Saturday - December 04, 2010

eye candy

Something eye pleasing to help warm the cold night ... works for me. How is it for you?

Here’s the one I like the best .... 

GEMMA ARTERTON

THE END of the line ....

Posted by peiper     on 12/04/2010 at 01:40 PM   
Filed Under: • Eye-Candy •  
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Double Entendre?

Snow, ice, wind, and record breaking cold continue to hammer the UK. In the land of “we don’t really have winter, just a bit of inconvenience” it has been snowing steadily for days. Some areas have received well over a foot of the white stuff, with nearly double that falling in the higher elevations. People are freezing to death, the roads are closed, the railways are a mess, schools are shut. Are people in panic mode? Are they finally losing that famous stiff upper lip and their famous ability for muddling through?  Sometimes a news headline is more telling than intended ...

PEIPER’S BDROOM

Philip Hammond, the Transport Secretary, was accused of “breathtaking complacency” after he told MPs that only 107,000 tons of the recommended 250,000-ton “strategic stockpile” of salt had been delivered. The rest was due to arrive over the next six weeks.

The stockpile was intended to provide back-up supplies when councils and the Highways Agency run out. It also emerged that councils were taking stringent measures to preserve existing supplies. One council has told staff to spread grit on only “one side of the pavement” in an attempt to conserve their stocks.  The alleged failure of councils to spread enough grit has been blamed by many motoring organisations for the paralysis of the road network.

Travellers by air and rail also continued to suffer. Gatwick, Southampton, Durham Tees Valley and London City airports were all closed for at least part of yesterday. Flights were cancelled at Heathrow, Luton and Newcastle. Train services operated by Eurostar, Southeastern, First Hull Trains, ScotRail, CrossCountry and East Midlands were also disrupted by the heavy snow.

About 7,000 schools were closed, while about two in five people failed to turn up for work, dealing a huge blow to the economy in the run-up to Christmas.

Mr Hammond has already ordered an inquiry into the failures that have left much of Britain at a standstill. In the Commons yesterday, Maria Eagle, the shadow transport secretary, criticised the Government’s response, telling Mr Hammond to “get a grip”.

“You are not filling the House with any kind of confidence that you are dealing with your responsibilities adequately,” she said. “Do you believe that a grit audit is an adequate response from the Government to the current suffering of motorists forced to sleep freezing in their cars, train passengers dropped off at stations with no way of being rescued and half the population struggling to get to work?”

Huh. Road salt shortages. Funny, when I first saw the headline I thought it was about government policy and politics. You know, one of those double intender thingies.

Posted by Drew458     on 12/04/2010 at 12:46 PM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •  
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someone sued man in Austria for yodeling ….. fake story? I don’t know but think so.

I think I may have to soon reinstall windows. Oh joy.

Late booting ... okay here. See what you people make of this.
I found the story a couple days ago, and held off posting it because frankly, I didn’t believe it. I’m still not certain. I used Snopes with no results and myth buster thing. I Googled it but still can’t verify if it’s true. I did not see it in any newspaper.

It just seem so convenient and so typical of the world but also seems too easy. So ....
If anyone out there in cyberspace knows of a way to verify one way or another, please let me know as well as where you went.

If it isn’t true, it’s still pretty funny in a way.  Under the heading of what can ppl think of next.  If it is true, it would be crazy and funny under the heading of, what can ppl think of next.
So here ...  what do you think?

Muslims sues man in Austria for yodeling
Wednesday, December 1, 2010

A man in Austria was sued because he offended his Muslim neighbours. In the land of yodeling he was doing just that. He was yodeling while cutting grass when his muslim neighbours thought he was mocking them.

According to a local news paper the Muslims were in the middle of prayer hence the reason they thought he was mocking them. The Muslims are not Austrian citizens by birth, they are immigrants suing a Austrian man for doing something that Austria is known for.

The 63 year old man was fined by the court and had to pay up 800 Euros after judges ruled he mocked the Muslims.

HERE’S WHERE I FOUND THIS STORY

Posted by peiper     on 12/04/2010 at 12:16 PM   
Filed Under: • weird stuff •  
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   Friday - December 03, 2010

Audiophile Steampunk

No pretending going on here either. This thing actually works. R^N™ Retro to the N^th!

