It bears a large crack, caused after the great naturalist put it in a box that was too small for it.
The egg is the only one known to exist from Darwin’s Beagle collection.
At one time it was thought there were a dozen or more.
It was spotted one day in February by volunteer Liz Wetton, who spends a day each week sorting eggs in the Museum’s collection.
She said: “It was an exhilarating experience. After working on the egg collections for 10 years this was a tremendous thing to happen.”
It was the collections manager, Mathew Lowe, who first realised the importance of the specimen.
“There are so many historical treasures in the collection, Liz did not realise this was a new discovery,” Mr Lowe told BBC News.
“To have rediscovered a Beagle specimen in the 200th year of Darwin‘s birth is special enough, but to have evidence that Darwin himself broke it is a wonderful twist.”
Dr Mike Brooke, the museum’s curator of ornithology, traced the specimen’s origin in the notebook of Professor Alfred Newton, a friend of Darwin’s and a professor of zoology in the late 19th century.
Newton had written: “One egg, received through Frank Darwin, having been sent to me by his father who said he got it at Maldonado (Uruguay) and that it belonged to the Common Tinamou of those parts.
“The great man put it into too small a box and hence its unhappy state.”
Darwin himself mistook the bird for a partridge at first. And in his notebooks from 1833, he wrote that the bird had a “high shrill chirp” and that its flesh was “most delicately white” when cooked.
The museum’s director, Professor Michael Akam, said: “This find shows just how valuable the work of our loyal volunteers is to the museum”.
This video says about itself:
This is the birth of the famous grouse. These little birds are crazy!! The real name of these birds is Rhynchotus rufescens or Red winged Tinamou or Martineta Colorada in Spanish.
ScienceDaily (Apr. 18, 2009) — Darwin was a brilliant observer and described everything he could perceive with the naked eye. However, the micro-organisms from the beginning of evolution remained hidden from him. He came unsuspectingly close to them in his essay on reefs: here.
Historians and advocates of government transparency have complained strongly about the Bush backlog, which Obama ended with an executive order signed the day after he took office that limits the review period to 30 days in most cases.
In a letter obtained by Politico, White House Counsel Gregory Craig informed the National Archives and Records Administration that President Obama “has not asserting executive privilege over any of this material,” opening the way for their release.
According to a press release from the National Archives, “On Monday, April 13, 2009, the Ronald Reagan library will open 244,966 pages of records processed in response to hundreds of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. These records include the Presidential Briefing Papers collection, Office of Speechwriting research material and approximately 13,000 pages of declassified records on numerous foreign policy topics.”
Another 797 pages of documents from President George H.W. Bush‘s administration on the topic of Saudi Arabia will be released at the same time.
President George W. Bush had held these documents back under an executive order signed on November 1, 2001. According to the New York Times, “The order, drafted by Alberto R. Gonzales, then the White House counsel, gives either an incumbent president or a former president the right to withhold the former president’s papers from the public. It was issued to block the release of 68,000 pages of records from the Reagan administration, which contain confidential communications between President Ronald Reagan and his advisers, including Mr. Bush’s father, George Bush, who was Reagan’s vice president.”
Former White House Counsel John Dean pointed out at the time, “The Executive Order suggests that President Bush not only does not want Americans to know what he is doing, but he also does not want to worry that historians and others will someday find out. Certainly that is the implicit message in his new effort to preclude public access to Presidential papers — his, and those of all Presidents since the Reagan-Bush administration.”
It is not yet known what documents are to be released. However, the fact that both the elder Bush and a representative of Ronald Reagan approved the releases suggests that papers relating to the most controversial issues of their administrations, such as Iran-Contra, will not be included.
Some Republicans have begun reassessing whether Mr. Reagan today affords the best example as they seek a path back to power. The economic crisis, which Mr. Obama last fall declared a “final verdict” on the anti-government philosophy that George W. Bush and Mr. Reagan shared, has made Reaganism less politically marketable than at any time in a generation.
TBILISI, Georgia — Thousands of people marched through Georgia’s capital Saturday on the third day of peaceful protests calling for President Mikhail Saakashvili to step down.
The largest rallies were held outside national television stations, where protesters called for the demonstrations to be shown live. …
The protesters are most angry with Saakashvili over his handling of the brief war last summer with Russia. The Georgian army fled ahead of invading Russian troops, and the country lost territory as separatists and their Russian allies took full control of two breakaway Georgian regions.
Saakashvili’s actions during the war “were not mistakes,” said Maria Loladze, 82. “He should be put on trial.”
The protesters also accuse the president of concentrating power in his hands and embarrassing his countrymen by his erratic behavior.
