Blunt Force Trauma Dept.
Czech Speedway Rider Knocked
Out In Crash...Wakes Up
Speaking Perfect English
[ http://www.dailymail.co.uk ]
[ a tinker's kus ]
When Matej Kus's teammates heard him talking after he was knocked out in a speedway accident, they were relieved he was conscious.
But they were also a little surprised.
For although the 18-year- old Czech knew only the most basic English phrases, he was conversing fluently in the language with paramedics.
Czech Matej Kus, 17, was banged on the head in a racing accident - and came to speaking perfect English.
Peter Waite, the promoter for Kus's team, the Berwick Bandits, said: "I couldn't believe what I was hearing.
"It was in a really clear English accent, no dialect or anything. Whatever happened in the crash must have rearranged things in his head.
"Before his crash Matej's use of the English language was broken, to put it mildly.
"He was only just making a start on improving it and struggled to be understood, but was keen to learn.
"Yet here we were at the ambulance door listening to Matej talking to the medical staff in perfect English.
"Matej didn't have a clue who or where he was when he came round. He didn't even know he was Czech.
"It was unbelievable to hear him talk in unbroken English."
Alas, Kus's new-found language skills didn't last.
The teenager, who injured a knee in Sunday's accident in Glasgow, is once more struggling to make himself understood in English.
After flying home to the Czech Republic to recover, he said - through an interpreter - that he remembered nothing of the accident or of the following two days.
Yesterday he added: "It's unbelievable that I was speaking English like that, especially without an accent.
"Hopefully I can pick English up over the winter for the start of next season so I'll be able to speak it without someone having to hit me over the head first.
"There must be plenty of the English language in my subconscious so hopefully I'll be able to pick it up quickly next time."
After the accident, team spokesman Lawrence Heppell said: "He was out cold for 45 minutes and he has been told by the medics to rest for at least a month.
"Matej could only string two or three words of English together and now he can speak it like a native, it's incredible."
Mr Waite added: "I've heard of other people getting knocked out and waking up talking fluent Italian or in one case even developing a Welsh accent.
"I never really believed it was possible but this incredible thing was happening in front of us."
It Was All Just A Terrible Dream Dept.
As A Man Is Cleared of Sexual
Assault Because He Was
Asleep, An Unsettling
Question...Can You Really
Sleepwalk Into Crime?
[ http://www.dailymail.co.uk ]
[ alan ball: sleepy perv ]Just over a year ago, Alan Ball went to a New Year's Eve house party, drank heavily and fell asleep on a sofa.
At some point during the night, he got up, went upstairs and climbed into bed with an under-age girl, whom he kissed on the lips.
After a year in which this lorry-driving father lost his job and was able to see his five-year-old daughter only during supervised visits, a judge at Preston Crown Court this week cleared him of sexual assault after the 35-year-old claimed he was sleepwalking at the time of the incident and had no memory of the events.
After being examined by two experts, the Crown Prosecution Service and the girl's family decided not to offer evidence against Ball.
'He has a history of sleepwalking typical of that type of behaviour of not knowing what he was doing,' said Fiorella Brereton, prosecuting.
'Sleepwalking is also within the family. The evidence leads our experts to the opinion he had no intention of abuse.'
As much as this judgment will come as a relief to Ball, it may be welcomed less by the police and the courts which have seen a steady increase in the use of sleepwalking as a defence.
Faced with the difficult task of distinguishing legitimate sleepwalkers from those using it as an excuse for their behaviour, the police and the courts are quickly having to come to terms with the complexities of this condition.
While once seen as an eccentric and harmless activity, sleepwalking is rapidly taking on an altogether more sinister aspect.
'I think it is clear that alongside most legitimate cases, there are some who are using it as a convenient excuse,' says one of the country's leading experts on sleepwalking, who cannot be named because of his involvement as an expert in a number of ongoing criminal cases.
'As the condition gets more coverage in the media, people are going to latch on to it as an excuse for crimes. Anybody can Google it on the internet and get the basics fairly easily.
'The problem is then how you make the distinction between legitimate cases and those who are faking it. That can be tricky.'
The basics of sleepwalking are clear: sleepwalking, or somnambulism, is a sleep disorder wherein the sufferer indulges in a range of behaviours or activities while they are asleep or in a sleep-like state.
This can range from simple behaviour, such as talking, sitting up in bed or getting dressed, through to driving or, in the case of a woman last year, sending emails inviting friends to dinner.
In even rarer cases, sexual assaults, violence and even murder have occurred.
It is estimated that 7 to 8 per cent of people sleepwalk when they are children, but that proportion falls to fewer than 1per cent in adulthood, with the majority of sufferers male.
