High 8 Us.

I shall be adopting the nomadic lifestyle for the next while and will be away from my computer. Don't expect to see any new entries here for the next couple of weeks.

To mark the day that's in it, I'll link to this image on the British Library's webpage.

Pope-watch...

How cool is this? Pope Benedict being escorted by the mounted Presidential guard of the Italian Republic (31 cavalrymen in total) to the Quirnal palace to meet President Ciampi. I happened to stumble across this as I was passing through Piazza Venezia!

Berlusconi Soap...

Okay, I'm fairly sure you won't read anything stranger than this today:

A bar of soap believed to be made from fat pumped from Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has gone on display.
Artist Gianni Motti says he made the soap made from fat from Berlusconi's liposuction operation.
It is part of an art exhibition in Basel, Switzerland, where for a price tag of £10000 (about R123 000), you can wash your hands with Berlusconi.
The 47-year-old artist who put the soap on display, Gianni Motti, claims to have acquired the fat from an employee of an elite plastic surgery clinic in Lugano in Switzerland.
The artist said: "Berlusconi had face lifting and liposuction operations in a clinic in Lugano, where I have good connections that provided me with some of the fat. It was jelly-like and it stunk horribly, like butter gone off or old chip pan oil."
According to Motti, the artwork called Mani Pulite (which means "clean hands" in Italian) expresses opposition to corruption and mafia structures in Italy, as well as his personal opinion of Berlusconi's policies.
Motti said: "I came up with the idea because soap is made of pig fat, and I thought how much more appropriate it would be if people washed their hands using a piece of Berlusconi." - Ananova.com

Pregnancy, virility and the Italian economy...

There's an interesting article in the Independent about pregnancy and the dangers that older women face by artificially prolonging fertility.

Professor De Swiet, who specialises in treating complications during pregnancy, said: "I have had 90 women in my clinic in the last year over the age of 40 and I do have concerns. There are worries about miscarriage, chromosomal disorders like Down's, high blood pressure and diabetes.
"At the moment, doctors are not telling women about the risks, and even when they do, the women often don't take it in. What you have to remember is that some of these women who become pregnant with IVF techniques are fundamentally unwell - they are not good breeders and they are at high risk of both morbidity and mortality."
It was not simply life-threatening conditions that affected older expectant mothers, Professor De Swiet said. "They seem to be more at risk from what I call the misery factor during pregnancy," he explained. "They tend to suffer more from breathlessness, heart palpitations and fainting. Often by 35 weeks, they have had enough and come in demanding a Caesarean."
He said that women should ideally have their children between 25 and 35, be aware that between 35 and 45 they were "safe enough" but that over that age, they should be made fully aware of the dangers.

BTW, I think it takes a particular type of medical personality to talk about 'good breeders'.
The article continues in a slighty unusual vein:

When Cherie Blair gave birth to her fourth child at the age of 45, the Prime Minister was widely admired for his virility and uniqueness at becoming a father while in office.
But it may be that the conception of Leo, now five, was down to Mrs Blair's genes rather than her husband's potency. Scientists have identified a certain type of genetic make-up in women who have continued to be able to become pregnant naturally over the age of 45.
Researchers from the Hadassah University Hospital in Jerusalem studied 250 Ashkenazi Jewish women, all of whom had children in their late forties and all of whom did not use contraception. Eighty per cent of the women in the study had at least six children, as well as a low miscarriage rate.
The researchers tested eight of the women and studied their genetic make up compared to a control group of non-Ashkenazi women. They found the Ashkenazi women had a pattern of gene expression which appeared to protect against DNA damage and cell death in the ovaries.
Dr Neri Laufer, who led the research, said his team had proved that the "pregnancy" genes were not unique to these particular Jewish women because they had also been found in Bedouin women.

There's also a piece about Italy's economic woes. Berlusconi sounds particularly desperate as he tries to project a positive image of the country:

The idea of Italy as sick, he said, was "profoundly at odds with the reality we live. Italy has thousands of monuments, historical palaces, archaeological sites, we have the greatest per capita ownership of cars and houses and the largest number of mobile phones." Not only that, but Italians knew how to make good use of them. "As they are playboys, our lads send at least 10 SMS messages to their girlfriends every day!"

