Urban Vancouver

From the Museum of London: Much ado about Something in Shoreditch: Shakespeare’s first theatre uncovered.

In one of the most exciting finds of recent years, Museum of London archaeologists have unearthed the remains of what is believed to be one of London’s earliest playhouses, and Shakespeare’s first, in Shoreditch. A wonderful serendipity saw the discovery made during excavations on a site being prepared for the building of a new theatre, by the Tower Theatre Company. To quote the Bard: "The wheel has come full circle."

It has long been known that an open air playhouse, called The Theatre, stood in this area, but traces of its exact location have proved elusive. A venture of the travelling player James Burbage, it was one of London’s first dedicated playhouses when it opened in 1576, and it was here that a young William Shakespeare trod the boards as part of The Lord Chamberlain’s Men company of players, and had his first plays performed.

A tenancy dispute led to The Theatre being dismantled and its timbers transported south of the river, where they were used to construct The Globe in 1599.

Museum of London Archaeology, whose previous excavations at the sites of the Rose, Globe and Hope theatres, and earlier work on The Theatre, has helped map out the Shakespearian city, found the footings of what appears to be part of a polygonal structure during their evaluation of the site at New Inn Broadway, Shoreditch.[continue]

In Britain, the government line of ‘trust us, this is for your safety’ has been interrupted by — imagine! — a bit of bad news. From The Times: ‘Fakeproof’ e-passport is cloned in minutes.

New microchipped passports designed to be foolproof against identity theft can be cloned and manipulated in minutes and accepted as genuine by the computer software recommended for use at international airports.

Tests for The Times exposed security flaws in the microchips introduced to protect against terrorism and organised crime. The flaws also undermine claims that 3,000 blank passports stolen last week were worthless because they could not be forged.

In the tests, a computer researcher cloned the chips on two British passports and implanted digital images of Osama bin Laden and a suicide bomber. The altered chips were then passed as genuine by passport reader software used by the UN agency that sets standards for e-passports. [continue]

Now first there’s the common words quiz. How many of the most common words in the English language can you list within five minutes? Go on now, we’ll wait here. I’ll even hold your beer for you.

Once you’re done with that, move on to the random sentence structure filler, which is more fun. The site explains what to do, and adds "It’s like Mad Libs… without the work!"

Ah, mad libs. Now that reminds me of a net classic from 1997, Spam Libs. Back in the day when spammers used their real email addresses, that technique led to some highly amusing results.

All of this is brought to you by stupidly high temperatures, which make innocent people surf the web instead of going outside the way they usually do.

From The Independent: The truth about the Picts.

The Picts have long been regarded as enigmatic savages who fought off Rome’s legions before mysteriously disappearing from history, wild tribesmen who refused to sacrifice their freedom in exchange for the benefits of civilisation. But far from the primitive warriors of popular imagination, they actually built a highly sophisticated culture in northern Scotland in the latter half of the first millennium AD, which surpassed their Anglo-Saxon rivals in many respects.

A study of one the most important archaeological discoveries in Scotland for 30 years, a Pictish monastery at Portmahomack on the Tarbat peninsula in Easter Ross, has found that they were capable of great art, learning and the use of complex architectural principles.

The monastery – an enclosure centred on a church thought to have housed about 150 monks and workers – was similar to St Columba’s religious centre at Iona and there is evidence they would have made gospel books similar to the Book of Kells and religious artefacts such as chalices to supply numerous "daughter monasteries".

And, in a discovery described as "astonishing, mind-blowing" by architectural historians, it appears that the people who built the monastery did so using the [continue]

Broccoli is good for you — really good for you! From the BBC: Broccoli may undo diabetes damage .

Eating broccoli could reverse the damage caused by diabetes to heart blood vessels, research suggests.

A University of Warwick team believe the key is a compound found in the vegetable, called sulforaphane.

It encourages production of enzymes which protect the blood vessels, and a reduction in high levels of molecules which cause significant cell damage.