In general, most incidents of sleepwalking occur during 'slow wave sleep' (SWS), when sleep is at its deepest. Children spend up to 80 per cent of their sleep in SWS, while this percentage drops off for adults; hence more children sleepwalk than adults.
While most occurrences of sleepwalking last only a few minutes and prove harmless to the sufferer and those around them, incidents have occurred which have proved more dangerous.
'When a person is moving around while in this state, they are not awake and are navigating by memory,' says Professor Jim Horne of the Sleep Research Centre at Loughborough University. 'When they're at home that is usually fine, but it can cause
trouble when somebody is in a hotel or in a new environment.'
Such was the case in 2007, when a 17-year-old German teenager climbed out of the fourth-floor window of an apartment he had just moved into with his sister in the town of Demmin.
After falling ten metres to the ground and breaking an arm and a leg, he continued to sleep on the pavement until he was found by police. No drugs or alcohol were involved, but the young man had a history of sleepwalking.
In 2005, a 15-year-old South London girl was found asleep on the arm of a 130ft crane on a building site. The girl had sleepwalked from her home near the site, climbed the crane and walked across a beam before lying down and continuing to sleep.
Afraid to wake her in case she panicked and fell from her precarious position, the firefighter who climbed the crane found the girl's mobile, phoned her parents, and had them call the girl to wake her.
While these two incidents involved teenagers, some people find themselves in such situations well into adult life.
[ natalie pinkham: slumbering tart ]TV presenter Natalie Pinkham, 29, regularly finds herself in embarrassing situations because of her sleepwalking. 'The worst time was when I was 24 years old and had been with my dad to watch Manchester United against Real Madrid at Old Trafford,' she says.
'I woke to find myself crawling down the corridor on all fours wearing very little. I had to walk sheepishly through reception, stretching my thin cotton nightshirt over my bum, all to cheers of drunken football fans.'
There is a consensus that family history plays an important part in sleepwalking in adulthood.
'It's clear that it has a lot to do with having a hereditary disposition,' says Professor Horne.
'There are also triggers that set off an incident - such as stress, lack of sleep, and possibly alcohol, although that has become the focus of a lot of debate.
'The difficulty and controversy occur when people have committed criminal acts while in a fugue state. Are they aware of what they're doing? Are they responsible for it? It is a fraught area.'
[ jules lowe: nap of death ]Fraught indeed. A number of high-profile cases have caused outrage after defendants who have claimed the sleepwalking defence have been acquitted.
In 2005, 32-year-old Manchester man Jules Lowe was acquitted of the brutal murder of his 82-year-old father Eddie in 2003 after claiming that he was asleep and had no recollection of the incident.
Lowe had a history of sleepwalking, had drunk alcohol and was grieving for his stepmother when he killed his father.
Pleading 'automatism' - the legal definition of acting involuntarily - Lowe was found not guilty on the basis of insane automatism and confined indefinitely to a mental institution.
The most notorious case occurred in Canada in 1988, when 23-year-old Toronto man Kenneth Parks was acquitted of murder and attempted murder of his parentsin-law.
In the early hours of May 23, 1987, he drove 15 miles to their house, broke in, assaulted his father-in-law and stabbed his mother-in-law to death.
Parks, a 'gentle giant' with gambling debts, claimed he was asleep the whole time and was not aware of what he was doing. 'There are definitely some suspicious claims,' says the anonymous expert. 'But it is possible to do some very complicated things while sleepwalking. People even make meals and wonder why they are putting on weight.
'In certain cases, primitive urges are unlocked, which is why you have incidents of inappropriate sexual behaviour and violence.'
For other experts, however, doubts remains over how conscious people are while in this state. 'I do not think it is possible to do complex actions while asleep,' says Professor Horne.
'The question is how responsible for their actions are these individuals. Are they aware of what they're doing? How do you prove or disprove this? It is very difficult.
'Take the issue of alcohol. If it is a trigger for these actions, then if a person has a history of these incidents and decides to drink, should they be held responsible?
'I really don't know the answers to these questions, and I suspect a lot of the experts who get involved in these criminal cases don't either. It really is anybody's guess.'
With more individuals charged with crimes choosing to mount their defence based on sleepwalking, it is clear, however, that these questions are not going to go away.
Library Of Alexandria Discovered
[ http://news.bbc.co.uk ]Archaeologists have found what they believe to be the site of the Library of Alexandria, often described as the world's first major seat of learning.
A Polish-Egyptian team has excavated parts of the Bruchion region of the Mediterranean city and discovered what look like lecture halls or auditoria.
Two thousand years ago, the library housed works by the greatest thinkers and writers of the ancient world.
