Stressed over sums

Or, in American, "angst over addition":

Some 13.5m adults in the UK become stressed out when asked to carry out basic sums, research suggests.

And 10m adults lack confidence in using literacy skills, analysis of questionnaires completed by 1,001 adults for Learndirect suggests.

The most common stress-raisers were working out cooking times, writing notes for the boss and tough spellings.

So maybe it isn't just kids who are having trouble with basic math -- or looking at it another way, if you don't get it down young, you might never get it down at all. Not to take the survey too seriously, however, as it appears to have been commissioned by a company specializing in providing remedial education. At the end of the BBC writeup, there is a box with a list of "Stressful Situations", which includes "Using grammar or apostrophes correctly". At least the survey participants were worried about it. . . .

He bore witness

An Englishman who survived the Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz and dedicated his life to telling the story of the Holocaust, has died, aged 97.

Leon Greenman was living in Holland with his Dutch wife Esther, and their son, when they were rounded up in 1943 and sent to the death camp in Poland.

His wife and three-year-old son Barney died there but London-born Mr Greenman survived six different death camps. . .

Mr Greenman later said he had promised God if he lived, he would let the world know what happened during the war. . .

BBC Jerusalem correspondent Tim Franks, who interviewed Mr Greenman in 1995 to mark the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, said he literally lived behind bars there - with bars on the windows and his letterbox sealed - as he had been targeted by neo-Nazis.

From the BBC.

WW2 destroyer located off Norway

A wreath-laying ceremony is to be held later for 110 people who died when their Royal Navy destroyer was sunk off Norway during World War II. . .

HMS Hunter, an 1,880-tonne H-class destroyer, had a crew of 145 - 110 of whom were killed when it was sunk . . .

There have been several attempts to find the vessel over the years, but it was the Norwegian mine hunter Hnoms Tyr, while on an exercise with the Royal Navy, the Norwegian navy and the Dutch navy, which made the discovery.

From the BBC.

Medieval buckle found in Perth

Archaeologists unearthed a medieval belt buckle in Perth following work to repair a collapsed sewer. . .

The copper alloy buckle is believed to date back to the 12th Century and was found along with animal bones, shells and pottery. . .

The buckle is similar to work found in Scandinavia, but it is believed it was made in Perth or elsewhere in Scotland.

A padlock, also dating from about 1150 onwards, was also found at the site, but it is not in such good condition.

Historical objects are often well preserved under the streets of Perth because the area is very water-logged.

From the BBC.

Revising the history of Viking dress

Vivid colors, flowing silk ribbons, and glittering bits of mirrors - the Vikings dressed with considerably more panache than we previously thought. The men were especially vain, and the women dressed provocatively, but with the advent of Christianity, fashions changed, according to Swedish archeologist Annika Larsson.

"They combined oriental features with Nordic styles. Their clothing was designed to be shown off indoors around the fire," says textile researcher Annika Larsson, whose research at Uppsala University presents a new picture of the Viking Age.

Full article here, with photos and further links.

Roman villa excavation appeal

Why is it that other newspapers haven't followed the Times of London's lead in actively promoting public support of archeology and historic preservation?

An excavation is about to start at one of the most important Roman villas in Western Europe. Its spectacular mosaics were saved by readers of The Times five years ago after being placed on the World Monuments Fund's list of the most endangered sites.

One of Britain's leading archaeologists is to explore the 1.6 hectare (4 acre) site around Brading Roman Villa on the Isle of Wight. Barely 15 per cent of it has been excavated and the dig is expected to last five years. . .

The finds could include mosaics, although it is unlikely that they would match the quality of those within the villa itself with their depictions of peacocks signifying eternal life, Orpheus charming the beasts of the forest and Tritons, or sea deities, carrying reclining nymphs on their backs.

New England athenaea

Today's New York Times has an article on historic membership libraries:

As if tailor-made for a weekend getaway, a series of historic athenaeums lines up along a virtual Athenaeum Alley in New England. Open for visits are athenaeums in Newport and Providence, R.I.; in Boston and Salem, Mass.; and in Portsmouth, N.H.

Visiting these bookish sanctuaries, which are housed in historic buildings in a number of architectural styles, provides an opportunity to touch remnants of American history. Many of the same books, newspapers, maps and documents that were read in colonial times can be viewed, admired and (with some limitations to nonmembers) handled.

Visitors to the Redwood Library and Athenaeum in Newport, the oldest lending library in America, can survey at close range the 755 titles in the library’s Original Collection. This is a selection of books that 46 educated Newport residents collectively purchased from England in 1748; they built the library to house the collection.

Antiquities looters play rough?

Indiana Jones is in the news, but this all too real story hasn't received much attention:

Rumours that the fire in a Bulgarian train that killed eight was an assassination attempt against a famous archeologist have spread in his hometown of Shumen.

Professor Rasho Rashev, director of the National Archaeological Institute with the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, was among those who died in the Sofia-Kardam night train fire. . .

Rashev's colleagues local 24 Hours daily an assassination attempt might have been provoked by his efforts against treasure looters.

From Novinite.

UPDATE: More on the fire and the investigation here.

"Based off"

Where did this horrible expression come from? I had never noticed it before, but a good half of the undergraduate papers my wife was recently grading included either "based off" or "based off of". Looking online I found this Boston Globe article from last month, which notes that while the earliest Nexis reference dates back to 1979, the surge in usage has taken place in just the past few years. Googling "based on" still produces far more hits than "based off", but the latter still is good for over four million citations at last count. I wasn't able to find all that much more on the expression, aside from this Metafilter thread which predictably sees commentors line up behind prescriptivist or descriptivist banners. Seems rather pointless, that: for the self-proclaimed descriptivists, it seems to be all or nothing -- either you embrace every linguistic mutation, or you must be an intolerant, reactionary, tide-commanding prescriptivist. I say forget the labels, embrace felicitous neologisms, and hold the line against outright mistakes -- "based off" emphatically included.