Friday, March 29, 2013
Science news
Synchrotron yields 'safer' vaccine
British scientists develop a new way to create an entirely
synthetic vaccine which does not rely on using live infectious virus,
meaning it is much safer.
Sea hares fool hungry predators with a sticky secretion that deactivates their sense of smell, scientists say. BBC Nature
Sea hares' sticky defence uncoveredCommonly used pesticides are damaging the brains of honey bees and affecting their ability to learn, two studies suggest.
Pesticides 'damage brains of bees'
Lightest-ever aerogel is only twice as heavy as hydrogen
Gao Chao's team had already been building macroscopic graphene materials in one and two dimensions; to create the new aerogel, the researchers branched out into the third dimension, using a new method of freeze drying the solutions of carbon nanotubes and graphene to create malleable carbon sponges.
PhD candidate Sun Haiyan explained, "It's somewhat like large space structures such as big stadiums, with steel bars as supports and high strength film as walls to achieve both lightness and strength. Here, carbon nanotubes are supports and graphene is the wall."
The new material is amazingly absorptive, able to suck in up to 900 times its own weight in oil at a rate of 68.8 grams per second — only oil, not water, which means it has massive potential as a cleaning material when it comes to events such as oil spills.
Photos from on top of the Great Pyramid
These shots are kind of fabulous, not just for the thrill of "yeah, somebody broke the rules!", but because of the perspective you get from on high that isn't visible in the many ground-level shots I've seen. From on top of the Pyramid, you can see how the stone is pockmarked and carved — it really looks like something humans cut out of the Earth. You can also see the graffiti left by generations of tourists in multiple languages; English, Arabic, French, and more. And you can see the edge of the modern city, shimmering just at the horizon. I don't think I'd previously had such a profound sense of how closely modern Egyptians lived and worked to the Great Pyramid, before. What a fascinating view!
Tattooine Photographed
Luke Skywalker's planet Tattooine has two suns that rise and fall close together. When Star Wars
first came out, it seemed ridiculous that a planet could revolve around
two stars at once, but as science fiction often goes, the real world
catches up later. French scientists have photographed a heavenly body
revolving around a binary star system. The possible planet is named
2MASS0103(AB)b, but is informally called Tattooine.Philippe Delorme of the Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France, and colleagues took the picture in November last year using a telescope in Chile. Searches in the telescope's archives turned up data on the object's position in 2002 (marked in the picture by a green arrow), allowing them to trace its orbital motion around the binary stars.Whether this mass is a planet or a star depends on how you define those things, as it appears now to sit on the dividing line between a planet and a star. Read more about Tattooine at NewScientist.
Also known as Tatooines, after a fictional world in Star Wars, planets that orbit binary stars have only been found before through indirect methods. The new object orbits at a distance of about 12.5 billion kilometres, close enough to its stars to have been born from a disc of dust surrounding them, like a planet. But it is 12 to 14 times the mass of Jupiter, placing it near the dividing line between planets and failed stars called brown dwarfs.
The $91,500 Crocodile Skin T-Shirt
This t-shirt, to be fair, is made out of crocodile, hence its price. Literally, the entire shirt is just luxurious, beautifully sewn swaths of crocodile. This makes it possibly rather uncomfortable, and perhaps a little heavy, for a t-shirt. Seems like you might feel a little clammy in it? Also kind of awkward to just have everyone stare at your shirt. ("Is that strange rich man wearing a crocodile???)And what does a $91,500 crocodile leather t-shirt look like? The Daily Mail has the pic. I'll wait till it goes on sale at Costco!
Forgive me for not having pictures of the t-shirt itself; photographs are forbidden at the Hermès store, most probably as an anti-knockoff policy, or possibly to keep secret the fact that there are t-shirts that cost MORE THAN THREE OR FOUR ACTUALLY QUITE DECENT CARS.
Thursday, March 28, 2013
The Daily Drift
Clear Skies Ahead!
Carolina Naturally is read in 191 countries around the world daily.
Let's run off and join the circus ...
Today is Barnum & Bailey Day
Today is Barnum & Bailey Day
Don't forget to visit our sister blog!
