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On this day April 8th:

On this day in 1973, master artist Pablo Picasso died at his chateau, near Canne in France.

On this day in 1995, after twelve years on death row, Richard Ingram, the British man on death row, he was electrocuted for the murder he committed against J.C Sawyer in 1983.

On this day in 1904, Britain and France signed the entente cordiale, resolving disputes about areas of Northern Africa and establishing diplomacy between the two nations.

On this day in 1986, Clint Eastwood was elected Mayor of Carmel, California, but only served for two years.

On this day in 1974, Hank Aaron, the American baseball star slugged his way to 715 homeruns, beating the Babe Ruth’s total, despite receiving daily death threats to leave the record alone. Nevertheless, Aaron finished his career with an amazing 756 homeruns.

On this day in 1997, against a flood of corruption, veteran newsman Martin Bell decided to stand for Neil Hamilton’s constituency.

UCLA Cotsen Institute of Archaeology

Two new articles on the research done by Willeke Wendrich and Hans Barnard at the Fayum Oasis in Egypt have been published in scientific journals.

The first article, in the current issue of Antiquity, “Identifying low-level food producers: detecting mobility from lithics” can be read here.

The second article, from the journal Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research B, “Dating stratified settlement sites at Kom K and Kom W: Fifth millennium BCE radiocarbon ages for the Fayum Neolithic,” is available here.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Talking Pyramids (Vincent Brown)

With diagrams.

Vincent has done an excellent summary and analysis of the recently reported attempts to discover the pyramid of Userkare at Saqqara.

The location of the lost pyramid of Userkare may have been found with a little help from Djoser and some clever aligning.

Professor of archaeoastronomy at Milan’s Polytechnic University, Giulio Magli has come up with a theory using new astronomical and topographical research to create a grid that connects up some of the major pyramids at Saqqara and South Saqqara.

Following on the heels of his announcement last year that the pyramids of Giza form a line aligned with Heliopolis, the professor is now tackling the search for the 4,300 tomb of the mysterious king Userkare.

You Tube

Dr Vasko (or Vassil) Dobrev explains his search for the tomb of Userkare – a Sixth Dynasty Pharaoh who ruled between the reign of Teti and Pepi I. In the video, Dr Dobrev explains that Egypt was in a power limbo after the assassination of Teti, until Userkare came to bring peace and restore order. He is excavating a site at Saqqara South where his team have so far covered a fifth of a hectare, out of a 15 hectare plateau. Dr Dobrev shows us in this video what he has found so far at the Tabbet al-Guech site, and some insight into the world of archaeology.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Caribbean Queen Rihanna give a high energy performance of “Rockstar 101″ — the latest single from her Rated R LP — on Wednesday’s American Idol.

Aaron Brown is a reporter who lives and writes on te Iron Range. I often enjoy his articles and perspective. He wrote a great wake up call to Iron Rangers the other day that I think could – maybe should – be read by other communities too. I’ll just excerpt two paragraphs (which I’ve taken out of order) here…

Maybe Google Fiber is a salvation; maybe it isn’t. Something else caught my eye. When Duluth was presented with the opportunity to pursue Google, it did so wholeheartedly and with a broad coalition that included more than the usual suspects. Duluth is pursuing Google Fiber with creativity, and yet with understanding of itself, both its limitations and potential. From YouTube to Facebook, from the Chamber of Commerce to students playing online video games, Duluth is trying something new.

We sit here waiting for Essar Steel to build a plant in Nashwauk that will not even remotely replace the jobs lost over the past 30 years. Even if the Essar project is wildly successful it won’t completely solve our problems, specifically the problems that face our local schools, cities and businesses. We need more. No one else will give us what we need unless we ask for, then demand, then create our own solutions. New industry, telecommuters and innovative ways to harness natural, renewable resources are the only way out of this anxious wilderness.

I’ve often said that I like the idea of the Google Fiber Community because it gets people talking about broadband. It gets them excited. Google is a long shot (if not lottery odds than at least carnival raffle odds, and I never win those) but once you’ve talked and committed and worked to convince Google that you’re worthy – well wouldn’t you have to believe if yourself and wouldn’t you go on to get it done? It’s a reason to make the first step. My Grandpa used to say – first you got to want to. Once you want to the rest is easy.

Aaron has gone even further with this idea – Google was an opportunity for each community to be creative, think big and make plans for the future. While the Google opportunity may be gone – the opportunity to be creative, think big and make plans for the future – and as the old saying goes, there’s no better time than a present!

Supporters of stronger intellectual property laws in other countries ought to be careful what they ask for… they just might get it, and then discover they didn’t really want it after all. For example, for many, many years, US companies have been screaming loudly about how the US should pressure China to be more respectful of intellectual property. China, for example, regularly makes the “priority watch list” of the USTR’s “Special 301” report, which is effectively a catalog of what countries US companies are complaining most about. However, China has suddenly taken an interest in intellectual property in the last few years, and it doesn’t seem to be turning out quite like US companies expected.