Works by Plato and Socrates and many others were later destroyed in a fire.
Oldest University
Announcing their discovery at a conference being held at the University of California, Zahi Hawass, president of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, said that the 13 lecture halls uncovered could house as many as 5,000 students in total.
A conspicuous feature of the rooms, he said, was a central elevated podium for the lecturer to stand on.
"It is the first time ever that such a complex of lecture halls has been uncovered on any Greco-Roman site in the whole Mediterranean area," he added.
"It is perhaps the oldest university in the world."
Professor Wileke Wendrich, of the University of California, told BBC News Online that the discovery was incredibly impressive.
Alexandria was a major seat of learning in ancient times and regarded by some as the birthplace of western science.
Birthplace of geometry
It was a tiny fishing village on the Nile delta called Rhakotis when Alexander the Great chose it as the site of the new capital of his empire.
It was made Egypt's capital in 320 BC and soon became the most powerful and influential city in the region.
Its rulers built a massive lighthouse at Pharos, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and the famed Library of Alexandria.
It was at the library that Archimedes invented the screw-shaped water pump that is still in use today.
At Alexandria Eratosthenes measured the diameter of the Earth, and Euclid discovered the rules of geometry.
Ptolemy wrote the Almagest at Alexandria. It was the most influential scientific book about the nature of the Universe for 1,500 years.
The library was later destroyed, possibly by Julius Caesar who had it burned as part of his campaign to conquer the city.
A Very European Hero
[ http://www.economist.com ] A Tintin blockbuster is on the way. Baffled Americans hoping to understand him should look at him through the prism of post-war Europe
IT IS one of Europe’s more startling laws. In 1949 France banned children’s books and comic strips from presenting cowardice in a “favourable” light, on pain of up to a year in prison for errant publishers. It was equally forbidden to make laziness or lying seem attractive. The law created an oversight committee to watch for positive depictions of these ills, along with crime, theft, hatred, debauchery and acts “liable to undermine morality” among the young.
Taken literally, the law suggests that an ideal comic-book hero would resemble an overgrown boy scout, whose adventures involve pluck, fair play, restrained violence and no sex. That is a pretty accurate description of Tintin, the Belgian boy reporter who enjoyed spectacular success in post-war Europe.
Tintin’s slightly priggish character fitted the times. His simple ethical code—seek the truth, protect the weak and stand up to bullies—appealed to a continent waking up from the shame of war. His wholesome qualities help explain the great secret of his commercial success—that he was, and remains, one of the rare comic books that adults are happy to buy for children.
But probity cannot explain why Tintin became a cultural landmark in Europe, as important on his side of the Atlantic as Superman on the other. There were plenty of wholesome comics in post-war Europe, most of them justly forgotten. Something else in Tintin spoke to children and adults in continental Europe. Even in the straitened years of post-war reconstruction, he was soon selling millions of books a year.
Admirers point to the quality of the drawing in Tintin, and the tense pacing of the plots, and they are right. Any child reared on “King Ottokar’s Sceptre”, a Balkan thriller; or “The Calculus Affair”, about a scientist’s kidnap, will later feel a shock of familiarity when watching Hitchcock films or reading Graham Greene. It is all there: the dangerous glamour of cities at night; the terror of a forced drive into the forest; a world of tapped hotel telephones and chain-smoking killers in the lobby downstairs.
Yet even excellence does not explain Tintin’s success in Europe. For, despite his qualities, Tintin has never been a big hit in the Anglo-Saxon world. In Britain, he is reasonably well known, but as a minority taste, bound within narrow striations of class: his albums are bought to be tucked into boarding school trunks or read after Saturday morning violin lessons. In America, Tintin is barely known.
All societies reveal themselves through their children’s books. Europe’s love affair with Tintin is more revealing than most.
Any exploration of Tintin’s hold on continental affections must start not with culture, but with history. For all the talk about morality, France’s 1949 law on children’s books had ideological roots. It was pushed by an odd alliance of Communists, Catholic conservatives and jobless French cartoonists, determined that French children should be reading works imbued with “national” values. Pascal Ory, a historian at the Sorbonne university (author of “Mickey Go Home. The de-Americanisation of the cartoon strip”), writes that the main aim of the law—which, remarkably, remains in force today, tweaked in the 1950s to add a ban on incitement of ethnic prejudice—was to block comics from America.