Today in History
| 1774 | Britain passes the Coercive Act against rebellious Massachusetts. | |
| 1854 | Britain and France declare war on Russia. | |
| 1864 | A group of Copperheads attack Federal soldiers in Charleston, Illinois. Five are killed and twenty wounded. | |
| 1885 | The Salvation Army is officially organized in the United States. | |
| 1908 | Automobile owners lobby Congress in support of a bill that calls for vehicle licensing and federal registration. | |
| 1910 | The first seaplane takes off from water at Martinques, France. | |
| 1917 | The Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) is founded, Great Britain's first official service women. | |
| 1921 | President Warren Harding names William Howard Taft as chief justice of the United States. | |
| 1930 | Constantinople and Angora change their names to Istanbul and Ankara respectively. | |
| 1933 | Nazis order a ban on all Jews in businesses, professions and schools. | |
| 1939 | The Spanish Civil War ends as Madrid falls to Francisco Franco. | |
| 1941 | The Italian fleet is routed by the British at the Battle of Battle of Cape Matapan | |
| 1941 | English novelist Virginia Woolf throws herself into the River Ouse near her home in Sussex. Her body is never found. | |
| 1942 | A British ship, the HMS Capbeltown, a Lend-Lease American destroyer, which was specifically rammed into a German occupied dry-dock in France, explodes, knocking the area out of action for the German battleship Tirpitz. | |
| 1945 | Germany launches the last of its V-2 rockets against England. | |
| 1946 | Juan Peron is elected President of Argentina. He will hold the office for six years. | |
| 1962 | The U.S. Air Force announces research into the use of lasers to intercept missiles and satellites. | |
| 1969 | Dwight D. Eisenhower dies at Walter Reed General Hospital in Washington, D.C. | |
| 1979 | A major accident occurs at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear power plant | |
| 1986 | The U.S. Senate passes $100 million aid package for the Nicaraguan contras. | |
| 1990 | Jesse Owens receives the Congressional Gold Medal from President George Bush. | |
| 1999 | An American Stealth F117 Nighthawk is shot down over northern Yugoslavia during NATO air strikes. |
Customers Abandon Wal-Mart As Their Treatment of Labor Wreaks Havoc on Sales
Wal-Mart’s infamously poor treatment of labor is starting to negatively impact its bottom line as customers abandon the superchain’s unstocked shelves, disorganized stores, and long waits for help.
Earlier this year, Wal-Mart’s low sales made the news, and then reports surfaced about their inability to keep the shelves stocked. Bloomberg reports that things are only getting worse for Wal-Mart:
Last month, Wal-Mart placed last among department and discount stores in the American Customer Satisfaction Index, the sixth year in a row the company had either tied or taken the last spot…“When you tell retailers they have to invest in people, the typical response is: ‘It’s just too expensive,’” Ton told Bloomberg.
Wal-Mart is entangled in what Ton (Zeynep Ton, a retail researcher and associate professor of operations management at the MIT Sloan School of Management in Cambridge, Massachusetts) calls the “vicious cycle” of under-staffing. Too few workers leads to operational problems. Those problems lead to poor store sales, which lead to lower labor budgets.
“It requires a wake-up call at a higher level,” she said of the decision to hire more workers.
Last month, Wal-Mart was freaking out about their low sales, which they tried to blame on “the January 1 payroll tax ‘increase’ and higher gas prices.” “In emails leaked to Bloomberg News, Jerry Murray, Wal-Mart’s vice president of finance and logistics, called February the worst start to a month he had seen in his seven years with the company. An email from another company executive said in part, ‘Where are all the customers? And where’s their money?’”
Where are the customers? According to Bloomberg they fled Wal-Mart’s poor customer service for places like Costco. You know Costco, where they pay their workers a fair wage and back legislation to increase the minimum wage.
Costco proved the repugican cabal and the corporate Scrooges wrong:
While Wal-Mart experienced February sales that were considered, “total disaster,” Costco’s earnings for the second quarter of the year climbed 39%. The New York Times reported, “Costco Wholesale’s net income for its second quarter climbed 39 percent as it pulled in more money from membership fees, sales improved and it recorded a large tax benefit.”Costco CEO Craig Jelinek openly supports raising the minimum wage to $11.50 an hour, “At Costco, we know that paying employees good wages makes good sense for business. We pay a starting hourly wage of $11.50 in all states where we do business, and we are still able to keep our overhead costs low. An important reason for the success of Costco’s business model is the attraction and retention of great employees. Instead of minimizing wages, we know it’s a lot more profitable in the long term to minimize employee turnover and maximize employee productivity, commitment and loyalty. We support efforts to increase the federal minimum wage.”
Costco’s good treatment of labor results in higher productivity and less turnover. Bloomberg reported:
Ton’s research has centered on retailers that include discount club Costco, whose chief executive officer, Craig Jelinek, offered his support publicly earlier this month for legislation to raise the federal minimum wage.Employees are an integral part of a company’s assets. Happy employees who feel good about working hard for a company that treats them fairly create good customer service. Costco is a great example of the long term viability generated by this old-fashioned business idea, before the age of gleeful, unapologetic greed and short term cash grabs.
Costco, which offers a starting hourly wage of $11.50 in all states and employee schedules that are generally predictable, has higher worker productivity and a lower rate of turnover than its competitors, Ton found.
Wal-Mart can’t keep its shelves stocked because it believes in cutting labor first in order to save money. Their utter disregard for long term business success has turned them into foolish Scrooges of flailing industry.
The customers are the market. If they’re not happy, they’ll go somewhere else. And they’re not happy with Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart’s entire business model is predicated upon sucking the most profit out of the least labor with no regard to their company image or customer satisfaction. That’s a short-term business model. The numbers don’t lie.