Steampunk creations are usually very cool and trendy with their hip retro style, but here’s a guy who seems to have taken the word “steampunk” a bit too literally, by building a steam-powered turntable to play his punk LPs on.

Built by a New Zealand based steampunk artist called Asciimation, the turntable features a a small steam engine he built from spare bits he had in his garage, The platter speed is controlled by a servo which uses a coil to read six magnets under the platter, with everything controlled by an Anduino processor.

The engine speed is controlled by a throttle being driven from a servo controlled by an Arduino. The RPMs are measured by a coil detecting the passing of six magnets in the edge of the platter and the approximate revs are displayed on an analogue meter. I am using the PID controller library to do the work out how to control the servo based on the input speed. The safety valve is making the whistling noise at the start as steam pressure is built up. A small flick of the platter will start the engine and then the Arduino takes over trying to maintain 33 1/3 RPM.

Here is a link to the steam powered record player in action, playing the Sex Pistols, doing God Save the Queen!. Real Steam. Real Punk.

How does it sound? Like real crap. The record is warped to hell and back again, just like they were back in the day. He uses a wooden turntable. No mass. He should have cut one on a lathe out of naval bronze or lead or iron. Brute mass is what makes steam power run smoothly. Flywheels. I doubt if he’s using any kind of modern inverted viscous oil micro-bearing either, like modern turntables do. Probably just an old hinge pin in a hole. I don’t think the left handed tonearm is contributing to the cacophony, but the VTA and tracking forces could be way out of kilter. And I was kind of expecting that spinning thingy with the two brass balls as a speed regulator and not some bit of circuitry. But that would be pure steam, and this is steampunk; a blend of the new and the fantastic with the look of the old and elegant, so I can accept a bit of hidden wiring. Plus that lets him use that to-die-for gorgeous ammeter.

And the handmade steam engine is named Nigel. Nigel seems a bit asthmatic to run for a full LP. Aside from that, what’s not to love?

h/t to The Vinyl Anachronist, over to Dvice. Plenty more pics at ASCIImation.

Posted by Drew458     on 12/03/2010 at 03:08 PM   
Filed Under: • Fun-Stuff •  
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hey daddy, I want a brand new car, champaign, caviar … DADDY, you oughta get the best for me

Just a kind of human interest story. 

Hey, Daddy, I want a diamond ring, bracelets, everything
Daddy, you oughta get the best for me

Hey, Daddy, gee, don’t I look swell in sables?
Clothes with Paris labels?
Daddy, you oughta get the best for me
(words and music, Bobby Troup, 1941)

Original recording by Sammy Kaye
HERE

Not bad for a 22-year-old: F1 mogul Bernie Ecclestone’s daughter Petra to buy £66m house

By Richard Kay

The estate agent’s blurb called it a ‘trophy property’ that should appeal to a ‘Russian oligarch, a Hollywood star or a sheik’.

And if that was not enough, the £79million price tag should cut out the average first-time buyer.

Now, nearly 18 months after JCB digger tycoon Sir Anthony Bamford put his Grade II-listed pile in Chelsea, west London, on the market - at a £34million mark up on what he paid for it four years earlier - he has at last found a suitable purchaser… though you couldn’t find anyone less like an oil sheik.

The buyer is also rather prettier and younger than your average oligarch. Step forward Formula 1 boss Bernie Ecclestone’s stunning younger daughter, Petra.

At 22, the model-turned-fashion-designer has been living with her long-term businessman boyfriend, James Stunt, in a seven-storey house in Eaton Square, Belgravia.

The fact that her new abode boasts up to 14 bedrooms is undaunting for her — a visitor to Eaton Square noticed her dressing room took up an entire floor.

The house she is buying, which includes a lodge next door, is set back from the road and boasts six reception rooms and ten bathrooms. Plenty of room, then, for James, 28, and his cellar of fine wines — he has a collection of Petrus spanning the great vintages of 1945 to 2005, worth £150,000.

Petra’s four dogs — two bulldogs, a boxer and a cavalier King Charles spaniel — will also have plenty of room to share.

The house, close to the London home of royal fiancee Kate Middleton, is being marketed by Beauchamp Estates in Mayfair.