The question of the transatlantic gap remains current. The coming year is a big one for Tintin. In 2009 it will be 80 years since the boy reporter embarked on his first adventure, a trip to the Soviet Union. In Belgium a museum is to open, dedicated to the work of Hergé, Tintin’s creator, whose real name was Georges Remi. (His initials, when reversed, are pronounced Hergé in French.) Even under construction, the museum is impressive: a soaring structure of concrete and glass, wrapped around a large wooden form like the hull of an upturned ship. The seriousness of the architecture carries a message. This is not a theme park, but a gallery for high art. That is an uncontroversial view in continental Europe, especially in Belgium and France, where cartoon strips are reviewed in critical essays and dissected in academic theses.
In America filming is supposed to begin in earnest on a trilogy of Tintin films to be directed by Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson, using digital “performance capture” technology to create a hybrid between animation and live action. Mr Spielberg secured an option to film Tintin shortly before Hergé’s death in 1983. The delays seem to have been caused partly by American puzzlement at Tintin. In September 2008 Universal Pictures pulled out of a plan to co-finance the project. The Hollywood Reporter, a trade publication, describes the films as being about “a young Belgian reporter and world traveller who is aided in his adventures by his faithful dog Snowy”, and explains that this storyline is “hugely popular in Europe”. You can almost hear the baffled shrugs.
As a journalist, Tintin is spectacularly unproductive, even by the idle standards of his trade. In all 24 albums he pauses perhaps twice to jot down a note. He happily gives rival reporters the details of his latest scoop. Only once is he seen with a completed article, on his inaugural 1929 trip to the Soviet Union. He briefly ponders how to get the manuscript to his office, before yawning and heading for bed, declaring: “Oh well, we’ll think about that tomorrow.” Four frames later, secret policemen are climbing the stairs to arrest him, and the article is never mentioned again.
Unlike another fictional adolescent with a media job—the American comic character Spiderman (portrayed as a freelance photographer in civilian life)—Tintin is not an outsider, or a rebel against the established order. He defends monarchs against revolutionaries (earning a knighthood in one book). His first instinct on catching a villain is to hand him over to the nearest police chief. He does not carry his own gun, though he shoots like an ace. Though slight, he has a very gentlemanly set of fighting skills: he knows how to box, how to sail, to drive racing cars, pilot planes and ride horses. He has few chances to rescue girls or women, moving in an almost entirely male, sexless world, but is quick to defend small boys from unearned beatings. His quick wits compensate for his lack of brawn. André Malraux, a French writer and politician, claimed that General de Gaulle called Tintin his “only international rival”, because both were famous for standing up to bullies.
Tintin is grandly uninterested in money. He is indifferent when—on occasion—he is offered large sums for accounts of catching some villain. Hergé’s disdain for transatlantic capitalism is portrayed in the 1931 “Tintin in America”, in which businessmen bid each other up to offer Tintin $100,000 for an oil well. When the young reporter explains the well is on Blackfoot Indian land, the businessmen steal the land from the Indians.
European snobbery about money permeates the books. Villains are frequently showy arrivistes. Old money is good. A gift (as opposed to gainful employment) allows his best friend, Captain Haddock, to buy back his family’s ancestral mansion. The captain takes to castle life with relish. Enriched by a treasure find, he swaps his seaman’s uniform for an increasingly Wodehousian wardrobe involving cravats, tweeds and at one point a monocle.
Hergé did not share his creation’s lack of interest in money. He paid minute attention to marketing (in total, some 200m albums have been sold) and the production of puzzles, colouring books and toys. Though Hergé is routinely voted onto lists of “10 famous Belgians”, he had no illusions about his homeland’s limitations as a market. He quickly began excising references to Tintin’s Belgian roots to boost his appeal on the French and Swiss markets, referring to him in 1935 as a “young European reporter”. He was happy for English-language editions to leave the impression that Tintin was British. Captain Haddock’s ancestral mansion changed from the Chateau de Moulinsart into Marlinspike Hall, and his most illustrious ancestor became a hero of the British royal navy, rather than a commander in the fleet of Louis XIV.
Assuming that Tintin does end up the subject of a Hollywood blockbuster, many around the world will soon think he is American. Hergé’s heirs know Tintin’s fame will take on quite different, global dimensions, in a way that will be hard to control. That will mark a big change.
After Hergé’s death, his wife Fanny inherited the rights to his work. She remains in overall artistic control of the Hergé Studios in Brussels (day to day the studios are run by Fanny’s second husband, Nick Rodwell, a British businessman). The studios are known for the ferocity with which they guard the works, scouring the world for abuses of copyright from Hergé’s old offices on a smart shopping avenue.
Mrs Rodwell confesses to seeing risks in Hollywood doing Tintin. To her, the charm of Hergé’s work is absolutely “European”—more “nuanced” than an American comic strip. The American style of telling a story threatens that European “sensibility”, she suggests: American narratives are “very dynamic, but more violent, and are much more aggressively paced.”