One typically well-informed character incredibly manages to blame the church for the country's economic woes:

"We don't know what model of society we are working towards. So what are we trying to achieve? Nothing works properly. This is a country where the Church is trying to drag us back to the Middle Ages. You can feel the pressure from the Church, for example during the recent referendum on IVF treatment.
"Twenty years ago we had the idea that we were working for a society more equal, more just. We were trying to understand how to develop this country in the best possible way. Today the logic of the big fish which eats the smaller fish has won out. And what this country really lacks is a sense of community. Everyone thinks about his own little problems. The problem is one of values, of what to tell one's children, when the people in power are so corrupt.'

Cardinal Sin, RIP

The Telegraph obituary focuses mainly on the late Cardinal's wit, but also gives a good account of the fall of the Marcos regime:

But it was after the opposition leader Benigno Aquino was murdered at Manila airport as he returned from exile in 1983 that Sin's criticisms increased. He warned that there was an ugly mood in the country, which could lead to results that would hurt the poor. When Ronald Reagan pushed Marcos into a general election, Sin urged Aquino's widow Cory to run. As the government became more repressive in its efforts to win the vote, the national bishops' conference issued increasingly outspoken pastoral letters.
After Marcos's victory, Mrs Aquino used the Church's radio station to call for non-violent resistance, prompting the defence minister and vice-chief of the defence staff to break with Marcos. As troops marched on their headquarters, Sin went on air calling "all the children of God" to protect the two former government members. During the next three days, hundreds of thousands of unarmed Filipinos formed a human shield in Manila's Avenue of the Epiphany of the Saints, pressing rosaries and sandwiches on the tank crews and thrusting flowers down the barrels of their guns and prevented them reaching the errant pair.
Soon Marcos fled to Hawaii. The whole episode was a miracle, Sin declared, "scripted by God, directed by the Virgin Mary and starring the Filipino people". After attending a large open-air Mass with President Aquino, he visited the Soviet Union and China before arriving in Rome. At his audience with Pope John Paul II, Sin declared that a moral dimension, not a political one, had been involved in the recent events. "He smiled because he understands," Sin explained afterwards. "He comes from Poland."

Imedla Maros commented: "With the death of Cardinal Sin, let us pray that all Filipinos will at last be united in spirit." (Make of that remark what you will...)

Great Moments in Recent History...

I've not blogged the Jackson trail/circus, but am gobsmacked by this (official???) page which compares his 'not guilty' verdict to the fall of the Berlin Wall and Nelson Mandela's release.

Religious Jokes...

The Laodiceans blog about the new Religious Hatred Bill proposed for England and Wales. The Independent has a series of religious jokes to mark the occasion. Be warned that you may find some of them very offensive...

EMO PHILIPS
"I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump. I ran over and said: 'Stop. Don't do it.'
'Why shouldn't I?' he asked. 'Well, there's so much to live for!' 'Like what?' 'Are you religious?'
He said: 'Yes.' I said.
'Me too. Are you Christian or Buddhist?'
'Christian.'
'Me too. Are you Catholic or Protestant?'
'Protestant.'
'Me too. Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?'
'Baptist.'
'Wow. Me too. Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?'
'Baptist Church of God.'
'Me too. Are you original Baptist Church of God, or are you reformed Baptist Church of God?'
'Reformed Baptist Church of God.'
'Me too. Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915?'
He said: 'Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915.'
I said: "Die, heretic scum," and pushed him off."
MYRON COHEN
"A Jewish grandmother is watching her grandchild playing on the beach when a huge wave comes and takes him out to sea. She pleads: "Please God, save my only grandson. I beg of you, bring him back." And a big wave comes and washes the boy back on to the beach, good as new. She looks up to heaven and says: 'He had a hat.' "
MONTY PYTHON FROM LIFE OF BRIAN
"Ex Leper: 'Yes, sir, a bloody miracle, sir. God bless you.'
Brian: 'Who cured you?'
Ex Leper: 'Jesus did, sir. I was hopping along, minding my own business. All of a sudden, up here he comes. Cures me. One minute I'm a leper with a trade, next minute my livelihood's gone. Not so much as by your leave.' 'You're cured mate.' Bloody do-gooder."
ROWAN ATKINSON IN BLACKADDER
"Bad weather is God's way of telling us we should burn more Catholics."
That last one is kinda context-dependent...

