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Pope Beatifies “Father of Cappuccino”
Marco d’Aviano, bron in Aviano, in the north of Italy in 1631, was friar from the Capuchin was beatifued for his efforts to rally Catholics and Protestants on the eve of the Battle of Vienna in 1683, a battle fought as part of an effort to stem Turkish incursion into Europe. He’s not yet been canonized as a saint, but this is the penultimate step in the process. Aviano is also, on a less Catholic note, famed as the person who inspired cappuccino style coffee. Suppsedly, after the victory, the Viennese discovered sacks of coffee abandoned by the Turks (who imbibed enormous quatities of extremely finely ground coffee brewed in…
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What Used to be at the Iraq National Museum
This tour gives a glimpse of some of the artifacts previously on display; it doesn’t even hint at the items from other museums stored for safe keeping during the war, or the thousands of cylinder seals and cuneiform tablets, most of which have not been inventoried. Of course, even if they had been inventoried, it wouldn’t help much since the looters took or destroyed the computers and completely destroyed the card catalog which was the most accurate inventory.
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40,000 Years of Human Endeavor Destroyed in Two Days
Teresa and Kip have said it better than I can. But I wanted to point to some more information about the tragic looting of Iraq’s National Museum, the world’s best collection, by far, of Mesopotamian artifacts. First of all, an enormous cultural loss for humanity could have been avoided, rather easily. It’s not like looting and collateral damage were new ideas; the art history and archaeological communities have discussed, written, and published their fears for quite a while. Even I posted about it. Since 1922 Iraqi law mandated that Iraq has an equal share in any archaeological finds within Iraq. Most of those finds were in the National Museum. In…
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Catching Up: SF, Celtic Archaeology, and Space
Catching Up: SF, Celtic Archaeology, and Space I know, I’ve been exceedingly delinquent regarding posting, but between teaching and dissertating, and tech editing, I’ve had no time for blogging. So I’m going to post a bunch of very quick links, with almost no commentary. First of all, I’ve added a couple of links over there on the left. There’s Cronaca, from one David, who has all the markings of a medievalist. Then there’s the new SF and Fantasy category. It contains links to the Nielsen Hayden duo, Patrick’s Electrolite, and Teresa’s Making Light. They’re writers and editors, but I’ve been reading their blog since ConJose, so I thought I should…
