Towering fungus

Scientists have identified the Godzilla of fungi - a giant, prehistoric fossil that has evaded classification for more than a century.

A chemical analysis has shown that the 6-metre-tall organism with a tree-like trunk was a fungus that became extinct more than 350 million years ago.

Known as Prototaxites, the giant fungus has intrigued scientists, who originally thought it was a conifer. . .

Samples of the giant fungi have been found all over the world since its discovery a century ago. It lived between 420 million and 350 million years ago, at a time when millipedes and worms were among the first creatures to make their home on dry land.

From New Scientist.

Repatriation flash

The international museum and heritage communities are reeling this morning at the news that the British Museum has decided to repatriate its director Neil MacGregor . . .

In an unprecedented act of cultural generosity Mr MacGregor will be shipped back to his country of origin and will go on display in a specially designed gallery at the foot of Castle Mount in Edinburgh.

"It is time to look afresh at restitution issues," said a spokesman for the British Museum, "and where better to start than with an archaic relic of the Enlightenment?"

From ArtNose. Really.

Fight to save Rhode Island's last one-room schoolhouse

Saying he was concerned about the safety of young children who would have to ride a ferry to get to school, Douglas Wilkie entreated fellow members of the School Committee last night to reconsider their decision to close the Prudence Island School, the only one-room schoolhouse in the state.

His appeal failed on a tie vote. But that may not be the end of the story.

Prudence Island residents said after last night’s School Committee meeting that they have written a letter to the state commissioner of education, asking him to intervene to keep the school open.

Prudence Island parents would have to send their kids to a mainland school by ferry and bus -- adding up to a school day over ten hours long. At the moment there are only two children enrolled in the K-4 school, so one can see the financial arguments for closure. Nonetheless, it seems grossly unfair for island parents to be cut off with a flippant recommendation that they home-school, especially given that they are still required to pay for the public schooling they are now being denied. Vouchers or tax credits would seem the least that should be done for them.

Australian Museum thief sentenced

It was the biggest museum theft in the nation's history, with more than 2,000 specimens, including a skull from the now-extinct Tasmanian tiger, stolen from Sydney's Australian Museum. Former museum pest controller Hendrikus van Leeuwen, convicted of the theft, was today jailed for up to seven years for what a judge described as "enormous, incalculable harm". . .

Soon after he was hired in 1996, van Leeuwen began stealing specimens from the Australian Museum whose natural history collection - the oldest in the country - dates back to 1827. . .

His haul included skulls, skins and skeletons from animals such as the Ganges River dolphin, the clouded leopard and the rare Bulmer's Fruit Bat. . .

Some items were irreparably damaged, the court was told.

Some exhibits had their identifying numbers removed while others were bleached or, like the Tasmanian tiger skull, had teeth removed.

Full story here.

New York Goudstikker sale results

The drama and intrigue surrounding a Nazi-looted art collection proved more compelling than its lackluster sale today at Christie's New York. Almost a third of the artworks once owned by dashing Dutch art dealer Jacques Goudstikker went unsold, on par with many ordinary art auctions but unusual for one so highly touted.

The 45 lots fetched $9.74 million, well under the $17.4 million presale high estimate. A Salomon van Ruysdael landscape that sold for $2.28 million was the top Goudstikker lot. Goudstikker's daughter-in-law Marei von Saher, a former professional figure skater from Greenwich, Connecticut, is the seller.

Full article here. Other writeups here and here.

Turner's Glaucus and Scylla, which had been returned by the Kimball, was bought back by the Kimball for $6.42M. Top lot was a fine early Bellotto for $11M.

Austin museum official in art theft brouhaha

A Texas art museum executive and his wife face accusations that they attempted to snatch paintings from an art festival.

Police in Austin, Texas, arrested Nathan Sheppard, 37, and his wife Alexandra, 33, Sunday. Nathan Sheppard, the Austin Museum of Art finance and operations director, was charged with burglary and evading arrest, while his wife was named in a burglary count, the Austin American-Statesman reported Wednesday.

