New shark-related species of the Galapagos islands, older than dinosaurs

From the Contra Costa Times in the USA:

Bay Area team discovers new fish

SAN FRANCISCO: Shark ancestors that predate the dinosaurs dwell deep in the ocean near Galapagos Islands

By Matt Krupnick

CONTRA COSTA TIMES

It’s amazing what you find lying around the bottom of the ocean, as St. Mary’s College professor Douglas Long has discovered.

Long was part of a team of researchers who this year identified two new species of deep-sea fish: unusual-looking shark ancestors that broke off on their own evolutionary path more than 320 million years ago.

The creatures, named the Galapagos and whitespot ghost sharks, were found more than 1,200 feet underwater near the Galapagos Islands in 1995, sucked through a vacuum tube into a research submarine.

Long and his team spent more than a decade making sure they were new species before publishing their results in the journal Zootaxa in October and December.

“They’ve been on their own branch of the evolutionary tree since well before the dinosaurs,” said Long, 40, who has taught biology at St. Mary’s since 1994. The Oakland resident also has taught at UC Berkeley and does research at the California Academy of Sciences.

These species belong to the Hydrolagus genus of the chimaeras.

See also here.

Albino white spotted ratfish: here. And here.

Deepwater fish species almost exterminated: here.

Galapagos shark poaching: here.

End of decline of bats in Britain?

This video is called Common Pipistrelle bats emerging from the TWM building in Tilburg, The Netherlands.

This one is not from the Google cache.

From The Independent in Britain:

End of the horror show for bats as numbers stage dramatic comeback

By Paul Kelbie

Published: 30 December 2006

After decades of decline some of Britain’s most endangered bat populations appear to be making a comeback.

Ever since Bela Lugosi flapped his cloak and flew off into the night as Count Dracula, the humble bat has suffered an image problem of almost catastrophic proportions, and these environmentally sensitive mammals have suffered as a result.

Throughout the 20th century, all 17 species of bat found in Britain saw their numbers fall dramatically as changes in farming methods, loss of habitat and human ignorance played a part in their downfall.

However, according to the latest figures from the Bat Conservation Trust (BCT), it appears the tiny creatures are at last managing to shed their ghoulish image.

Through a concerted effort to create greater public awareness of bats as gentle, harmless creatures, as well as the protection of more roosting sites and improved agricultural practices, the BCT says there has been a slight rise in at least four bat species – the lesser horseshoe bat, Daubenton’s bat, Natterer’s bat and the common pipistrelle bat.

Funding boost for Great horseshoe bats in Somerset: here.

Genetic work carried out as part of a research project on the National Trust Purbeck Estate in Dorset has found that the population of greater horseshoe bats in the UK originated from west Asia around 40,000 – 60,000 years ago: here.

Tracking Greater horseshoe bats in the Forest of Dean: here.

UK: Former minister Robin Cook dies

From the Google cache.

UK: Former minister Robin Cook dies Comments: 10

Date: 8/6/05 at 7:48PM

Mood: Thinking Playing: War, by Edwin Starr

The BBC reports:

Former minister Robin Cook dies

Former Cabinet minister Robin Cook, 59, has died after collapsing while hill walking in north-west Scotland.

It is believed he was taken ill while walking with his wife Gaynor near the summit of Ben Stack, at around 1420 BST, Northern Constabulary said.

Mr Cook was flown by coastguard helicopter to Raigmore Hospital in Inverness, where he died on Saturday evening, police said.

This is a sad personal loss to Robin Cook’s family and friends; to whom we wish strength and all the best.

This is also a sad political loss to the more sensible forces within Britain’s ruling Labour party.

After starting as an ally of Tony Blair‘s Rightist “New” Labour policies, during the last years, Cook became a sharp critic of these policies; especially of the Iraq war.

We also wish the best to the forces of peace in the United Kingdom in realizing Robin’s Cook’s goal of ending the Iraq war and British participation in it.

UK artists: Blair, get troops out of Iraq.