The chickens are coming home to roost for Wal-Mart. There’s only so long you can get by — even when offering the lowest prices — if your stores irritate and annoy shoppers to such an extent that they stop even trying to find what they need at your store. Wal-Mart was the leader in treating workers like crap, making sure they don’t work enough to qualify for health insurance, and thus forcing them into state and federal welfare programs even though they were employed.
It turns out that treating labor well is more than just the right thing to do. It’s also the key to long-term profitability. And contrary to what repugicans tell us, labor is not the enemy. Happy labor is actually a smart investment for a business.
Did you know ...
That military justice is broken say sexual assault victims
About the repugican cabal's Bachmann problem
And why you ask: Because Michele could face a house ethics probe over her presidential campaign
About how arctic ice loss amplified superstorm sandy
Why it's so hard to keep guns out of abusive homes
Here's a progressive manifesto
That Megan McCain thinks being a repugican who supports gay marriage is a bitch
That a 1,200-year-old Egyptian text describes a shape-shifting jesus
Jon Stewart Reveals Kool Cigarettes as the Source of the repugican cabal’s Minority Outreach Plan
Video of Part 1:
In Part 2 of the segment, Stewart shows how this repugican cabal’s new minority strategy already went off the rails at cpac.
The repugican cabal thinks they are going to fix their demographic issues by following the lead of an industry that got people hooked on their dangerous product by lying to them about the health risks of that product. That sounds about right. When your party is in such bad shape that you have to take marketing tips from an industry that professional creates addicts to kill, you’ve got real problems.
As cpac demonstrated, before the rnc can think about getting minorities hooked on their bad for their health toxins in their party platform they have to not be destroyed by the destructive behavior of their current addicts.
It isn’t a coincidence that the rnc would be inspired by Kool cigarettes, because both smoking and the beliefs of the repugican cabal are bad for your health.
CIA director promotes woman who approved destruction of CIA "harsh interrogation" videos
A woman has been placed in charge of the CIA’s clandestine service for the first time in the agency’s history, reports the Washington Post.
She's a veteran officer whom many in the agency support, and the
high-level appointment is seen as a step forward for women in
Washington. That's the good news! The bad news is...
[S]he also helped run the CIA’s detention and interrogation program after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and signed off on the 2005 decision to destroy videotapes of prisoners being subjected to treatment critics have called torture. The woman, who remains undercover and cannot be named, was put in the top position on an acting basis when the previous chief retired last month. The question of whether to give her the job permanently poses an early quandary for [CIA Director John] Brennan, who is already struggling to distance the agency from the decade-old controversies.
Controversy over Esquire profile of the SEAL who shot bin Laden (or maybe didn't)
Teen who pointed laser at aircraft jailed for 30 months
U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson sentenced a 19-year-old man on Monday to 30 months in federal prison for shining a laser pointer at a plane and police helicopter, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney's Office, which prosecuted the case.
Mother, aunt of Georgia baby slaying suspect Elkins arrested for lying to police
Mom Karimah Elkins, 36, and aunt Katrina Elkins, 33, were booked Tuesday for allegedly giving false statements to authorities
The mother and aunt of De’Marquise Elkins — the Georgia teen accused
of senselessly shooting a 1-year-old baby to death in his stroller —
have been arrested for allegedly lying to cops.
Mom Karimah Elkins, 36, and aunt Katrina Elkins, 33, were booked Tuesday
morning at the Glynn County jail on charges of making false statements
to authorities, a misdemeanor. Jail records show both women posted bond.
A 19 year old develops plan to clean up ocean trash vortexes
From Inhabitat:
Slat went on to found The Ocean Cleanup Foundation, a non-profit organization which is responsible for the development of his proposed technologies. His ingenious solution could potentially save hundreds of thousands of aquatic animals annually, and reduce pollutants (including PCB and DDT) from building up in the food chain. It could also save millions per year, both in clean-up costs, lost tourism and damage to marine vessels.
Let Children Be Bored to Foster Their Creativity
Idle
hands are the devil's playground notwithstanding, some experts now believe
that you should let children be bored, so they can develop their innate
ability to be creative:Dr Teresa Belton told the BBC cultural expectations that children should be constantly active could hamper the development of their imagination. [...]Hannah Richardson of the BBC explains: Here.
Dr Belton said: "Lack of things to do spurred her to talk to people she would not otherwise have engaged with and to try activities she would not, under other circumstances, have experienced, such as talking to elderly neighbours and learning to bake cakes.
"Boredom is often associated with solitude and Syal spent hours of her early life staring out of the window across fields and woods, watching the changing weather and seasons.
"But importantly boredom made her write. She kept a diary from a young age, filling it with observations, short stories, poems, and diatribe. And she attributes these early beginnings to becoming a writer late in life."
Sex discrimination begins in the womb
Women in India are more likely to get prenatal care when
pregnant with boys, according to groundbreaking research that has
implications for girls’ health and survival. The study by Leah Lakdawala
of Michigan State University [...]