With its own drive, a huge frontage and with planning permission for an underground swimming pool and gym already granted, it is said to be the most valuable property in Chelsea.

Sir Anthony and his wife Carole bought the mansion from Lebanese businessman Ely Calil in 2006 for £45million.

MORE OF INTEREST HERE, AND SEE HER OTHER HOUSE

Posted by peiper     on 12/03/2010 at 10:20 AM   
Filed Under: • Celebrities • Family • UK •  
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mudscum filthy terrorists should have human rights protected? how many agree with that pov?

Right you are. Your country is attacked by a sub-human species but the law says you must treat em as tho they are real people. Moreover, you must obey international law and follow the suggestion of the idiot UN committee.
Pshaw ... gotta be kidding me.  BS to that and the UN.  Wish we could get out of that thing and kick em all out of our country. Let em move to Brussels.
Terrorists are not impressed by good treatment unless they see it as a weakness.  “Human Rights” For rats. Where’d they get that?

We’ll eventually defeat muzzie terrorists by holding hands and singing we are the world?

Anti-terror fight should be conducted within laws: UN expert

United Nations (ANTARA News/Xinhua-OANA) - The global anti-terrorism fight should be conducted according to the rule of law while taking into account the human rights, a UN expert told reporters here Wednesday.

“We believe that in the long term terrorism will only be defeated if we do so according to the rule of law and with appropriate respect for human rights,” Mike Smith, who is the executive director of the Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED), said at a press conference here.

“If you don`t consider law and human rights, you threaten to alienate the origin of communities, maybe just perpetuate the problem and contribute to the recruitment of terrorists,” Smith said.

The Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC) is tasked with monitoring implementation of Resolution 1373, which requests countries to implement a number of measures intended to enhance their legal and institutional ability to counter terrorist activities at home, in their regions and around the world. The Committee comprises all 15 Security Council members.

The Committee is part of the UN which allows it to easily bring professionals together to brainstorm on a particular subject, Smith said.

source is antara news

Posted by peiper     on 12/03/2010 at 09:53 AM   
Filed Under: • Terrorists • United-Nations •  
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KEYSTONE KOPS LOSE KOP IN LOO.  REALLY.

On the one hand I can see some dark humor here. Sort of. I’m hesitant tho.
On the other hand, what?  Why didn’t they think of checking the john? 

Isn’t that one of the first places to look?  Maybe not. 

Crack police lose dead officer in toilet

When a senior drugs officer with Britain’s ‘FBI’ went missing, his colleagues were baffled.

The Serious Organised Crime Agency, admired for its investigative skills and hi-tech crime-fighting abilities, marshalled its resources in the hunt. If only they had checked the toilets.

Two ‘extensive searches’ of the offices failed to turn up anything and, 16 hours after he was last seen, the officer’s colleagues called his wife and told her she should report him missing to local police.

He was eventually found at 4am the next day by a security guard on his regular rounds, who noticed the toilet cubicle door had been shut for a ‘considerable time’.

The guard then called Soca officers who kicked down the door and found their colleague dead on the toilet, just a few metres from his desk in the London offices of the agency.

The agency, which employs 4,200 staff and has 40 offices in Britain, refused to confirm when the officer was found dead earlier this year, but a source said he ‘vanished’ after going to the toilet at 12pm.

The source said his colleague, a team leader in charge of Soca’s Interpol drugs desk, was not found until the early hours the next day.

He added that Soca was ‘staffed by brand new, inexperienced staff who are keen to assist but who have little, if any, background experience in law enforcement work’.

A police source, who has worked in the Met for 15 years, told the magazine: ‘How these guys can be called Britain’s FBI when they can’t even find their own officer 50ft from his desk is an embarrassment.’

METRO UK SOURCE

Posted by peiper     on 12/03/2010 at 09:36 AM   
Filed Under: • UK • work and the workplace •  
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   Thursday - December 02, 2010

the eu and diplomacy and england and too,too funny

wasn’t planning this clip. in fact, was getting ready to call it a night and re-found this great short clip.
funny ... not that the Brits would ever have actually thought this way. rotflmao, you might too.

from the best TV series ever made anywhere,ever.