Cheney’s Halliburton Destroys Babylon in Iraq

Aout this video:

The Ishtar Gate is one of the most dramatic finds from ancient Babylonia. Covered with dragons and bulls, Nebuchadnezzar dedicated the huge, ceremonial gate to the goddess Ishtar. It was the main entrance to the inner streets and temples of Babylon. King Nebuchadnezzar II was known for awesome building projects such as the restored temple of Marduk and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, which was considered one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

From the Google cache:

Cheney’s Halliburton Destroys Babylon in Iraq

Linking: 4 Comments: 14

Date: 3/25/05 at 10:16PM

Mood: Thinking Playing: War, by Edwin Starr

By Katrina vanden Heuvel, in The Nation:

Halliburton Destroys Babylon

Posted March 25, 2005

The U.S.-led destruction on the ancient city is one of the most ‘reckless acts of cultural vandalism.’

The sterile term “collateral damage” justifiably brings to mind the human tragedy of war.

But the devastating and wanton damage inflicted on the ancient city of Babylon by U.S.-led military forces gives another meaning to the term.

In this case, we are witnessing violence against one of the world’s greatest cultural treasures.

Babylon’s destruction, according to The Guardian, “must rank as one of the most reckless acts of cultural vandalism in recent memory.”

When Camp Babylon was established by U.S.-led international forces in April 2003, leading archeologists and international experts on ancient civilizations warned of potential peril and damage.

It was “tantamount to establishing a military camp around the Great Pyramid in Egypt or around Stonehenge in Britain,” according to a damning report issued in January by the British Museum.

Read also here.

And here.

And here.

And here.

And here.

And here.

Iraq war and libraries: here.

Hatra in Iraq: here.

Art looting and smuggling here.

Rumsfeld and the looting of the Baghdad museum: here.

Looting in Afghanistan: here.

Chile: Pinochet torture centre now Allende museum

Chile: Pinochet torture centre now Allende museum

Linking: 13 Comments: 8

Date: 3/10/06

Mood: Thinking Playing: El pueblo unido, jamas sera vencido

From the Washington Post (USA):

Pinochet-Era Police Center to Become Allende Museum

By Eva Vergara
Associated Press

Sunday, March 12, 2006

SANTIAGO, Chile — The mansion was used as a domestic spying center by the feared secret police of former dictator Augusto Pinochet.

Now it will house artwork and be dedicated to the Marxist foe overthrown by the general’s bloody 1973 coup.

The Salvador Allende Solidarity Museum, due to open next month, will exhibit work by the likes of Pablo Picasso, Roberto Matta and Joan Miro.

“This is Salvador Allende‘s revenge,” said Jose Balmes, the Spanish-born director of the museum.

The remodeling of the mansion was a journey through the inner workings of the shadowy agency responsible for many of the dictatorship’s worst abuses.

Workers found passports, papers with instructions to agents, and diagrams of places under surveillance or targeted for operations.

“In the basement, we found a communications center used to tap telephones around the country,” Balmes said.

“There was evidence many phones were tapped.”

Some of the rooms in the big, two-story house in a middle-class neighborhood near downtown Santiago were used for interrogating detainees, although the place was not a jail, Balmes said.

The mansion served as the Spanish Embassy in the 1950s but then stood empty until the secret police took it over in 1973.

Another large house, Villa Grimaldi, served as a detention and torture center.

That site, in a southern suburb of the capital, has been turned into a memorial to victims.

Among those held there were Chile’s incoming president, Michelle Bachelet, and her mother, Angela Jeria.

The mansion converted into the Allende museum was purchased and remodeled with financial support from the Chilean government and European countries including Spain, France, Germany, Italy and Sweden.

Spy equipment found there is being left untouched, as a reminder of what the house was before, said Balmes, 79, who came to Chile in 1939 to get away from Francisco Franco’s dictatorship in Spain.

“The place is a memorial,” he said.

Documents that the workers found were turned over to Hugo Dolmetsch, one of several judges investigating human rights abuses under Pinochet.

Many of the artworks to be exhibited come from a museum established by Allende in 1972.

Artists and intellectuals from around the world, such as Ecuadoran painter Oswaldo Guayasamin and Argentine author Julio Cortazar, contributed.

After the coup, the art disappeared.

It was not until civilian rule was restored in 1990 that the collection was traced to a basement at another Santiago museum.

Some pieces had been damaged, while others were well kept, Balmes said.

A few paintings were never recovered, including one by Miro, he said.

Another by Miro, a tribute to Allende painted in 1976, will be exhibited when the museum opens.

See also here.

Infamous Pinochet-era agent Osvaldo Romo dies: here.