Health News
Real henna has been used safely for thousands of years, but
tattoo stands frequently use an ingredient that poses risks.
A gut microbe that may contribute to people packing on the pounds produces a methane that can be detected in breath.
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford's long history of public drunkenness and brawling
Now, many people have come forward to say that Ford had become drunk and disorderly at military charity event called the Garrison Ball. These are just the latest in a series of incidents of public drunkenness for the mayor, who is a horrible embarrassment to the city of my birth.
The Toronto Star has a long account of Ford's frequent bouts of public drunkenness and brawling, including events that he lied about at the time and later had to apologize for.
However, over the next hour, people in attendance noticed that the mayor seemed impaired. According to interviews, he was “incoherent,” “stumbling,” “rambling,” “intoxicated,” “slurring,” “seemed to be drunk,” “was nervous, excited, sweaty, out of it.”
Military guests were offended at the mayor’s behavior, according to guests interviewed by the Star. “It felt disrespectful to the event,” said one organizer.
The six guests who provided accounts of the mayor’s condition spoke on condition of anonymity. The Star found that while these guests were concerned with the mayor’s condition, they did not want to be identified for two reasons. First, they did not want to be linked to a story that would cast a poor light on the annual Garrison Ball, which raises money for Wounded Warriors, a federally registered charity. Second, these guests, who all have prominent positions in the community, feared they would somehow be blacklisted for speaking out about the mayor.
Girls basketball team accused of putting urine in rival’s water
Parents of Monett High School players are upset about something that
happened at a girls basketball game at Cassville High School in
southwest Missouri. Cassville players admitted they poured urine into a
water cooler used by Monett players during the game. Parents of Monett
High School players have received a letter about the prank from Monett
school administrators.
The letter says four members of the Cassville team each urinated into a cup, then poured urine from only one player into the cooler. It says Cassville High School administrators learned about the prank. The letter says Cassville school leaders punished the players and are looking into whether "further discipline is warranted." It also says Cassville administrators "apologized for the incident and regret that anything of this nature has occurred."The letter says Monett school administrators are looking into the health risks involved, and asked infectious disease specialists for assistance.
"Our understanding at this time is that the individual whose urine was used will be undergoing tests to determine if any health risks are present. We will pass along any information we receive," says the letter, which was signed by Monett High School Principal David Steward and Athletic Director Daryl Bradley. Cassville administration would not comment on whether urine tests are in fact being done. Cassville School District Superintendent Jill LeCompte sent a written statement on the incident that says they've "investigated the incident and determined that an inappropriate act had occurred. Disciplinary actions have been taken."
The letter to Monett parents also ask that there be no retaliation. "We are asking you, as parents, to help us work with our girls and their friends to handle this situation with professionalism and restraint. We understand that all of us in Monett are angered and frustrated by this occurrence and the amount of time before the incident came to light. We encourage you to support our stance that retaliation in any way stoops to the level of the offense committed against us and is counter productive. Our goal is to work through any lingering issues and put this incident behind us quickly," the letter says.
The letter says four members of the Cassville team each urinated into a cup, then poured urine from only one player into the cooler. It says Cassville High School administrators learned about the prank. The letter says Cassville school leaders punished the players and are looking into whether "further discipline is warranted." It also says Cassville administrators "apologized for the incident and regret that anything of this nature has occurred."The letter says Monett school administrators are looking into the health risks involved, and asked infectious disease specialists for assistance.
"Our understanding at this time is that the individual whose urine was used will be undergoing tests to determine if any health risks are present. We will pass along any information we receive," says the letter, which was signed by Monett High School Principal David Steward and Athletic Director Daryl Bradley. Cassville administration would not comment on whether urine tests are in fact being done. Cassville School District Superintendent Jill LeCompte sent a written statement on the incident that says they've "investigated the incident and determined that an inappropriate act had occurred. Disciplinary actions have been taken."
The letter to Monett parents also ask that there be no retaliation. "We are asking you, as parents, to help us work with our girls and their friends to handle this situation with professionalism and restraint. We understand that all of us in Monett are angered and frustrated by this occurrence and the amount of time before the incident came to light. We encourage you to support our stance that retaliation in any way stoops to the level of the offense committed against us and is counter productive. Our goal is to work through any lingering issues and put this incident behind us quickly," the letter says.
No rest for Richard III's bones
Weeks after his remains were discovered under a car lot, Richard III's bones are yet to be put to rest.
The University of Leicester, which led the exhumation project, plans to
inter Richard at the local cathedral. But York, the seat of his branch
of the House of Plantagenet, wants him back.
Three of Tutankhamun’s Rings
(a) The green nephrite signet shows the King and Min.
(b) The three-dimensional bezel is formed from a lapis lazuli scarab
flanked by an inlaid falcon and moon barque on a cartouche-shaped base.
The inlays are green jasper and glass.
(c) The scarab bezel of the gold ring is of chalcedony; the underside
shows Thoth and the udjat.
