It's been slow for the past couple of days, but here's some items which you might want to skim through ...
They've opened a new archaeological museum in Siena, which basically brings together a pile of exhibits from 'the back rooms' of other museums in the area:
• A Siena apre il nuovo museo dell'archeologia (Affari Italiani)
The New York Times Magazine has a feature on Albert Hofman (of LSD fame) which includes, inter alia:
• Day Tripper (NY Times)
Hadrian's Wall is one of the many "at risk" sites on English Heritage's list of same:
• HERITAGE SITES 'ARE LEFT TO CRUMBLE UNDER LABOUR' (Daily Express)
An apparently-interesting production of Medea at the Library of Alexandria:
• Medea in Alexandria (Al Ahram)
A piece in the German arm of the Financial Times considers the enlistment of academics by various business type and the somewhat-common link between Plato and doing good business is mentioned:
• What did the ancient Greeks ever do for us? (Financial Times Deutschland)
... and we really can't let the passing of Eartha Kitt pass, and we'll use a line from most of the online obituaries to justify inclusion here:
... interesting (symptomatic of the times?) that Kitt did not figure in the movie version of same, which had Elizabeth Taylor in the role (and this was before Kitt took the hit for her comments on the Viet Nam war).
• Sex kitten Eartha Kitt dies, age 81 (Times of London)
They've opened a new archaeological museum in Siena, which basically brings together a pile of exhibits from 'the back rooms' of other museums in the area:
• A Siena apre il nuovo museo dell'archeologia (Affari Italiani)
The New York Times Magazine has a feature on Albert Hofman (of LSD fame) which includes, inter alia:
As a highly valued executive researcher at Sandoz (now part of Novartis), he traveled the world to study psychotropic compounds. With his wife he went to Mexico to sample psychedelics at their practical source, as administered by the curanderos and curanderas of the Sierra Mazateca. It was Hofmann who succeeded in synthesizing psilocybin from the “magic mushroom” of the Mazatecas. He also isolated a compound similar to LSD from another Native American botanic sacramental, the ololiuhqui vine. As a scientist he was fascinated by the ritual practiced by the ancient Greeks at Eleusis each fall. These rites, honoring the grain goddess Demeter, celebrated antiquity’s most profound mystery cult. Initiates described an intense life-changing experience in the course of the nighttime ceremonies. Hofmann believed that one of the components of the sacred kykeon, the potion distributed to adepts, was a barley extract containing ergot.
• Day Tripper (NY Times)
Hadrian's Wall is one of the many "at risk" sites on English Heritage's list of same:
• HERITAGE SITES 'ARE LEFT TO CRUMBLE UNDER LABOUR' (Daily Express)
An apparently-interesting production of Medea at the Library of Alexandria:
• Medea in Alexandria (Al Ahram)
A piece in the German arm of the Financial Times considers the enlistment of academics by various business type and the somewhat-common link between Plato and doing good business is mentioned:
• What did the ancient Greeks ever do for us? (Financial Times Deutschland)
... and we really can't let the passing of Eartha Kitt pass, and we'll use a line from most of the online obituaries to justify inclusion here:
Kitt was given her first starring role as Helen of Troy in Wells's staging of Dr Faustus.
... interesting (symptomatic of the times?) that Kitt did not figure in the movie version of same, which had Elizabeth Taylor in the role (and this was before Kitt took the hit for her comments on the Viet Nam war).
• Sex kitten Eartha Kitt dies, age 81 (Times of London)