Following on the heels of the life magazine archive I present this Dutch archive of bicycle racing of days long gone. Truth be told I don’t know weather I romanticize this period of racing or prefer it. The pictures though are fascinating. You can find the whole set here.
This post is lazily reposted from Wired…
“There’s a voracious bacterium nibbling on Italy’s priceless cultural relics — and historians are shouting, “Bravo!” Over the centuries, air pollution has formed a thin black crust on the stone surfaces of statues and buildings, and Desulfovibrio vulgaris vulgaris is being used to remove that crud in a very Italianate fashion: by eating it. Unleashed on works of art and architecture, the bacteria metabolize the sulfate in the crust, converting some of it into — oh, please excuse them — gasses. So far, microbiologist Claudia Sorlini and her team at the University of Milan have applied the biotreatment to parts of their home city’s gothic Duomo and Michelangelo’s Pietà Rondanini. Next, Sorlini says, she’s itching to let her peckish little friends gorge themselves on Notre Dame.”
From Wired
1 CommentDaniele Pinto reports for The New York Times that italian authorities have announced the discovery of a late second century Roman sarcophagus in the outskirts of rome. The coffin is in excellent condition and gives a solid representation of life (or death) of the Roman social elite of the time who regarded culture and education as essential to reaching the afterlife. The remains are currently being analyzed by the National Museum of Prehistory and Ethnology in Rome. So, I guess there will be more news to come…
I’ll admit to not being the greatest with knowledge of the ancient world but, I’m always fascinated when something like this appears. I always assume that most of these antiquities are already found, but something like this happens and suddenly we get another chance to learn about the past in a far deeper and careful way than the past has been examined in the past.
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