New documents about Rembrandt discovered

This video says about itself:

Self portraits by Rembrandt set to [the music of] Antonio Vivaldi‘s: “Winter”.

From the Rembrandthuis museum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands:

A surprising discovery. New Italian documents about Rembrandt

The art historian Professor Lauro Magnani from Genoa has found, in the archive of an ancient family from Genoa, unknown, really interesting data about Rembrandt.

The descriptions are about what happened in 1666/67, not long before Rembrandt died; they also contain interesting information about international appreciation of Rembrandt’s art. The documents also show us how some (surprised) foreigners saw Rembrandt as a person. This discovery has become the stimulus for a small symposium on Friday afternoon 13 June, organized by the Nederlands Instituut in Rome, the Rembrandt Research Project and Museum Het Rembrandthuis.

From Dutch NOS TV:

It turns out that [Rembrandt] three years before he died in 1669 got a third, so far unknown, commission from Italy.

This commission was for making three meter high altar pieces [which he did not get commissions for in the Netherlands] for the family church of the Genoese Sauli family. Rembrandt negotiated a lot about the price.

Rembrandt made sketches for the altar pieces and had them shipped to Genoa. It is unclear whether they have arrived; the sketches are lost. The altar pieces themselves have never been made.

See also here. And here. And here.

Rembrandt and McCain: here.

Related articles

• Background Information about Rembrandt and the Old Masters (landscapeartblog.wordpress.com)
• Rembrandt and Musings on Modern Man (joaninordinarytime.wordpress.com)
• #Check Price# : Landscape and Religion from Van Eyck to Rembrandt (free4avej.wordpress.com)

First leatherback turtle nest in Texas since 1930s

This video is called Dr. Scott Eckert – Leatherback Sea Turtle Presentation.

From the New York Times in the USA:

For the first time since the 1930’s, federal biologists confirmed that a leatherback sea turtle has nested on a Texas beach, at the Padre Island National Seashore near Corpus Christi.

Last Friday, staff conducting a beach patrol found turtle tracks and a few exposed eggs. They were thought at first to be those of a green turtle. But the eggs and the width of the tracks, more than six feet across, were later determined by a park biologist, Cynthia Rubio, to be from a leatherback. The giant, ancient, endangered turtles, some the size of a Smart Car, have until now only been known to nest in four spots in the United States – with about three dozen females a year laying eggs on beaches along the east coast of Florida and slightly larger nesting populations in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. There is evidence of nesting in North Carolina as well.

UNH researchers tag first-ever free-swimming leatherback turtles in New England: here; and here.

Leatherback turtles in Malaysia: here.

6000 new Leatherback turtle nests discovered in Panama & Colombia: here.

CIA spy scandal in the Netherlands on Pakistani nuclear proliferation

This video from the USA is called U.S. Nuclear Non-Proliferation Policy [and the Indian sub-continent].

In Dutch daily De Telegraaf today, the main headline on the front page was for this article:

12 June 2008

Dutch-United States spying scandal

by Joost de Haas

THE HAGUE – The United States intelligence service CIA has done operations which the Dutch government did not know about. In a conflict about that, the The Hague CIA boss had to leave.

The espionage row up to now had been carefully kept from becoming public in order not to harm the relationship with the USA.

Controversy

The CIA ‘station chief’ who had become controversial left the Netherlands in 2005 after the Dutch intelligence bosses had lost confidence in him. Well informed sources in The Hague say so. Behind closed doors, the parliamentary committee on intelligence services (CTIVD) has been informed on the problems with the CIA.

When asked, the chair of that committee, [Christian Democrat] Ms I.P. Michiels van Kessenich-Hoogendam, confirmed that the issue had been solved by replacing the CIA chief.

The controversial operations on Dutch territory included, eg, an inquiry into nuclear technology proliferation, including Pakistan. The [Dutch secret service] AIVD in this found out about CIA activities which it had not been informed about according to the legal rules. According to insiders, this led to a bizarre situation during a secret visit to the house of a Dutch businessman: “Shortly after the AIVD had intruded into the house and had installed microphones and cameras, suddenly a CIA team arrived, going into the same house. In this way, the AIVD people were able to film their American colleagues.”

According to Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad, that incident was in 2004. There, the AIVD confirms the De Telegraaf article.