Pompeii exhibition brings doomed town to life
Pompeii is the little Roman town that became a byword for sudden, violent death.A new exhibition at the British Museum wants it to be equally famous for raucous, exuberant life.
Most visitors will know how residents of Pompeii and its neighbor Herculaneum died - in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. The volcano, long thought dormant, belched out a superheated cloud of fast-moving gas and debris that incinerated residents where they stood - and preserved the towns as museums of Roman life, frozen in time.
"Pompeii and Herculaneum were ordinary towns, but it was an extraordinary disaster," said Vanessa Baldwin, assistant curator of the exhibition. "It was a tragedy, but it preserved them for us."
Pompeii's extraordinary end still fascinates, making it one of the world's most-visited ancient sites. "Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum," which opens Thursday and runs to Sept. 29, looks set to be one of the museum's biggest-ever hits. It has sold 50,000 advance tickets, and will reach an even bigger audience when a live event in June is broadcast to hundreds of movie theaters across Britain.
It aims to un-freeze the picture, bringing to life a vibrant society completely unaware that disaster was about to strike.
Many of the 450 objects in the show have never left Italy before. They have been loaned by Italian archaeological officials, who have themselves come under fire for the fragile state of the ancient site on the Bay of Naples.
The exhibition aims to give a vivid sense of how the towns' ancient residents lived, through artifacts including mosaics, paintings, carbonized furniture and even the charred remains of residents' meals.
"We want people to take a fresh look at the Romans," Baldwin said Tuesday. "We want them to come away feeling a bit closer to them, feeling like they can relate more to them. They can go into their kitchens and recognize things that they have in their own kitchen."
The exhibition is structured around the rooms of a typical wealthy resident's house, from the shops at the entrance to the atrium, bedrooms, kitchen and garden - and even the latrine. Among the items proudly displayed are the contents of a cesspit: broken jars, lamps and perfume bottles, coins and jewelry - though not, thankfully, the 700 bags of ancient excrement also found there.
Elsewhere there are sturdy cooking pots, elegant serving dishes and sleek mass-produced tableware, along with wooden items whose survival for 2,000 years - carbonized by the heat of the volcano - seems miraculous.
An elegant wooden side table and a baby's crib are not much different from versions in use today. The heat also preserved items of food, including bread, grains, dates and pomegranates.
Then, as now, food was a key part of home life and the economy. Some merchants grew rich from fish sauce, or garum, a Roman kitchen staple made from fermented mackerel heads and guts. Both ordinary and kosher varieties were available, and several of the elegant clay jars are on display.
British Museum Director Neil MacGregor said that what has emerged from the ash at Herculaneum and Pompeii "was not at all the Rome people thought they would find. It was much more complex - a much funnier, a much livelier place to live."
The exhibition shows that it was certainly a richly decorated, colorful world. Floors and walls were adorned with mosaics and frescoes of plants, animals and humans - the latter often in explicitly sexual poses.
Phalluses abound - on monuments, good-luck charms, even wind chimes - and there are examples of erotic art that shocked the 18th-century Europeans who rediscovered them. A marble statue of the god Pan coupling with a nanny goat is likely to stop 21st-century visitors in their tracks, too.
For all the familiarity of this Roman world, there are surprises. The exhibition reveals that Pompeii and Herculaneum were less stereotypically "Roman" places than we might think. Many residents were descended from Greeks or other groups, and more than half were slaves or freed slaves.
It was also an era of considerable social mobility. Freed slaves, known as liberti, were a powerful segment of society, owning businesses and properties.
A prominent role was played by women, who could own wealth and go into business, but not vote or hold public office. A fresco of a baker and his wife shows them as business partners and apparent equals.
Inevitably, the towns' sudden end casts a poignant shadow over the exhibition.
It's not known how many people died in the eruption of Vesuvius, but 1,500 bodies have been found in the two towns, which are still only partially excavated. Two-thirds of Herculaneum and a third of Pompeii remain buried.
In one room of the exhibition is a floor mosaic of a guard dog - an ancient "Beware of the Dog" sign. Elsewhere is the dog himself, contorted in agony in his final moments. Volcanic ash hardened around the canine corpse, which eventually rotted away. Centuries later, archaeologists poured plaster into the gap, creating a perfect dog-shaped mold.
The same technique has been used on some of the human victims, including a whole family, hunched against the deadly heat, a child huddled in its mother's lap.
Despite all the death, it is the vivid life of the towns that makes the strongest impression.
One exhibit is a sign from a dining room, which advises guests: "Don't dirty the couch covers, keep your eyes off other people's partners and take your quarrels home with you."
That's good advice, even now.
Most visitors will know how residents of Pompeii and its neighbor Herculaneum died - in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. The volcano, long thought dormant, belched out a superheated cloud of fast-moving gas and debris that incinerated residents where they stood - and preserved the towns as museums of Roman life, frozen in time.
"Pompeii and Herculaneum were ordinary towns, but it was an extraordinary disaster," said Vanessa Baldwin, assistant curator of the exhibition. "It was a tragedy, but it preserved them for us."
