If it's expensive, it must be good

That's the way many consumers think, as has been demonstrated time and again. And it applies to higher education no less:

John Strassburger, the president of Ursinus College, a small liberal arts institution here in the eastern Pennsylvania countryside, vividly remembers the day that the chairman of the board of trustees told him the college was losing applicants because of its tuition.

It was too low.

So early in 2000 the board voted to raise tuition and fees 17.6 percent, to $23,460 (and to include a laptop for every incoming student to help soften the blow). Then it waited to see what would happen.

Ursinus received nearly 200 more applications than the year before. Within four years the size of the freshman class had risen 35 percent, to 454 students. Applicants had apparently concluded that if the college cost more, it must be better.

From the New York Times. But as the article goes on to note, many of the schools raising tuition and fees are also boosting financial aid -- making accurate comparison of average net student expenses difficult. I must say, the increasing gulf between sticker price and what the typical student actually ends up paying makes me uncomfortable. Despite all the needs-based aid being dispensed, how many applicants are being scared away by price tags that are indeed overwhelming? And the more complex the financial aid system becomes, the less transparent it is -- even as it becomes as much a determinant of who goes to what school as anything else.

Basic writing skills will take you far

It's odd that so many graduate from college unable to write. Blame instant messaging or texting if you will, but the fact is, in the age of the Internet you are what you write -- and good writing gets you noticed in a big way.

Especially given what else is out there, amply illustrated by this page, "Cover Letters from Hell". Although it's been written up before, I found it via the Cranky Professor, who observes:

Next semester I will show it to my students to help explain why I care about their writing - and why they should, too.

London: slaving port

The working papers of West India Merchants and Plantation went on display at the Museum in Docklands in east London.

The records, belonging to Thomas Mills, give detailed accounts of slaves who worked on the family's sugar plantations on Caribbean islands. . .

The documents include a plantation journal, dating back to 1776, which describes the duties and the lives of the slaves on the islands of St Kitts and Nevis.

An estimated 24,962 African slaves were carried by 77 British ships which sailed from West India Quay between 1802 and 1807. . .

Some 3,136 slaves did not survive the trans-Atlantic journey. . .

Next year a series of events will mark 200 years of the abolition of slavery by the British.

From the BBC.

Ancient flying squirrels

Another eye-opening fossil find from China:

A new fossil discovery from China shows that a tiny squirrel-like creature glided through the air during the age of dinosaurs, more than 75 million years earlier than scientists had documented that ability in a mammal.

The creature might have even beaten birds into the air.

Like today's flying squirrels, it stretched a furry membrane between its limbs to provide an airfoil for gliding after it jumped from a tree. But it's not related to anything living today.

From Discovery News.

Robert Rosenblum obit

This is close to home -- though I was not one of his students, many of my friends were. I was in New York for the tribute symposium in October; the turnout and the quality of the papers amply reflected Rosenblum's own wide contributions over many productive years:

Robert Rosenblum, an influential and irreverent art historian and museum curator known for his research on subjects ranging from Picasso to images of dogs, died on Wednesday at his home in Greenwich Village. He was 79. . .

For half a century, Mr. Rosenblum taught in the undergraduate and graduate art history divisions at New York University, where he occupied an endowed chair as professor of Modern European art starting in 1976. For the last decade he also served as curator of 20th-century art at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Despite his illness, diagnosed in 2004, he continued his regimen of teaching, writing and lecturing until a few weeks ago. . .

Perhaps his most important book was “Transformations in Late 18th-Century Art” (1967), in which he argued that Modernism did not begin with the turn of the 20th century, as formalist critics saw it, but was a far more complex phenomenon that went back to 18th-century France, when attempts were first made to refresh Western visual culture. In 2003, the French government made Mr. Rosenblum a chevalier of the Legion of Honor for his scholarly devotion to that country’s art. But by then he had long since turned away from viewing the birth of Modern art as a strictly French phenomenon. On visits abroad, he had rediscovered the work of long-neglected artists like the German painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) and the Danish artist Vilhelm Hammershoi (1864-1916). . .

Still, his espousal of artists excluded from the art world A-list sometimes raised eyebrows. One controversial example was a 2001 exhibition at the Guggenheim devoted to the painter Norman Rockwell.

