via The Guardian by Peter B Campbell
A diver holds a bronze disc discovered during the 2017 underwater excavations at Antikythera, Greece. Photograph: Brett Seymour/EUA/ARGO 2017
The shipwreck at Antikythera, Greece, continues to reveal its secrets and surprise archaeologists. As reported last week, recent excavations on the 1st century BC shipwreck have revealed statue fragments, bronze ornamentation, and wooden remains from the ship’s hull. The finds are sensational, but the artifacts and the project have broader importance.
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via Boing Boing by Reanna Alder
Biomechanist Katy Bowman uses the metaphor of nutrients – and nutritious movement vs. junk food movement – to unpack what’s not working for most of us about our modern lifestyle.
Turns out that even those we consider “active” spend most of their time sedentary, according to research. And our shoes, furniture, pillows and other props mean that we are not getting the full range of motion – the essential movement nutrients – out of the limited activity that we do.
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via New Statesman by Michael Prodger
Such was the grip exerted on the arts in Britain by the Italian Renaissance that the first early-Netherlandish painting didn’t enter the National Gallery until 1842. That picture was Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait of 1434, depicting Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini, a merchant from Lucca resident in Bruges, and his second wife. It was sold to the gallery by a Scottish soldier who had acquired it in Spain in mysterious circumstances during the Peninsular War.
The portrait became an object of instant fascination and sparked a scholarly debate that still rumbles on: who are the sitters? Is the woman Giovanni’s first wife or his second? Does the picture celebrate a marriage, a betrothal, a pregnancy – or is it an Annunciation disguised within a domestic interior? The acquisition also sparked an interest in van Eyck, who was widely (if erroneously) thought to have invented the technique of oil painting and whose attention to detail, skills as a colourist and ability to depict light on reflective objects seemed nothing less than magical.
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via Interesting Literature
The greatest coastal poems
We’ve taken ourselves off to the seaside for this week’s poetry selection. What are the best poems about beaches and the coast?
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via The Guardian by Susannah Lydon
Reconstruction of a newborn Ichthyosaurus communis. Illustration: (c) Julian Kiely
Not all new palaeontology discoveries are made on dramatic rocky outcrops. Sometimes dusty drawers in the back-rooms of museums are the source of exciting discoveries. A new study by Dean Lomax, a researcher at the University of Manchester, and colleagues on a previously neglected specimen in the the Lapworth Museum of Geology, University of Birmingham, UK, has increased our knowledge of how the youngest ichthyosaurs – a group of extinct marine reptiles – lived and fed.
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via Boing Boing by Andrea James
Undercover is a World War II training film from the OSS, precursor to the CIA, would be enough to dissuade most people from a career in espionage. They enact numerous examples of tiny slip-ups that ended up blowing the covers of various spies and secret agents.
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via Big Think blog by Paul Ratner
Geodynamic simulation of the early Earth. Credit: Macquarie University.
Researchers discovered how impacts from giant meteorites may have helped jump-start the tectonic processes and the magnetic field of early Earth.
An international study, led by scientists from Macquarie University in Australia, found that impacts from massive meteorites could have caused subduction - a process described as “where the solid outer section of the Earth sinks into the deeper mantle at ocean trenches” by the study’s lead author Associate Professor Craig O’Neill from Macquarie University.
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via 3 Quarks Daily by Thomas R. Wells
A natural disaster is a disaster because it involves a lot of human suffering, not because the event itself is especially big or spectacular. The destruction of an uninhabited island by a volcano is not a natural disaster, because it doesn't really matter to humans. A landslide doesn't matter, however enormous, unless there is a town at the bottom of it.
So what does the word ‘natural' add? We use it to demarcate the edges of responsibility. We don't use it very well.
Man-made disasters, like Chernobyl or Deepwater Horizon or Bhopal or Grenfell Tower, are ones acknowledged to have been brought about by human decisions. These disasters could have been avoided if certain people had made different choices. The suffering of a man-made disaster is therefore the responsibility of particular persons and institutions. They can be held answerable for their decisions: required to justify them and judged – and punished – if they cannot. For example, the investigation into the Grenfell Tower fire will scrutinise in forensic detail the reasoning behind the key decisions that permitted a containable danger to be transformed into mass death; such as the installation of a flammable cladding, the absence of sprinklers; and refuge in place instructions for residents. Some decision-makers may face criminal charges for negligence. They will certainly be vilified in the tabloid press and hate-mobbed on social media. Organisations like the local council and the company running the building will likely receive an official shaming, fines, and compulsory reorganisation or dissolution.
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via OUP Blog by Daniel C. Taylor
What would you think, when crossing a Himalayan glacier, if you found this footprint? Clearly some animal made the mark.
SHIPTON 1951 PHOTO (By Permission: Royal Geographical Society, Eric Shipton Photographer)
This print is in a longer line of tracks, and shows not just one animal. The print looks like a person’s … but that gigantic toe on what is a left foot has the arch on the outside of the foot. Big toe on one side, the arch on the other, three tiny toes? And the longer line of footprints suggests that a family of mysteries walked the route.
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via Boing Boing by Andrea James
The fine folks at Super Deluxe mounted a camera on a train traveling through the desert, and it's as relaxing and scenic as it sounds.
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