Cheers all and enjoy the weekend

Posted by peiper     on 12/02/2010 at 03:28 PM   
Filed Under: • Humor • UK •  
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some droll British humor in poetic form … is anyone writing like this anywhere, anymore? doubtful

Living in a foreign country exposes one to new entertainment experiences. I learned a bit with regard to that many years ago, being married to a Brit and visiting here on more then one occasion. And also touring the country end to end as road manager for various American Country Music acts.

Like a lot of Americans of my generation, I was totally misled with regard to Brit humor. We always thought in terms of droll, dry wit. Very sophisticated ie. David Niven to name one.  This was long before Monty Python, keep in mind.  Peter Sellers was working and making ppl laugh, but not yet internationally. I’m talking even before “The Mouse That Roared”. Yeah right.  Dry, understated Brit humor. That’s a laugh right there.  Not that it isn’t true. But the truth, the whole truth and nothin’ but is, there is hardly anything more slapstick, roll on the floor funny and entirely insane funny, then Brit comedy at it’s best.

Sorry if I offend my fellow yanks but, in all the years of TV we have never produced anything to touch “Yes Minister” or “Yes, Prime Minister.” Or “Rising Damp” which I didn’t know what that was until moving here. Not the show, the condition. Rising damp. Can’t talk about slapstick comedy and leave out “Faulty Towers.”
Sadly, they (Brits) haven’t been producing those standards in a long time.  Drama like “Downton Abbey,” sure enough.  They can shine at those. But comedy has become coarse, even for an old salt such as myself. What I mean is, it isn’t clever anymore. The wit is gone in favor of the fast , cheap gag.

I listen to radio here because on occasion there is still something worth listening to.  One of the very best (in fact it is the best) and funniest programs is on every Monday night at 6:30.

It’s called “Just a Minute” where four panelists must speak on a given subject for one minute without ‘hesitation’ - ‘repetition’ or
‘deviation.’ It doesn’t sound like much reading it here in print but it is a howl. It’s on BBC Radio 4.
The moderator is a man named Nicholas Parsons, and he’s 87. AND ... still working. He does more then radio alone. To hear the guy you’d think he was 40. Incredibly funny and incredibly fast thinking.

Well now, although perhaps still known to a British audience (?), I have just discovered a man whose name was, Marriott Edgar.  He was a writer. And I’d say unique. The following might appeal more to an audience here, but I think anyone can appreciate this.  It isn’t Faulty Towers and in fact it’s ... well here.
Read it for yourself.  First though some background.

Marriott Edgar (1880 - 1951 / Kirkcudbright / Scotland)

Marriott, Edgar was born 5th October, 1880 in Kirkcudbright, Scotland and was half brother to the novelist Edgar Wallace. He toured with Stanley Holloway in ‘The Co-Optimists’ and was affectionately known to his friends as ‘George’. He was described as medium height, quiet with a droll sense of humour. Edgar became known for his witty dittys such as The Lion and Albert, Aggie the Elephant, and The Magna Charta, which were immortalized in popular monologues by actor Stanley Holloway. Edgar died in London on 5th May 1951.

Henry the first, surnamed “ Beauclare,”
Lost his only son William at sea,
So when Henry died it were hard to decide
Who his heir and successor should be.

There were two runners-up for the title-
His daughter Matilda was one,
And the other, a boy, known as Stephen of Blois,
His young sister Adela’s son.

Matilda by right should have had it,
Being daughter of him as were dead,
But the folks wasn’t keen upon having a queen,
So they went and crowned Stephen instead.

This ‘ere were a knockout for Tilda,
The notion she could not absorb
To lose at one blow both the crown and the throne,
To say naught of the sceptre and orb.

So she summoned her friends in t’West Country
From Bristol, Bath, Gloucester and Frome,
And also a lot of relations from Scotland,
Who’d come South and wouldn’t go home.

The East Counties rallied round Stephen,
Where his cause had support of the masses,
And his promise of loot brought a lot of recruits
From the more intellectual classes.

The Country were split in two parties
In a manner you’d hardly believe,
The West with a will shouted: “Up with Matilda !”
The East hollered: Come along, Steve!

The two armies met up in Yorkshire,
Both leaders the same tactics tried.
To each soldier they gave a big standard to wave,
In hopes they’d impress t ‘other side.

