She would not be amused

The mausoleum built as a memorial to Queen Victoria’s love for Prince Albert was put on English Heritage’s “at risk” list yesterday.

Days after Albert died, in 1861, Victoria ordered that the mausoleum, above, be built in the grounds of the Windsor Castle retreat of Frogmore House. Decorated with frescoes, plaster angels and marble, it took ten years to complete. When Victoria died, 40 years after her husband, her remains were placed there with his. . .

English Heritage said: “The building suffers from condensation and damp. Parts of plaster angels are falling from the ceiling and frescoes are in need of repair. The downpipes are not able to cope with heavy rainfall.”

From the Times of London.

Bomb at Pompeii

A mortar bomb from the Second World War was found today in the archaeological ruins of Pompeii, Italy, police officials said.

The bomb was discovered in the rubble of the Surgeon’s House, the archaeological site next to the Roman Basilica, the ANSA news agency said.

Police from Pompeii secured the area as tourists looked on until the bomb squad from Naples arrived.

Full story here.

Nazifying Rembrandt

His face is one of the best known in the art world, and as the Netherlands celebrates the 400th anniversary of Rembrandt's birth, his life and work retain few secrets. But did you know he was once a Nazi icon?

An exhibition at the Dutch Resistance Museum in Amsterdam recalls the Nazis' largely forgotten mission to incorporate the Dutch painter into fascist ideology, and win sympathy in the Netherlands, which they occupied in 1940.

The artist appeared on Dutch stamps issued during the occupation, a "Rembrandt" prize was awarded for artistic contribution to National Socialist culture, and a Rembrandt opera and film were written.

The Nazis even tried to institute a national holiday on Rembrandt's birthday, July 15, to replace the traditional Queen's Day parties on the date of the Dutch Queen's birthday.

All this without much success, to the everlasting credit of the Dutch. Full story here.

Campaign sign restrictions

The Rhode Island Affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union is taking issue with a city ordinance that prohibits the posting of campaign signs more than 60 days before a primary or election.

In a letter sent to City Solicitor Joseph Fernandez yesterday, Steven Brown, ACLU executive director, called the ordinance "patently unconstitutional" and a violation of free speech.

As would seem obvious. Yet . . .

Councilwoman Rita Williams and a candidate who is running against an incumbent council member in the North End, recently called The Journal to complain that political signs for their opponents have been up for many days or weeks. The posting of placards in yards, windows and buildings is a violation of the city ordinance, which prohibits them from being posted until 60 days before the election, or tomorrow.

The weird thing is that in the initial article that brought this to my attention two days ago, no one ever brought up the ordinance's manifest illegality. Although I suppose that in itself says something about Providence's political class -- reporters included. From the Providence Journal.

A generous retirement gift

A Chinese vase given to a cleaning woman as a retirement present in 1940 was described as "a lost treasure of the Qing dynasty" after it fetched £92,000 at auction in London yesterday.

It might have sold for more than £1 million had it been in perfect condition. But the cleaner, who lived in Chelsea, central London, polished it so much that she rubbed off most of the gold enamel.

She bequeathed the red, white and blue pot to her grandson, who kept it for years beside his television.

From the Telegraph.

Repairing nerves, with silk

Silk may be able to help repair damaged nerves, according to scientists. . .

They hope the silk will encourage cell re-growth across severed nerves, possibly even in damaged spinal cords.

A picture of nerve cells growing on the silk is one of the winning images in this year's Wellcome Trust Biomedical Image Awards.

From the BBC. The Wellcome awards page is here, and well worth a visit.

No swords in Scotland

Museum officials have been forced to withdraw swords from sale in the gift shop of the newly refurbished Kelvingrove just a day after the art gallery re-opened to the public.

Glasgow City Council took the decision yesterday to remove the swords from the shelves "in light of public concern".

Complaints had been received that it was inappropriate for the city's flagship museum to be selling swords less than two weeks after the end of a nationwide knife amnesty during which police urged members of the public to surrender similar weapons. . .

Last week it was revealed that more than 12,000 bladed weapons were handed in to police forces across Scotland during the latest knife amnesty.

Swords accounted for 474 of the 12,645 weapons surrendered between May 25 and June 30. . .

A council said the swords on sale at Kelvingrove were ornamental replicas, but they were being withdrawn nonetheless.

Full story here. Previous post on Scottish sword-banning here.

L'Affaire Dreyfus commemorated

French President Jacques Chirac has led a ceremony marking the centenary of the rehabilitation of the Jewish army officer Alfred Dreyfus.

The case triggered a national crisis in France in 1895, when the captain was convicted of treason on trumped-up spying charges.

Mr Chirac said his rehabilitation was a rejection of anti-Semitism and a victory for human rights. . .

Relatives of Alfred Dreyfus attended the ceremony, along with relatives of the novelist Emile Zola, who campaigned on behalf of the captain.

From the BBC. Background on the Dreyfus Affair here and here.

Time capsule: RAF WW2 hospital

Part of Britain’s last remaining WWII RAF Hospital is to open its doors to the public for the first time as part of National Archaeology Week.

The airmen’s recovery ward, one of three buildings that also comprise a surgical block and decontamination chamber, is situated in the grounds of the National Trust’s Croome Park in Worcestershire and will be open to the public on July 15 and 16. . .