Pompeii's extraordinary end still fascinates, making it one of the world's most-visited ancient sites. "Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum," which opens Thursday and runs to Sept. 29, looks set to be one of the museum's biggest-ever hits. It has sold 50,000 advance tickets, and will reach an even bigger audience when a live event in June is broadcast to hundreds of movie theaters across Britain.
It aims to un-freeze the picture, bringing to life a vibrant society completely unaware that disaster was about to strike.
Many of the 450 objects in the show have never left Italy before. They have been loaned by Italian archaeological officials, who have themselves come under fire for the fragile state of the ancient site on the Bay of Naples.
The exhibition aims to give a vivid sense of how the towns' ancient residents lived, through artifacts including mosaics, paintings, carbonized furniture and even the charred remains of residents' meals.
"We want people to take a fresh look at the Romans," Baldwin said Tuesday. "We want them to come away feeling a bit closer to them, feeling like they can relate more to them. They can go into their kitchens and recognize things that they have in their own kitchen."
The exhibition is structured around the rooms of a typical wealthy resident's house, from the shops at the entrance to the atrium, bedrooms, kitchen and garden - and even the latrine. Among the items proudly displayed are the contents of a cesspit: broken jars, lamps and perfume bottles, coins and jewelry - though not, thankfully, the 700 bags of ancient excrement also found there.
Elsewhere there are sturdy cooking pots, elegant serving dishes and sleek mass-produced tableware, along with wooden items whose survival for 2,000 years - carbonized by the heat of the volcano - seems miraculous.
An elegant wooden side table and a baby's crib are not much different from versions in use today. The heat also preserved items of food, including bread, grains, dates and pomegranates.
Then, as now, food was a key part of home life and the economy. Some merchants grew rich from fish sauce, or garum, a Roman kitchen staple made from fermented mackerel heads and guts. Both ordinary and kosher varieties were available, and several of the elegant clay jars are on display.
British Museum Director Neil MacGregor said that what has emerged from the ash at Herculaneum and Pompeii "was not at all the Rome people thought they would find. It was much more complex - a much funnier, a much livelier place to live."
The exhibition shows that it was certainly a richly decorated, colorful world. Floors and walls were adorned with mosaics and frescoes of plants, animals and humans - the latter often in explicitly sexual poses.
Phalluses abound - on monuments, good-luck charms, even wind chimes - and there are examples of erotic art that shocked the 18th-century Europeans who rediscovered them. A marble statue of the god Pan coupling with a nanny goat is likely to stop 21st-century visitors in their tracks, too.
For all the familiarity of this Roman world, there are surprises. The exhibition reveals that Pompeii and Herculaneum were less stereotypically "Roman" places than we might think. Many residents were descended from Greeks or other groups, and more than half were slaves or freed slaves.
It was also an era of considerable social mobility. Freed slaves, known as liberti, were a powerful segment of society, owning businesses and properties.
A prominent role was played by women, who could own wealth and go into business, but not vote or hold public office. A fresco of a baker and his wife shows them as business partners and apparent equals.
Inevitably, the towns' sudden end casts a poignant shadow over the exhibition.
It's not known how many people died in the eruption of Vesuvius, but 1,500 bodies have been found in the two towns, which are still only partially excavated. Two-thirds of Herculaneum and a third of Pompeii remain buried.
In one room of the exhibition is a floor mosaic of a guard dog - an ancient "Beware of the Dog" sign. Elsewhere is the dog himself, contorted in agony in his final moments. Volcanic ash hardened around the canine corpse, which eventually rotted away. Centuries later, archaeologists poured plaster into the gap, creating a perfect dog-shaped mold.
The same technique has been used on some of the human victims, including a whole family, hunched against the deadly heat, a child huddled in its mother's lap.
Despite all the death, it is the vivid life of the towns that makes the strongest impression.
One exhibit is a sign from a dining room, which advises guests: "Don't dirty the couch covers, keep your eyes off other people's partners and take your quarrels home with you."
That's good advice, even now.
Cake hotel whose rooms were filled with edible fixtures and decor
A Mediterranean-inspired bedroom, with edible furnishings, a caramel popcorn-filled bathtub, floating meringues and edible pearlescent popcorn bunting, all created using Light Soft Brown sugar. The perfect location for a midnight feast!
