Archive for June, 2008
Roman ships by the (half) dozen
I am not really into boat and ship archaeology; I have based the following on the blog by Peter Alaca (http://groups.google.com/group/sci.archaeology/browse_thread/thread/29c4a2423d95c5ed), with corrections and additions based on newspaper coverage. During archaeological research at De Meern (part of the large-scale suburban development Leidsche Rijn, west of Utrecht), a wreck has been found of a hitherto unknown type of Roman ship. The excavated remnants show [...]
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Homer and astronomy
Constantino Baikouzis and Marcelo O. Magnasco have argued that the individual who described the killing of the suitors in the Odyssey (whom we know as Homer) has situated his story at a particular date, or rather at a specific moment in time, viz. a particular solar eclipse. I give you the authors’ abstract: ”Plutarch and Heraclitus believed a certain passage in [...]
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O tempora, o mores
I quote from a BBC News item (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7473303.stm): ‘Jack Straw has said laws in England and Wales to let witnesses give evidence anonymously will be rushed through Parliament as this was “an emergency”. The law lords’ ruling last week that defendants needed to know who was testifying against them has already led to one £6m [...]
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Obituary Cyd Charisse
Today we got the news that Cyd Charisse has passed away. She was a great dancer (her career started with the Ballet Russe) and a great stage presence. For me she will always be the femme fatale in the Broadway Melody sequence in Singin’ in the Rain. She was certainly not a small woman (especially [...]
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Rome’s poor
Not every poor inhabitant in Rome spent his time at the games munching his free sandwich. The burial site of Ponte Galeria, excavated during the past year, has provided paleopathologists with a lot of evidence showing the back-breaking toil of those buried there, probably working in Ostia’s harbour. The Associated Press news item: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hKvgUclxefB2iLkkRP6K-nzmlSKQD916P4HG0.
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War profiteering
(Almost) everybody will be aware of the war profiteering that has been going on in Iraq, the beneficiaries being American firms, large and small, some of them, like Halliburton’s, intimately linked with the White House. But it is always a bit worse than you expected: in a BBC programme (below) we get the figures — but also [...]
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