Upwards of 100 aircraft operated out of Defford at its wartime peak but today all that remains of the base is its medical centre, complete with its remarkably untouched original fabric and décor.

Read the rest at the 24 hour Museum.

Uncuddly marsupials

Palaeontologists digging in northern Australia have found fossil evidence of several new species - including a "killer kangaroo".

The flesh-eating marsupial would have lived between 10 and 20 million years ago, scientists say.

The research team has also unearthed evidence of a large carnivorous bird dubbed the "demon duck of doom".

Full article here.

EU roaming price caps?

An ongoing story from the BBC:

The European Commission has outlined plans that could cut the cost of using mobile phones abroad by up to 70%.

The plans put tight limits on how much operators can charge customers who make or receive international or national calls while in other EU states.

Whether through regulation or competition, it's only a matter of time before roaming costs become a nonissue -- just as they did within the USA, and none too soon. As things now stand, I have a separate SIM card for each of the European countries I visit regularly (you can read about how to do it here), so when I go I have a local number and local rates. But it would be so much more convenient if one didn't have to go though all that hassle, including keeping contacts apprised of one's number-of-the-day (or setting up elaborate forwarding regimens).

A Rubens rediscovery

A LOST masterpiece by Rubens that inspired many of his greatest hunting scenes has been sold to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

The Calydonian Boar Hunt, painted in 1611 or 1612 and for years mistakenly attributed to a follower of Rubens, surfaced at the Paris auctioneers Jean-Marc Delvaux. Instead of its estimate of €10,000 (£7,000) it sold to an unknown buyer for more than €300,000 — at which point other bidders started to realise its true provenance. . .

It is thought that the painting was sold on to the Getty Museum by the London agent Hazlitt, Gooden & Fox. The oil-on-panel work was previously only known from later copies and engravings. The attribution to Rubens has been confirmed by David Jaffe, senior curator of Flemish paintings at the National Gallery in London. He told The Times yesterday: “This is an exciting discovery as it represents Rubens’s earliest known hunt scene, which became one of the great themes of his painting career.”

Full story here.

PS This is rather old news -- the LA Times apparently announced it at the beginning of May. I missed it at the time, however, so I'm sure others did too. The Getty catalog page on the panel is here.

See old Beijing, while you still can

A short walk from Tiananmen Square and the Great Hall of the People, a historic neighborhood named Qianmen is an eerie picture of destruction. Ancient homes lie in rubble. Scavengers squat in alleyways and wait to ransack vacated buildings.

The reason for the devastation is the 2008 Olympic Games, which have turned much of the city into a noisy, disjointed construction zone. New subway lines and new roads are under construction, even an entire new downtown. On the city’s northern rim, at least 25,000 laborers are building the Olympic stadiums and village.

And yet amid such grandiose projects, it is modest Qianmen, once the domain of Qing Dynasty opera singers and classical scholars, that is prompting an uneasy question. Will the Olympics, which organizers promised would enhance the city’s ‘‘cultural heritage,’’ instead help finish off what remains of old Beijing?

From the NY Times.

Dinosaur thermodynamics

"The question of whether dinosaurs were warm-blooded or cold-blooded just doesn't have a simple answer," said Dr Angela Milner, associate keeper of palaeontology at London's Natural History Museum.

"There's a huge spread of physiological states, from things that were more at the ectothermic end and had no problem keeping warm because they were so large, right through to small meat-eating dinosaurs that were not far short of the endothermic biology seen in birds."

From the BBC.

Rogue waves

Enough to make landlubbers of us all, in today's NY Times:

Enormous waves that sweep the ocean are traditionally called rogue waves, implying that they have a kind of freakish rarity. Over the decades, skeptical oceanographers have doubted their existence and tended to lump them together with sightings of mermaids and sea monsters.

Hey, I like mermaids and sea monsters!

But scientists are now finding that these giants of the sea are far more common and destructive than once imagined, prompting a rush of new studies and research projects. The goals are to better tally them, understand why they form, explore the possibility of forecasts, and learn how to better protect ships, oil platforms and people.

The stakes are high. In the past two decades, freak waves are suspected of sinking dozens of big ships and taking hundreds of lives.

Strange new world

Artificial sperm have been used to create living animals for the first time, in an experiment that promises to pave the way for a new era of fertility treatment.

Full story here, including this:

Other experiments have suggested that artificial eggs can be made in the same way, though no offspring have yet been born.

In the longer term, it may even prove possible to produce sperm from female stem cells, and eggs from male ones, allowing homosexual couples to have children that bear the genes of both parents.

This would also enable a single man or woman to provide both the sperm and eggs needed to create an embryo, so that a person could essentially mate with himself or herself.

A shocking story

"My defibrillator has also gotten me some funny stories this week . . ."

Go read the rest at Dr. Helen's.

That head-butt

Can you believe it?

I wonder what the French will make of Zidane now.

I also wonder when referees will start making use of instant replay. Seems that it is inevitable -- and there was already speculation that Zidane's red card wouldn't have happened but for the replay on the in-stadium video screens.

Google SMS

This I should have known about during our recent car trip. Send a text message to GOOGL (46645) and get all sorts of directory info texted back, including driving directions, movie times, weather info, and much more. Appears to be US-only, at least so far.