Grim Zim

Poor Bulawayo. A photo essay in the Guardian on Zimbabweans' "day-to-day struggle to survive" there. Via Norm Geras (one of many who knew Bulawayo in better days).

History's Top 100 Heroes

Japan Probe has posted a translation, with handy biographical links, of a recent Japanese TV network's national survey of historical heroes. Not surprisingly, the list is heavily tilted towards figures from Japanese history, but what caught my attention was the sheer number of famous warriors and military leaders. I'm pretty sure that you wouldn't see results like this if you surveyed Americans -- even those who are compulsive watchers of the History Channel. And though Europeans can draw on a much longer history, I wouldn't expect them to come up with results all that much different. Westerners, with a few notable exceptions, are just too thoroughly post-feudal. The invented heroes of Tolkein are far better known than their medieval models -- for better or for worse.

The Met's Etruscan chariot

In this case, it's simply not going back:

A small mountain village in Umbria is fighting New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art for the ownership of a 2,600-year-old Etruscan war chariot.

The Met intends to make the carefully restored bronze war chariot, which dates from 530BC, the star attraction of its $155 million (£80 million) Leon Levy and Shelby White Court, part of a new wing which is due to open on April 20. . .

For the past decade, the Met has been carefully restoring the chariot, said to be the only intact Etruscan chariot ever found, to its former glory. The three panels of the 14ft vehicle show scenes from the life of Achilles . . .

A spokesman said the museum had bought the chariot "in good faith", although he admitted that, since it has been in their collection for more than a 100 years, there were no papers to prove its provenance.

The chariot was found in 1902, and though its export was held up by protests, it seems no laws prohibited its sale abroad at the time:

Italy made its first law on protecting its cultural heritage in 1906, two years after the chariot's arrival in New York.

A law stating that every archaeological find is the property of the state was signed in 1939.

Maurizio Fiorilli, the lawyer in charge of the Italian government's efforts to reclaim its antiquities, said: "In this case, there are no real rights."

From the Telegraph.

Deodorizing the durian

The durian, a spiky fruit native to Southeast Asia, has been variously described by its detractors as smelling like garbage, moldy cheese or rotting fish. It is banned from many hotels, airlines and the Singapore subway. But durian lovers — and there are many, at least in Asia — are convinced that like fine French cheeses, the worse the smell, the better the taste. . .

“To anyone who doesn’t like durian it smells like a bunch of dead cats,” said Bob Halliday, a food writer in based Bangkok. “But as you get to appreciate durian, the smell is not offensive at all. It’s attractive. It makes you drool like a mastiff.”

Nevertheless, a Thai government scientist, who after three decades of research is one of the world’s leading durian experts, now says he has managed to excise its stink.

Working at an orchard here, near the Cambodian border, the scientist, Songpol Somsri, crossed more than 90 varieties of durian, many found only in the wild, and came up with a fruit that he says smells as mild as a banana. . .

Durian lovers are at once disbelieving of and horrified by the prospect of a no-smell durian. They complain that the fruit is being homogenized like the insipid tomatoes bred to look pretty behind plastic wrap. . .

The concept is even more mystifying to those who live in Malaysia, Singapore or Indonesia, where durians are prized for their odor and priced accordingly. . .

Dr. Songpol says he has developed a separate durian that might please Malaysians and Indonesians. The pungent smell of that durian, Chantaburi No. 3, develops three days after the fruit is picked, allowing for odorless transport.

From the NY Times.

Space tourism and Moore's Law

Five space tourists to date; the price of the trip doesn't seem to have moved much in the last several years, running around $20-25M.

One writeup is titled, "Billionaire tourists in space, next: you and me", but I'm not so certain. Aside from the riskiness of spce travel, it's still expensive enough that even if Moore's Law can be applied, it will take a good 24 years until space is accessible for under $5000 (and still a full 18 years even if you optimistically assume a halving of the cost every 18 months).

Downward Dog

It doesn't get more authentic than this. Don't ask about the Fish.

PS I had wondered for some time why the Fish Pose was so named, and online resources state:

Unlike many of the poses that mimic the creatures they’re named after, Fish Pose doesn’t actually look like a fish. Instead, it’s said that if you perform this pose in water, you will be able to float like a fish.

Ditto here:

Matsyasan, or the Fish Pose, is so named because the ability to float in water is facilitated by the fact that the posture releases the inhibitions on the lungs thus allowing them a greater capacity to fill with air.

Leaving aside the fact that fish don't normally float atop the water, at least unless they're dead, this explanation isn't terribly convincing. Pretty much all the other yoga poses are named for what they look like, not for what they'll turn you into. And though I've never looked to have it confirmed, it hit me several years ago that the Fish is no exception. The difference is that you have to be in Fish yourself to see it. Not only do others look quite fishy in Fish when viewed upside down, your own view becomes quite fishlike, the floor becoming the ceiling, or rather, the water's surface, seen from below.