Hergé wanted the risk taken. He died days before a planned face-to-face meeting with Mr Spielberg, but had been briefed on the director’s thinking by a trusted assistant, Alain Baran, sent to Los Angeles to open negotiations. Mr Baran later wrote that Mr Spielberg saw Tintin as an “Indiana Jones for kids”, imagining Jack Nicholson as Captain Haddock. Such talk did not alarm Hergé. He said a film-maker like Mr Spielberg should be given free rein, and told his wife: “This Tintin will doubtless be different, but it will be a good Tintin.”
Such artistic openness is perhaps surprising, given where Hergé began his career. He always said the Catholic boy-scout movement rescued him from a “grey” childhood in lower middle-class Brussels. From there, he fell in with a slightly hysterical clutch of hard-right priests and nationalists, one of whom gave him his first job, on a small Belgian Catholic newspaper, the Vingtième Siècle, which fervently supported the monarchy, Belgian missionaries in the Congo and Mussolini and loathed the Bolshevik atheists running Russia and “Judeo-American” capitalism.
Tintin was born in this unpromising environment, in a weekly children’s supplement, Le Petit Vingtième. Hergé wanted to draw cartoons about the Wild West of America. His employer, an alarming priest named Norbert Wallez, had other ideas, ordering that the new fictional reporter be sent to the Soviet Union, then to Belgium’s colony in the Congo.
The 1930 story “Tintin in the Congo” has done much to feed Hergé’s reputation for racism. Its Africans are crude caricatures: child-men with wide eyes and bloated lips who prostrate themselves before Tintin (as well as Snowy his dog), after he shows off such magic as an electromagnet, or quinine pills for malaria.
In Scandinavia the staggering toll of African wildlife Tintin kills—especially a rhinoceros he reduces to blackened chunks with dynamite—has prompted additional angst. The book remains popular in Africa, Hergé defenders like to assert. But, in truth, it has lost any charm it ever possessed. It is a work of propaganda—not for “colonialism”, as is often said—but more narrowly for Belgian missionaries, one of whom keeps saving Tintin’s life in evermore ludicrous ways: first dispatching a half dozen crocodiles with a rifle then rescuing him from a roaring waterfall, seemingly unhindered by his advanced age and ankle-length soutane.
Hergé’s reputation is also marked by charges of anti-Semitism. He received many complaints about one of his villains, the hook-nosed New York financier, “Mr Blumenstein”. It does not help that this caricature appeared in “The Shooting Star”, an adventure written in 1941 while living in Brussels under Nazi occupation. In the field of devout Tintinologists, much effort has been put to explaining this “lapse” away. Michael Farr, a British expert on Tintin, is typical, writing in 2001 that as soon as Hergé realised that his character was “liable to misunderstanding”, he gave Blumenstein a different name and a new nationality, having him hail from “São Rico”.
Tintinologists have a ready explanation too for another lapse: the fact that Hergé spent the war working for Le Soir, a Belgian newspaper seized by the German occupiers and turned into a propaganda organ. This is usually explained by Hergé’s “naivety”, as an author of children’s comics (a defence also used for P.G. Wodehouse).
Alas, none of those arguments survive a reading of a biography of Hergé by Philippe Goddin, published in 2007. Mr Goddin’s honesty is commendable: his is an official biography, based on Hergé’s large collection of private papers.
Mr Goddin returns to “The Shooting Star”, and its initial newspaper serialisation in Le Soir. This included a strip about the panic unleashed when it seemed a giant meteorite would hit the earth. In one frame, he writes, Hergé drew two Jews rejoicing that if the world ended, they would not have to pay back their creditors. At that same moment in Belgium, Mr Goddin notes, Jews were being ordered to move to the country’s largest cities and remove their children from ordinary schools. They were also banned from owning radios, and were subject to a curfew. In the news pages of Le Soir, these measures were described as indispensable preparations for an orderly “emigration” of Jews. A year later, Hergé deleted the drawing of the Jews of his own accord, when the serialised “The Shooting Star” became an album.
Mr Goddin demolishes the excuse of naivety, thanks to papers found in Hergé’s files. As early as October 1940, he records, Hergé received an anonymous letter accusing him of luring Belgian children to read German propaganda, by publishing Tintin in Le Soir’s youth supplement. A few months later, Hergé had a bitter argument with an old friend, Philippe Gérard. In a letter, Gérard demanded Hergé either endorse the “odious propaganda” of Le Soir or make his disagreement with the German occupation known. Saying it was just “a job” would not do, his friend concluded.