It were known as the battle o’t Standard,
Though no battling anyone saw,
For with flags in their right hands, the lads couldn’t fight,
And the referee called it a draw.

The next time they met were at Lincoln,
Where Stephen were properly beat,
At the end of the scrap he were led off a captive,
With iron balls chained to his feet.

They took him in triumph to Tilda,
Who, assuming an arrogant mien,
Snatched the Crown off his head and indignantly said
“Take your ‘at off in front of your Queen!”

So Stephen were put in a dungeon,
While Tilda ascended the throne
And reigned undisturbed for best part of a year,
Till she looked on the job as her own.

But Stephen weren’t beat by a long chalk
His plans for escape he soon made,
For he found Tilda’s troops were all getting fed up,
Having heard that they wouldn’t be paid.

So when Tilda got snowed up at Oxford,
Where she’d taken to staying of late,
She woke one fine morn, to the sound of a horn,
And found Stephen outside her front gate.

Her troops gone, her castle surrounded,
She saw she hadn’t a chance,
So, the ground being white, she escaped in her nightie
And caught the next packet for France.

She didn’t do badly at finish,
When everything’s weighed up and reckoned
For when Stephen was gone the next heir to the throne
Were Matilda’s son, Henry the second.

http://www.poemhunter.com/marriott-edgar/poems/

Posted by peiper     on 12/02/2010 at 10:47 AM   
Filed Under: • Humor • UK •  
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more jingle bells, jingle bells and humor by mac,

cartoon by Mac, one of the world’s best.

Posted by peiper     on 12/02/2010 at 03:52 AM   
Filed Under: • Humor •  
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SOME EYE CANDY FOR AN EARLY AND SNOWY THURSDAY MORNING

first ... the scene that greeted me early today. those tracks, if you can see em, don’t belong to the newspaper delivery folks. they run all the way down the driveway and thru the back yard.  could be fox, we do have em here except when they’re needed. as in the dog next door. or could be pheasant. have lots of them but didn’t hear them this morning. maybe I don’t wanna see whatever it is.

And good morning to you all.

jingle bells, jingle bells ....  hey folks. we actually do have horse drawn carts come thru every so often. mostly in spring and summer tho. and carriages too.

EYE CANDY

SO USE YOUR IMAGINATION.  WHAT?  I GOTTA FILL HER IN ALL THE TIME?

OK,OK ... HERE. JEESH.

Posted by peiper     on 12/02/2010 at 03:01 AM   
Filed Under: • Eye-Candy •  
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Is the U.S. set to be dragged into Europe’s financial troubles? Euro soars on rumor.

We no longer live in a world where we can isolate ourselves and pretend we aren’t affected by outside influences.  I wish that were not so.  I wish we could actually build a wall around ourselves and tell the rest of the world to buzz off. Being me of course I’d use cruder terminology. And I very definitely do not want to be the world’s policeman.  I do not care how China treats its people in its own back yard. I don’t care what Putin and Russia do so long as it doesn’t cause problems for the USA.  If I get PO’d when outsiders stick their nose in our internal affairs, I can hardly be surprised when others get a nose out of joint when we do the same.  But okay .. the world is connected as it has never been before.  We have enemies the likes of which we have not known in the past. At least not to the degree we now face.  So we are indeed connected, like it or not.

Which leads me to .....

Don’t be coy and don’t misrepresent this story. The US has already contributed to the fund and even more than that, it stopped the slide of the Euro during the Greek crisis through Currency Swaps. The ECB needed US Dollars to buy up the bonds the PIIGS were issuing, that the capital markets were rejecting. Without the Swaps the Euro would have fallen to who knows where, leading to much higher costs for Europeans to bail out the PIIGS. The reason the US Fed did this was to protect the Trillion dollar investments US banks have in the PIIGS alone. When Trichet spoke of the possibility of buying bonds from the PIIGS today he was signaling a further round of Currency Swaps between the ECB, the BoE and other foreign Central Banks. If all you great Brits are ignorant of what Currency Swaps are, look it up on Wikipedia, they explain it simply enough for you to understand.