Happy Solstice

From the Telegraph:

Modern-day druids, hippies and revellers who turn up at Stonehenge to celebrate the summer solstice may not be marking an ancient festival as they believe.The latest archaeological findings add weight to growing evidence that our ancestors visited Stonehenge to celebrate the winter solstice.
Analysis of pigs's teeth found at Durrington Walls, a ceremonial site of wooden post circles near Stonehenge on the River Avon, has shown that most pigs were less than a year old when slaughtered.
Dr Umburto Albarella, an animal bone expert at the University of Sheffield's archaeology department, which is studying monuments around Stonehenge, said pigs in the Neolithic period were born in spring and were an early form of domestic pig that farrowed once a year. The existence of large numbers of bones from pigs slaughtered in December or January supports the view that our Neolithic ancestors took part in a winter solstice festival.

An interesting political survivor in Spain:

The future of a Franco-era veteran and Spain's foremost political survivor hung in the balance yesterday as the country waited to see if he had secured a record fifth term as regional president of Galicia.

One seat will save Franco veteran, 82, from hanging up his presidential boots
By Isambard Wilkinson in Santiago de Compostela
(Filed: 21/06/2005)

The future of a Franco-era veteran and Spain's foremost political survivor hung in the balance yesterday as the country waited to see if he had secured a record fifth term as regional president of Galicia.
Manuel Fraga, 82, was himself confident that his centre-right People's Party (PP) would win the one seat it still needs for a majority in the Galician assembly.
If the PP fails to win the last available seat, a coalition of Socialists and Galician nationalists will form the regional government and the career of Spain's most colourful and contrary politician will be at an end.
Mr Fraga himself recently declared that he wanted to die with "las botas puestas" - wearing his boots - as his hero the dictator Francisco Franco did.
Don Manuel, as he is known, has a reputation for falling asleep at meetings, and is sensitive to remarks about his age, even though he recently collapsed while appearing in a live televised broadcast.
(snip)
Like, Franco, Mr Fraga enjoys shooting and once accidentally shot the dictator's daughter, Nenuca, in the bottom.

What Would Jesus Eat? Incredbibly that's one of the latest diet-books in the States. One of the writers for the Times tries it out:

Dr Colbert is the author of What Would Jesus Eat? the book at the centre of a new dieting craze that is sweeping America (and doing particularly well in states that voted Republican). “We seek to follow Jesus in every area of our lives,” he writes in the introduction. “Why not in our eating habits?” Biblical health has become big business in the USA. Alongside Dr Colbert’s 50-odd books on the subject, other authors have produced The Maker’s Diet, Body by God and the Hallelujah Diet. Not all are about healthy eating (Colbert himself is the author of The Bible Cure for Candida and Yeast Infections), but few other areas have captured public imagination in quite the same way.
(snip)
To eat as Jesus ate, bluntly speaking, one should follow what we know of today as a Mediterranean diet (fish, grains, fruits, beans and lentils) and observe what Colbert describes as “the law that was given to the Israelites from God through Moses”. This, of course, is the Jewish dietary law of kashrut — what Jews follow in order to keep kosher. Jews and kosher are rarely mentioned in Dr Colbert’s book. To his readership, the idea of eating like Jesus obviously appeals. Eating like a Jew, possibly less so.
Like Jesus I, too, am a Jew. But, as exemplified by the pig, I’m not a very good one. This week I shall be basically learning how to be a better Jew. And Jesus will be helping me.
I have some trouble explaining this to my family.
(snip)
TODAY starts badly. Habitually, I tend not to eat breakfast. Consequentially, it’s nearly lunchtime before I glance in the book and realise that, according to Dr Colbert, Jesus did.
“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day,” he writes. (That’s “he”. Not “He”. “He” was reticent on the subject. I think.) “Think of your metabolic rate as a fire in a fireplace. By morning, the fires of metabolism have all but gone out.”
Breakfast should be whole grain bread, unsweetened yoghurt, wholegrain cereal and fruit. This means that, in order to lose weight as Jesus lost weight, I will have to actually eat more than I currently do. Still, far be it from me to question the Word.
A healthy lunch was all very well for Jesus, traipsing around the Holy Land, but I can’t help but think he’d have had a harder time of it in the News International canteen at Wapping. I opt for a slightly grim chicken salad. Jesus was OK with chicken, apparently. Pork is out, obviously, and while red meat is allowed, it shouldn't be considered a daily staple. Jesus only ate red meat at feasts. Jesus also preferred free-range, organic meats. No battery farms for Jesus.
Up until the time of Noah and the flood, writes Dr Colbert, pretty matter of factly, everybody was a vegetarian. This, apparently, could account for the astonishing life-spans of Adam (930 years), Seth (912) and Methuselah (969). Post-Noah, Abraham only managed 175. Somebody should write a book about the Methuselah diet. That would be a winner.

