An eclectic assortment of stuff: food, archaeology, fun, books, history, geekery, etc.
Posted in strange stuff on Jul 30th, 2008
Something to be glad about: you can die in relative obscurity, rest in peace, and know that nobody will ever sell your bloomers at auction for £4,500. Poor Queen Victoria hasn’t been as fortunate.
Posted in computer stuff, history & archaeology on Jul 30th, 2008
From the New York Times: Discovering How Greeks Computed In 100 B.C..
After a closer examination of a surviving marvel of ancient Greek technology known as the Antikythera Mechanism, scientists have found that the device not only predicted solar eclipses but also organized the calendar in the four-year cycles of the Olympiad, forerunner of the modern [...]
Posted in art, history & archaeology on Jul 30th, 2008
From The Telegraph: New X-ray technique reveals colour of hidden van Gogh.
A portrait of a woman by Vincent van Gogh that he later painted over has been revealed in more detail than every before thanks to a new X-ray technique.
Previous research had discovered an outline of the peasant’s head behind the Dutch painter’s later work, [...]
Posted in history & archaeology on Jul 30th, 2008
From the Hartlepool Mail: Ancient anchor a puzzle for experts.
The origins of a 200-year-old anchor dragged up from the depths of the North Sea looks set to remain a mystery.
Marine archaeologist Gary Green, of Tees Archaeology, says the anchor — which was discovered when it got caught up in a trawler’s net — will be [...]
Posted in art, history & archaeology on Jul 29th, 2008
From The Times: Many hands painted Lascaux caves.
The painted caves of Lascaux in the Dordogne region of France are one of the most famed monuments of Ice Age art. Dating back about 17,000 years, the great Hall of the Bulls and its adjacent chambers proved so popular with visitors that a generation ago the cave [...]
Posted in stupidity on Jul 29th, 2008
From the CBC: GPS game blamed for Ottawa bomb scare.
A treasure-hunting game is being blamed for a bomb scare that resulted in the four-hour closure of a major Ottawa road and an operation involving two dozen police officers, a hazmat team and the police explosives unit last week.
The scare was prompted by the discovery of [...]
Posted in animals, birds, insects, etc on Jul 29th, 2008
From the Beeb: Small shrew is heavyweight boozer.
A tiny tree-shrew that lives on alcoholic nectar could — pound for pound — drink the average human under the table, scientists have discovered.
Malaysia’s pen-tailed tree-shrew waits until nightfall to binge on fermented nectar from the bertam palm.
The animal could give insights into how humans’ alcohol tolerance first [...]
Posted in history & archaeology on Jul 29th, 2008
From ANSA: Ancient Greek ship fished from sea.
An ancient Greek trading ship that had lain on the seabed off the coast of Gela in southern Sicily for 2,500 years was brought to the surface for the first time on Monday. The ancient Greek vessel is 21 metres long and 6.5 metres wide, making it by [...]
Posted in history & archaeology on Jul 25th, 2008
From ansa.it: Tomb reveals ancient trade network.
The tomb of a woman who died around 2,600 years ago on the eastern Italian coast is helping archaeologists piece together the vast trade network that once linked this area with the Middle East, North Africa and Greece.
Experts working on a tomb near the port of Ancona say the [...]
Posted in DNA on Jul 25th, 2008
So I’m catching up on news items, and –oh my gosh! did you see this? From the L.A. Times: How reliable is DNA in identifying suspects?.
State crime lab analyst Kathryn Troyer was running tests on Arizona’s DNA database when she stumbled across two felons with remarkably similar genetic profiles.
The men matched at nine of the [...]
July 24th is the feast day of Saint Christina Mirabilis. Here’s a bit about her from the St. Christina the Astonishing page at Cynthia Large’s site:
Christina was born in the town of Saint-Trond in 1150. She was orphaned at fifteen, along with her two sisters, and worked as a shepherd, growing closer to God over [...]
I packed up my laptop and headed off to the summer cottage for a spell, planning to sign up for the new high-speed wireless internet access that’s being advertised in the area. I figured it would solve all my internet access problems in one fell swoop. Once settled at the cottage I phoned the company, [...]
Posted in history & archaeology on Jul 5th, 2008
From The Telegraph: Jacobean ‘Titanic’ discovered by archaeologists.
Marine archaeologists who explored the 600-ton vessel off Dorset believe it may have been as luxurious in its day as the Titanic.
Among the treasures they have retrieved is a statue of a merman whose eye sockets would have held precious stones.
The 4.5ft wooden figure was one of a [...]
From The Economist: Of sommeliers and stomachs.
Fine food sings on the palate, but pairing it with the right wine creates a chorus. Among those in the know, the plum, chocolate and spice flavours of Cabernet Sauvignons, Merlots, Pinot Noirs and Sangioveses best accentuate the rich flavours of red meats. Now, however, a group of researchers [...]
Posted in history & archaeology on Jul 3rd, 2008
From CNN: Recreating the sound of Aztec ‘Whistles of Death’.
Scientists were fascinated by the ghostly find: a human skeleton buried in an Aztec temple with a clay, skull-shaped whistle in each bony hand.
But no one blew into the noisemakers for nearly 15 years. When someone finally did, the shrill, windy screech made the spine tingle.
If [...]
Posted in technology on Jul 1st, 2008
If you suffer from dementia and can no longer remember basic things, how will you manage to perform simple tasks? A University of Toronto professor is designing tools that can help. From the University of Toronto Magazine: Home Smart Home.
Mihailidis and his colleagues have built an artificial intelligence system that can recognize when patients need [...]
Goodness! Somebody’s growing truffles on Vancouver Island. From the Vancouver Sun: Wait worth it for patient truffles harvesters.
It took seven years for Betty and Grant Duckett to harvest their first truffle, but for them it was worth the wait.
The couple retired to Vancouver Island after years of raising livestock on the Prairies. They wanted to [...]