So much news, so little time

I'll be taking a break for the next week or so. Time for some outdoors activity!

Art as investment

The old saying about art and antiques is to buy it because you love it. Yet there will always be those who think first in terms of investment, and this Slate article pushes the view that art can indeed be a good investment vehicle.

Tyler Cowen begs to differ -- and rightly so. As he correctly notes:

Studies of auction prices are usually biased toward the winners; the losers never go on the block again or are sold quietly at a loss through dealers.

The other factor not mentioned is the unregulated nature of the art market. Art dealers routinely engage in practices that are strictly verboten when it comes to securities. This means that art can be a very good investment indeed for insiders, but much less so for everyone else.

Baking powder commemoration

A bit late on this -- apologies to any who might have missed the ceremony:

The discovery of baking powder – which made baking easier, quicker and more reliable – will be designated a National Historic Chemical Landmark in a special ceremony on June 12 in East Providence, Rhode Island. The American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society, sponsors the Landmarks program.

In the mid-19th century, Eben Horsford, a chemist at Harvard University, devised a unique mixture of bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) and calcium acid phosphate, which he named "yeast powder" and later called baking powder. In the presence of water, the mixture releases carbon dioxide, which leavens biscuits, cookies and quick breads. To prevent a premature chemical reaction, Horsford introduced starch to keep the mixture dry.

Horsford and his business partner, George Wilson, established the Rumford Chemical Works in Rhode Island to market baking powder. Rumford Baking Powder was marketed for decades using the formula first devised by Horsford in the 1850s and refined in the 1860s.

Full press release here.

Zahi Hawass does Chicago

I only just ran across this, in an article on blunders that get the boss in trouble:

It was all so innocent. Standing in for his boss at a ceremony to kick off the Field Museum's King Tut exhibit, Exelon executive Randy Mehrberg casually mentioned that Exelon Chief Executive John Rowe loves Egyptian artifacts so much that he keeps a sarcophagus on display in his office.

As he sat on the same stage, Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt's antiquities council, could hardly believe his ears. A cultural treasure from his homeland squirreled away in the office of a Chicago utility executive? It was an outrage!

Hawass stepped up to the microphone and launched an all-out attack, threatening to cut off ties with the museum unless Rowe surrendered the sarcophagus immediately. A day later, Rowe caved and offered to lend the artifact to the Field indefinitely.

As it turns out, however, the sarcophagus was hardly a "cultural treasure" -- and while Hawass may be justified in pushing for repatriation of genuine cultural treasures, he was way out of line in insisting that Egypt's blanket ban on private ownership of even run-of-the-mill antiquities be applied worldwide on his say-so. Dan Miller has yet harsher words in this column in the Chicago Sun-Times:

On the eve of the opening of the King Tut exhibit at the Field Museum last week, Egypt's bombastic chief of the modestly named Supreme Council of Antiquities demanded that Rowe turn over the sarcophagus to the Field Museum or Egypt would sever ties with the museum for all time, and withdraw its support of the Tut exhibit.

Zahi Hawass declared to the press that "antiquities should be in a museum, not in people's homes."

Though this particular antiquity probably would not even be on exhibit at the Field were it not for diplomatic necessity. In all likelihood, it would sit in storage, or be quietly deaccessioned. And were it in the Cairo Museum, it would surely be rotting forgotten in the basement.

PS NY Times writeup here.

Adam Elsheimer exhibition

Haven't heard of Elsheimer? A great artist, too little known nowadays -- but the subject of an exhibition opening tomorrow in Edinburgh. See the National Gallery of Scotland website for more.

"Port of Theodosius" unearthed in Istanbul

Archeologists shudder at the thought of digging train tunnels through the core of ancient cities. Destruction of important material is inevitable, and the huge costs of construction delays mean that what archeological investigation takes place will be hasty and limited. Yet at the same time, that investigation will be carried to areas otherwise unlikely ever to be explored, because overlaid by modern construction. What has been taking place in Istanbul is no exception:

Turkish archaeologists announced on Tuesday that they have discovered an ancient Byzantine port in an area that was planned to be an underground station for a modern rail tunnel.

They're calling the find the "Port of Theodosius," after the emperor of Rome and Byzantium who died in the year 395, and say the items they're digging up here could shed significant light on the commercial life of this ancient city.

The excavations are being conducted in the Yenikapı area, which is located south of Istanbul's historical peninsula, home to numerous Byzantine and Ottoman structures. . .

So far, the archaeologists have found what they think might be a church, an old gate to the city and eight sunken ships, which archaeologist Cemal Pulak says he believes were all wiped out by a giant storm more than 1,000 years ago.

From Turkish Daily News.

Dating prints by wear analysis

A molecular biologist has borrowed a technique from genetic science to date hand-printed art. The so-called print clock method, developed by Blair Hedges of Pennsylvania State University, could help historians and collectors pinpoint when thousands of undated, hand-printed materials were created.

Hedges, who does field work in the Carribbean and happens to collect old maps of the area, conceived of the method after noticing that later editions of the same maps had more line breaks. The flaws exist because printmakers often used the same wood blocks and metal plates for decades and those components deteriorated over time.

Read the rest here.

What the article doesn't note is that while tracing the deterioration of printing plates may allow one to estimate the number of impressions made (itself a very useful contribution), it is rather less useful in dating any given state of the plates. The problem is that plates weren't always in continuous use; in the case of art prints, this can be irregular in the extreme -- decades or even centuries passing between print runs. Perhaps map production kept a steadier pace over time, however.