In addition, Georgians complain that too little has been done to help the poor and create jobs. …
No protests were called for Sunday, which is Palm Sunday for Georgians and other Orthodox Christians. But opposition leaders said the daily protests would resume Monday.
The justified anger of broad layers of the Georgian population against its right-wing, corrupt government only finds a very distorted expression in the current protests being led by an opposition alliance recruited in the main from former Saakashvili supporters: here.
Thailand Evacuates Leaders from Asian Summit After Protests
11 April 2009
Thailand evacuated leaders from an Asian summit Saturday after anti-government protesters stormed the venue in Pattaya.
Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has now lifted a state of emergency in the seaside resort after helicopters airlifted Asian leaders from the city.
Hundreds of red-shirted demonstrators, demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Abhisit, breached police lines and broke through glass doors to enter the hotel where the ASEAN summit was to take place. …
The annual summit was to bring together leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations with the leaders of Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea.
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s plane was two hours from landing at Pattaya when he received word of the protests. His plane was diverted to an undisclosed location for refueling and then returned to Canberra.
Thailand PM declares Bangkok state of emergency: here.
Journalists of British daily The Guardian have made a list of protest songs. All of them in the English language.
I ‘ll reproduce some of that list on this blog. Not exactly in the same way as they did. Eg, they have options to listen to songs on Spotify, which is not available in all countries.
And I have added links. And grouped the songs according to themes. The theme of this entry is pro peace songs from before the Iraq war.
There are a thousand anti-war songs, most angry, some sad, others defiant, but none with the novelistic scope and detail of this first-person tale of the battle of Gallipoli [see also here], written by a Scottish folk singer who emigrated to Australia while that country was fighting alongside the Americans in Vietnam. Told through the eyes of a rambler who answers his country’s call and returns minus his legs, it skews patriotic fraud like nothing else. Impossible to sit through its seven minutes with dry eyes. SY
This demure chamber-folk waltz masks a deceptively sharp piece of political observation from [Kate; not George] Bush, ostensibly concerning British soldiers in Northern Ireland. Singing with a slight Irish lilt, she laments the boy who “should have been a father” but never even made it into his 20s. “It’s just so sad that there are kids who have no O-levels and nothing to do but become soldiers,” she said. “It’s not really what they want, that’s what frightens me.”
The power of subtlety in protest music is brilliantly expressed by one of the earliest anti-nuclear songs, an unofficial anthem of the CND movement and Ban the Bomb marches. Originally sung with innocent clarity by his sister Lorna – and later covered by Simon and Garfunkel – Ian Campbell’s clever descriptiveness gradually subverts a scene of idyllic normality into a shocking climax as the sun falls to earth and “death comes in a blinding flash of hellish heat”.
Martin Carthy claims only ever to have written two songs, but he’d be hard pushed anyway to match this damning analysis of the cause and effects of the Falklands war. At the height of his powers both as an expressive singer and innovative acoustic guitarist, Carthy adapts the traditional song form to knit a particularly harrowing human tragedy into the context of a cold commercial enterprise and the gruesome triumphalism of the victory parades. CI [Unfortunately, I could find no video of this song]
Ohio Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young 1970.
“Tin soldiers and Nixon coming/ We’re finally on our own/ This summer I hear the drumming/ Four dead in Ohio.” CSNY’s stomping slice of angry hippie rock was a rapid response to the Kent State shootings on 4 May 1970, when the Ohio National Guard shot four students taking part in a Vietnam war protest. Neil Young saw a report in Life magazine, wrote the lyrics, recorded the song with the band and released it by June. RV
Written as the Vietnam war was starting to escalate, Ochs’s defiant soldier-song ties together centuries of bloody US military history to powerful effect, told over a simple folk strum. The lyric prises the generation gap wide open – “It’s always the old who lead us to war/ Always the young who fall” – while Ochs provocatively described his signature tune as bordering “between pacifism and treason, combining the best qualities of both.” GT
This video is called Steve Earle sings Bob Dylan’s “Master’s of War”.
According to Dylan this is a pacifistic song against war and not an anti-war song, though the distinction might be lost on many listeners. Taken from The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, it is certainly the work of a young man, one who puts himself front and centre to denounce those that “build the death planes”. “I just want you to know/ I can see through your masks,” he whines, but in its arrogance the song carried a real power; one that was to find popular expression as the 60s wore on. PMac
One of the most significant political songs of recent times, and a notable attempt to dig into the mindset of John Walker Lindh, the alienated “American boy” who fought for the Taliban forces before his capture late in 2001. In doing so, Earle unearthed some uncomfortable home truths about US complicity in 9/11: “I’m trying to make clear that wherever he got to, he didn’t arrive there in a vacuum,” he said. GT
Reluctantly released by Motown, who were dismayed by its downbeat social message, this remains a landmark in soul music’s politicisation. Both a cry of confusion and a plea for tolerance, the song has personal resonance: the “brother, brother, brother” of the lyric is Gaye’s sibling Frankie, who served three years in Vietnam. Though the message is banal in places – “war is not the answer, only love can conquer hate” – its liquid groove and complex, layered harmonies remain eternally fresh. GT
“Country Joe” McDonald would lead audiences in a call-and-response chant, spelling out the nickname of his partner, Barry “the Fish” Melton. Except sometimes – as memorably captured during his performance at the Woodstock festival – he’d swap “fish” for another word starting with “F”. The segue into the rest of the song then made more sense. “One, two, three, what are we fighting for?” he asked, and a generation railed against the war in Vietnam. CLS
Give Peace a Chance John Lennon 1969.