De Telegraaf is a Rightist daily with a tradition of slavishly following United States governments.

The CIA has been in the news before as helping the Pakistani regime in nuclear spying in the Netherlands against the will of the Dutch government.

United States governments have a record of supporting nuclear proliferation to the regimes of Pakistan, India [see also here], Israel, and South Africa when it was still an apartheid state.

While citing nuclear proliferation as the pretext for the Iraq war with over a million dead … while Iraq did not have any weapons of mass destruction.

At the moment, Iran is threatened by war by the Bush administration with similar pretexts as for the Iraq war … though even Bush’s own intelligence services admit that Iran does not have any nuclear weapons and is unlikely to get them anytime soon.

One of already over 110 (when I last checked) comments at the site of De Telegraaf:

How low have we [Dutch] gone by following Bush. “Our little boy” [Prime Minister Balkenende], did he say anything about it during his recent visit to the USA, or did he accept insecere compliments like a good boy?

Ans, Driel | 06:50 | 12.06.08

Saving Indian Ocean seabirds

This is a black-browed albatross video.

From BirdLife:

Indian ocean seabirds get thrown a lifeline

12-06-2008

The 12th meeting of the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) this week (June 7-11 ) in Muscat, Oman has struck a major step forward for seabird conservation by adopting a measure to reduce the bycatch of vulnerable albatross and petrel species.

All longline vessels fishing for tuna and swordfish in the southern Indian Ocean (south of 30°S) will be required to use a combination of at least two measures to reduce seabird bycatch. …

Birds that will benefit include Wandering Albatross Diomedea exulans, the Critically Endangered Amsterdam Albatross Diomedea amsterdamensis (only 17 pairs remaining), Shy Albatross Thalassarche cauta [see also photo here] from Australia, and also Black-browed Albatross Thalassarche melanophrys from South Georgia (a UK Overseas Territory), which visit the rich feeding grounds off coast of South Africa in the non-breeding season.

BBC wandering albatross video: here.

Scientists have confirmed that the world’s rarest albatross, the Amsterdam albatross (Diomedea amsterdamensis), is indeed a separate species, ending 20 years of debate on the status of this Critically Endangered bird: here.

Stop seabird slaughter through EU Fisheries Policy: here.

After a 3-year seabird risk assessment that found tuna and swordfish longline fishing has significant impacts on Atlantic seabird populations, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) failed to act at a recent meeting in Recife, Brazil: here.

June 2010: Brazilian seabird conservationists have made a breakthrough with the protection of several species of imperiled albatross as their efforts have shown that with simple measures around nine out of the ten albatrosses caught on longline fishing hooks three years ago can now be saved: here.

Indian novelist on hunger strike for Union Carbide victims

This video from Britain is called Bhopal Disaster – Channel 4/BBC – The Yes Men.

From British daily The Guardian:

Booker-shortlisted novelist begins hunger strike over Bhopal

Randeep Ramesh in Delhi

Thursday June 12, 2008

Indra Sinha, the author of a Booker-shortlisted novel set in the aftermath of the tragedy of the world’s worst industrial disaster in Bhopal, yesterday began an indefinite hunger strike in support of survivors protesting against “government indifference” over their plight.

Sinha, a longtime supporter of the Bhopal campaign, told the Guardian that he wanted to “give something back to people who had given me so much. The survivors have gone through hell and been let down by everybody that matters. The judges, politicians have all sold them down the river.”

More than two decades ago, white clouds of toxic gas escaped from American multinational Union Carbide’s pesticide plant. The gas killed 5,000 people that night and 15,000 more in the following weeks – and there is evidence that hundreds of children are still being born with birth defects.

Sinha joins another nine activists in Delhi who began fasting this week. The protestors, who include children and survivors, have complained of being beaten by police after they demonstrated outside the prime minister’s office in the Indian capital.

Set in the slums of a town a re-imagined Bhopal, Sinha’s Animal’s People is a damning indictment against corporate greed and indifference to human suffering. Its climax is a hunger strike to shame the authorities into helping the survivors.

“I know the problem with a hunger strike is that it hurts you more than the government but there has to be some moral pressure on this government which appears dazzled by Dow Chemicals (which brought Union Carbide in 2001) and promises of god knows what investment. How long can I go on (without food)? I don’t know honestly.”