By way of reply, Hergé offered a defence of neutrality. “I am neither pro-German, nor pro-British,” he wrote back. “As I can do absolutely nothing to hasten the victory of either England or Germany, I watch, I observe and I chew things over. Calmly and without passion.” His aim was to remain an “honest man”, Hergé wrote, which did not mean shouting “Heil Hitler” or volunteering for the Waffen SS. Some said German occupiers were pillaging Belgium. An honest man had to acknowledge this was not true.
There is a link between Hergé, this disappointing man, and his creation Tintin, who fights against despots so bravely. It lies in the rationalisation of impotence: a very European preoccupation.
The key to Tintin is that he has the mindset of “someone born in a small country”, says Charles Dierick, in-house historian at the Hergé Studios. He is “the clever little guy who outsmarts big bullies”. And as a little guy, even a clever one, Tintin’s bravery works within limits: he rescues friends, and foils plots. But when he finds himself in Japanese-controlled Shanghai, in “The Blue Lotus”, he can do nothing to end the broader problem of foreign occupation.
Hergé’s final complete adventure, the 1976 “Tintin and the Picaros”, offers the clearest expression of this doctrine of neutrality. Tintin finds himself summoned to rescue old friends from a civil war between two Latin American warlords. One general is backed by “Borduria”, a fictional but identifiably Communist-block nation. The other is financed by the (presumably American) International Banana Company. Tintin does not take political sides. He contents himself by backing the rebel general in exchange for his friends’ freedom, and a pledge that the revolution will be bloodless, with no executions or reprisals. That focus on the death penalty is an extremely European way for Tintin to remain a “man of good faith”, to borrow a phrase Hergé used about himself. There is no wild talk of promoting democracy, or even regime change.
Interviewed late in life, Hergé acknowledged the links between his wartime experiences and his moral outlook. The second world war lies behind a great deal in Tintin, just as it lies deep beneath the political instincts of many on the European continent. It matters a lot that the Anglo-Saxon world has a different memory of that same war: it is a tragic event, but not a cause for shame, nor a reminder of impotence.
Tintin has never fallen foul of the 1949 French law on children’s literature. He is not a coward, and the albums do not make that vice appear in a favourable light. But he is a pragmatist, albeit a principled one. Perhaps Anglo-Saxon audiences want something more from their fictional heroes: they want them imbued with the power to change events, and inflict total defeat on the wicked. Tintin cannot offer something so unrealistic. In that, he is a very European hero.
I've Got You Under My Skin Dept.
Is ‘Dr. Jekyll’ Bound In Mister Hide?
[ http://www.msnbc.msn.com ]
Finest library collections hold books wrapped in human skin
PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Brown University's library boasts an anatomy book that combines form and function in macabre fashion. Its cover — tanned and polished to a smooth golden brown, like fine leather — is made of human skin.
In fact, a number of the nation's finest libraries, including Harvard's, have such books in their collections. The practice of binding books in human skin was not uncommon in centuries past, even if it was not always discussed in polite society.
Centuries ago, the best libraries belonged to private collectors. Some were doctors who had access to skin from amputated parts and patients whose bodies had gone unclaimed. In other cases, wealthy bibliophiles acquired skin from executed criminals, medical school cadavers and people who died in the poorhouse.
Nowadays, libraries typically keep such volumes in their rare book collections and do not allow them to circulate. But scholars can examine them.
Brown's John Hay Library has three books bound in human skin — the 1568 anatomy text by the Belgian surgeon Andreas Vesalius, and two 19th-century editions of "The Dance of Death," a medieval morality tale.
One copy of "The Dance of Death" was rebound in 1893 by Joseph Zaehnsdorf, a master binder in London. A note to his client reports that he did not have enough skin and had to split it. The front cover, bound in the outer layer of skin, has a slightly bumpy texture, like soft sandpaper. The spine and back cover, made from the inner layer, feel like suede.
Connection between content, cover"The Dance of Death" is about how death prevails over all, rich or poor. As with many other skin-bound volumes, "there was some tie-in with the content of the book," said Sam Streit, director of the John Hay Library.
Similarly, many of the volumes are medical books. The College of Physicians of Philadelphia has some books bound by Dr. John Stockton Hough, who diagnosed the city's first case of trichinosis. He used that patient's skin to bind three of the volumes.
"The hypothesis that I was suggesting is that these physicians did this to honor the people who furthered medical research," said Laura Hartman, a rare-book cataloger at the National Library of Medicine in Maryland and author of a paper on the subject.
In most cases, universities and other libraries acquired the books as donations or as part of collections they purchased.
It is not clear whether some of the patients knew what would happen to their bodies. In most cases, the skin appears to have come from poor people who had no one to claim their remains. In any case, the practice took place well before the modern age of consent forms and organ donor cards.