Although nobody was talking about Bagism, apart from John and Yoko, Give Peace a Chance became as recognisable a call to disarm as Guernica or the CND sign. Lennon had used the phrase as an answer to a reporter during the Montreal bed-in. He liked it so much that he set it to music on a cheap four-track with the help of Allen Ginsberg and others. Even Lennon admitted the song wasn’t his finest, but as a peace chant, it’s untouchable. WD
Born in the USA Bruce Springsteen 1984.
The title track of the Boss’s biggest album is a cautionary lesson for the composers of ironic protest songs. The US right heard the clarion call of the chorus and persuaded Ronald Reagan to use an implied Springsteen endorsement in a September 1984 campaign speech. Fans heard the furious denunciation of America’s use of working-class men as Vietnam cannon fodder in the verses and knew that the song was a critique of the exploitation of patriotism. GM
Woodstock 40 years ago: Country Joe McDonald’s and Jimi Hendrix’s antiwar classics: here.
Martha Rosenberg: Remembering Woodstock’s Women Musicians — Both of Them: here.
THE International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has confirmed that medical professionals who monitored CIA interrogations at the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay violated medical ethics by participating in torture: here.
A recently released confidential Red Cross report on the treatment of 14 “high value” detainees details the CIA’s methods of torture. It also outlines violations of international law committed by Washington in the “war on terror”: here.
The rightist, anti communist organizations “Remember Moldova” and “Hyde Park” had called for the protest by the Internet and SMS. They have close links to the rich elite in Moldova. On Wednesday, Gabriel Stati, son of the multimillionaire Anatol Stati, was arrested in Kiew. He is suspected of having bankrolled rightist provocateurs of the violence.
Many demonstrators waved Rumanian flags, and shouted: “Long live Greater Rumania“. Some demonstrators shouted: “Bessarabia is Romanian soil” or “Unification with Bessarabia“. The extreme Right Noua Dreapta (New Right) was on the front line of the demonstration with their symbol, the Celtic cross. The right in the Moldovan republic has supported annexation by Rumania for a long time.
The Celtic cross is used as a symbol by neo nazi movements throughout the world, like the NPD in Germany and Nederlandse Volksunie in the Netherlands.
Update: authorized English translation of the Salzmann article: here.
This video from London, England, says about itself:
Workers at the Visteon car component plant leave their week-long occupation. The workers were told on 31 March that they were being made redundant without notice, redundancy pay or even payment for their last week of work. They decided to take over their workplace.
On 9 April a high court ruling led to the majority of the workers to decide to end the occupation, but to continue to picket until their demands are met.
Australia: In a bid to divert public anger over huge corporate retirement payouts, the government has announced it would amend the Corporations Act to allow golden handshakes awarded to departing CEOs to be capped: here.
USA: Following last week’s adoption of the new state budget, New York’s Democratic Governor Paterson is advancing a plan to lay off nearly 9,000 state workers. Meanwhile, New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg has threatened to lay off 7,000 city employees: here.
GOP Rep.’s campaign funds lose $703,500 in stock market: here.
More than 10,000 ThyssenKrupp workers from throughout Germany held a demonstration on Monday April 6 in Duisburg, to protest against job losses and wage cuts: here.
Allegations that the KLA maintained a secret network of prisons in their bases in Kosovo and neighbouring Albania were made on the BBC programmes “Crossing Continents” and “Newsnight,” broadcast April 9. This is probably the first time a major news network has carried out an investigation into the claims which have been largely ignored, even suppressed, for more than a decade. According to “Crossing Continents,” the evidence reveals “another side to the conflict which the world was not supposed to see.”
Reporter Michael Montgomery, who has spent years investigating the disappearance of thousands of ethnic Albanians, Kosovo Serbs and Roma gypsy civilians during and after the conflict, spoke to sources, including relatives of those who died and are still missing, and former KLA soldiers. Many still remain extremely wary talking publicly about what happened. They face intimidation and some have been killed, according to United Nations officials.
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