And so on... The article gets a wee bit tiresome to be quite honest.

On selecting a gown...

There are few better ways to be disabused of the notion that human nature changes greatly over time than reading Jane Austen:

What gown and what head-dress she should wear on the occasion became her chief concern. She cannot be justified in it. Dress is at all times a frivolous distinction, and excessive solicitude about it often destroys its own aim. Catherine knew all this very well; her great aunt had read her a lecture on the subject only the Christmas before; and yet she lay awake ten minutes on Wednesday night debating between her spotted and her tamboured muslin, and nothing but the shortness of the time prevented her buying a new one for the evening. This would have been an error in judgment, great though not uncommon, from which one of the other sex rather than her own, a brother rather than a great aunt might have warned her, for man only can be aware of the insensibility of man towards a new gown. It would be mortifying to the feelings of many ladies, could they be made to understand how little the heart of man is affected by what is costly or new in their attire; how little it is biassed by the texture of their muslin, and how unsusceptible of peculiar tenderness towards the spotted, the sprigged, the mull or the jackonet. Woman is fine for her own satisfaction alone. No man will admire her the more, no woman will like her the better for it. Neatness and fashion are enough for the former, and a something of shabbiness or impropriety will be most endearing to the latter.
-From Northanger Abbey

Zimbabwe bishops to confront Mugabe

This article in the Times shows further confrontation between Zimbabwe's bishops and Robert Mugabe:

EVERY morning Father Michael looks out of the window of his Harare parish house and sees an ever larger crowd of homeless families outside. “I feel helpless,” said the Jesuit priest, who was too terrified to give his real name.
“I keep telling them my little homilies, that the violent will not win, they will have to answer for what they have done, but I see a city ringed by fire.
“People who worked to look after their families — carpenters, metalworkers, street vendors and caterers — have been turned into beggars by their own government. This is a crime against humanity and all we can do is give them black plastic sheeting.”
As Operation Murambatsvina or “drive out filth”, moves into its second month, as many as a 1m city-dwellers have been made homeless by government bulldozers and axe-wielding police.
Churches have become the only refuge for people who have lost everything. But priests have now been warned not to help by the government of President Robert Mugabe.
Harare has been turned into a refugee city with marauding bands of families pursued through the smoking rubble by police who move on anyone they find sleeping outside or still retaining a few possessions.
Some have been taken to camps outside the city such as Caledonia Farm, where there is only one lavatory for several thousand people. Those with money have left for villages but many have no family to go to and the country’s fuel shortage means buses are few and far between.
Others have returned to Harare, claiming village chiefs are refusing to accept them because there is not enough food. Zimbabwe is facing its lowest harvest since independence. The United Nations estimates that 6m Zimbabweans are in urgent need of food aid.
With international aid agencies prevented from helping, those who can have sought shelter from the freezing winter nights in church yards and halls.
But confidential minutes of a meeting last Wednesday between community representatives and government officials headed by Ignatius Chombo, the minister of public works, confirm that church leaders have been refused permission to help the homeless.
The Catholic church has called for prayers all over the country today. Bishops will condemn “the injustice done to the poor” in the bravest move yet to stand up to Mugabe.

Does this Vasari hide a Leonardo?