A Pirates of the Caribbean room, with a giant treasure chest full of edible pearls, ginger spiced doubloons and cutlasses, which visitors can spray gold themselves, and rum and raisin chocolate brownies and tea cakes – all made from Taste Experience Caribbean-inspired Light Muscovado sugar
A British-inspired Golden syrup sugar room, with a giant golden-syrup lion, patriotic treacle tarts in the shape of the British Isles and a giant tower of doughnuts
A Mayan-inspired room hidden in the cellar featuring a Mayan fudge temple, complete with floating meringue ‘clouds’, ‘sacrificial’ salted caramel and chocolate hearts, and Mayan-inspired carved gold cookies all made from Taste Experience Mayan-inspired golden caster sugar
A Mississippi-inspired ‘Mardi Gras’ room featuring a five foot long rainbow cake in the traditional colours of green, yellow & purple, gold baby heads and of course King Cakes
A Barbados-inspired library, with edible shells, and beautiful hand-painted cookies, fruit cakes and florentines showcased as museum features inside vintage glass jars, all made from Barbados inspired Dark Muscovado sugar
A Guyanese-inspired room, complete with a sea turtle cake, and cake ‘turtle eggs’ buried in mounds of Demerara sugar
A South Pacific-inspired room with a huge two metre high Easter Island statue, made entirely from chocolate mud cake baked using Golden Granulated sugar
Eco-home which doesn’t have ‘rural character’ faces enforced demolition
With its higgledy-piggledy walls and turf roof it looks like the cosy
home of a friendly hobbit. But an eco-dwelling in rural Pembrokeshire
could become a test of the Welsh Government's grand designs on
sustainable living. Sculptor Charlie Hague and his wife Megan Williams
spent nearly a year creating their wooden roundhouse on private family land in Glandwr.
The single story building, fashioned with a reciprocal green roof and lime plastered straw bale walls cost £15,000 to construct and was completed just in time for the couple's first child allowing them to move out of the damp caravan where they had lived for the previous four years. They claim it was the only way they could afford to own their own home. Yet despite earning plaudits from environmental architects across the world the young family are now fighting an order to demolish their dream home because it is claimed it is harmful to the rural character of the locality. Pembrokeshire County Council has issued an enforcement order demanding they tear it down after going ahead with the build without first seeking planning permission.
"We built this house to provide our son with a healthy environment to grow up in. We were born in the area, went to school here, and have lived here all our lives. We wouldn't want to be anywhere else," said Mr Hague, 25. The artist uses sustainably sourced wood from his own land to make his work. The couple applied for retrospective planning permission. But the council says that the house is "not essential to provide accommodation for an agricultural or forestry worker". Ms Williams, 25, said they are devastated at the prospect of pulling it down and have begun a campaign to save their home. "I know it's not a possibility for everyone, and our situation here is unique, but if young people are to live and work in the area they need somewhere to live," she said.
Opponents say it is vital to enforce planning permission rules across Wales to prevent a repeat of what happened in Ireland were unregulated bungalow building before the financial crash saw the landscape scarred by development. However supporters insist that the building, which is next to the Lammas eco village, is created from the resources on the land and fulfills the Welsh Government's One Planet development policy which they claim gives the go ahead to building homes in open countryside in Wales provided they embody the principles of sustainable living and are zero carbon. The matter will now be decided by the Welsh Assembly. In a statement Pembrokeshire County Council said: "An enforcement notice has been served on this property as it is alleged that an unauthorized dwelling has been built in open countryside without planning permission. It is currently the subject of an enforcement appeal."
The single story building, fashioned with a reciprocal green roof and lime plastered straw bale walls cost £15,000 to construct and was completed just in time for the couple's first child allowing them to move out of the damp caravan where they had lived for the previous four years. They claim it was the only way they could afford to own their own home. Yet despite earning plaudits from environmental architects across the world the young family are now fighting an order to demolish their dream home because it is claimed it is harmful to the rural character of the locality. Pembrokeshire County Council has issued an enforcement order demanding they tear it down after going ahead with the build without first seeking planning permission.
"We built this house to provide our son with a healthy environment to grow up in. We were born in the area, went to school here, and have lived here all our lives. We wouldn't want to be anywhere else," said Mr Hague, 25. The artist uses sustainably sourced wood from his own land to make his work. The couple applied for retrospective planning permission. But the council says that the house is "not essential to provide accommodation for an agricultural or forestry worker". Ms Williams, 25, said they are devastated at the prospect of pulling it down and have begun a campaign to save their home. "I know it's not a possibility for everyone, and our situation here is unique, but if young people are to live and work in the area they need somewhere to live," she said.
Opponents say it is vital to enforce planning permission rules across Wales to prevent a repeat of what happened in Ireland were unregulated bungalow building before the financial crash saw the landscape scarred by development. However supporters insist that the building, which is next to the Lammas eco village, is created from the resources on the land and fulfills the Welsh Government's One Planet development policy which they claim gives the go ahead to building homes in open countryside in Wales provided they embody the principles of sustainable living and are zero carbon. The matter will now be decided by the Welsh Assembly. In a statement Pembrokeshire County Council said: "An enforcement notice has been served on this property as it is alleged that an unauthorized dwelling has been built in open countryside without planning permission. It is currently the subject of an enforcement appeal."
Crime Fighting Trees
Trees give us shade and suck CO2 from the atmosphere; now a study finds that trees may reduce crime in cities.
