"Dry drowning"

As if parents don't have enough to worry about:

Johnny Jackson, a 10-year-old American boy from South Carolina, died at home on Sunday from "dry drowning" more than an hour after going swimming and walking home with his mother. The sad event highlights a little known danger that parents and child carers should be aware of, that drowning can kill hours after being submersed in water.

The Medical News article doesn't really give any solid numbers on how common "dry drowning" (dying from water in the lungs) is, though it does note that a "not insignificant" component would be children dying after a bath.

Since this story appeared on the Today show, I expect it will cause a disproportionate degree of worry among parents. My usual yardstick for assessing relative risk is crude and subjective, but not necessarily inaccurate: do I personally know anyone, or anyone who knows anyone, who has been a victim? By that metric, I'm not going to lose any sleep over this particular scare-of-the-month. Teenage driving, that's another matter. . .

Machu Picchu looted

Machu Picchu, now Peru's biggest tourist attraction, was famously believed to have been discovered in 1911 by US explorer Hiram Bingham. . .

Now the story about its discovery by the western world has been shaken up by a team of historians who say a German businessman looted its treasures more than 40 years before.

They say the adventurer, Augusto Berns, who traded in Peru's wood and gold, raided the citadel's tombs in 1867 apparently with the blessing of the Peruvian government.

He had set up a sawmill at the foot of the forested mountain on which Machu Picchu stands and systematically robbed precious artefacts which he sold to European galleries and museums.

Only when one of the historians found a map in Peru's national museum were his activities traced.

From the BBC. New Scientist notes:

Berns' activities were uncovered by Paolo Greer, who in 1978 discovered an old map of the area and subsequently traced Berns' activities through documents in the National Library of Peru.

New Scientist has been given access to some of the documents Greer uncovered, which you can see on the right. Greer uncovered a sketch map of the area by Berns' partner, a lost geology book with material based on Berns' work, a booklet describing Berns' plans to loot Machu Picchu, and his handmade map of the area.

Greer's research will be published in South American Explorer Magazine.

Images of the documents may be viewed as links from the original New Scientist article. The AP writeup adds:

Peruvian historian Mariana Mould de Pease backs Greer's claim. She said she found in Yale University archives a letter of understanding between Berns and Peru's then-president to pillage the site, as long as the Peruvian government received 10 percent of the profits.

Flying fish video

See it here.

Human movements studied by phone

The whereabouts of more than 100,000 mobile phone users have been tracked in an attempt to build a comprehensive picture of human movements.

The study concludes that humans are creatures of habit, mostly visiting the same few spots time and time again.

Most people also move less than 10km on a regular basis, according to the study published in the journal Nature. . .

Although the scale of the latest study is unprecedented, it is not the first time that mobile phone technology has been used to track people's movements.

Scientists at MIT have used mobile phones to help construct a real-time model of traffic in Rome, whilst Microsoft researchers working on Project Lachesis are examining the possibility of mining mobile data to help commuters pick the optimum route to work, for example.

From the BBC. The Real Time Rome website is here.

World's largest restaurant

Syria may already boast some of the world's best food, but now it can also claim the world's largest restaurant.

The 6,014-seat Damascus Gate has taken the accolade from a Bangkok eatery serving a mere 5,000 diners.

From the BBC, with video.

Munch Museum to move

National and city officials announced plans Wednesday to move a popular museum dedicated to Norwegian painter Edvard Munch to a new building next to the national Opera House by 2014.

The city-owned Munch Museum is currently outside downtown Oslo, making it more difficult for visitors to reach, they said. The plan also calls for moving the national library and the city's Stenersen art museum to the same area, called Bjoervika.

From the International Herald Tribune.

Goudstikker update

A summary online, from the May Art+Auction.

Art thefts challenge Canadian police

The disappearance this month of 12 gold artifacts handcrafted by the influential native artist Bill Reid is exposing the underbelly of the Canadian art industry recently buoyed by record-setting sales. As Canadians increasingly gain confidence in artworks and cultural artifacts as promising and secure investments, a new wave of criminal activity in the art world is also taking root.

It is a problem Canadian police are being forced to address while scrambling to locate the Reid items, which disappeared overnight last week from a closely guarded exhibit at Vancouver's Museum of Anthropology. . .

The RCMP investigating the Reid thefts, for example, have no specialized section dedicated to the investigation of art theft. . . .

For the past several decades, most art thefts in Canada have been investigated simply as stolen property. Such an approach has deprived authorities of the opportunity to establish investigative protocols and a database of stolen artworks.