- Jeff, Boulder, CO USA, 02/12/2010 00:53

We can’t save ourselves. We are headed the same way. If we aren’t working we aren’t paying taxes, and if we aren’t paying taxes our government has to print money that isn’t worth what people expect of it--so if we write Europe a hot check for aid, what will come of it for all of us?

- Sheri, OKC, Oklahoma, USA, 02/12/2010 02:52

The title of this story is very misleading - it should be the opposite way around. Europe was dragged into the US’s financial troubles when our greedy bankers invested in the US sub-prime mortgage market. The sub-prime mortgage fiasco was essentially that US financial institutions were pressured into lending mortgages to people with low credit ratings. Many then went on to default and the rest is history. Those who set this in motion were of course on the Democrat-Left and included the ‘Clintonistas’ and the soon to be President Mr Obama himself.
All part of the ongoing destruction of the West by the Liberal-Left. By the way the US National Debt is nearly $14 Trillion - and they’re going to bail us out via the IMF? Don’t make me laugh.

- A Richards, London, England, 02/12/2010 01:37

So just what are these people commenting on?  Well, the morning news here at 7am UK time.  See what you think of all this. And is the USA going in deeper? 

Is the U.S. set to be dragged into Europe’s financial troubles? Euro soars amid claims America will support IMF bailout

By Daily Mail Reporter

Last updated at 4:05 AM on 2nd December 2010

The euro soared today after a report that the U.S. would support a larger aid package for Europe through the International Monetary Fund.
In midday trading in New York, the euro traded at $1.3140 from $1.3011 late Tuesday. It popped by more than one cent immediately after the report came out.
Reuters reported at midday that an unnamed U.S. official said the U.S. would be willing to have the International Monetary Fund give more money to the European Financial Stability Facility.

The U.S. is the IMF’s biggest stakeholder.
The EFSF is a 440billion euro fund the Europeans put together as part of a broader 750billion euro rescue package in May during the Greek debt crisis.
The IMF has already pledged up to 250billion euro.  The Obama administration would not comment on the report.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner did dispatch Treasury Undersecretary Lael Brainerd, Treasury’s top official on international matters, for talks with European officials. Mr Brainerd had meetings in Madrid with economic officials on Wednesday and was scheduled to be in Berlin on Thursday and Paris on Friday.

The U.S. ‘can’t afford to let Europe implode,’ said David Gilmore of Foreign Exchange Analytics.
But the statement might not mean that the U.S. has already agreed to a deal allowing the IMF to contribute more money or ponying up more money for Europe itself.

One possibility is that the Americans are ‘flying a kite to the Europeans to push them in the direction of increasing the stability fund,’ Mr Gilmore said.
The euro has fallen 10 per cent since early November as Ireland, after Greece, accepted billions in emergency financing. Investors now worry Portugal may be next, or even Spain.

Spain, due to the size of its economy, would be a much greater financial burden that the other countries should it require a bailout.
A spokesman for the EU’s monetary affairs chief Olli Rehn said he had not heard of talks about extending the EFSF fund.

SOURCE

Posted by peiper     on 12/02/2010 at 02:15 AM   
Filed Under: • Economics • International • USA •  
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thurs. archeology .

Sad story but it would be great if something of history were uncovered. Won’t be many of our buildings left to view a thousand yrs from today. Those folks built to last.

Italy

Archaeologists to embark on quest for 2,500-year-old lost Greek theatre

Italian archeologists are to embark on a quest for a long-lost, 2,500-year-old Greek theatre, nearly a century after the hunt cost a British adventurer his fortune and his sanity.

By Nick Squires in Rome

Alexander Hardcastle spent a decade searching for the fabled theatre, which is said to be buried beneath the remains of Akragas, a city established by Greek colonists six centuries before Christ on the southern coast of Sicily.
The World Heritage site is best known for the Valley of the Temples, a cluster of five Doric temples which draws tens of thousands of tourists each year.

Hardcastle, a former soldier who had served with the Royal Engineers in the Boer War, believed that remains of the stone-built theatre had survived, despite Akragas being shaken by earthquakes, sacked by the Carthaginians and plundered for its stone.

The Harrow-educated gentleman scholar, who was born in Belgravia, spent a fortune on the quest between 1920 and 1930, but lost all his money when his family’s bank collapsed in the wake of the financial crash of 1929.
He died in poverty in a mental asylum in the town of Agrigento, which overlooks the ancient site, in 1933.
He had achieved a restoration of the city, partly rebuilding temples, uncovering perimeter walls and clearing ancient roads, but found no trace of the legendary theatre.