Missing the forest for the polonium

Time has an overview of the Litvinenko case, and what an involved story it is. But perhaps most striking was this quote, from the very end of the article:

"While you in the press are obsessed by Politkovskaya and Litvinenko, you've missed that half a dozen major oil executives and another half-dozen major bankers have been murdered in the last few months."

Camden Passage: the end is nigh

THE Christmas lights are now on in Camden Passage, but for some dealers this will be their last festive period in the London antiques thoroughfare.

Over the last few months, landlords Octagon Assets, who have purchased a number of shops in Islington, have given notice to some of their tenants and issued large rent rises on others. At least 12 shops in Camden Passage are facing either closure or a rent hike of up to 70 per cent. . .

Octagon, who bought the premises about a year ago . . . plan to redevelop the property. . .

The antiques community in Camden Passage has come under threat in recent years. Last year, 40 antique dealers were evicted from the Georgian Village antiques centre and, in their place, planning permission has recently been granted for a new Reiss fashion chain store.

Some of the more vocal traders have launched a campaign to preserve Camden Passage as an antiques market. They have sent round a petition calling on the council, the government and the London Assembly to do all they can to protect the heritage of the area.

Not much chance of that, I'm afraid. As the article notes, many of the dealers facing eviction have been there for decades, and in many cases have been given no opportunity to renegotiate new leases. This reminds me of a conversation I had with a California dealer a few months back, who had taken the advice of one of his customers to heart: "the biggest mistake most antiques dealers make is not buying their own shop". He'd stretched to buy several years ago, and was sitting pretty while his neighbors found their situation increasingly precarious. It's a pity the Passage dealers couldn't have gotten together to buy their building before it was too late. From the Antiques Trade Gazette.

Royal rocking horse

A rocking horse which is thought to have belonged to King Charles I has gone on display at a London museum.

The 17th Century horse, made from softwood and elm, is thought to be the oldest in the UK and was bought for the V&A Museum of Childhood for £25,000.

From the BBC (with picture). The Museum of Childhood's website is here.

Incidentally, the V & A's purchase seems quite reasonable considering the $12,999.95 price on this newly-made rocking horse from Hammacher Schlemmer.

Antarctic time capsule

A neat stack of seal meat sits in an enclosed porch, tins of cocoa and cabbage are piled on shelves inside, and all seems ready for Antarctic explorers Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton to take shelter.

Of course they won't: their kind of exploration of the southern continent ended nearly a century ago. But this remote, snow-shrouded shelter hut appears eerily intact.

Prefabricated in New Zealand in 1910, transported by ship and reassembled on a spit of land on McMurdo Sound in January 1911, the hut was built for the final expedition led by Britain's Scott, whose ill-fated race to reach the South Pole has become the stuff of legend.

From Reuters.

Bluebird to the Ruskin Museum

It will probably take another two years and a lot of fund-raising, but the future of the iconic craft of legendary speed hero Donald Campbell has finally been settled.

In an official ceremony yesterday Mr Campbell’s daughter Gina gave Bluebird to the Ruskin Museum, where campaigners plan to put her on display.

Campbell, 46, lost his life almost 40 years ago, after attempting to break his own world water speed record on Coniston Water.

Bluebird soared out of the water on its second run at a speed close to 300mph, somersaulted and sank. ‘I’ve gone’ said Campbell over his radio. His famous last words.

The wrecked craft lay at the bottom of the lake undiscovered until brought to the surface in 2001 by diver and underwater surveyor Bill Smith.

Full article here. Further links: a capsule biography of Donald Malcolm Campbell; a collection of Bluebird photos; the BBC report of the lifting of the Bluebird; and the recovery project website.

Haymarket Riot gallows sold

The Chicago History Museum has lost in its bid to get the old Cook County gallows.

The gallows was auctioned off Wednesday night, and the Chicago museum lost out to Ripley's Believe It or Not! Museum, a San Francisco company that operates around the country.

Oddity-loving Ripley's bid $68,300 for the device that put 86 convicts to death. . .

The gallows was built in 1887 for the hanging of some of the eight men convicted in the May 4, 1886, fatal bombing in Chicago's Haymarket Square -- even though none of them was responsible for throwing the bomb.

Full article here.

Hidden Adams drawings revealed

THOUSANDS of drawings by the world-renowned Scottish architect Robert Adam have been uncovered for the first time in almost two centuries.