From the Times:

IT IS a mystery that has confounded the art world for generations: what became of the Leonardo masterpiece, described as miraculous for its breathtaking beauty and scale, which has not been seen for 500 years? First, the facts: in 1505 Leonardo da Vinci began a vast work, The Battle of Anghiari, on a wall in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. The work, a whirl of horses and soldiers in battle, was to commemorate Florence’s defeat of Milanese forces in 1440. It was described at the time as a miraculous thing.
What happened next is less than clear. It is not even known if the painting was finished, or whether it later suffered irreparable damage.
(snip)
Now art experts, backed by a British foundation, say that they are convinced that the masterpiece is hidden behind a later Renaissance fresco, and the one real person to feature in The Da Vinci Code wants to pierce a hole in it and use an endoscope to prove that the masterpiece lies behind it.
But Maurizio Seracini, an engineer who specialises in using medical techniques to investigate artworks, faces opposition from fellow art historians who claim that the lost Leonardo is a myth and fear that the huge Giorgio Vasari painting that covers an entire wall in the council chamber of the Palazzo Vecchio will suffer extensive damage for no good reason.
Leonardo was commissioned to paint The Battle of Anghiari in the early 16th century, during the short-lived Florentine Republic that overthrew the Medici dukes.
However, the Medicis returned to power, and in 1563 Duke Cosimo apparently instructed Vasari to paint The Battle of Marciano, depicting one of the Medicis’ own victories, apparently replacing Leonardo’s work.
Signor Seracini says that he does not believe that Vasari destroyed the Leonardo. “Instead he erected a wall between his painting and Leonardo’s,” he says. “In fact, I am convinced he used the Leonardo as a model for his own work.”
Vasari even left behind a clue worthy of Dan Brown, says Signor Seracini. One of the pennants in his battle scene bears the words Cerca Trova, Italian for “seek and you shall find”.
(snip)
1 Leonardo is known to have finished at least the central part of The Battle of Anghiari. An eyewitnesses said it was “miraculous”
2 Vasari was an admirer of Leonardo and is unlikely to have simply painted over his work
3 Technical soundings have shown there is a cavity behind the Vasari, strengthening the theory that he put a protective wall in front of the Leonardo
4 Vasari painted the words Cerca Trova — seek and you shall find — in small letters on a pennant. It is high up and not obvious to the naked eye. It is the only writing in the painting
5 A masterpiece by Masaccio was also hidden behind a Vasari painting but was later rediscovered.

On the Magi...

From Where is Your God by Michael Paul Gallagher, SJ.

My favorite example is in the stonework of Autun Cathedral where the three are in the same bed under a large blanket, and all are wearing their crowns! An angel is waking them to point at the star. One of them is shown with eyes wide open in wonder, another half-awake, but the third remains sound asleep - as if to represent the three stages of spiritual alertness in the medieval tradition.
In all the early tradition they were protrayed as identical figures. It is only from the twelft-century onwards that the magi-kings assume individual characteristics, being depicted as the three ages of life, or as representing different races and continents of the world. from this epoch comes the delighful legend that the three met for Christmas Mass in Armenia in AD 54 and that they died happily within a few days, all being well over a hundred years old. At some point their supposed bodies showed up in Milan, but after the sack of that city in 1164, Cologne Cathedral managed to acquire the relics and they remain there still in a magnificent enamelled shrine. In the late Middle Ages a Cologne breviary announced that the kings had in fact been consecrated bishops by St Thomas in India, thereby creating another problem for artists concerning what headgear to give them.
Apart from the legends and the art, spiritual writers reflected in the Magi in many ways. The Venerable Bede was one of those who suggested meanings for the three gifts: gold signified kingship, incense divinity, and the myrrh was a prophesy of the Passion. A few centuries later St Bernard's interpretation was more down to earth: money for the poor family; incense to disinfect the stable; and myrrh as a herbal remedy against worms in children.

In Brief...

A new addition to my blogroll - go visit Therese over at Logres for a nice mixture of literary (Hopkins!) and spiritual content.
In the Telegraph we read of a gambling coup related to the colour hat worn by a certain Mrs Windsor.
It might surprise some of you to know that in some parts of the world there are still pirates:

Pirates clutching knives and AK47s boarded a supertanker moored off Basra in the latest of a series of seaborne robberies in the Persian Gulf.
In recent weeks there have been a number of audacious attacks on ships waiting to load at the city's overstretched terminals, raising concerns about the safety of oil exports and adding piracy to the area's list of security threats.
In the most recent incident, three men boarded the tanker in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

Here in Rome we have the chance of seeing a 'lost' Donatello!

A marble masterpiece in private hands for 400 years and now attributed to the Renaissance sculptor Donatello went on public view yesterday for the first time.
The bas-relief of the Madonna with 13 cherubs is said to have come from the tomb of St Catherine of Siena in Rome's Santa Maria Sopra Minerva. The work is thought to have been sculpted by Donatello in 1430 and 1431, but all trace of it was lost after the tomb was dismantled in the 1570s.

When Grandfathers Turn Bad...

Do any of you remember the nice old Italian gentleman who put himself up for adotion as a grandfather?
Unfortunately things haven't worked out well for the family that adopted him:

Two weeks ago, the adopted grandfather vanished, but not before leaving his trusting hosts with various unpaid debts and stealing a couple of post office cheques. In the end, Mr Angelozzi had selected Elio and Marlena Riva’s home at Spirano, in the province of Bergamo, from the many offers that had flooded in. Apparently, his loneliness was at an end. There was going to be a happy ending. Eighty-year-old Mr Angelozzi charmed everyone with his erudite conversation, the mania for precision that he had “acquired in all those years of strict Jesuit schooling” and the old-fashioned courtesy that prompted him to say “Marlena is my angel. Her voice is just like that of my dear wife,who passed away twelve years ago”.
But the fairy-tale was destined to end in tears. The truth began to come out at the beginning of May. “We discovered there was an unpaid bill for 3,500 euros with one of the local dentists. ‘Granddad’ had been having treatment without telling us”, say Elio and Marlena Riva.

The human canonball who wouldn't fly...

In the Independent:

He is accustomed to hurtling through the air at 60mph in a daily death-defying act as a human cannonball. But the circus stuntman Todd Christian was without a job yesterday because of his fear of flying.
Christian, 26, said he fell out with his employers, Cottle & Austen circus, when they tried to send him to a special training camp in Brazil after he injured himself several times during the act. "I know it sounds silly because I'm a human cannonball, but I don't like long flights and if I'm on a plane for a long time I start to panic," he said.
[snip]
Marnie Dock, the circus's expert cannon trainer, said Christian had been dismissed because he was not in good enough shape for the job.
"Todd simply wasn't fit enough," said Dock, who became the world's first female cannonball at the age of 16. "When we took him on he didn't tell us about previous injuries, and several times over the last couple of months we have had to drop the act from the show because he had injured his knee.
"He was supposed to go to the gym every day but he didn't and when he refused to go on a training course in Brazil we had no choice but to replace him.
[snip]
His role has been taken over by Diego Zeman, a Brazilian known as Diego the Human Rocket, who - unlike Christian - has received the specialist space training that helps him deal with the G-force of being fired through the air at 60mph.
"I feel sorry for Todd but being a human cannonball is what I have always dreamed of doing and I'm very happy," he said.

In brief...

From the Telegraph:

Italians worried about their image are taking out insurance against going bald.
The policy is open to anyone aged between 15 and 70, of either sex. It was developed by an insurance firm and a chain of hair care clinics, which ask for £220 annual premiums regardless of how much or how little hair the insured party has.
The pay-out, capped at £5,300, depends on the amount of hair lost between a client first taking out insurance and their final claim.

An article about child-labour in India:

A boy of five has been forced to take a job in the Indian police station where his late father worked.
In a case that highlights the huge problem of child labour in the sub-continent, Saurabh Nagvanshi spends his days running small errands, such as delivering reports to desks and carrying cups of tea for adult officers.
He was given the post at a police station in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh on "compassionate grounds" after the death of his father.
The practice, in which jobs are passed on within a family when a public servant dies to compensate for the loss of income, was instituted by the British. Although illegal, it remains common in rural areas.

Another parrot.

Trafalgar account for sale...

In the Telegraph:

A description of the horrors of the Battle of Trafalgar written by a barely-literate below-decks seaman is to be auctioned next month.
The document describes the action of Britain's greatest naval victory from the point of view of Robert Sands, a 17-year-old "powder monkey" on the Temeraire.
[snip]
Sands, from Rochester, Kent, was rated as "Boy, third class", the lowest form of life on a line-of-battle ship in Nelson's command.
His story opens with a description of the famous signal to the fleet sent by Nelson: "He said he oped that Everey man would doo his Duty this day for old Englands sake for it would be a gloureus day for them that lived to see the end of it."

A new theory on why it becomes more difficult to learn languages as we age:

Instead of language skills deteriorating with age, as was once thought, the brain becomes better at filtering out sounds which are not needed in the native tongue.
As a result, adults do not recognise sounds which are vital to other languages because they have lost their childhood ability to hear small sound differences.

A chocolate Elton John sculpture... *shudder*

Popes...

One of the finest paintings in Rome is Velazquez's portrait of Innocent X Pamphilj at the Doria Pamphilj Gallery. Famously, the Pope himself described it as 'troppo vero' - too realistic. It captures the character of a typical Renaissance Pope - crafy, not without intelligence, but with a certain weakness.


It's interesting to see how the (often distasteful) modern artist Francis Bacon was inspired by this masterpiece of portraiture.

In the news...

Oprah Winfrey claims Zulu blood...She told 3,200 fans at her Live Your Best Life seminar in Johannesburg: "I went in search of my roots and had my DNA tested and I am a Zulu."
[snip]
Local historians, however, were disinclined to believe her claim, as there are few records of the Zulus having any connection to the African slave trade. "If there were Zulu people taken as slaves they would have been taken eastwards by Arab traders or Portuguese to their South American colonies," said one.

Even more bizarrely...

A celebrity hairdresser beat up his 62-year-old neighbour during a row over a dead seagull, a court heard yesterday.
Daniel Galvin, 35, whose clients include the Duchess of Cornwall, is said to have repeatedly punched James Hicken in the face, leaving him semi conscious and in agony, after Mr Hicken dumped the bird at his feet.

And on a more religious note...
The British are making provisions to liberalise their law on the religious content of civil weddings:

Couples marrying in register offices may soon be able to celebrate with Bible readings or anthems such as Bread of Heaven under proposals to relax the ban on religion at civil ceremonies.
Civil weddings are currently required to be strictly "secular in nature" and registrars often bar poems and popular songs with only passing religious references.
Ministers believe, however, that the legal restrictions should be eased to allow readings or music that contain an "incidental" reference to a God or deity in "an essentially non-religious context".
[snip]
Bishops will, however, be even more worried about any changes which could make civil partnerships appear more like religiously authentic marriages, something they insist the ceremonies are not.
A spokesman for the Church of England said: "The Church is not seeking to prevent the use of readings, poems or music simply because they have some religious association.
"But we recognise that the singing of a hymn or prayers, or possibly even readings from the Bible or other sacred books, may give rise to more difficult issues."

There's also an interesting editorial in the Telegraph:

There is a reason why 1 Corinthians 13 ("Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels…") is so popular in modern church weddings. The word "God" does not occur in it. Apart from that passing nod to angels, the verses have no reference to the Christian religion.
This would please certain officious public registrars, who have interpreted the rule banning "religious" content in civil marriage ceremonies to exclude the merest mention of the divine. Forget about Corinthians: even Robbie Williams's song Angels has been blacklisted. This rule now looks likely to change, with the Government considering allowing "an incidental reference to a god or deity" in civil services.

Misc...

Parrot.
Dolphins.
An interesting story in the Telegraph about Fundamentalist Mormans and polygamy:

The leader of a polygamous sect has been charged with child sex abuse in connection with an arranged marriage between a teenage girl and a 28-year-old man who was already married.
Warren Jeffs, a self-proclaimed prophet and despotic president of the Fundamental Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, faces up to two years in jail if convicted.
Although Jeffs, 49, was charged with sexual conduct with a minor, he did not have sex with the 16-year-old girl but arranged her marriage to the man, said prosecutors.

In the Times
:

Archaeologists were due to dig up the chancel of a Suffolk church today in search of the remains of a relative of one of America’s earliest founding fathers.
Scientists want to take DNA from the bones or teeth of Elizabeth Gosnold Tilney, who died 400 years ago.
Mrs Tilney was the sister of the British sea captain Bartholomew Gosnold, who was born in Grundisburgh, Suffolk, and is said to have founded the first English-speaking American colony in Virginia in 1607.
Archaeologists in Virginia, USA, recently found what they believe to be the remains of Captain Gosnold, and to confirm their suspicions they plan to make cross-checks with the DNA of his sister.

St Anthony of Padua
I think St Anthony has found enough stuff for me to own me twice over... I popped by the Basilica of S.Antonio today and was pleased to see the place packed with Mass-goers. Outside was a large statue of the saint, tables where one could acquired blessed bread and lilies and a Francisan friar wearing a white soul drenching everyone with holy water and blessing us throught the intercession of the saint. I understand there was a parade this evening - Italian Catholicism at its best.