History of economic neoliberalism in Chile: here.

Pinochet junta member convicted: here.

Quique Cruz sums up the story of his long life journey towards the creation of an extraordinary work of art and human testimony called Archaeology of Memory: “The day after my nineteenth birthday, I was detained by Pinochet’s secret police and spent one month as a desaparecido in the Villa Grimaldi torture centre: here.

Bird from dinosaur age in Antarctic

From the Google cache.

Bird from dinosaur age in Antarctic

Date: 1/20/05 at 8:22PM

Playing: I’m a little dinosaur, by Jonathan Richman

AFP reports:

Fossil Fowls Raise Bird Questions

Jan. 20, 2005 — Modern birds may have evolved before the mass extinction of the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago, the event conventionally believed to have shaped animal diversity today, a study says.

The first recognizable bird appeared during the Jurassic period about 150 million years ago, if the landmark fossil called Archaeopteryx — a descendant of dinosaurs that grew feathers and took to flight — is a guide.

During the subsequent Cretaceous period, birds developed widely, establishing major lineages.

But many experts believe that it took the extinction of the dinosaurs — wiped out by climate change triggered by the impact of a giant asteroid or comet — before birds, like mammals, were able to evolve into the extraordinarily diverse class and shapes they are today.

This “big bang” was facilitated mainly because the surviving species from the mass extinction were able to exploit habitat niches vacated by the dinosaurs.

That theory is now contested by the discovery of a fossil in Antarctica by palaeontologists from Argentina and the United States.

The bird, discovered on Vega island, was called Vegavis iaii.

See also here. And here.

Germany: Berlin museum restores ancient Roman gate

Germany: Berlin museum restores ancient Roman gate

Date: 10/19/05 at 8:08PM

BERLIN Oct 19, 2005 — Officials from Berlin’s Pergamon Museum announced plans Wednesday to dismantle and remove much of its famed Market Gate of Miletus over the next year and a half and to spend the next 10 years restoring it.

The towering Roman gate, built around 120 A.D. as the entrance to the market square in the Aegean coastal city of Miletus in what is now Turkey, is one of the museum’s chief attractions.

But metal supports built decades ago are sagging dangerously.

In the next three weeks, workers will cut a hole in the 75-year-old museum’s southern exterior wall.

Through it, they will pass 58 of the gate’s marble blocks weighing about 110 tons to load them onto flatbed trucks and take them to an offsite facility for restoration.

Source: ABC site

A very long engagement; anti World War I film

This video is the trailer of the film A very long engagement.

From the Google cache of Dear Kitty ModBlog.

A very long engagement; anti World War I film

Date: 2/7/05 at 8:55PM

Mood: Thinking Playing: War, by Edwin Starr

As we saw, no Oscar nominations for Michael Moore‘s Fahrenheit 9/11.

More cowardice in Hollywood: also no nominations for A Very Long Engagement.

A film by the makers of well known Amélie, with its star Audrey Tautou.

However, probably in Hollywood they thought: “a French, sorry … “freedom” film (like French letters in King George’s kingdom are “freedom letters” etc.).

An anti war film; well, anti World War I, about ninety years ago, but still … it shows soldiers killed by their “own side” authorities …

So, “Let’s stay on our knees for Washington DC.”

One of the points of this poignant film is that ordinary French and German people had no reason to hate each other; the warmongers on both sides were the problem.

Many people might think a prostitute and murderess (the character “Tina Lombardi” in this film) is a very bad person indeed.

Well, in this film it turns out: not if compared to warmongers, who are far, far worse.

As the lead character Mathilde (Audrey Tautou‘s role) finds out: after a personal meeting she would never repeat her earlier reference to Tina as “that whore”.

Dadaism against World War I: here.

Christmas 1914 soldiers’ truce: here.

Wozzeck, opera on World War I by Alban Berg: here.

French film maker Jean Renoir: here.

USA: Abramoff scandal in South Africa too

USA: Abramoff scandal in South Africa too

Date: 1/31/06 at 9:26PM

Mood: Thinking Playing: Free Nelson Mandela, by the Special AKA

Prensa Latina reports:

Abramoff in South Africa Too

Washington, Jan 31 Jack Abramoff, former high-flying Republican lobbyist and his illegal actions are making news in South Africa after the discovery on how Abramoff financed an association to favor the Apartheid regime.