The author, who is based in southern France, said that the real problem is that there has been no case made against Union Carbide, the question of Dow becomes one of “public relations”.

“Because no American executive has ever been brought before a court of law there has been no rigorous investigation of the facts. So it is not a legal or moral problem but one of image. Next week Dow are sponsoring an event at the Cannes advertising festival which is about using marketing for good causes. It is absurd.”

Dow, one of the world’s largest chemical companies, purchased Union Carbide in 2001 and says it never owned or operated the Bhopal plant. Therefore it has no responsibility for the events in 1984. The disused Union Carbide factory in Bhopal contains about 8,000 tonnes of carcinogenic chemicals which continue to leach out and contaminate water supplies used by 30,000 local people.

Satinath Sarangi of the Sambhavna Trust, which helps to rehabilitate victims, said the government is washing its hands of Bhopal. No one, he says, has taken responsibility for cleaning up the site and paying the high cost of medical bills.

“We need to catalyse global opinion about the issue. The government tries to buy us off with empty promises but really there’s nothing.”

India: Victory for Bhopal survivors: here.

More bee species than mammals and birds combined

This video is called Solitary bee just emerged and taking first flight.

From the American Museum of Natural History:

Bee species outnumber mammals and birds combined

Newly completed checklists from the American Museum of Natural History highlight the importance of these pollinators

Scientists have discovered that there are more bee species than previously thought. In the first global accounting of bee species in over a hundred years, John S. Ascher, a research scientist in the Division of Invertebrate Zoology at the American Museum of Natural History, compiled online species pages and distribution maps for more than 19,200 described bee species, showcasing the diversity of these essential pollinators. This new species inventory documents 2,000 more described, valid species than estimated by Charles Michener in the first edition of his definitive The Bees of the World published eight years ago.

“The bee taxonomic community came together and completed the first global checklist of bee names since 1896,” says Ascher. “Most people know of honey bees and a few bumble bees, but we have documented that there are actually more species of bees than of birds and mammals put together.”

The list of bee names finished by Ascher and colleagues was placed online by John Pickering of the University of Georgia through computer applications that linked all names to Discover Life species pages, a searchable taxonomic classification for all bees, and global maps for all genera and species. Ascher and colleagues recently reviewed all valid names from his checklist and from those of experts from all over the world for the World Bee Checklist project led by the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History and available online (www.itis.gov).

The bee checklists were developed as a key component of the Museum’s Bee Database Project initiated in 2006 by Ascher and Jerome G. Rozen, Jr., Curator of bees at the Museum, and with technical support from Curator Randall Schuh. A primary goal of this project is to document floral and distributional records for all bees, including now obscure species that may someday become significant new pollinators for our crops. The vast majority of known bee species are solitary, primitively social, or parasitic.

These bees do not make honey or live in hives but are essential pollinators of crops and native plants. Honey is made by nearly 500 species of tropical stingless bees in addition to the well-known honey bee Apis mellifera. Honey bees are the most economically important pollinators and are currently in the news because of colony collapse disorder, an unexplained phenomenon that is wiping out colonies throughout the United States.

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The crises facing traditionally managed pollinators like honey bees highlight the need for more information about bee species and their interactions with the plants they pollinate. The National Academy of Sciences identified improved taxonomic data on bees as a high priority, and the new online bee checklists, maps, and other databases have for the first time made comprehensive data readily accessible. The checklists compiled by Ascher and colleagues facilitate ongoing databasing of the Museum’s worldwide collections of more than 400,000 bee specimens, research that was possible due to the generous support of Robert G. Goelet, Chairman Emeritus of the Museum’s Board of Trustees. The Discover Life bee checklist can be accessed at www.discoverlife.org/mp/20q?guide=Apoidea_species. The valid names in this checklist were peer-reviewed as a contribution to the World Bee Checklist (www.itis.gov), a just-completed project coordinated by Michael Ruggiero of the Integrated Taxonomic Information System at the Smithsonian Institution, with technical support by David Nicolson of ITIS. The World Bee Checklist Project and development of collaborative tools for a planned dynamic catalog received funding from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII). For additional credits, see here.

Bees in Zealand: here.

How to Build a Bee House: here.