While human leather may be repulsive to contemporary society, libraries can ethically have the books in their collections if they are used respectfully for academic research and not displayed as objects of curiosity, said Paul Wolpe of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania.
"There is a certain distancing that history gives us from certain kinds of artifacts," Wolpe said, noting that museums often have bones from archaeological sites. "If you had called me and said these are books from Nazi Germany, I would have a very different response."
Getting inside the author’s skinThe Boston Athenaeum, a private library, has an 1837 copy of George Walton's memoirs bound in his own skin. Walton was a highwayman — a robber who specialized in ambushing travelers — and left the volume to one of his victims.
The Cleveland Public Library has a Quran that may have been bound in the skin of its previous owner, an Arab tribal leader.
Decades ago, the Harvard Law School Library bought a 1605 manual for Spanish lawyers for $42.50 from an antiquarian books dealer in New Orleans. It sat on a shelf unnoticed until the early 1990s, when curator David Ferris was going through the library catalog and found a note saying it was bound in a man's skin.
DNA tests as to whether it is human skin were inconclusive — the genetic material having been destroyed by the tanning process — but the library had a box made to store the book and now keeps it on a special shelf.
"We felt we couldn't set it just next to someone else's law books," Ferris said.
NASAy It Ain't So Dept.
EU Space Official Supports UFO
Disclosure – Says NASA
Can’t Be Trusted
[ http://www.examiner.com ]
Dr. Peter Creola, a retired Swiss chief delegate at the European Space Agency (ESA) and head of the Swiss office for space policies, has joined forces with those who demand the truth about UFOs. ESA is the European version of NASA. On the topic of disclosing the truth about UFOs, Dr. Creola said “…you cannot unconditionally trust NASA.”
Robert Fleischer, Coordinator of Exopolitics Germany praised Dr. Creola by stating “There are not many European high officials who dare to step forward when it comes to the reality of the UFO phenomenon… As chairman of the ‘Ariane Programme Board’, he played a key role in launching the first European carrier missile ‘Ariane’ and has been involved in numerous key projects of ESA.”
Fleischer also shared comments by Dr. Creola from a recent interview published in “Mysteries”, a German magazine:
“Question: In your opinion, would a scientific investigation of the UFO phenomenon and the propulsion systems used by UFOs bring new possibilities for terrestrial space activities?
Creola: Of course – not only for our space activities, but maybe even for the future of mankind! I always found it astonishing that sightings of silent crafts, which are obviously not bound to our gravitational laws, are being ignored by science – at least officially.
Question: Do you think that the US space agency NASA is covering up evidence about UFOs?
Creola: Well, NASA is part of the government system. Whatever is the official policy also applies to NASA and has to be carried out in that fashion. If, for example, the official line is not to comment on certain topics related to UFO sightings, or if some of these sightings involve National Security, then NASA will obviously follow that doctrine. Indeed, in this case, you cannot unconditionally trust NASA.
That, of course, also applies to Roswell. If indeed something extraterrestrial crashed there in 1947 and if the US government has successfully managed to keep it undisclosed to this day, then NASA would also be bound to this policy (not to disclose).”
Dr. Creola’s comments are consistent with whistleblower testimony from the Disclosure Project and other high ranking former government leaders around the world. Let’s hope his courage and honorable intentions will inspire a similar effort at NASA in the U.S.
Now In The Know Dept.
CEO Of NASA Contractor Lockheed
Knew Of Extraterrestrial
UFO Visitors
[ http://www.examiner.com ]
Lockheed "Skunk Works" former CEO knew the Roswell extraterrestial UFO influenced designs of Testor model kits for Roswell UFO models, and U.S. top secret aircraft. According to a CNI News report by Colorado resident Michael Lindemann, the design information was derived from forensic illustrations and numerous witness testimonies about the Roswell UFO, provided by William L. “Bill” McDonald.
In an e-mail, dated July 29, 1999, apparently addressed to Lindemann, McDonald referenced an excerpt of a discussion with Harold Puthoff, founder of the previously highly classified U.S. “remote viewing” program. McDonald said:
“Well Hal, you asked for it! Now that legendary Lockheed engineer and chief model kit designer for the Testor Corporation, John Andrews, is dead, I can announce that he personally confirmed the design connection between the Roswell Spacecraft and the Lockheed Martin Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles (UCAVs), spyplanes, Joint Strike Fighters, and Space Shuttles. Andrews was a close personal friend of "Skunk Works" CEO Ben Rich -- the hand-picked successor of Skunk Works founder Kelly Johnson and the man famous for the F-117 Nighthawk "Stealth" fighter, its "half-pint" prototype the "HAVE BLUE", and the top-secret F-19 Stealth Interceptor. Before Rich died of cancer, Andrews took my questions to him.
