Which way to the Hippodrome?

Originally from the WSJ, reprinted here:

On a drowsy May day in the country, tractors and combines were lumbering down dirt roads when, suddenly, a cloud of dust rose up on the horizon. Birds scattered. Rumbling across the green landscape came seven racing chariots, each pulled by four horses.

Riding in the chariot decorated with an engraving of Alexander the Great was Luiz Augusto Alves de Oliveira, a 50-year-old sugar-cane farmer who has an epic plan: returning chariot racing to its ancient glory. . .

De Oliveira is part of a highly committed global community of horse and history buffs who believe that chariot racing is a sport whose time has come again, after a hiatus of a millennium or so . . .

Last September in Paris, director Robert Hossein staged five performances of a $17 million Ben-Hur re-enactment at the Stade de France, featuring hundreds of extras appearing as charioteers, gladiators and pirates. It drew close to 300,000 spectators.

Wine madness, continued

A month or so back there was an article in the Wall Street Journal about the boom in advanced security systems for wine cellars. Never got around to posting the thought, but my immediate reaction was how things have changed in a few short decades, from buiding fallout shelters to safeguarding one's stocks of overpriced plonk.

As usual, however, it's human nature to miss the threat within -- and the world of wine is no exception:

Many in Sausalito still can't believe who is at the center of the tale -- a man so woven into the civic fabric that he called himself "Joe Sausalito" in his slice-of-Marin-life newspaper column. He was a gregarious city commissioner with influential friends, and an oenophile who belonged to the local wine society -- that is, until the society's 1959 Chateau Lafite-Rothschild vanished.

Police say Mark Anderson abused the trust he built, starting a wine storage firm for collectors and then selling 8,000 bottles out the back door to fund a lavish lifestyle. Facing embezzlement charges, police say, Anderson kept right on selling -- then really fouled things up when he tried to cover his tracks.

Federal prosecutors recently accused Anderson of setting an October 2005 fire at a warehouse in Vallejo where he rented space for the wine. The flames spread through the building, consuming 6 million bottles owned by 92 Napa Valley wineries and 43 collectors. Their value: $250 million.

Full article here.

It's heeeeeere . . . .

That Chinese-made toothpaste, tainted with a chemical that killed scores in Panama? It ain't just Panama:

Consumers were advised yesterday to discard all toothpaste made in China after federal health officials said they found Chinese-made toothpaste containing a poison used in some antifreeze in three locations: Miami, the Port of Los Angeles and Puerto Rico. . .

The United States is the seventh country to find tainted Chinese toothpaste within its borders in recent weeks.

From today's NY Times.

License plate chaos in the UK

The Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) says a record number of vehicles are being cloned to escape motoring fines and commit crimes.

More than 40,000 sets of number plates were stolen in 2006, a rise of almost 25%, according to police estimates.

"Stolen" here presumably including plate numbers "borrowed" for new, unauthorized plates.

Acpo's Coventry-based Vehicle Crime Intelligence Service says it now has no confidence in the ability of the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) licensing system to prevent cloning.

From the BBC. Electronic tagging is being looked at; a big part of the problem is the extensive reliance on traffic enforcement cameras, which don't check to see if the plates belong on the car carrying them.

TB in the air

Recent headlines have given much space to the case of Harley Speaker -- a lawyer, no less -- who traveled repeatedly while infected with a particularly dangerous strain of tuberculosis. So far, no reports of anyone else becoming infected -- in which case, the entire episode may prove to be a great benefit. If existing quarantine measures failed so badly here, with one infectious individual, what does that portend for future pandemics? Let us hope that this incident provokes the necessary reforms. As noted here:

Perhaps the most significant legal issues in Speaker's case concern the federal quarantine law, and the difficulty federal health officials had trying to learn the identities of those who were exposed to Speaker . . .

The quarantine order was the first issued by the federal government since a patient with smallpox was isolated in 1963, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Leave a tool unused too long, and it is bound to become unusable.

CDC officials have been requesting changes in the nation's antiquated quarantine laws to gain easier access to airline and ship passenger lists, provide patients a clearer appeals process when subjected to quarantines and give health officials explicit authority to offer vaccinations and medical treatment to quarantined people. . .

The legal rights of a quarantined person, including the right to request a hearing, are not clear under current law, Gostin said. Some legal scholars said the absence of clear guidelines could lead to a legal tangle that might stall government quarantine actions during an outbreak of pandemic flu or other contagious diseases.

Speaker can challenge the constitutionality of the quarantine order, and might even be able to seek a federal payment for damages, Gostin said.

Airlines can be slow to hand over passenger information because of concerns of violating customer privacy. It was not until late Wednesday that the CDC got full information from Air France about U.S. passengers on Speaker's May 12 flight from Atlanta to Paris.

One proposed change in the law would require airlines and cruise lines to electronically submit passenger and crew lists to the CDC upon request.

The prospect of an epidemic decimating a population unhindered while the lawyers argue is horrible yet all too believable.

FOLLOWUP in today's NY Times only confirms the problem:

When asked why the health organization (CDC) could not move more quickly and catch up with Mr. Speaker before he took more flights, Dr. Gerberding said in the press conference that much of the previous week’s activity had been spent debating issues concerning the laws and regulations that govern isolation and quarantine in the United States and internationally.

Architectural confusion?

More news from Europe:

A German woman in Dusseldorf blocked the entrance to an underground station when she mistook it for a subterranean car park, police said on Wednesday.

Not the first time at the station, apparently.

Back from Paris

Just got back yesterday from a quick week's tour of Brussels and Paris. Hadn't been in Brussels since I was a grad student; in the interim, I've probably changed more than the city. In any event, there wasn't enough time for a proper reacquaintance, so a return trip is inevitable.

Paris was more of a working visit this time. Rather too rainy for comfortable strolling, but as a fallback plan sitting in a cafe or restaurant and looking outside wasn't so bad. My French colleagues were keen on Asian food, so we ended up at one quite decent Korean place and one decidedly substandard generic Vietnamese/Chinese/Thai restaurant. Given my choice, I'd save my Asian eating for other cities. The worst sushi experience I've ever had was in Paris -- absolute dogfood.

Great show at the Bibliothèque Nationale, but only for a very short time (20 May to 24 June): Trésors carolingiens, for which they've dragged out all the great Carolingian manuscripts which haven't been on display for decades, and which likely won't be out again like this for decades to come. Not much publicity for this, but a must-see.