport.

Some may say this is all a small price to pay for making art accessible. Amy Lamboley over at Crescat Sententia, for example, writes:

But obviously, preservation isn't our only concern. Art only has value insofar as it gives enjoyment to people--not fodder for critics, but enjoyment to ordinary people. And insofar as taking art out of museums increases the number of people enjoying that pleasure, and the quality of that pleasure itself, then we ought to consider a bit of damage to the art incurred in the process as a reasonable cost.

Yet if art is for the ages, shouldn't we be thinking beyond the pleasures of the moment? Present-day access to great art is worth defending, but let's not forget that our historical moment is but a blip in the centuries-long lifetime of a painting. Those "ordinary people" may not notice that "bit of damage" now, yet repeat it a hundredfold and then what will be left for their equally ordinary but much more numerous descendants?

I won't even go into the problems with the naive populist equation of art with enjoyment, which should be apparent on even the most cursory reflection.

Ancient sites of Uzbekistan

Kampyr-Tepe, in southern Uzbekistan, was built at the time of Alexander the Great's empire and occupied for about 500 years until it fell into decline.

Since it was discovered, a generation ago, it has been closed to the public because it stands in a sensitive and tightly guarded military zone, right on the Afghan border.

And it would seem quite well-protected, as a result:

The small houses were in the nearest part of the city. Square rooms opened on to a grid of narrow passages, criss-crossing to make streets. Stacks of pots and plates sat outside, as though the people of Kampyr-Tepe had left the washing up one evening after dinner. Great round platters and bowls, made of the same ochre dust as the plain.

At first we were amazed. Why had they not been taken off to some museum? Dated, labelled... or stolen even? But the more we looked, we realised there were just so many, they were ordinary, just part of the land. . .

The deep south of Central Asia has a feel all its own. . .

It wears its past casually. Kampyr-Tepe is just one of its treasures. There are sights here, in this quiet and private place, that almost anywhere in the world would have bus-loads of visitors trooping to and fro, buying souvenirs and cups of tea.

"You see that big pit there," said an old farmer, Hamrah Baba, living on the plains to the north of Kampyr-Tepe. "When I was a boy, we used to lower each other down there in turns, hanging on a rope. We did not think it was special. Then, these men came from Tashkent and found all sorts of things. They found gold and those chessmen."

The gold was 35kg of solid gold jewellery, set with turquoises. The chess pieces may be the oldest on earth. The pit where Hamrah Baba once played is in the citadel of Dalverzin-Tepe. Capital of the Kushan empire, it was one of the richest on the planet.

From the BBC, spotted thanks to Nathan Hamm of The Argus (your source for matters Central Asian).

1937 bike tops $20K at auction

A 1937 Elgin bicycle propelled by a drive shaft, the best one of four known examples, sold for a record $20,900 on April 17 at Copake Auction. Of the four known examples, this is the only one in original finish.

From Antiques and the Arts; other sale highlights are also noted, and a full writeup is promised for a future issue.

The mention of original finish caught my eye, since it has been the norm for some time for collectors of old cars, bicycles, and pedal cars to strip down and repaint, even if the original paint is mostly intact. I've long wondered when these collectors would wake up and start demanding original finish -- as is the norm in most fields -- causing the value of the few surviving unrefinished pieces to go through the roof. Perhaps that time is now.

Robbery attempt at Kempton Park

Any dealer or collector who shops the greater London markets will want to take note of this:

A gang struck at the popular Kempton Park Racecourse fair on Tuesday, April 13, first piercing the car tyre of a jewellery dealer and then accosting him during an unscheduled stop at a nearby petrol station. In this case the thieves had picked on the wrong man – the 67-year-old Hertfordshire man was a former fencing and boxing champion who tackled one of the thieves. The gang of four fled emptyhanded. However, the dealer conceded he was lucky to escape unhurt with his stock and takings and warned others to be on their guard.

US dealers have been targeted in similar wise for a good long time -- though often as not, there is no sabotage or confrontation, just a break-in when the victim makes a rest stop (which is virtually inevitable, given American driving distances). From what I recall, most Kempton jewelry dealers aren't carrying serious swag, but those American dealers who do now usually have Brinks (or a similar security firm) pick up and deliver their stock when they set up at shows, and store the stuff in between.