Brassica vegetables such as broccoli have previously been linked to a lower risk of heart attacks and strokes. [continue]

What if you’d bought a house in a good neighbourhood, moved in, and then realized that you had a major rat problem caused by the old ladies next door? The LA Weekly tells of Scott and Liz Denham, who had that very problem: Unchallenged by Health Officials, Elderly Twins Fed Local Vermin Population.

"You start to realize that, as you go to that property, ‘Wait a minute. Something isn’t right here,’" says Scott. He hadn’t paid much attention to the house next door. But now, he noticed, "You couldn’t see in any of the windows. I don’t know if it was tarp, but it wasn’t just curtains. It was blacked out. You couldn’t see in the house. The front door was rotted."

When he crept closer,the odor — "a urine stench" — was "unbearable." By the end of their first long weekend in the Palisades, Liz was stressed out, peering at shadows. The more she peered, the more rats she saw. Standing in her own master bedroom, she found herself at eye level with a group of rats who clearly had a routine, slipping methodically in and out of drains and cracks on her neighbors’ outside wall.

She saw three rats squeeze out of a roof drain in a precision, shoulder-to-shoulder group, Ratatouille-style. Another rat pack traveled along the dusty, reeking hedge on the property line. The hedge was a rat highway, and it swayed under its commuters’ weight. [continue]

I love the way the writer of this article, Max Taves, includes information from so many different sources. Hurrah, Max! A fascinating read.

Stories like this make me want to climb on my soapbox to give my one piece of house-shopping advice: go interview the neighbours before you buy a house. They’ll tell you if there are crazy old ladies feeding rats, or if the dog-breeder down the street lets her 74 hounds yip and howl for hours. People selling a house don’t want you to know these things, so they’ll try to arrange it so that you don’t find out. Ask questions, and walk through the neighbourhood at different times of the day when you don’t have an appointment.

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

From The Press and Journal: Ancient palace found in dig on hill.

Archaeologists have uncovered ancient traces, from tiny bead ornaments to massive walls, of a forgotten prince’s palace on the slopes of Bennachie in Aberdeenshire.

Only yards from a busy car park used by walkers visiting the landmark hill, a 15-strong team rediscovered remains of Maiden Castle just below the surface of a wooded hillside mound.

A stone’s throw from the Rowantree car park, near Pitcaple, and also close to one of the most important Pictish carved monuments in the country, the two-week dig confirmed the importance of the 2,000-year-old fort area.

"The outline of the Pictish fort is now clearly defined by the circle of ancient trees here," said Edinburgh-based archaeologist Murray Cook. [continue]

From AlphaGalileo: First indication for embalming in Roman Greece.

A Swiss-Greek research team co-lead by Dr. Frank Rühli from the Institute of Anatomy, University of Zurich, found indication for embalming in Roman Greek times. By means of physico-chemical and histological methods, it was possible to show that various resins, oils and spices were used during embalming of a ca. 55 year old female in Northern Greece. This is the first ever multidisciplinary-based indication for artificial mummification in Greece at 300 AD.

The remains of a ca. 55-year old female (ca. 300 AD, most likely of high-social status; actual location: Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki, Greece) shows the preservation of various soft-tissues, hair and part of a gold-embroidered silk cloth. This unique find allows [continue]

From the BBC: Ancient rock carvings discovered.

More than 100 new examples of prehistoric art have been discovered carved into boulders and open bedrock throughout Northumberland and Durham.

The 5,000-year-old Neolithic carvings of circles, rings and hollowed cups, were uncovered by volunteers.

One of the most interesting discoveries was [continue]

From The Times: Que? Spanish crew’s lack of English sank the Mary Rose.

For generations, the reason why the Mary Rose sank during a battle with a French invasion force has divided historians.

Now a new theory can be added to the list of suggestions about why the pride of Henry VIII’s navy was lost: two thirds of its crew were foreigners who failed to understand orders.

Forensic science examinations of the 16th-century crew’s skulls have revealed that the majority were not British but southern European, most probably Spanish.