Dr. Ben R. Rich confirmed:
* There are 2 types of UFOs -- the ones we build and ones 'they' build. We learned from both crash retrievals and actual "hand-me-downs." The Government knew and until 1969 took an active hand in the administration of that information. After a 1969 Nixon "purge", administration was handled by an international board of directors in the private sector…
* Nearly all "biomorphic" aerospace designs were inspired by the Roswell spacecraft -- from Kelly's SR-71 Blackbird onward to today's drones, UCAVs, and aerospace craft…
* It was Ben Rich's opinion that the public should not be told [about ufos and extraterrestrials]. He believed they could not handle the truth -- ever. Only in the last months of his decline did he begin to feel that the "international corporate board of directors" dealing with the "Subject" could represent a bigger problem to citizens' personal freedoms under the United States Constitution than the presence of off-world visitors themselves.”
Lindemann added that “Bill McDonald received the above information from Andrews from 1994 until their last phone call near Christmas in 1998.” Lindemann also noted “It should also be known that Dr. Ben R. Rich attended a public aerospace designers and engineers conference in 1993 before his illness overwhelmed him in which he stated -- in the presence of MUFON Orange County Section Director Jan Harzan and many others that – ‘We’ (i.e., the U.S. aerospace community/military industrial complex) had in it's possession the technology to "take us to the stars".
See the complete letter from John Andrews and the hand written reply from Dr. Ben Rich. Hear more revealing testimony from Disclosure Project whistleblowers. NASA can not deny secrets discovered by UK hacker Gary McKinnon and many astronauts if it expects full funding from the Obama White House administration.
Fumble In The Jungle Dept.
Film Critic Gets Bad Reviews
[ http://www.sun-sentinel.com ]
[ the face of a fool ]Is Ben Lyons the most hated film critic in America?
In the four months since the fresh-faced 27-year-old "movie dude" for the E! channel was installed to co-host a revamped version of the venerable review program At the Movies, he has gotten a resounding thumbs down from an angry mob of bloggers, columnists, critics and fans of the show.
Consensus is that Lyons, son of critic Jeffrey Lyons, is unworthy of the balcony seats once occupied by critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel on the TV mainstay.
"His integrity's out the window. He has no taste," said Erik Childress, vice president of the Chicago Film Critics Association. "Everyone thinks he's a joke."
Lyons became infamous in film circles for calling Will Smith's 2007 zombie-vampire movie I Am Legend "one of the greatest movies ever made."
"One of the 'greatest movies ever made'?" marveled Childress, himself a reviewer for eFilmCritic.com. "Next to Lawrence of Arabia and Citizen Kane? The only way you can say that with a straight face is if you've only seen 50 movies in your life. Or you're trying to give quotes to appease someone who can do you a favor later."
Lyons, who declined to be interviewed for this story, has been accused of landing his job through nepotism; knowing little about movies; sucking up to celebrities; and, most damaging, of being a "quote whore" — a shill for movie marketers whose raves are tailor made for gushy pull quotes on movie ads.
Which would be of hardly any consequence were it not for the drastic transformation of film criticism. These days, moviegoers are just as apt to check a rating at Rotten Tomatoes, the popular movie-review aggregating Web site, as to read an actual review from a news publication.
In this light, Lyons' ascension represents more than the changing of the guard — many view it as yet another example of the dumbing down of media and of celebrity triumphing over substance.
"It crystallizes everything that's wrong with American pop culture right now," said Scott Johnson, the blogger behind the Web site StopBen Lyons.com. "I don't expect to agree with a critic all the time. But his approach is to throw out blurbs just so he can get on a poster."
S.T. VanAirsdale, senior editor of the Hollywood-skewering blog Defamer, framed the debate around the "Ben Lyons Hate Storm" in more direct terms.
"It's a pretty microcosmic phenomenon, when you look at who hates him," VanAirsdale said. "But for people who take film criticism seriously, he's an imposition. If he's established himself as the benchmark for where popular criticism is headed, we're all kind of [in trouble]."
[ the silencer ]
[ local ho ]
[ click to read ] 
[ packin' heat ]
[ alan ball: sleepy perv ]
[ natalie pinkham: slumbering tart ]
[ jules lowe: nap of death ]
[ the face of a fool ]
[ rockstar ]
[ USPS ]
[ stalker ]
[ yanni ]
[ gimp ]
[ pathos ]
[ nooooooo! ]
[ rockstar ]
[ USPS ]
[ stalker ]
[ yanni ]
[ gimp ]
[ pathos ]
[ nooooooo! ]
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