UPDATE: The thefts and attempted thefts continue, with the Antiques Trade Gazette reporting incidents at Sandown and elsewhere.

Fun with medieval artillery

I'm suffering from trebuchet envy -- Cranky Professor Michael Tinkler has pictures of a contest in which the winning entry threw a 2-lb sack of flour 230 feet, using a 6-ft throwing arm and a 350-lb counterweight. Time to scale it up!

ADDENDUM: Of course, I should have mentioned trebuchet.com (don't you love the Web?).

Soviet war loot returned to Netherlands

More than 100 drawings stolen by the former Soviet Union during World War II have been officially given back to the Netherlands.

The Old Master drawings had been stored in a museum basement in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, for more 50 years. They were first looted from Holland by the Nazis, who it is thought had earmarked the pictures for Adolf Hitler's private collection. But then, in 1947, they were stolen by the Red Army and taken to the USSR. . .

The 139 pictures are from the Koenigs Collection, which is considered to be one of most important collections of drawings in the world. They were traced to Kiev by the Netherlands last year. The drawings, which date mainly from the 15th and 16th centuries, were discovered still in their original black boxes with red seals at the Khanenky Museum in Kiev. The recovered pictures are all by German masters and include a group of six apostles drawn by Hans Holbein the Younger.

From the BBC. The Ukrainian authorities are to be praised for their prompt and straightforward actions -- not to be taken for granted, as the article notes: "More than 300 drawings from the same collection were traced to Moscow 10 years ago, but Russia has so far refused to hand them back."

My tattoo says what!?

Stop by any tattoo shop, and there's a good chance you'll see someone getting a kanji character inked onto his or her skin. . .

The problem is that sometimes the tattoos don't mean what their wearers think they mean. . .

From the Chicago Times.

Bobby Short ends run at Carlyle

. . . after 36 years.
Read about it in the NY Times.

Benton murals return to the Whitney

Here's a story from the NY Times that nicely illustrates the pitfalls when museums follow trends too assiduously:

The Whitney Museum of American Art is billing its display of "The Arts of Life in America," five murals painted by Thomas Hart Benton, as "a landmark homecoming." For the past 51 years, the murals have been part of the permanent collection of the New Britain Museum of American Art in Connecticut, which has lent them to the Whitney, their original owner, for nine months. . .

By the 50's Benton's work was considered embarrassingly outmoded. Regionalism was equated with America-first isolationism, and with the ascendancy of Abstract Expressionism, if Benton were mentioned at all, it was because he had been Jackson Pollock's teacher. . .

The Whitney now looked on the murals as unwanted surplus, their status as faded as Benton's reputation. Sanford Low, the director of the New Britain Museum, was informed in 1953 that the paintings might be for sale.

Low ended up buying them for nuppence: $500, plus $3000 in relocation expenses (the Whitney had paid Benton $4600 for the murals in 1932). Estimated value today? The Times mentions one conservative estimate of a minimum of $10M.

More on Persian Wars sea hunt

Today's NY Times has an article on the ongoing efforts to turn up relics of the epic sea battles of the Persian Wars. No new discoveries since previous posts here and here, it would seem, but a nice summary of what is out there and how it is being sought.

Waco apocalypse

Eleven years later today, and the politics bloggers haven't paid it much attention -- but Palaeojudaica's Jim Davila has posted on it here (and who better than one well versed in the apocalyptic tradition?). Read it for yourself; when he states: "It's hard to imagine how the authorities could have done a worse job of dealing with David Koresh and his followers", one cannot but recall that no one was ever held responsible for this truly horrendous affair. And the deplorable lack of outrage among soi-disant sophisticates, who could not manage to eke out any sympathy for a group of "religious fanatics".

Reclaiming the mosque at Cordoba

Muslims across Spain are lobbying the Roman Catholic church in the southern city of Córdoba to make a symbolic gesture of reconciliation between faiths by allowing them to pray in the city's cathedral.