First, a few years back, we wrote about a high profile counterfeit DVD bust in China, where the “culprit” was actually a rich American. Then, we noticed in 2008 that China was starting to talk about China cracking down on video game piracy, but only when it concerned others copying China’s video games. Finally, late last year, we noted that a French company had lost a patent lawsuit in China.

It turns out that was just the beginning. Joe Mullin points us to a story about how there have been a series of recent patent and trademark rulings in Chinese courts all of which appear to be going against large multinational companies and in favor of Chinese companies.

Of course, this isn’t a surprise at all. Various studies have shown that greater copyright, patent and trademark protections tend to follow a period of great innovation, when the companies that did that innovation look to protect their position from upstarts elsewhere. In other words, it acts in the exact opposite manner as it’s supposed to. It’s not an incentive to innovate, but a tool used to stop competition and innovation from others. The situation in China is playing out exactly according to that formula. The country is growing into a bigger believer in intellectual property laws — but only for the sake of using it to protect against foreigners — which, we assume, is not what US companies wanted, but which they should have expected if they ever bothered to look at the actual history of stronger intellectual property laws.

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Verizon Wireless sure is busy. Word on the street is that they’re preparing to launch seven new phones, in addition to wrangling an iPhone deal if you believe everything you hear. HTC’s next Android wonder-phone, the Incredible, is next apparently. More »

The Renault Laguna Coupé Monaco GP will be presented alongside the Renault Wind, Megane CC and Dacia Duster at the Cabriolet, Coupé and SUV show in Paris. The Renault Laguna Coupé in Monaco GP version is a limited series model with pearl white and pearl black tint.

It has an all-leather interior, Carminat TomTom sat nav system, Bose audio system, Xenon lights and electronic 4Control roof. The Laguna Coupé Monaco GP will go on sale from June 2010 but official pics, engine details and the price are not currently available. We’ll have more news when the official Laguna images are released.

I do believe, that after causing all manner of cable-news freak outs last night and much soiling of boxer-briefs amongst the easily frightened, we have discovered the nadir (or is it the height?) of international banality:

US air marshals subdued a Qatari diplomat on a flight to Denver in a bomb scare triggered after he reportedly smoked a cigarette and then joked he was trying to ignite his shoes, officials said…

This guy apparently is an honors graduate of the John Bolton School of International Diplomacy.

When Slut Shit Goes Wrong: Kiely Williams has hit out at critics (that includes us) who cried “EPIC FAIL!” over the former 3LW and Cheetah Girl’s sex-charged single and music video “Spectacular.” The ex-Disney star has been the laughing stock of the blogosphere ever since the official video for her first solo single hit the Interwebs on Monday.

The video for “Spectacular” features Williams — decked out for The Ho Stroll in fishnet leggings, a faux fur jacket, and handcuffs as a bracelet — sodomizing a brick wall and crooning about getting wasted at some dive and going home for an unprotected roll in the hay with a dreadlocked stranger.

You know, a typically Saturday night. (Insert eye-rolling here….)

While many a digested YouTuber has argued that the rave-inspired dance track promotes ideals of unprotected sex and even date rape, Kiely argues that her Not Safe For Work, Life, or While Eating “Spectacular” was written and produced to raise awareness about such serious issues — not encourage them. The 23-year-old insists she only filmed the promo to draw attention to the number of people who fail to use protection during casual sexual encounters. The phrase “Lame Excuse” springs to mind. If you truly want to encourage people to stop hooking up for drunken trysts, how about appearing in a PSA or something? But let’s hear her out:

In a message accompanying the video on her YouTube.com page, Kiely wrote, “I am playing a character in the music video for the song Spectacular, as I did in the Cheetah Girl movies. Young women across the country get intoxicated and have unprotected sex. That’s a fact. I recorded the song to bring attention to this frighteningly prevalent activity. It is absurd to infer or suggest that I am condoning this behavior,” she added.

“Are Lady Gaga and Beyonce advocating murder with the Telephone video? Of course not. Was Rihanna encouraging suicide with Russian Roulette? No. Was Madonna suggesting that young unmarried girls get pregnant with Papa Don’t Preach? I don’t think so. Is Academy Award winner Monique a proponent of incest because of her portrayal of Mary in the movie Precious? Clearly, the answer is no,” the singer continued.

“I wrote Spectacular and made the video to bring attention to a serious women’s health and safety issue. Please don’t shoot the messenger.”

Frontline (R. Krishnakumar)

With maps.

