Another dead language

A woman believed to be the last native speaker of the Eyak language in the north-western US state of Alaska has died at the age of 89.

Marie Smith Jones was a champion of indigenous rights and conservation. She died at her home in Anchorage. She helped the University of Alaska compile an Eyak dictionary, so that future generations would have the chance to resurrect it.

Nearly 20 other native Alaskan languages are at risk of disappearing. . .

According to Michael Krauss, a linguist and professor with whom she worked, "she was very much alone as the last speaker of Eyak" for the last 15 years.

From the BBC.

ADDENDUM: Note this NPR story:

Every two weeks, one of the world's 7,000 languages becomes extinct. Some succumb to dialects, others to a dominant language. . .

David Harrison, a professor of linguistics and co-director of National Geographic's Enduring Voices project, explains why we should care and how to save them.

Another related story here. For further reading: When Languages Die.

More troubles for São Paolo art museum

More bad news for the São Paulo Museum of Art. The museum, site of the theft last month of paintings valued at more than $50 million, has been threatened by São Paulo state authorities with temporary closing. . .

In court proceedings, the authorities contend that the museum has been operating for 40 years without formal permission from the city, the police and the fire service. Mariza Schiavo Tucunduva, a state official in charge of health and safety, said a recent inspection had shown that the fire system was not operating, extinguishers were missing, and exits were not clearly marked

From the NY Times.

Yenikapi excavations

A belated update on a story that we'll be following for years to come:

For centuries the harbour of Ancient Constantinople, modern Istanbul, was the inlet of the Golden Horn . . .

A second, mainly commercial, harbour, in use from the 5th-10th centuries AD, has been found on the south shore of the peninsula, on the Sea of Marmara. Yenikapi was discovered four years ago during construction of a rail link between Europe and Asia across the Bosphorus: it had become filled in with silt and forgotten.

Now one of the largest archaeological investigations in Europe, Yenikapi has produced waterlogged finds ranging in date from 7,000 years ago to the Ottoman age. Two dozen or so Byzantine ships are among the most important, says James Delgado of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology (INA) at Texas A&M University.

"This is one of the greatest nautical archaeological sites of all time, a repository of forgotten Byzantine shipbuilding," he says. "After analysis, the work at Yenikapi should rewrite the book on Byzantine shipbuilding, and the role of maritime trade in the history of Constantinople". . .

Yenikapi has ushered in a new age of nautical archaeology, hitherto concentrated on shipwrecks and upstanding harbour works. "Dry excavations of silted harbours are poised to tell us more about naval technology and hull construction than we might ever learn from a single shipwreck", says Deborah Carlson of the INA..

From the Times of London. Note that "dry" is relative, as the sites are often below the water table -- but still, it's a lot easier than working offshore. I'm still waiting for excavations at silted-up naval battlefields, a prime example being near Miletus, where the Battle of Lade was fought in 494 BC:

The ruins of the once prosperous city-port of Miletus are now ten kilometres distant from the coast and the Island of Lade now forms part of a rich agricultural plain.

ADDENDUM: More detail on the Yenikapi story at Barista, along with pictures and further links.

Shredded memories

We've posted before on the ongoing project to reconstruct shredded Stasi files. Wired published another article on the same subject last week; this passage was what caught my eye:

In November, the first children born after the fall of the wall turned 18. Evidence suggests many of them have serious gaps in their knowledge of the past. In a survey of Berlin high school students, only half agreed that the GDR was a dictatorship. Two-thirds didn't know who built the Berlin Wall.

Porca miseria

The world's gone mad:

A story based on the Three Little Pigs has been turned down from a government agency's annual awards because the subject matter could offend Muslims.

Interestingly, no mention of concern regarding potential offense to Jews, whose dietary restrictions are much the same.

The digital book, re-telling the classic fairy tale, was rejected by judges who warned that "the use of pigs raises cultural issues". . .

The judging panel also attacked the book's stereotyping of builders.

