Author: Serkadis

The sunspot activity level has increased sharply as predicted and will take a while to reach a peak.  It was a very long wait this time, but I do not think the wait was overly excessive.  Anyway, they are back with a vengeance and we have had 38 days of them without break.

So we can put those fears of another Maunder minimum back into the closet for another eleven to thirteen years.  I not so sure that they should not be buried forever and perhaps we will know enough then to decide.

It is long forgotten that the Maunder minimum data came at the dawn of the age of the telescope and the data is dodgy.  At the time observers questioned the reality of sunspots at all.  It is pretty hard to find sunspots when no one aims a scope at the sun because he does not believe they even exist.

The sunspot cycle is now back in convincing form and the next thing to look for is the obvious peak.  That should not take too long at all.

 I have posted this radio report before and it reflects the swift improvement in reception brought on by the increase in solar activity.

The K7RA Solar Update

http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2010/02/26/11362/?nc=1

A member of the Palatine City Council says the former girlfriend of one of the two convicted Brown’s Chicken and Pasta killers has received half of the nearly $100,000 in reward money collected since the 1993 massacre.

Palatine Councilman Jack Wagner said Tuesday that Anne English, who finally stepped forward with her secret, leading to Juan Luna’s and James Degorski’s arrest in 2002, received her share of the money last week.

English is sharing the reward with a friend, Melissa Oberle, who reportedly coaxed her into contacting authorities.
 

Read the original article from The State Journal-Register.

Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services

Lincoln Land Community College will be closed for mid-semester break Saturday through Sunday, March 14. No classes will be held and all administrative offices at the main campus and other locations in the LLCC district will be closed. Classes and regular business hours will resume Monday, March 15.

Lincoln Land Community College’s Capital City Training Center at 130 W. Mason St., and the Illinois Small Business Development Center, 8 Old Capitol Plaza, will maintain regular office hours Monday through Friday through March 12.
 

Read the original article from The State Journal-Register.

Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services

Experts in diagnosing black lung disease will conduct examinations in Springfield once a month at the Capital Community Health Center.

The first Coal Miner’s Clinic, conducted by Drs. Robert Cohen and Bill Clapp of Cook County Health and Hospitals System, will take place from 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Friday at the center at 2239 E. Cook St.

The clinic will be open to anyone in central and southern Illinois or southwestern Indiana who has worked in coal-mining professions or has other occupational exposure to dust, fumes and chemicals.

The clinic will continue on the first Friday of each month.

The free evaluations can help people qualify for black lung benefits from the federal government, according to Shelly Rigsby, program coordinator for the Southern Illinois and Southwestern Indiana Respiratory Disease Program.

People signing up for appointments are asked to bring in a chest X-ray, which costs $150 and is the federally funded examination program’s only out-of-pocket expense, Rigsby said.

Confidential appointments for the monthly clinics can be made by calling Melissa Bagwell at (866) 252-9732.

Read the original article from The State Journal-Register.

Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services

The Harvard Crimson (James K. Mcauley and Julia Ryan)

Thanks to David Petersen for the above link.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Manchester University

The University of Manchester and the Natural History Museum in London are to revisit the work of anthropologist Sir Grafton Elliot Smith and set up a publicly available website on his excellent but as yet overlooked work.

The team, which includes researchers at Manchester’s KNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptology, has won a £160,000 Wellcome Trust grant to re-examine Smith’s evidence from 20,000 bodies buried at Nubia, in research that never received the recognition it deserved.

Smith, an academic at the Universities of Cairo and Manchester and UCL in the early twentieth century, originated the study of disease in large populations and gathered extensive data just before Nubia was flooded by the building of the low dam of Aswan. The area is now southern Egypt/northern Sudan.

KNH Director Professor Rosalie David, of Manchester’s Faculty of Life Sciences, said: “Elliot Smith was one of the great pioneers of palaeopathology and was the first to study disease patterns of given archaeological populations on an extensive scale. However, his work has never been properly recognised or acknowledged, largely because of the diversity of projects he worked on and because the surviving related archival material and human remains are now held in scattered institutions. It is important to investigate his research legacy because it provides an unequalled picture of patterns of disease, diet and living conditions over many centuries.”