Córdoba's renaissance cathedral sits in the centre of an ancient mosque complex, and local Muslims want to be allowed to pray there again. They have appealed to the Vatican to intercede on their behalf.

Zakarias Maza, the director of the Taqwa mosque in neighbouring Granada, said yesterday: "We hope the Vatican will give a signal that it has a vision of openness and dialogue. It would be good if there were a gesture of tolerance on their part.

From the Guardian. It would appear many Spanish Christians are not overly sympathetic to this rather selective ecumenicism:

"Will Christians be able to pray in the mosques of Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Iran or Kuwait?" demanded one contributor to a Catholic website. "Muslims should practise what they preach!"

The better comparison to Cordoba's Christianized mosque, however, would be the many now-Islamicized Judeo-Christian religious sites of the former eastern Roman Empire -- most prominently, Jerusalem's Temple Mount.

Let's write Hittite!

Yes, cuneiform fonts are on their way . . . more here. Hat tip to Phluzein (whence also this post on Hittite rollerskates)

Salon hanging at the Renwick

Last weekend I popped in at the Renwick. Along with a fine exhibit of American studio furniture on the ground floor, there is an overwhelming array of first-class American paintings hung the old-fashioned way -- i.e., covering the walls, floor to ceiling -- in the Grand Salon upstairs. The pictures are from the National Museum of American Art, now closed for renovation.

Now there is an essay in appreciation of this installation in the Washington Post, with illustrations. Read it, and visit if you can.

Picasso's secret police file to go on display

French police are preparing to put on display their secret files on Pablo Picasso for the first time. These include Picasso's little-known application for French citizenship - rejected because of his "extremist ideas and drift towards communism".

Documents show that Picasso was spied on initially as a suspected anarchist, and later over his communist sympathies - before he became a prominent member of France's Communist Party.

The exhibition opens at the Paris police museum on Tuesday.

From the BBC; the museum website is here.

Hunley funeral

From Saturday's Richmond Times-Dispatch:

The experimental Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley tended to bring death rather than life.

The Hunley killed 21 of the 28 Confederate sailors who dared to sail aboard it, including the eight on its dramatic final voyage, who are to be buried with honors and fanfare in Charleston today.

It killed five Union sailors when it sank the sloop USS Housatonic off the coast of Charleston on Feb. 17, 1864. That sinking - the first by a submarine - introduced a lethal form of warfare that has claimed thousands of lives since the Civil War. . .

Thousands of people have lined up to see the remains of the Hunley, which was raised from the ocean bottom in August 2000 and now soaks in a huge tank of cool water infused with an electrical current to preserve the sub for future display. . .

Today, tens of thousands of people are expected to line the streets to watch the remains of the Hunley's last crew borne on caissons to historic Magnolia Cemetery. The Hunley Commission, a state agency devoted to the project, has billed the event, "the last Confederate funeral."

"Green" ICBMs

Can you say, "does not compute"?

In order to comply with EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) regulations, and at a cost of about $5.2 million per ICBM, the rocket motors on 500 Minuteman III missiles will be replaced with new ones. These rockets will emit less toxic chemicals when used. . .

Thus, if the Minuteman III ICBMs have to be used in some future nuclear war, their rocket motors will not pollute the atmosphere. EPA regulations do not apply in foreign countries, so no changes are being made to reduce the harmful environmental effects of the nuclear warheads.

From StrategyPage, spotted via VodkaPundit.

Chicago: meteorite magnet?

Recall our post about the great Chicago fire being caused by comet fragments? Over at Space.com there's a story today about a more recent impact:

You might think meteor expert Steven Simon knew exactly what was happening one evening when the skies over his home were lit up by an exploding, 2,000-pound space rock bigger than a refrigerator. But it was only the next day, when nearby residents brought him chunks of the extraterrestrial visitor that had landed in the street and punched through their roofs, that Simon began to understand the true nature of the frightening event.

Now after a year of study, the University of Chicago researcher has helped produce a full account of the giant rock that tore through the atmosphere at 54 times the speed of sound.