Researchers believe that the vessel’s fate was sealed because of their inability to understand their officers’ orders when it began taking on water in the Solent, off Portsmouth, in 1545. [continue]

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.

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 Olympic Games. [continue]

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, Patch of Grass.

But this latest technique, which has never been used before, has unveiled the pigments van Gogh used in the original painting.

Over two days the scientists bombarded the painting with a powerful pencil-thin beam of X-rays, which caused the atoms in the picture to release "fluorescent" X-rays of their own which the scientists measured.

As the different chemicals that van Gogh used to paint the image release differing amounts of fluorescence, they were able to map the picture in great detail. [continue]

• Van Gogh Portrait Of A Women Revealed Behind Another Painting - sciencedaily.com (see image)
• Visualization of a Lost Painting by Vincent van Gogh Using Synchrotron Radiation Based X-ray Fluorescence Elemental Mapping - ACS Publications

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 difficult to trace. (…)

Gary said the fact that the anchor is partly made of wood, rather than iron, dates it back as far as the early 1800s. [continue, see photo]

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 had to be closed to save the paintings from encroaching mould. A replica, Lascaux II, was built nearby and has proved equally popular.

One thing that strikes the visitor is the exuberance of the compositions, with hundreds of animals, including bison, horses and deer, parading along the walls and ceilings, often overlapping. A big problem in sorting out possible groupings of animals, and possible motives for painting them, has been the issue of contemporaneity — what was painted when?

A recent study by scientists at the Louvre’s research and conservation laboratories has suggested [continue]

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 a suspicious package under the Transitway bridge at Hurdman station last Wednesday that turned out to be part of a geocache. Geocaching is a game that involves searching for hidden packages using GPS co-ordinates. (…)

Police are urging geocachers who hide packages to tell police exactly where they are [continue]

Dear police (especially Insp. Tyrus Cameron of the Ottawa Police),

Geocachers are not likely to tell you about every cache they hide; the idea of doing that would never cross their minds.

But you’re supposed to be good at figuring stuff out, right? Ok, so how do you think geocachers know where to look for the hidden cache boxes? They find cache locations listed on the web, that’s how. And you can find those locations too, in seconds. It doesn’t take four-hours or two dozen police officers.

If you think some suspicious box might be a geocache, just have somebody back at the office take a quick peek at geocaching.com. What do you want to bet that the geocaches in your neighbourhood are already listed there?

• Frequently Asked Questions about Geocaching - geocaching.com
• How to Geocache - instructables.com
• Intro to Geocaching for the GPS Nomad - nomad3k.com
• Geocaching - Wikipedia

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 evolved, the scientists say. [continue]

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 far the biggest of its kind ever discovered. Four Greek vessels found off the coasts of Israel, Cyprus and France are at most 15 metres long.

The one in Gela is also of particular value for scholars who will be able to delve into Greek naval construction techniques thanks to the amazing find of still-intact hemp ropes used to ’sew’ together the pine planks in its hull — a technique described in Homer’s Iliad. "Gela’s ancient ship is the patrimony not only of Sicily but of all humanity," said Sicily’s regional councillor for culture Antonello Antinoro, who watched Monday’s operation. [continue]

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 site contains over 650 artefacts from the 7th century BC, including numerous items made in other parts of the world. [continue]

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 13 locations on chromosomes, or loci, commonly used to distinguish people.

The FBI estimated the odds of unrelated people sharing those genetic markers to be as remote as 1 in 113 billion. But the mug shots of the two felons suggested that they were not related: One was black, the other white.

In the years after her 2001 discovery, Troyer found dozens of similar matches — each seeming to defy impossible odds.

As word spread, these findings by a little-known lab worker raised questions about the accuracy of the FBI’s DNA statistics and ignited a legal fight over whether the nation’s genetic databases ought to be opened to wider scrutiny.

The FBI laboratory, which administers the national DNA database system, tried to stop distribution of Troyer’s results and began an aggressive behind-the-scenes campaign to block similar searches elsewhere, even those ordered by courts, a Times investigation found. [continue]