Detective Sergeant Alain Lacoursiere, with the Surete du Quebec, is one of only two investigators in Canada whose attention is devoted exclusively to looking for stolen art.

From the National Post. More on the Reid theft here, including this:

Initially, museum officials were unwilling to disclose the value of the stolen works, but then publicized the message that intact they were worth about $2-million, while the gold would be worth little more than $15,000 at market prices.

Getting that information out, says Toronto lawyer and art-theft expert Bonnie Czegledi, "probably" had an impact on the fate of the works.

One obviously doesn't want to help potential blackmailers maximize their returns, but at the same time, top priority in a case like this is to prevent destruction of the objects. If only this were done more widely in cases of stolen metal artifacts!

More on art theft in Canada here. As usual, the weakest link is usually human error.

Salander selloffs begin

The collapse of Salander-O'Reilly Galleries will undoubtedly take years to sort out, but the bankruptcy auctions have already begun. For an overview of the whole, messy story, at least as of this spring, see "The Art of the Steal" at portfolio.com.

When hedgehogs are outlawed, only outlaws will have hedgehogs

A man who attacked a teenage boy with a hedgehog has been fined by a New Zealand court.

William Singalargh, 27, had asked his victim if he wanted to "wear a hedgehog helmet" before hurling the animal at the 15-year-old. . .

A more serious charge of assault with a weapon - the hedgehog - was dropped. It carried a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

From the BBC. No mention of any charges relating to the abuse and apparent demise of poor ol' spiny.

"It never hurts to talk" -- or does it?

BARACK OBAMA FIRST VOWED to meet unconditionally with the leaders of America's foremost enemies in the YouTube Democratic candidates' debate on July 23, 2007. Since then he has reaffirmed and expanded on the commitment in a variety of contexts. . .

In Portland on May 18, Obama cited John F. Kennedy's 1961 summit with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna among the series of negotiations that led to America's triumph over the Soviet Union in the Cold War. The Vienna summit, however, disproves Obama's assertion regarding the unvarying value of meetings between enemy heads of state about as decisively as any historical episode can refute a thesis.

Although the article is clearly partisan, its central argument need not be: the notion that there is no downside to parley is widespread across the political spectrum. Read the rest here.

Sardinian necropolis under siege

An ancient Mediterranean necropolis described as one of the world's greatest historical sites is being submerged beneath cement, high rise housing and rubbish dumps, according to Italian conservationists.

Tuvixeddu - which means “hills with small cavities” in the Sardinian dialect - contains thousands of Phoenician and Punic burial chambers from the 6th century BC.

From the Times of London. More on Tuvxeddu here and here.

Morgan's new royal miniature prayer book

A major acquisition, belatedly noted:

The Morgan Library & Museum will put on special exhibition beginning May 20 an extremely rare Renaissance illuminated manuscript, the Prayer Book of Queen Claude de France (1499-1524), created around the time of her coronation in 1517. It is the most important single illuminated manuscript acquired by the Morgan in the last twenty-five years and will go on view in the East Room of the historic McKim building.

The tiny, jewel-like book, measuring just 2 3/4 by 2 inches, is richly illustrated with 132 scenes from the lives of Christ, the Virgin Mary, the apostles, and numerous saints. . .

The exhibition of the prayer book will include a second, related manuscript, the Prayer Book of Anne de Bretagne. Anne was Claude's mother and queen of France as the wife first of King Charles VIII and then King Louis XII. This manuscript, which was commissioned around 1495 by Anne for her son, was illuminated by Jean Poyer, a leading Tours illuminator in whose workshop the Claude Master is now thought to have trained. Side by side, the two juxtapose a mother’s book with her daughter’s and the work of one illuminator with that of his protégé.

Full press release here. More info, including an online virtual viewer, here.

While you're at it, you can check out the Morgan's three Gutenberg Bibles, all of which are on display until September. Press release excerpt:

For the first time in more than a decade, The Morgan Library & Museum
presents all three of its Gutenberg Bibles, the largest number of copies in any single collection. Three Gutenberg Bibles allows visitors to see important differences in copies of the first substantial printed book in the Western world, an epoch-making technological innovation, yet also a highpoint in the art of graphic design. The exhibition is on view from May 20 through September 28, 2008, in the Morgan’s Clare Eddy Thaw Gallery.

Digital ink doesn't run

Just had one of my camera SD memory cards go through the wash after being left in a shirt pocket. The label's now faintly crinkled, but it seems to be working fine.