Leslie Alcock obit

PROFESSOR Leslie Alcock will be most widely remembered for his book Arthur’s Britain, which made a lasting impact on the scholarly community and was hugely popular, and for his excavations at the hill fort of South Cadbury-Camelot, Somerset, which attracted worldwide attention. These were the popular highlights of a career that had a profound influence on the practice of archaeology in Britain and on the study of early medieval Britain in particular.

From the Times of London.

More Nazi-looted art at auction

Not a record, but a very healthy price nonetheless:

A painting by Austrian expressionist Egon Schiele, missing for more than 60 years after it was stolen by the Nazis in 1938, has fetched £11.7m at auction.

The painting surfaced last year when an anonymous collector asked Christie's for a valuation.

It was returned to the family of its original owner, who sold it on Tuesday.

From the BBC.

Missile defense and Moore's Law: when, not if

Back when Reagan was pushing his so-called "Star Wars" program, it seemed to many that it would be as ineffective as it would be expensive -- and potentially destabilizing to boot.

Fast-forward a few decades, and the picture looks rather different (though if this thread over at the Volokh Conspiracy is any indication, there is still considerable skepticism). According to what information has been released to the public, the current generation of interceptors still have a miserably low success rate even under optimal conditions. Yet leaving aside the point that even this may be enough to provide an effective deterrent to rogue nation brinksmanship, it should be emphasized that what is lacking isn't the interceptor technology per se, but rather more specifically, interceptor guidance.

Put another way, interceptors we already have -- what we need now is better aim. And what constrains better aim? Listening to the skeptics, you might think it would be some immutable physical constant. In fact, the main limitation is computing power. I don't know if Reagan or his advisors were so prescient as to appreciate the implications of Moore's Law for missile defense back in the '80s, but it shouldn't be so hard to extrapolate now, two decades later.

If computational power doubles every 18 months, so should antimissile targeting accuracy. Exponential increase has a way of sneaking up on you. I don't know enough to say when the scoffing will stop, but it seems certain that that stop will be abrupt -- just as it was for "smart bombs", whose potential should have been obvious long prior to their appearance in perfected form in Afghanistan.

MORE on current antimissile developments here.

Don't slime 'em until you can see the whites of their eyes

Instead of quelling riotous crowds with tear gas or rubber bullets, peacekeepers may soon be sliming them.

A portable device worn like a Ghostbuster backpack allows the wearer to cover the ground in goo so slippery it's almost impossible for a person to maintain their footing.

Until protest organizers catch on, and start handing out bags of sand. The range of projection also seems far too short for stopping a charging crowd:

The nozzles can shoot the non-toxic material up to 25 feet, enough leeway to slime the ground in front of a maddening mob.

I presume "maddened" is what is meant here.

I could see some real problems with this, at least until they figure out how to spray it greater distances. It might be useful as is to set up no-cross lines, though it might not be so hard to cross just by running up to the treated area and then skating or sliding to the other side. From Discovery News.

The sword in the suitcase

A unique Anglo-Saxon sword has been discovered in an old suitcase in the attic of the archeologist who unearthed it nearly 50 years ago.

The seventh century "pattern-welded" Bamburgh Sword, which was forged for a king, narrowly avoided being dumped in a skip by workers who were clearing the house of the archeologist and broadcaster Brian Hope-Taylor after his death.

From the Telegraph. Why they put "pattern welded" in quotation marks escapes me -- read about the process here; illustrations of modern work here.

Getty's problem list expands

An internal review by the J. Paul Getty Trust has found that 350 Greek, Roman and Etruscan artifacts in its museum's prized antiquities collection were purchased from dealers identified by foreign authorities as being suspected or convicted of dealing in looted artifacts. . . The assessment valued the 350 vases, urns, statues and other sculptures at close to $100 million. That is in addition to 52 items in the Getty collection that Italy has demanded back, contending they were illegally excavated and exported.

The assessment does not address the question of whether any of the 350 objects were purchased illegally, nor does it evaluate their artistic significance. But Getty records show that they include 35 of the museum's 104 masterpieces.

From the LA Times. A derivative article in the Guardian, which will be available much longer.

Record price for Nazi-looted Klimt

A dazzling gold-flecked 1907 portrait by Gustav Klimt has been purchased for the Neue Galerie in Manhattan by the cosmetics magnate Ronald S. Lauder for $135 million, the highest sum ever paid for a painting.

The portrait, of Adele Bloch-Bauer, the wife of a Jewish sugar industrialist and the hostess of a prominent Vienna salon, is considered one of the artist's masterpieces. For years, it was the focus of a restitution battle between the Austrian government and a niece of Mrs. Bloch-Bauer who argued that it was seized along with four other Klimt paintings by the Nazis during World War II. In January all five paintings were awarded to the niece, Maria Altmann, now 90, who lives in Los Angeles, and other family members.

From tomorrow's NY Times. Further richly deserved payback for Austria, whose representatives' intransigence left them with nothing rather than all. Previous posts here and here.

Diesel wins at Le Mans

Read about it here.

Diesel engines are more and more in the news. There are a few fellows locally who run their Mercedes diesels on old cooking oil that Chinese restaurants are happy to get rid of. The idea of having an around-the-town car that uses free fuel is pretty intriguing. . .