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Biblical Archaeology Review (Orly Goldwasser)

To the Asiatics, as they were called, the lush Nile Delta, with its open marshlands rich with fish and fowl, was a veritable Garden of Eden. From earliest times, Canaanites and other Asiatics would come and settle here. Indeed, this is the background of the Biblical story of the famine in Canaan that led to Jacob’s descent into Egypt (Genesis 46:1–7).

By the beginning of the Egyptian Middle Kingdom (a few years after 2000 B.C.E.), the pressure of immigrants on the eastern Delta was so strong that the Egyptian authorities built a series of forts at strategic points to “repel the Asiatics,” as the story of Sinuhe tells us.1

More than a century later, however, Egyptian policy toward the Asiatics changed. Instead of trying to prevent them from coming in, the Egyptians cultivated close relations with strong Canaanite city-states on the Mediterranean coast and allowed select Asiatic populations to settle in the eastern Delta. The last of the great pharaohs of the XIIth Dynasty, Amenemhet III (c. 1853–1808 B.C.E.) and Amenemhet IV (c. 1808–1799 B.C.E.), even established a new town for them.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Toronto Sun (Kevin Connor)

With video.

Some curators at the Royal Ontario Museum seem introverted and not keen on sharing their artifacts — and then there is Egyptology educator Gayle Gibson.

Her personality is as large as a pyramid and she was delighted to share her treasures.

Although her expertise is Egypt and not lions, she bears a good resemblance to the actress who starred in the movie Born Free.

One of her favourite treasures is a 3,000-year-old mummy coffin beautifully decorated with art work and prayers.

“A (mummy) coffin would cost as much as a car, so this is a low-end coffin, but she would of had some connection with the ruling class because it was decorated by experts,” Gibson said.

It is a mystery as to what happened to the mummified woman for whom the coffin was made.

Gibson also brought out a mummified Roman baby who died 2,000 years ago. Tests have not concluded the sex of the child.

“This baby was wrapped in a painted cloth. It is a nice meaningful scene with a priest showing the child is now safe in the arms of God,” Gibson said while lovingly looking at the baby.

“It is a lovely image. They did the best they could, but you can tell this wasn’t a wealthy family.”

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

American University of Beirut (Maha Al-Azar)

For the average person, a 300-square meter area may merely bring to mind a large apartment, but for historians and archeologists, such a space could contain a wealth of information, puzzles, and insights into a world long forgotten.

These forgotten narratives are exactly what an expedition led by AUB President Peter Dorman, who is also an acclaimed Egyptologist, set out to uncover when it headed to Luxor (ancient Thebes) to study the inner sanctuary of a modest temple that lies within the great Medinet Habu complex, whose history spans several millennia, from the Eighteenth Dynasty and up to the Christian era.

The Medinet Habu complex is an impressive architectural mortuary temple precinct that covers about 60,000 square meters. It is probably best known for the 7000 square meters of inscribed reliefs that adorn the vast funeral temple of Ramesses III, of the Nineteenth Dynasty. But now an earlier, more modest temple precinct dedicated to the god Amun has been studied by the Epigraphic Survey of the University of Chicago, where Dorman spent close to nine years leading the Survey and five years chairing the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Archaeogate – Egittologia
Méroé, un empire sur le Nil
Musée du Louvre, Paris
26 mars – 06 septembre 2010

À l’occasion de cette première exposition consacrée à Méroé, capitale d’un empire puissant installé sur les rives du Nil, deux cents oeuvres illustrent la majesté de cette civilisation antique où se mêlent des influences africaines, égyptiennes et gréco-romaines

Située au Soudan, à deux cents kilomètres au nord de l’actuelle Khartoum, la ville de Méroé, capitale du royaume, est connue pour ses pyramides destinées aux rois et aux reines qui ont dominé la région entre 270 avant J.-C. et 350 après J.-C.