One way to understand the implications of the archaeological discoveries at Pattanam is to delve into the amazing wealth of data from the excavations at the lost Ptolemic-Roman port city of Berenike, on Egypt’s Red Sea coast. During the Ptolemic-Roman period (third century B.C. to sixth century A.D), Berenike served as a key transit port between ancient Egypt and Rome on one side and the Red Sea-Indian Ocean regions, including South Arabia, East Africa, India and Sri Lanka, on the other.

This ancient port city was well-connected by roads from the Nile that passed through the Eastern Desert of Egypt and also by sea routes from the Indian Ocean regions. Cargoes unloaded at Berenike and other Egyptian Red Sea ports (such as Myos Hormos, now lost) used to be taken along the desert roads to the Nile and from there through the river to the Mediterranean Sea and across, to the Roman trade centres.

Exotic goods from Rome and Egypt flowed into Berenike along the same desert road before being loaded into large ships bound for the Indian Ocean.

By the end of the second century B.C., the Egyptians and the Romans finally learnt the skill of sailing with the monsoon winds across the Indian Ocean (“from the Arabs and other Easterners”). Voyages from Berenike for the riches of the Malabar coast therefore became “faster, cheaper, but not less dangerous”.

According to most accounts, one of the major centres in India that ships from Berenike travelled to, along with the monsoon winds, was the emporium of Muziris, on the Malabar coast.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Google’s mapping efforts are nothing but ambitious. It is working diligently to make Street View imagery for as many of the Earth’s cities as possible. It is also aiming to have them recreated in 3D in Google Earth. The satellite imagery of even the most remote places is becoming more detailed. Yet, most of its efforts focus on just 30 percent of the Earth’… (read more)

Creo que a más de uno el rumor de que Yahoo quiere comprar FourSquare nos ha levantado una sonrisa. Yahoo lleva un montón de años intentando subirse a todas las olas y salir del marco “compañía con portal y servicios que triunfó hace diez años”. El problema es que desde hace tiempo o no aciertan con el enfoque o no ejecutan bien o no lanzan en el momento adecuado. De todo esto tenemos un montón de ejemplos: Mash en las redes sociales, software para internet y el televisor, Fire Eagle y la localización, Buzz como alternativa al modelo Digg, vídeo en directo en la red, Go como plataforma en el móvil… y podríamos seguir un buen rato, hace muchos años que Yahoo no tiene un servicio ganador y no ha sido por falta de intentos.

Visto así, la idea de hacerse con FourSquare no es en absoluto descabellada: si no logran crear algo que realmente conecte con lo que va a ser el futuro de la web, mejor buscarlo fuera. El problema es que pueden o comprar muy barato (si realmente FourSquare es uno de los protagonistas de esa web de los próximos años) o muy caro si se queda en el camino hacia los usuarios normales. Ya sucedió con delicious, el líder en su sector… pero que nunca llegó al gran público ni – en parte por culpa de Yahoo – a poner en valor todo el potencial de los datos que posee. Yahoo necesita un Foursquare, pero quizás no a FourSquare

Más información en Genbeta, BI.

Hearing Alan Greenspan’s excuses that he couldn’t have done anything to stop the Wall Street marauders from overrunning main street because Congress(!) would have stopped him sure does make me angry.

Evidently the masters of the universe are all powerful until they have to admit they screwed up.

And to cap it off, Greenspan whined he was only wrong 30% of the time. So when should anyone be held accountable for their bad decisions?

It’s like General Custer saying, “Give me a break. I only made one mistake. All the rest of the time I was doing just great.” So what?

All the people whose lives were ruined by Uncle Alan’s tiny misjudgment and failure to do something about the rampant fraud might not think it was such a little deal after all.

Mozilla security saw a new bug-report filed at bugzilla reporting an unclaimed RSA root certificate. The certificate goes by the name of RSA Security 1024 V3. Both Verisign and RSA have declined ownership of this certificate.

Kathleen Wilson, an active Consultant at Mozilla Corporation has been actively digging through Mozilla security issues. He writes at this Mozilla security Google group saying,

I propose that the “RSA Security 1024 V3″ root certificate authority be
removed from NSS.

OU = RSA Security 1024 V3
O = RSA Security Inc
Valid From: 2/22/01
Valid To: 2/22/26
SHA1 Fingerprint:
3C:BB:5D:E0:FC:D6:39:7C:05:88:E5:66:97:BD:46:2A:BD:F9:5C:76

I have not been able to find the current owner of this root. Both RSA
and VeriSign have stated in email that they do not own this root.

This issue got everyone worried about this being a rouge certificate. However, later Wilson assured the certificate’s origin by saying,

I have received email from official representatives of RSA confirming
that RSA did indeed create the “RSA Security 1024 V3″ root certificate
that is currently included in NSS (Netscape/Mozilla) and also in Apple’s
root cert store.