For several years after its launch in 1985, Abramoff was the Washington face of Pacman, code name for the International Freedom Foundation (IFF), an organization supporting Apartheid, according to news published by African newspaper Mail and Guardian.

[The] Former Republican lobbyist headed IFF from Washington and in Johannesburg the group was leaded by Craig Williamson, a high ranking apartheid-era spy, accused of multiple assassinations, said the newspaper.

According to historians IFF was in reality part of an elaborate South African military intelligence operation established to combat sanctions and undermine the African National Congress, it also supported Jonas Savimbi and his rebel Angolan movement, Unita.

In 1983, Abramoff visited South Africa as head of the College Republicans National Committee (CRNC).

Two years later he organized an international conference of right-wing groups at Savimbi”s headquarters attended by Savimbi, leaders of the Afghan mujahedin [including Osama bin Laden], Nicaraguan contras, Laotian guerrillas and members of the Oliver North American right.

Abramoff was one of the more influential lobbyists in Washington until late 2005 when, together with his associate Michael Scanlon, was found accused of fraud for an amount of 100 million dollars among other illegal actions.

Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and Republican for Georgia, said this scandal should promote a large revision in the parliamentary forum.

The case allowed federal attorneys to start an investigation on some twenty Senate members, government´s advisors and officials linked to the executive cabinet.

Bush and other lawmakers quickly got rid of donations coming from Abramoff who gave several thousands dollars to Bush´s campaign funds.

hr/mgz jvj

Film: Kevin Spacey stars as Jack Abramoff, the real-life Washington D.C. lobbyist, who bilks millions from his clients, buying and selling congressmen and other government officials: here.

Tom DeLay: here.

Ex South African Apartheid thugs now as US mercenaries in Iraq: here.

1955 Freedom Charter of South Africa: here.

Entanglement of business interests and politicians in Germany: here.

Dutch Romantic paintings and African mats

From the Google cache of ModBlog.

Dutch Romantic paintings and African mats

Linking: 6

Date: 10/15/05 at 9:08PM

Today, on the reconstructed windmill of Rembrandt’s father, one starling. Singing.

In the art hall of Rotterdam today, two exhibitions.

A small one of African mats; and a big one of Dutch nineteenth century Romantic paintings.

The mats, losa, are made by women in Congo.

The big exhibition is called Masters of the Romantic Period. Dutch painting 1800-1850.

The organizers of the exhibition recognize that it is difficult to exactly define Romanticism, as there are many contradictions within it (naming German philosopher Hegel in this context).

For instance, they state there are both progressive and reactionary political views among supporters of Romantic arts.

Here one might say that this even sometimes happened within the life of the same individuals, like English Romantic poets Wordsworth (see also here) and Coleridge.

Another problem with defining Romanticism especially in painting is that it is not a style like, eg, impressionism is.

Rather, common ideas linked various Romantic painters.

Often, Romantics look at a period in the past as an “ideal” age.

Here, I’d like to point out that a difference between Romanticism in The Netherlands and in many other countries shows.

An influential Romantic author like Sir Walter Scott tended to see the Middle Ages as the “ïdeal” age of courage and chivalry.

While The Netherlands during the Middle Ages were not one political entity, and economically far less significant than Flanders just south of them.

So, Dutch nineteenth century Romanticists, both authors and painters, tended to not see the Middle Ages as a role model.

They prefered the seventeenth century, often described as the “Golden Age” for The Netherlands, politically, economically, and artistically.

While a German romantic would probably not feel that way on the seventeenth century in Germany; there, a time of devastating thirty years war, political Balkanization, etc.

In Dutch Romantic painting, one can see relationships to the seventeenth century in various ways.

One can see them in choice of subjects: seventeenth century political history; seventeenth century clothes of people depicted in paintings.

Also in choosing subjects similar to seventeenth century paintings: like people skating on frozen canals in winter; or arrangements of flowers.

Among the artists represented at the exhibition was Andreas Schelfhout, who often had skating or other aspects of winter as his subject.

Among the others: Johannes Bosboom, Johannes Tavenraat, and Barend Cornelis Koekkoek.

From the train back, between Voorschoten and Leiden, a buzzard flying over the meadow.

African masks: here.

Wordsworth and Coleridge: here.