Constituée essentiellement de prêts du musée de Khartoum – dont la célèbre statue en bronze doré d’un roi archer, du British Museum, du World Museum et du Garstang Museum de Liverpool, des musées de Munich, de Berlin ou de Leyde, cette exposition réunit près de deux cents œuvres qui évoquent l’originalité et la puissance de l’empire de Méroé.

Les principaux thèmes abordés sont la vie quotidienne, l’artisanat, les systèmes sociaux, les rois et leurs insignes du pouvoir, le rôle des reines, connues sous le nom de candaces, les cultes, où cohabitent Amon l’Egyptien et Dionysos le Grec, l’au-delà tel que le concevait le peuple de Méroé.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Armchair Prehistory (Edward Pegler)

An ultra swift guide to the early Predynastic of Egypt.

The Nile valley is a fine thing. A narrow corridor straddling the great Sahara desert it is, strangely, a perfect place to farm. Until the construction of the Aswan Dam the annual flood’s timing, unlike Iraq’s, made it relatively easy to grow crops on its riverbanks without irrigation.

In history the Nile valley was also (ignoring the relatively minor oases) the major overland lifeline between the Mediterranean and Sub-Saharan Africa. As such it was not just an avenue for communication. It was also a bottleneck along which almost all trade passed between the two areas. Admittedly, much of the good stuff, ivory, gold and slaves, went north. There is little evidence of what went south.

The ancient kingdoms of Egypt and, to the south, Kush controlled much of this trade until the end of the first millennium BC. At this time Arabian and Greek sailors, travelling down the Red Sea into the Indian Ocean and down the East African coast, broke their monopoly. Kush did not last much longer after this although the cities of the Nile delta, Alexandria, Cairo and Fustat, sitting at the head of the Red Sea trade routes to Europe, survived very well indeed.

Bizarrely, although there’s limited evidence of agriculture around the Nile delta around 5000 BC, there is little evidence for agriculture or settlement anywhere along the Nile valley before around 4000 BC (the “Naqada” culture). Compare this with the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East, where agriculture started around 8500 BC, four thousand years earlier. Now consider that the two are less than 300 miles apart at their closest points across the Sinai Desert.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

American University in Cairo Press

Beyond the Horizon. Studies in Egyptian Art, Archaeology and History in Honour of Barry J. Kemp
Edited by Salima Ikram and Aidan Dodson
Foreword by Zahi Hawass
2009

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Amarna Project

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Ancient World Online

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Rundle Foundation for Egyptology Newsletter

Thanks to AWOL for linking to this resource.

Beginning in 1981, newsletters have been sent to Rundle Foundation /ACE members. They provide information on social and educational activities, and also brief records of archaeological work. The newsletters sometimes contain articles of academic interest and some of these (from early issues) are listed on this page.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Kerma.ch

Still today, Nubia is synonymous with a mysterious and faraway land through which the River Nile runs, a land that leads the way into Sub-Saharan Africa, its riches and its exoticism. While without writing for millennia, Nubian civilisation displays remarkable dynamism and originality, culturally as well as economically.

Kerma is one of the most important sites of the Nile Valley. Under excavation by a Swiss team for more than thirty years, it has revealed exceptional archaeological remains, monumental temples and vast necropoleis buried in the ruins of ancient cities. Kerma is the capital city of the first kingdom of Nubia. The region, which includes the oldest cemeteries of the African continent, also boasts the discovery of statues of the Black Pharaohs.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Guests Saturday at Western DuPage Special Recreation’s charity dinner and auction, “There’s No Place Like WDSRA,” will walk into the lobby of Abbington Distinctive Banquets in Glen Ellyn and encounter a floor-to-ceiling tornado made of balloons.

A rainbow of balloons will greet them as they enter the room. On the ceiling, a yellow brick road made of about 2,000 balloons will run around the room and lead up to the Emerald City, otherwise known as the stage.

WDSRA’s theme for its annual fundraiser is, of course, a takeoff on “The Wizard of Oz.” The man behind the decorations is Bill McCormack, owner of the American Balloon Company of Glen Ellyn and WDSRA’s 2010 Hall of Fame inductee.

“He’s done some really elaborate balloon decorations for us,” said Sherry Manschot, WDSRA’s marketing and PR manager. “They’re really quite stunning.”

McCormack, whose clients include everyone from the Chicago White Sox to numerous charities to family birthday parties, said if anyone had told him 13 years ago he would be where he is today, he would have said they were nuts.

“We just kind of stumbled into it and it’s grown,” he said.

A native of Hoffman Estates and resident of unincorporated Glen Ellyn, McCormack got his degree in construction management and worked as a mechanical contractor for 17 years. But he and his wife, Adrienne, wanted a business of their own. Franchises, they decided, were just another form of working for someone else.

Then the McCormacks met a guy putting Teddy bears in balloons at a trade show. Intrigued, they bought the necessary equipment and started working shows on weekends.

“Doing it part-time just wasn’t working,” McCormack said.

So he quit his job in 1997, opened a kiosk at Charlestowne Mall in St. Charles and then bought the assets of a store that sold Beanie Babies. For the first couple years while the balloon business got, well, up in the air, Beanie Babies provided the cash flow.

“It’s just been snowballing ever since,” McCormack said.

Balloon Buddies, as the business first was called, changed its name after McCormack bought out the American Balloon Company. His store is now at 485 Main St. in downtown Glen Ellyn.

“I’ve had a lot of fun,” he said. “It’s rewarding.”

Clients big and small

McCormack currently works with one full-time employee and three part-timers, but he pulls in other help as needed or contracts out to other balloon companies for events he can’t handle himself.

He has many corporate clients and has festooned trade shows at McCormick Place and the Rosemont Convention Center with balloons. But when a mother calls wanting one large balloon in the shape of the numeral 5 for a birthday party, McCormack runs it out to her when she comes by so she won’t have to take her little one out of the car.

“There’s nothing too big, nothing too small,” he said.

The work entails a lot of running around. His busiest week is between Christmas and New Year’s. This past New Year’s Eve, he had 17 balloon drops in the Chicago area, from as far north to Skokie to as far west as St. Charles. He rents a 16-foot box truck to make the deliveries when his van (which holds 300 balloons) won’t do.

Spring brings a busy season for providing balloons for charity walks. McCormack said he normally gives a 25 percent discount to charities, but WDSRA holds a special place in his heart. He donates much of his work to the group and has for 13 years.

The annual auction raises funds for the recreation programs WDSRA runs for children and adults with disabilities and provides scholarships for those who otherwise might not be able to participate.

“They are my favorite charity,” McCormack said. “They appreciate what volunteers and the people who help them do, more so than any organization I’ve been involved with.”

McCormack said WDSRA always gives him latitude in which to work. One year when its fundraiser had an undersea theme, he created a balloon octopus with eight 15- to 20-foot arms. After the event, a guest asked for the creation and drove it home on top of his car.

“They’ve given me the opportunity to try new things and really stretch my imagination,” he said.

McCormack’s involvement with WDSRA doesn’t end with balloons. He and his daughter, Erin, jumped out of a plane for WDSRA’s sky-diving fundraiser last year. McCormack and his father also work casino nights that benefit the charity.

“It’s something the whole family gets involved in and it’s a lot of fun,” he said.

Ballon art & business

McCormack, a certified balloon artist, said he learned many of his balloon techniques by taking classes during the years the International Balloon Arts Convention was held at the Hyatt Regency in Rosemont. He entered competitions there a couple times, once building a spaceship and another time the American flag in a 20-by-20-foot space in 27 hours. He didn’t win awards, but the flag – built at the first convention after 9/11 – earned recognition in Balloon Images magazine.

“It’s a challenge, and it really tests your ability to do things right then,” he said.

McCormack doesn’t claim to be especially artistic, but he said a mechanical background helps in constructing the structures beneath the balloons when he makes sculptures.

“Once you learn how to put different size balloons together, or the same size balloons … in a particular order, you can create most anything,” he said.

McCormack enjoys the looks on people’s faces when they see his creations. He’s especially pleased when someone who doesn’t know what he’s building recognizes what it is right away.

“Most people still think a balloon is on the end of a string. The things you can do with them is truly amazing,” he said.

For event decorations, McCormack favors latex balloons made by Qualatex because they are thicker and last longer. But once a balloon bursts, there’s little danger of it harming the environment, he said.

“Latex balloons degrade just as fast as an oak leaf,” he said.

What McCormack does warn against is young people buying helium balloons to suck the helium so they can talk funny.

“What it does is deprive the brain of oxygen,” he said.

If there’s a frustration to selling balloons, McCormack said, it’s the last minute of his work. For a big event, he’ll start blowing up balloons with an air compressor the day before, but he can’t do it sooner than that.

“You get into a real time crunch,” he said. “I’m a stickler for being on time. I hate showing up to a job late.”

McCormack’s commitment to his clients, no doubt, accounts for his business taking off. He recalled that a mechanical contractor once told him that his goal was to make and keep customers. If he did that, the money would follow, the contractor said.

McCormack decided to adopt that business philosophy as his own.

“Most of our business comes from word-of-mouth and repeat business,” he said. “If the customer is happy, they’ll come back.”

For more information on McCormack’s company, contact americanballooncompany.com or (630) 469-2747.

• Do you know someone with an unusual job or hobby? Let us know at [email protected], (630) 955-3532 or 4300 Commerce Court, Lisle, 60532.

If you go

What: “There’s No Place Like WDSRA” charity dinner and auction

When: 6 p.m. Saturday, March 6

Where: Abbington Distinctive Banquets, 3S002 Route 53, Glen Ellyn

Tickets: $85

Details: wdsra.com or (630) 681-0962

Read the original article on DailyHerald.com.

Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services

Decatur Daily (Review by John Davis)

In the Valley of the Kings.
By Daniel Meyerson.
Ballantine, 230 pages

Daniel Meyerson, Ellis Fellow at Columbia University, is a professor of writing. I can only envy his students. This is doubtless the most readable account of that long ago series of de­cades that began the last century. What could well be dry going, as was Egyptian archaeology at that time, is brought to vivid life by Meyerson, whose mastery of the well-chosen bon mot, anecdote and insight is a wonder in itself. Character sketches are not to be forgotten.

We meet Carter as the skilled draftsman who comes under the wing of that recognized founder of modern archaeology, the charmingly named W. Flin­ders Petrie. Petrie came to the attention of European scholars because of his scientific appreciation of simple pottery shards to tell a story of developments in pottery but also, by inference, civilization.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Mini-Europe

Theme park featuring miniature replicas of European monuments

True to its name, Mini-Europe is a theme park featuring miniature, 1:25 scale models of monuments in the European Union. Located in Brussels, Belgium, Mini-Europe lies at the base of the Atomium which is in the reverse scale, a model of an iron crystal lattice magnified 165 million times.
The park was created in 1989 and features 350 monuments and live action models, including the Leaning Tower of Pisa, an erupting Mount Vesuvius, and Big Ben including its famous chimes. The buildings represent roughly 80 cities in the EU, most of which were financed by their respective countries or regions.
Though the buildings might be small in size, much attention to detail has been paid in their creation. With the exception of a few stone structures, most of the monuments were created using a silicone mold and epoxy resin or polyester casts. The Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela took 24,000 hours to build, and the Grand Place of Brussels cost roughly €350,000 to complete.
Additionally, the park features a new interactive exhibition, the “Spirit of Europe,” which shares EU history through multimedia games.

Read more about Mini-Europe on Atlas Obscura…

Category: Miniatures, Small Worlds and Model Towns
Location: Brussels, Belgium
Edited by: anhie, Dylan