P.S. Check out this impact calculator to play out your own doomsday scenarios (writeup here).

Disarming the other

Enlightened appearance, racist roots: it's not widely appreciated, but most American weapons laws were intended to keep down the rabble, not disarm propertied whites. When I lived in California, concealed carry of an unlicensed pistol was a misdemeanor, whereas carrying a knife was a felony -- a decades-old measure directed especially at Mexicans, as it was explained to me. And the notorious Sullivan Laws in New York were specifically intended to disarm Tammany's rivals, not to keep the peace (at least in the conventional sense). A common characteristic of these laws -- most of which still remain on the books, in some form or another -- is the provision of selective loopholes, usually in the form of permits to be granted at the pleasure of the powers-that-be. In case you haven't followed the issue, this is the main reason for the recent push to reform concealed-carry laws, moving away from the old and inherently arbitrary "may issue" formulation to a "shall issue" form predicated on equal treatment and due process.

Some states, however, took a cruder approach, as noted in two articles cited this morning by Glenn Reynolds -- one on selectively (racially) applied laws in the American South and another on gun laws from an African-American perspective). There's also a piece (for which I don't have a link handy) on the use of guns for self-protection by civil rights workers in the South, which adds a bit more perspective on an already quite complex story.

Lost Etruscan capital found at last?

In the rolling hills of Tuscany, scholars believe they have uncovered one of the great lost cities of the ancient world.

The ruins are believed to be those of Chamars, the leading city state of the Etruscan civilisation that dominated much of Italy before the emergence of Rome.

The find raises the possibility of locating the tomb of Lars Porsena, the Etruscan king who reigned over Chamars in the 6th century BC. Porsena’s tomb was said by the historian Pliny the Elder to consist of a labyrinth 300ft square. According to legend, it was adorned with a golden carriage, 12 golden horses and other treasures.

Giuseppe Centauro, a professor of urban restoration at Florence University, said: “I believe Chamars has at last been found. This was the biggest Italian city before Rome and it represents the entire Etruscan civilisation from the beginning to its decadence. . .

Three years ago workmen excavating foundations for a goods yard found the remains of what is one of the most complete Etruscan settlements to be discovered in Tuscany. . .

Centauro and a team of experts have been detailing all the finds in the area around the newly discovered city on the banks of the Bisenzio river. He believes the settlement so far found is merely one of several within the walls of Chamars.

His team has already discovered that stone walls encircle an area of seven square miles. Within this area there are several tombs, extensive house foundations and a sophisticated water system of canals and artificial basins.

In one stretch, defensive walls 10ft thick emerge from the vegetation for 700 yards. The remains lie between the Calvana mountains near the town of Prato, and Mount Morello, near Florence.

From the Sunday Times of London.

UPDATE: More at Discovery News, with pictures.

Eton appoints imam

Read all about it in the Telegraph.

Bombs away

Iraq, where things that go boom seem to be all over the place:

About 100 meters down, while talking on my mobile phone with a source, Osama stops and begins to talk with some Kurdish militia members who are set up down one of the side streets.

"Hey man," Osama interrupts my phone call. "I found the bomb."

Being on the phone, I motion for him to wait, until I see he's pointing to an artillery shell embedded in concrete five feet away from us. It's huge -- a 155 mm artillery shell -- and there are wires and a homemade detonator sticking out the back.

"Uhhh, I have to call you back," I say into the phone.

The Kurds are laughing hysterically at us at this point, oblivious to the fact that they themselves are only 30 feet away and will live only a nanosecond longer than Osama and me should it explode. . .

As we stand a marginally safe distance away, one soldier explains that the Iraqis take a different approach to disposal of bombs than the Americans.

"When these guys find a bomb or a (rocket propelled grenade) they carry it to our base," one says. "We'll walk outside to talk to them and they'll be swinging a huge shell out of the back of truck all proud that they helped. We freak out every time."

As we talk about such matters, as if on cue, two Kurdish militiamen walk up to the bomb, as we watch incredulously. They poke it a few times and then actually try to pick it up.

From the Washington Times. Hat tip to ParaPundit, who has some additional links and commentary.