Russia's Seven Strong Men
The Manpupuner Rock Formations
Wolf Man
Trouble-making zoo orangutan given guard to stop younger apes learning from her
Frankfurt Zoo has posted a security guard at its orangutan enclosure to
watch a trouble making ape which has been taking apart the cage. The
worry is that young, impressionable orangutans might learn from her.
"She's not trying to break out, that is not her aim, she just messes with various things, including the fence, but also the water pipes and heating, and she causes damage. She uses branches and whatever else she can find as tools," Christine Kurrle, zoo spokeswoman said.
"So far she is the only one of the six who does this kind of thing but it is obviously not in our interest that the others learn how to manipulate the fence." The 20-year-old orangutan called Sirih, has become so good at making holes in the fence around her enclosure, and digging up the water and heating pipes that the zoo has stationed a security man to watch over her and raise the alarm at the first sign of trouble.
She may soon be on her way to a new home anyway, said Kurrle. "Sirih is being moved because she is a healthy, strong female and needs to leave the group to be paired with a mate. We don't know when or where yet, that will be determined by the international breeding program."
"She's not trying to break out, that is not her aim, she just messes with various things, including the fence, but also the water pipes and heating, and she causes damage. She uses branches and whatever else she can find as tools," Christine Kurrle, zoo spokeswoman said.
"So far she is the only one of the six who does this kind of thing but it is obviously not in our interest that the others learn how to manipulate the fence." The 20-year-old orangutan called Sirih, has become so good at making holes in the fence around her enclosure, and digging up the water and heating pipes that the zoo has stationed a security man to watch over her and raise the alarm at the first sign of trouble.
She may soon be on her way to a new home anyway, said Kurrle. "Sirih is being moved because she is a healthy, strong female and needs to leave the group to be paired with a mate. We don't know when or where yet, that will be determined by the international breeding program."
Surviving In Hostile Habitats
The Life Of Extremophiles
Scientists are amazed by the survival abilities of this motley crew and are currently researching their peculiar adaptations to find out whether they can be transferred to our own species.
Animals Literally Half Male And Half Female
Animal News
Birds do it, bees do it — but how did 3-ton dinosaurs with sharp, pointed spikes on their backs and tails get it on?
A mass extinction of supersized crocs at the end of the Triassic paved the way for dinosaurs to take over.
The seven sexes are randomly determined by a series of cut and paste genetic recombination events.
Counterfeit ingredients are increasingly being found in traditional Chinese medicines.
Animal Climate
Australia may lose a rare marsupial to the ravages of a rapidly warming world.
By warming the Arctic, the jet stream takes on a more meandering loop, which can push Arctic air further south.
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
The Daily Drift
Ever had one of those days ...
Carolina Naturally is read in 191 countries around the world daily.
Looks like Spring will arrive this weekend (two weeks late) ...
Today is Quirky Country Music Song Titles Day
Today is Quirky Country Music Song Titles Day
Don't forget to visit our sister blog!
Today in History
| 1350 | While besieging Gibraltar, Alfonso XI of Castile dies of the black death. | |
| 1512 | Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon sights Florida. | |
| 1802 | The Treaty of Amiens is signed, ending the French Revolutionary War. | |
| 1814 | U.S. troops under Gen. Andrew Jackson inflict a crushing defeat on the Creek Indians at Horshoe Bend in Northern Alabama. | |
| 1836 | The Mexican army massacres Texan rebels at Goliad. | |
| 1866 | President Andrew Johnson vetoes the civil rights bill, which later becomes the 14th amendment. | |
| 1884 | The first long-distance telephone call is made from Boston to New York. | |
| 1893 | The American Bell Telephone Company makes the first long distance telephone call to its branch office in New York. | |
| 1899 | The Italian inventor G. Marconi achieves the first international radio transmission between England and France. | |
| 1900 | The London Parliament passes the War Loan Act, which gives 35 million pounds to the Boer War cause. | |
| 1912 | The first cherry blossom trees, a gift from Japan, are planted in Washington, D.C. | |
| 1933 | Some 55,000 people stage a protest against Hitler in New York. | |
| 1941 | Tokeo Yoshikawa arrives in Oahu, Hawaii, to begin spying for Japan on the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor. | |
| 1942 | The British raid the Nazi submarine base at St. Nazaire, France. | |
| 1944 | One thousand Jews leave Drancy, France for the Auschwitz concentration camp. | |
| 1944 | Thousands of Jews are murdered in Kaunas, Lithuania. The Gestapo shoots forty Jewish policemen in the Riga, Latvia ghetto. | |
| 1945 | General Dwight Eisenhower declares that the German defenses on the Western Front have been broken. | |
| 1952 | Elements of the U.S. Eighth Army reach the 38th parallel in Korea, the original dividing line between the two Koreas. | |
| 1958 | The United States announces a plan to explore space near the moon. | |
| 1976 | Washington, D.C. opens its subway system. | |
| 1977 | In aviation's worst disaster yet, 582 die when a KLM Pan Am 747 crashes. |
Professor Or Hobo?
Gays and the Law
Gay people have been a part of America since this nation's founding -- and long before that.
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