He also added that that RSA has since, dropped the root certificate and so should Mozilla. In another mail from RSA, it was told that the private key for this root was safe with RSA. This assures that this flaw was not exploited and now the certificate will be removed from NSS (Network Security Services).

[ Via: LinuxToday ]

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Discovery News (Rossella Lorenzi)

With slideshow.

When Howard Carter discovered King Tutankhamun’s treasure-packed tomb in 1922 in the Valley of the Kings, he found a large collection of footwear of different sizes and shapes.

“It is the only evidence of ancient Egyptian royal footwear. It is an amazing collection. Just think — it is 3,300 years old,” Dutch Archaeologist Andre Veldmeijer, the author of “Tutankhamun’s Footwear: Studies of ancient Egyptian Footwear,” told Discovery News.

Veldmeijer studied 81 specimens, including simple sewn sandals, as well as other elaborately decorated, gold ornamented, brightly colored open shoes.

Full report on Discovery News

The first detailed analysis of sandals buried with the boy king suggest the sometimes elaborate footwear was made to accommodate his club foot.

At least three pairs of shoes found in King Tut’s tomb display a horizontal strap just below the toes, as shown in this illustration. (Click on the photo to find out more about the amazing sandals.)

King Tutankhamun might have worn some sort of orthopedic shoes specially designed to cope with his club foot condition, an investigation into the pharaoh’s footwear has suggested.

Published in the book, “Tutankhamun’s Footwear: Studies of Ancient Egyptian Footwear,” the research is the first detailed analysis of the 3,300-year-old footwear since King Tut’s mummy and treasure-packed tomb were discovered by Howard Carter in 1922.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Egypt Exploration Society

With some gorgeous b&w photos from the 1920s. The Heritage Key article mentioned below dates to early February.

A fascinating article on Amice Calverley, who worked for the Society in the temple of Sety I at Abydos, has just appeared on the Heritage Key website here (see also the comment by Chris Naunton beneath the main piece).

The project to record the decoration in the temple remains one the Society’s most significant contributions to Egyptology and its genesis is summarized in the introduction to the first of the published volumes, The Temple of King Sethos I at Abydos. Vol I. The Chapels of Osiris, Isis and Horus (London and Chicago, 1933):

“In the season of 1925-6 the Egypt Exploration Society, after excavating for some years exclusively at El-Amarna, decided to transfer its activities to Abydos, where the uncovering of the Osireion, interrupted by the war, urgently demanded completion. For this task the Committee engaged the services of Mr. Herbert Felton, who to many years’ experience as a practical engineer added the further qualification of being a photographer of high standing.”

A selection of photographs taken in 1925 during the final clearance of the Osireion, under the direction of Henri Frankfort. The enigmatic structure had been discovered by Petrie while working for the EEF in 1901-2 but the monument’s situation beneath ground level meant that sliding sand and water seepage had prevented its complete excavation until almost a quarter of a century later, when the problem was finally solved with the aid of a gravity railway pulled by water buffalos, and a steam engine pump.

“The presence of Mr. Felton at Abydos afforded a welcome opportunity for recording the admirable sculptures of the temple of Sethos I, and his negatives provided the nucleus of what was at that time intended to become merely a photographic survey.’’

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

France24

With photos of the Nefertiti bust, Hawass in his familiar speech-with-mics mode and the Rosetta Stone.

Egyptian antiquities supremo Zahi Hawass on Wednesday opened an international conference on recovering ancient artefacts from abroad, saying countries must unite to recover their stolen heritage.

“We need to cooperate, we need a unification between our countries,” Hawass told antiquities officials, deputy culture ministers and museum directors from 21 countries at the two-day Cairo meeting.

“Every country is fighting alone, every country suffered alone, especially Egypt,” Hawass told the delegates from countries that have seen their national heritage looted over the centuries.

“We will battle together,” he said, adding that “maybe we will not succeed in a lifetime (but) we have to open the subject.”

Hawass, who heads Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), urged delegates to draw up lists of artefacts missing from their countries and displayed in museums abroad.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Luxor News (Jane Akshar)

Thanks to Jane for sharing her lecture notes, as usual.

Chicago House 2009-2010 season Ray Johnson

It was nice that the last lecture of the season was Ray as I really admire the work they do in Luxor and how accessible they make their publications. Indeed he opened his lecture by announcing that yet another publication was available.

There are over 100 titles on the Oriental Institute website that available free in low resolution PDF’s and they are pleased that rather than seeing a drop of sales it has actually resulted in an increase. The link is here http://oi.uchicago.edu/research/pubs/catalog/ and if you look you can see a dollar sign or a downward arrow. The downward arrow gives you the free PDF. They are looking to get everything n online and are thankful for donations that have made scanning possible.

This year they were working at Medinet Habu, TT107, and Khonsu and Luxor temples.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes