An eclectic assortment of stuff: food, archaeology, fun, books, history, geekery, etc.
Posted in language on Oct 31st, 2008
From BBC Wales: E-mail error ends up on road sign.
When officials asked for the Welsh translation of a road sign, they thought the reply was what they needed.
Unfortunately, the e-mail response to Swansea council said in Welsh: "I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated".
So that was [...]
Posted in DNA, history & archaeology on Oct 31st, 2008
From the New York Times: Phoenicians Left Deep Genetic Mark, Study Shows.
Posted in history & archaeology on Oct 30th, 2008
From National Geographic: “Spider God” Temple Found in Peru.
A 3,000-year-old temple featuring an image of a spider god may hold clues to little-known cultures in ancient Peru.
People of the Cupisnique culture, which thrived from roughly 1500 to 1000 B.C., built the temple in the Lambayeque valley on Peru’s north coast.
The adobe temple, found this summer [...]
Posted in books & lit, history & archaeology on Oct 30th, 2008
From Wikipedia: Danse Macabre.
Dance of Death, also variously called Danse Macabre (French), Danza Macabra (Italian) or Totentanz (German), is a late-medieval allegory on the universality of death: no matter one’s station in life, the dance of death unites all. La Danse Macabre consists of the personified death leading a row of dancing figures from all [...]
Posted in history & archaeology, religion on Oct 29th, 2008
From the BBC: Mystery of cardinal’s missing bones.
A forensic archaeologist has raised fresh questions over why no remains were found in the grave of an English cardinal in line to become a saint.
It comes just days before artefacts owned by Cardinal John Henry Newman go on display ahead of his possible beatification.
Tens of thousands of [...]
From the New York Times: Dry-Ice Martini and Electric Cake.
When does a recipe become a science project?
Is it when the compulsion to create an edible electrical circuit keeps a cook up all night, wrapping Twizzler string licorice in pure silver?
Is it when a baker decides to bake 20 equilateral-triangle-shaped pecan pies for Thanksgiving, then attach [...]
Posted in religion on Oct 29th, 2008
From the LA Times: Vatican switchboard sees a human touch as the answer.
Telecommunications technology of the early 21st century has produced a phenomenon known as "phone hell": an audio inferno where callers are tormented either by mechanized voices or human ones with less soul than the machines.
But the opposite exists. It can be found here [...]
Posted in music on Oct 29th, 2008
From Scientific Blogging: Beatles Unknown "Hard Day’s Night" Chord Mystery Solved Using Fourier Transform.
It’s the most famous chord in rock ‘n’ roll, an instantly recognizable twang rolling through the open strings on George Harrison’s 12-string Rickenbacker. It evokes a Pavlovian response from music fans as they sing along to the refrain that follows:
"It’s been a [...]
Posted in history & archaeology on Oct 29th, 2008
From the Guardian: Wreck of Titanic sister ship finds new destiny as tourist attraction.
Nearly 92 years have elapsed since Captain Charles Bartlett, standing in his pyjamas on the bridge of the biggest vessel in the world, the HMHS Britannic, gave the call to abandon ship.
It was 8.35am on November 21 1916. The four-funnel ocean liner, [...]
Posted in history & archaeology on Oct 29th, 2008
From ENCToday: Little object, big find from shipwreck.
One of the smallest artifacts recovered during the latest dive expedition at the shipwreck presumed to be Queen Anne’s Revenge is getting big attention.
The circular, dime-sized piece has been resting on the ocean floor for 300 years, but early examination indicates it may be the first coin to [...]
Posted in history & archaeology, music on Oct 28th, 2008
From the Beeb: Sea shanty recordings unearthed.
Relatives of a sea captain from Sunderland have heard their long dead ancestor singing sea shanties recorded in the 1920s.
The songs, which were in a collection recorded on wax cylinders by American academic James Madison Carpenter, were restored for a BBC documentary.
Mark Page, born in 1836, ran away to [...]
Posted in history & archaeology on Oct 28th, 2008
From National Geographic: Inca Elite Imported Diverse "Staff" to Run Machu Picchu.
Inca nobility at Machu Picchu relied on special, permanent servants from the far corners of the empire to manage the royal estate, according to a new study of human skeletons found buried at the site. (…)
Royal retainers, known as yanacona, may have been brought [...]
Posted in history & archaeology on Oct 28th, 2008
From the LA Times: Copper ruins in Jordan bolster biblical record of King Solomon.
A massive copper smelting plant in the biblical land of Edom is at least three centuries older than researchers previously believed, placing it firmly in the traditional timeline of King Solomon, considered the greatest ruler of Israel, researchers reported Monday.
The existence of [...]
Posted in animals, birds, insects, etc on Oct 28th, 2008
From nature.com: Early bird gets the better song.
Birds that come from the earlier eggs in a brood are more likely to be better singers, scientists have found.
In most bird species, song is used by males to demonstrate their fitness to potential mates, and many studies have shown that the healthiest males tend to sing the [...]
From csmonitor.com: Québecois: maligned accent may have its roots in royal courts.
Québec’s francophones have long been ridiculed by the Parisian French – the scholars, elites, and aesthetes from the ancestral homeland. They have deemed the Québecois accent an "abomination" of what they consider the most beautiful language.
They shouldn’t sneer.
The Québeckers’ much-maligned accent can be traced [...]
Posted in art, history & archaeology on Oct 28th, 2008
From Neatorama: Negative Campaigning in Medieval Time:
Negative political campaigns and mudslinging aren’t anything new – in fact, the practice harks back to medieval time. [continue, see image of mural, oh my.]
Posted in history & archaeology on Oct 28th, 2008
I like weird old appliances and kitchen implements (you should see my ice crusher!) so HarpWeek’s 19th century advertisements for appliances is just my kind of thing.
There are other delights lurking in the HarpWeek’s advertising section, too, like this 1865 cartoon advertising yeast powder. And who can resist An Appeal to Manhood when it’s [...]
Posted in history & archaeology on Oct 27th, 2008
From The Telegraph: Letters from King George III to his son Prince William have been unearthed.
A remarkable series of letters sent by King George III to his son Prince William IV have been unearthed in which he offers fatherly advice on joining the Royal Navy as well as scoldings for disobedience and falling into debt.
The [...]
Posted in history & archaeology, religion on Oct 27th, 2008
From The Guardian: Researchers dig up the dirt on father of Protestantism
German scientists have reconstructed an extraordinarily detailed picture of the domestic life of Martin Luther, the 16th-century reformer and father of Protestantism, by trawling through his household waste uncovered during archaeological digs on sites where he used to live.
Beer tankards, grains of corn, cooking [...]
Posted in history & archaeology on Oct 27th, 2008
From New Scientist: Why did Neanderthals have such big noses?.
The Neanderthal’s huge nose is a fluke of evolution, not some grand adaptation, research suggests.
The Neanderthal nose has been a matter of befuddlement for anthropologists, who point out that modern cold-adapted humans have narrow noses to moisten and warm air as it enters the lung, and [...]
Posted in history & archaeology on Oct 27th, 2008
From Fire out of Africa: a key to the migration of prehistoric man.
The ability to make fire millennia ago was likely a key factor in the migration of prehistoric hominids from Africa into Eurasia, a researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Institute of Archaeology believes on the basis of findings at the Gesher Benot [...]
Posted in fun on Oct 27th, 2008
Oh, delightful. From BoingBoing: German traffic cops angered by British driver who mocks traffic cams with a Muppet.
Someone in Germany is driving an automobile built for UK roads and has installed a Muppet in the passenger seat. The speed cameras in Germany are made to take photos of drivers who sit in the left side [...]
Posted in history & archaeology on Oct 27th, 2008
From All Africa: Namibia: End of Shipwreck Dig, Start of Years of Study.
Excavations at the site where the remains of a centuries-old shipwreck were discovered near Oranjemund almost seven months ago have ended — and now the real work of studying what has been hailed as Namibia’s most exciting archaeological discovery in decades at least [...]
Posted in strange stuff on Oct 26th, 2008
From Pink Tentacle: Monsters in mid-1870s news prints.
For a brief period in the mid-1870s, artistic woodblock prints known as "newspaper nishiki-e" were a popular form of mass entertainment in Japan. These colorful prints fed the public’s enormous appetite for sensationalism by retelling shocking stories culled from the major newspapers of the day. The Meiji government [...]
Posted in environment on Oct 26th, 2008
From the New York Times: Up, Up and Away.
Shara and Scott Di Valerio wanted to build a deck for their hot tub, a place to relax in the woods on their five acres east of Seattle. But at some point, as they found themselves up in a stand of fir trees with a majestic [...]