Another notoriously touchy group, those builders. The panel assumes they will be up in arms over being represented as pigs, two-thirds of whose work falls apart with a huff and a puff.

Saving energy at sea

The Age of Sail may be over, but the wind is still free:

Oil at more than $90 a barrel is concentrating minds in the shipping industry. Higher fuel costs and mounting pressure to curb emissions are leading modern merchant fleets to rediscover the ancient power of the sail.

The world's first commercial ship powered partly by a giant kite sets off on a maiden voyage from Bremen to Venezuela on Tuesday, in an experiment which inventor Stephan Wrage hopes can wipe 20 percent, or $1,600, from the ship's daily fuel bill.

Meanwhile, what works on land works on water, too:

But if Skysails is a relatively elaborate solution . . . shipping companies seeking immediate answers to soaring fuel prices and the need to cut emissions are, simply, slowing down. . .

"The number of shipping lines reducing speed to cut fuel costs has been growing steadily," Klein, whose organization runs safety surveys on more than 6,000 ships worldwide, told Reuters.

"Slowing down by 10 percent can lead to a 25 percent reduction in fuel use. Just last week a big Japanese container liner gave notice of its intention to slow down," he added.

Savings of up to 50% in fuel consumption are mentioned later in the article. From the Washington Post, which also notes:

The world's 50,000 merchant ships, which carry 90 percent of traded goods from oil, gas, coal, and grains to electronic goods, emit 800 million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year. That's about 5 percent of the world's total. . .

Shipping was excluded from the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol to slow climate change, and many nations want the industry to be made accountable for its impact on the climate in the successor to Kyoto, which runs to 2012.

Record Bronze Age axehead hoard found in Dorset

A coach driver discovered Britain's largest hoard of Bronze Age axeheads while waiting for a party of school-children at a Dorset farm.

Tom Peirce, 60, asked the farm’s owner if he could use his metal detector in one of the fields during his lunchbreak. Within minutes he heard a loud beep and found part of a bronze axe.

Over the next three days Mr Peirce and two other metal detectorists unearthed more than 500 items of Bronze Age metalwork, including 268 complete axeheads. The axes, buried at three separate locations more than 50 metres apart, could be worth tens of thousands of pounds, which Mr Peirce would share with the farm's owner, Alfie O'Connell.

From the Times of London.

Museum fire prevention: gas vs sprinklers

I wonder if this makes sense:

A new sprinkler system is being installed at Watkins Community Museum of History.

The $75,000 system replaces a 10-year-old FM-200 gas system used to put out fires in the 120-year-old building at 1047 Mass. The switch from gas to water is being made after a lightning strike two years ago caused most of the gas to be expended when the suppression system was set off. There was no fire and no damage from the lightning strike.

The hydrofluorocarbon gas in five of six tanks at the museum was expended at the time of the lightning strike. They were not refilled because of the expense, leaving only one tank for fire suppression. It would have taken about $40,000 to refill the tanks, Rebecca Phipps, museum director, said.

"We decided it would be better to go with water," she said.

The sprinklers are being installed on the top three floors, which includes the storage area for artifacts that are not on display. Once installed, the system will not protect the lower two floors or the basement.

I'd think that if properly installed, a gas system would be no more vulnerable to accidental discharge than sprinklers. It is true that museums can do much to minimize the risk of water damage from sprinklers by insuring vulnerable object are not left uncovered in the open, but it still seems that gas systems offer a huge advantage not just in the ease of cleanup but also in the greater sophistication of their triggering mechanisms. Sprinklers are normally temperature-actuated, requiring some serious heat before they go to work.

French WW1 veterans: and then there was one

Louis de Cazenave, who fought in the Battle of the Somme in 1916, died in his sleep at his home in Brioude, central France, his son Louis said.

Mr de Cazenave's death leaves Lazare Ponticelli, also 110, as the last "poilu", or French WWI veteran.

Full story here.