via ResearchBuzz Firehose: Chloe Dobinson in ComputerworldUK
The Bolshoi Theatre Museum has completed a major project to digitise a range of historical documents, with the aim of making the information publicly accessible and searchable via its website.
Four thousand volunteers helped scan 8,000 historic posters, 120,000 programmes and 100,000 rare photographs from the 192-year-old Russian theatre's museum archives, in order to convert them into digital formats.
“The three key objectives of the project are to rediscover, preserve and share the Bolshoi Theatre’s history, as part of the world’s cultural heritage,” Bolshoi Theatre director, Lidia Kharina, told Computerworld UK.
“The project helps to uncover previously overlooked facts, patterns and insight. It also helps protect and preserve the artefacts by creating digital copies. And lastly, it is important to make the archive easily searchable and accessible to the public all over the world.”
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via OUP Blog by Johanna Luthman
“Abbey, glass…” by 1899441. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay.
After a period of chastity, Margery Kempe’s husband described one of those hypothetical scenarios that couples sometimes use to test each other. “Margery, if a man came with a sword and wanted to chop off my head unless I had sexual intercourse with you as I used to before, […] [would you] allow my head to be chopped off, or else allow me to have sex with you as I previously did?” When pressed to answer, Margery finally told him she would “rather see [him] slain than that [they] should return to [their] uncleanliness.” Did that make her a bad wife, as her husband initially complained, or a devout Christian, as she believed?
The fifteenth-century English mystic Margery Kempe has divided opinions for centuries. For supporters, Kempe’s earnest spiritual struggles, vivid visions, and difficult journey to grace were laudable and inspiring. For opponents, her loud expressions of faith seemed fake and showy, her constant talk of—and with—God was annoying at best and potentially heretical at worst, and her independence and seemingly unwomanly behavior were problematic. Both sides agreed that she was uncommonly persistent in trying to live her life on her own terms. Since the rediscovery of the account of her life in the 1930s, modern scholars and readers have variously suggested that Kempe was a significant example of late medieval religiosity, a proto-feminist, a mentally ill hysteric, or a woman suffering from post-partum depression and menopausal symptoms. In any case, Kempe was, and still is, a difficult woman to ignore, and the autobiographical The Book of Margery Kempe, originally written in the 1430s, provides a fascinating view into both the spiritual and profane world that she inhabited.
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via New Statesman by Philip Hoare
A newly unearthed photograph identifies the African-American Trafalgar survivor who appears in Melville’s final novel. Could the book’s hero have been black, too?
The photograph below tells a remarkable tale. I discovered it in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle while researching my new book. The image, taken by John Havers, was acquired by Prince Albert in the 1850s and it portrays veterans of Trafalgar at the Royal Navy hospital in Greenwich in 1854. Sitting on a bench overlooking the Thames, these aged faces and bodies were a familiar sight in south London in their 18th-century-style frock coats and cocked hats, earning them the nickname “Greenwich geese”.
One figure in particular stands out. Using the hospital records, I identified the third man from the left as Richard Baker, an African American, born in Baltimore in 1770, who served at Trafalgar on HMS Leviathan; he entered the hospital in 1839. Seventeen men born in Africa fought for the British during the battle; 123 from the West Indies. There is a black man portrayed on the Westminster-facing bronze plaque on Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square. But the records show only one Trafalgar veteran from Baltimore: Baker, who is likely to have been a freed or even escaped slave.
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via the Guardian by Ian Semple, Science editor
A carving found on a pillar at Göbekli Tepe, apparently showing a figurine holding a head. Photograph: German Archaeological Institute (DAI)
Fragments of carved bone unearthed at an ancient site on a Turkish hillside are evidence that the people who spent time there belonged to a neolithic “skull cult” – a group that embraces rituals around the heads of the dead.
The remains were uncovered during field work at Göbekli Tepe, an 11,000-year-old site in the south-east of the country, where thousands of pieces of human bone were found, including sections of skulls bearing grooves, holes and the occasional dab of ochre.
Pieces of three adult skulls recovered from the sitehave hallmarks of being carved with flint after being scalped and defleshed first. Evidence that the latter was not always an effortless affair is found in multiple scrape marks where the muscles once attached to the bone.
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a post by Dr Juliette Desplat for The National Archives Blog
A new Law of Antiquities was approved in Iraq in 1924, as the country was under a British Mandate. Drawn up by Gertrude Bell, it was very generous towards foreign archaeologists, allowing them to receive and export a substantial share of the artefacts uncovered.
It all started to change in 1933, a year after the Kingdom of Iraq was granted independence. The ‘Arpachiyah Scandal’, involving Agatha Christie’s husband Max Mallowan, was the first step on a long and winding road towards an attempt to decolonise archaeology.
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via OUP Blog by Tom Fletcher
“Apple Device Blur” by Pexels. CC0 Public Domain viaPixabay.
We now face a century of change like no other in history. Technology will transform how we meet our needs for peace, dignity and community. This will shatter the global political equilibrium, and shift power away from governments towards individuals. States, ideas and industries will go out of business. Inequality could grow.
Already, the internet has changed the world faster than any previous technology. The smartphone has given a superpower to much of the world’s population. For many, the web is no longer for our downtime, but for all our time. We have access not just to more information than we can process, but more than we can imagine. From self driving cars to artificial intelligence, as Nobel Prize winning geneticist Richard Smalley says – “when a scientist says something is possible, they’re probably underestimating how long it will take. If they say it is impossible, they’re probably wrong”.
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via 3 Quarks Daily: Tony Joseph in The Hindu
The thorniest, most fought-over question in Indian history is slowly but surely getting answered: did Indo-European language speakers, who called themselves Aryans, stream into India sometime around 2,000 BC – 1,500 BC when the Indus Valley civilisation came to an end, bringing with them Sanskrit and a distinctive set of cultural practices? Genetic research based on an avalanche of new DNA evidence is making scientists around the world converge on an unambiguous answer: yes, they did.
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via Boing Boing by David Pescovitz
A fine example of factory porn: The International Table Tennis Federation paid a visit to Double Happiness, manufacturers of balls and other ping pong products.
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via MakeUseOf by Anya Zhukova
On a normal day, we’re all about helping you make better use of all things technology in your day-to-day life.
But today is not one of those days.
Every once in a while, we go astray and give you a peek at some of the weirdest things the web has to offer. Big fan of odd physics in gaming? Love debunking weird science claims? We know just the right places for you online.
Much as I love bacon I do not want to watch it online.
Continue reading and discover more bizarre sites you would not believe!
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via Boing Boing by Andrea James
Nagato Iwasaki scours beaches for driftwood he can repurpose into lovely sculptures.
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