Now a team of archaeologists is to resume the hunt, embarking in the next few months on a dig that will be funded by a two million euro grant from the European Union.
The team will be led by Giuseppe Castellana, 64, the director of the Valley of the Temples Archeological Park.
“We want to resume the research started by Alexander Hardcastle in the coming months. It will be a way of honouring his memory,” Prof Castellana, who has been involved in more than 80 digs over the last 30 years, told La Stampa newspaper.

“The discovery would go down in history and it would also benefit the modern city of Agrigento, which needs to survive on archaeological tourism but hasn’t managed to make the most of its enormous potential,” he added.

Akragas was described by the ancient Greek poet Pindar as “the most beautiful city in the world inhabited by mortals” and scholars think it highly likely that it would have boasted a theatre.
The archaeologists also hope to unearth evidence of a hippodrome, a stadium for horse and chariot racing.
Excavations were carried out at the site in the 1970s and 1980s but archaeologists found no evidence of the theatre or hippodrome.

SOURCE, TELEGRAPH

[ Drew ] That’s right, it is Thursday already! Allow me to do my linky part then:

Sindi shows her appreciation for a good solid column, even if it’s an ancient Greek one.

GET ME OUT OF HERE ...

Posted by peiper     on 12/02/2010 at 01:22 AM   
Filed Under: • Archeology / Anthropology •  
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stealing resources …. copper has value …

Well as usual this wasn’t planned as my first post of the day and btw ... had no plan to boot this early. Came downstairs around 5:20am or thereabouts, see piles of fresh snow everywhere and doubt we’ll get out this morning unless things melt. So then, sitting at puter cos of course I just HAD to boot the damn thing and check mail. Well, as long as I was checking mail I just HAD to see what was happing at BMEWS. Didn’t I?

The picture of me this early morning is a an insomniac with a now cool cup of what once was hot tea, a many years thin hooded sweat shirt of a blue hue. Been washed so many times it’s hard to tell. But PJ bottoms and slippers and no socks sitting at a pc in front of a bay window facing our front yard. Still too dark outside to take a picture but hell, you know what snow looks like so why bother? And it’s pretty damn cold where my feet are.

So I checked the site and found a comment and a link to what isn’t a new story. It’s been happening here and in fact, some thieves have been targeting ancient village churches for the lead in roof.  Not only is the story worth posting (I believe), but see the following comments as well.  I always find what folks have to say about subjects as interesting as the story itself. Often times more so.

So ...

H/T Rick K for the heads up on this one.

DIY metallurgists liberate and scrap America’s vital telephony substrate

Cory Doctorow

Spiraling commodity prices and a plummeting US job market have apparently made digging up copper phone lines and selling them for scrappage an attractive proposition. AT&T is offering $3K for information leading to the arrest of the copper scrappers who freelanced enough copper out of the fertile Atlanta soil to knock 7,000 people offline. It’s part of a wider nationwide pattern of DIY five-finger discount recycling—100 miles of copper vanished from Appalachia, three hits to the same NJ station, and a $75K score also in the Garden State.

The FBI report shows that industry and local officials are taking countermeasures to help address the scrapper problem, but apparently much more needs to be done. For example, while a variety of physical and technological security measures have been taken there are limited resources available to enforce these laws, and a very small percentage of perpetrators are arrested and convicted. Additionally, as copper thefts are typically addressed as misdemeanors, those individuals convicted pay relatively low fines and serve short prison terms.

Atlanta isn’t the only place seeing copper theft problems. In this report, Appalachian Power said more than 100 miles of copper wire has been stolen from the company’s southern West Virginia facilities alone. Replacing stolen wire can cost up to $1 million a year, the utility stated. Other thefts have been reported all across the country in recent days. One location in New Jersey has been hit three times in the last two months seeing some $13,000 worth of copper stolen. A utility in the same state this week reported a $75,000 theft of the metal.

www.boingboing.net

Posted by peiper     on 12/02/2010 at 12:51 AM   
Filed Under: • Crime • USA •  
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