Wonder if the police had their house searched? Seems obvious, but I've heard of more than one instance where someone was caught red-handed trying to sell items from a stolen collection, only to be released on bail before a search could be made for the rest of the missing items. Full article here. Sheppard has now resigned, so this does not look like a case of mistaken arrest. It is to be hoped that his misdeeds were limited to his off-work time.

Patna Museum theft: crores of rupees

Just in from New Delhi:

The CBI has filed the second chargesheet in the Patna museum theft case, which indicates a major security lapse at the premises. The thieves had actually succeeded in their second attempt after leaving enough proof of their first aborted operation which could have easily been detected.

A total of 18 idols, worth crores of rupees in the global antique market, of the Pala dynasty period were stolen from the museum in September last year. The agency has so far recovered 17 of them with the arrested accused giving no clear indication about the 18th.

"Crores of rupees" -- I shall have to remember that expression. A crore is equal to ten million (that's a hundred lakh, by the way). A crore of rupees is worth $246,609 at today's exchange rate.

As a side note, it's interesting that the term "idol" appears to have no negative connotation in Indian English -- which makes perfect sense given the different underlying cultural background, but which is still a bit startling for those of us unused to a matter-of-fact acceptance of idols and idolatry.

Seeing the Intrepid

You may have visited the Intrepid when in New York, but I bet you didn't get this view.

Disarming the drama department

Yale has reversed its decision to ban prop weapons on stage in the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre. But instead of simply admitting that the ban was ill-considered -- which one could certainly honorably do, pleading overreaction in the shock and horror of the moment -- Yale administrators have instead chided those who protested the ban as selfish while imposing a new, less onerous, but equally foolish requirement that Yale audiences henceforth be informed before each performance that the weapons on stage are not real. What next? Perhaps announcements should also be made that stage villains are really just actors, that stage lovers are actually quite indifferent to each other, and that if someone should die in the course of a play, they will come back at the end to take their bows.

Pandemics: learning from the past

Despite all the contributions of modern medicine, most authorities seem to agree that much of the progress towards longer, healthier lives over the past hundred-odd years has come from preventative measures: in particular, raising living standards and improvements in sanitation. And as this article notes, even in the absence of a cure, epidemics can be successfully blunted -- if there is enough vision and will:

When the Spanish flu reached the United States in the summer of 1918, it seemed to confine itself to military camps. But when it arrived in Philadelphia in September, it struck with a vengeance.

By the time officials there grasped the threat of the virus, it was too late. The disease was rampaging through the population, partly because the city had allowed large public gatherings, including a citywide parade in support of a World War I loan drive, to go on as planned. In four months, more than 12,000 Philadelphians died, an excess death rate of 719 people for every 100,000 inhabitants.

The story was quite different in St. Louis. Two weeks before Philadelphia officials began to react, doctors in St. Louis persuaded the city to require that influenza cases be registered with the health department. And two days after the first civilian cases, police officers helped the department enforce a shutdown of schools, churches and other gathering places. Infected people were quarantined in their homes.

Excess deaths in St. Louis were 347 per 100,000 people, less than half the rate in Philadelphia. Early action appeared to have saved thousands of lives. . .

This month, researchers published two new studies in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences comparing public-health responses in cities like St. Louis and Philadelphia.

Using mathematical models, they reported that such large differences in death rates could be explained by the ways the cities carried out prevention measures, especially in their timing. Cities that instituted quarantine, school closings, bans on public gatherings and other such procedures early in the epidemic had peak death rates 30 percent to 50 percent lower than those that did not. . .

What these results mean for a future epidemic is not clear. “If avian flu became a pandemic tomorrow,” Dr. Ferguson said, “we would start a crash program to make a vaccine.”

But he added that rigid preventive measures like quarantines, mandated mask wearing and widespread business closings would still need to be put in place.

“What our study shows,” he continued, “is that interventions even without a vaccine can be effective in blocking transmission. What’s much less certain is whether society is prepared to bear the costs of implementing such intrusive and costly measures for the months that would be required to manufacture a vaccine.”

It's not as if there's any choice, though. To dither under such circumstances is to die.