About 9,000 of Adam's designs were glued into 57 albums by his relatives to make them easier to sell after the family fell on hard times. In doing so, drawings on the back were lost for more than 170 years.

Now, using a technique developed for examining old watermarks, an academic, Dr Ian Christie-Miller, has been able to see through the paper and reveal the hidden image.

Read more here. The albums are in the Soane's Museum.

Step aside, Kansas!

The UK has the highest number of reported tornadoes for its land area of any country in the world, experts say.

Just last Tuesday, a mini tornado blasted through the village of Bowstreet in Ceredigion, west Wales, causing thousands of pounds worth of damage to homes and other buildings and flattening trees and fences.

Dr Terence Meaden, deputy head of the Tornado and Storm Research Organisation (Torro), said about 70 tornadoes were reported across the UK in 2004 and 2005, with 40 this year.

Dr T Theodore Fujita, an American meteorologist, first recognised the UK as the top site for tornadoes in 1973, and Torro had confirmed his findings ever since, Dr Meaden said.

Full article here. Note that the British claim is for countries: I'm sure that if you selected by region (e.g., "Tornado Alley"), you'd get differing results.

Bactrian Gold in Paris

A sumptuous trove of ancient Afghan treasure went on show in a Paris museum yesterday after escaping the destruction of the Taleban regime while hidden in vaults under the presidential palace in Kabul.

The items, some dating from the great civilisations before the Roman Empire, owe their survival to a scheme involving seven keys that would have befitted a central Asian fable.

At the heart of the exhibition, in the Guimet museum, is a collection of jewellery, dress and other artifacts of gold and precious stones from the first century AD that were found in 1978 by Soviet archeologists at Tillia-Tepe, in northern Afghanistan.

The “hoard of Bactrian gold”, never before seen in public, had been give up for lost until 2003 . . .

The Paris show was suspended this year after the Afghan parliament refused to let the treasures leave the country. After the decision was reversed, insurers refused to cover their transport. They relented after the French armed forces undertook the shipment.

The Guimet museum was chosen because of its long involvement in Afghan archaeology, which was almost a French monopoly until the 1970s.

From the Times of London.

Westminster Panels to Museum of London

The Museum of London has unveiled its latest acquisition, a pair of rare medieval paintings, known as the Westminster Panels, which miraculously survived the mass destruction of English religious art during Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries.

Acquired by the museum for £190,000, the panels were commissioned by or for George Fascet, Abbot of Westminster from about 1498-1500. They depict the Archangel Gabriel and the Virgin standing on plinths which bear the shield of arms of Westminster Abbey and the Abbot himself.

From the 24 Hour Museum.

Art restitution backlash

An ongoing issue, treated once again in today's Observer:

Erika Jakubovits, head of an association in Vienna helping Jewish families with restitution claims, said: 'All the old stereotypes are surfacing again ... There is much talk about "rich Jews" supposedly plundering German and Austrian museums in search of money ... a lot of families are not at all rich. They just want to have back what belonged to them.'

A recent development is a decision by a Berlin court to give a music publishing house - holding original scores by Bach among others - protected status as national heritage. Peters publishers was owned by a Jewish family before being expropriated by the Nazis in 1939, but the ruling denies the family's heirs any right to make a restitution claim. Julius Schoeps, of the Moses Mendelssohn research centre in Potsdam and a prominent member of Berlin's Jewish community, recalled a decision by German judges in the 1930s denying Jews property because they were not German Aryans. He is afraid the same logic may be applied again.

Climbers, not slashers

What an exciting time for palaentologists! The speed with which established theories are overturned seems ever-accelerating:

In the Jurassic Park films, the velociraptor was a terrifying hunter that slashed open its victims with a giant, razor-sharp claw. The latest research has shown, however, that the dinosaur's formidable claw was, in fact, a prehistoric climbing crampon, which could also have represented a significant stage in the evolution of flight.

In an attempt to test theories that the animals disembowelled their prey, palaeontologists at the Natural History Museum in London and at Manchester University conducted simulations of a raptor attack using a replica claw on the end of a robotic arm and computer models.

Their findings have forced a complete revision of beliefs about how the pack-hunting carnivores attacked. They now think the hunters clambered up the flanks of large herbivores before clamping their jaws around their victims' throats.

The researchers also claim smaller relatives of the dromaeosaurid family, which includes the velociraptor, may have used their claws to climb trees and leap down on to their prey

Full article here.