| |
|
17. april 2005
|
|
At the end of the 19th century, a massive library of classical papyrus was found in grabage dumps in Oxyrhynchus in Egypt. 400,000 fragments were stored in Oxford, but unfortunately none of it could possibly be read. Before last week.
The previously unknown texts, read for the first time last week, include parts of a long-lost tragedy - the Epigonoi ("Progeny") by the 5th-century BC Greek playwright Sophocles; part of a lost novel by the 2nd-century Greek writer Lucian; unknown material by Euripides; mythological poetry by the 1st-century BC Greek poet Parthenios; work by the 7th-century BC poet Hesiod; and an epic poem by Archilochos, a 7th-century successor of Homer, describing events leading up to the Trojan War. Additional material from Hesiod, Euripides and Sophocles almost certainly await discovery.
Oxford academics have been working alongside infra-red specialists from Brigham Young University, Utah. Their operation is likely to increase the number of great literary works fully or partially surviving from the ancient Greek world by up to a fifth. It could easily double the surviving body of lesser work - the pulp fiction and sitcoms of the day.
"The Oxyrhynchus collection is of unparalleled importance - especially now that it can be read fully and relatively quickly," said the Oxford academic directing the research, Dr Dirk Obbink. "The material will shed light on virtually every aspect of life in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt, and, by extension, in the classical world as a whole."
The Hellenistic world is arguably the most closely researched era in history, at least before the 20th century. Yet, the sources have not been as good as we'd hoped. Lots of famous classical authors are known only through references and brief quotations in other works. It will be very, very exciting to see what comes out of this brand new library.
10:29:36 PM 
|
|
WikiNews has an uncomfirmed story about violent protests in the Iranian city of Ahwaz.
Over 20 Ahwazi Arab protestors are dead, 500 injured and 250 arrested, in the wake of protests in the Khuzestan, Iran city of Ahwaz this weekend, says the British Ahwazi Friendship Society (BAFS). The protest erupted after publication of an alleged 1999 letter containing plans for a programme of ethnic "restructuring", purported to be a leak from the office of Iranian President Khatami.
Other reports indicate some dead, but serious discrepencies exist in reports existing at time of writing.
There has been many such reports, few of them confirmed. It's apparently not only the CIA that is clueless about what really goes on in Iran.
9:05:05 PM
|
|
On April 8, two Saudi passengers on KLM flight 685 from Amsterdam to Mexico City set off all alarms in the US Homeland Security department, forcing the flight to return to Holland.
The two Saudis, the database reported, were brothers and pilots who had attended the same Arizona flight school as 9/11 hijacker Hani Hanjour. Soon the multiplicity of U.S. terror databases started pumping out similar hits. Fearing that Flight 685 might be a 9/11-style plot in the making, U.S. authorities refused the plane overflight rights, and Canada rejected a request to land. Much to the chagrin of its 278 passengers, the KLM jet made an exhausting odyssey back to Amsterdam.
Was it a plot? The KLM 685 incident—which was not widely publicized by the U.S. government—is an illustration of just how hard it has become to tell ordinary guys from bad guys in the war on terror. Washington's concern about the KLM flight seems legitimate: in the past year, U.S. counterterrorism officials have cited intelligence indicating that Al Qaeda might be planning to use foreign-based airliners to launch attacks against the U.S. homeland. One U.S. counterterrorism official told NEWSWEEK that the two passengers were "bad dudes." And a European intelligence official said the two have "extensive but secondary" links to Al Qaeda.
We still don't know if this incident was part of an ominous development, because the Dutch allowed them to return to Saudi Arabia.
8:08:07 PM
|
|
I have to say I have no firm opinion on the candidacy of John Bolton, except that my sentiment towards the UN says that the worse the dems make Bolton look, the more I think the UN deserves him. Mark Steyn, unsurprisingly, has pretty firm opinions. His satirical take on the dems' reaction to Bolton's hands-on-hips bullying is a pleasure to read.
Somehow, Steyn manages to get David Gest mixed up in this story. Yeah, you know, the guy who actually admitted being beated up by Liza Minnelli. Just read it.
7:55:43 PM
|
|
In an NYT article that will no doubt get reactions here in Norway, Bruce Bawer seeks to dispel the self-righteous myth that we are the richest country in the world. We are at least pretty close, if you base it on a crude GDP per capita. But there are other ways to estimate riches. And Mr Bawer mentions a few methods that doesn't have us come out very well.
In Oslo, library collections are woefully outdated, and public swimming pools are in desperate need of maintenance. News reports describe serious shortages of police officers and school supplies. When my mother-in-law went to an emergency room recently, the hospital was out of cough medicine. Drug addicts crowd downtown Oslo streets, as The Los Angeles Times recently reported, but applicants for methadone programs are put on a months-long waiting list.
In Norway, the standard line is that there must be some mistake, that such things simply should not happen in "the world's richest country." Why do Norwegians have such a wealthy self-image? Partly because, compared with their grandparents (who lived before the discovery of North Sea oil), they are rich. Few, however, question whether it really is the world's richest country. [...]
In short, while Scandinavians are constantly told how much better they have it than Americans, Timbro's statistics suggest otherwise. So did a paper by a Swedish economics writer, Johan Norberg.
Contrasting "the American dream" with "the European daydream," Mr. Norberg described the difference: "Economic growth in the last 25 years has been 3 percent per annum in the U.S., compared to 2.2 percent in the E.U. That means that the American economy has almost doubled, whereas the E.U. economy has grown by slightly more than half. The purchasing power in the U.S. is $36,100 per capita, and in the E.U. $26,000 - and the gap is constantly widening."
The one detail in Timbro's study that didn't feel right to me was the placement of Scandinavian countries near the top of the list and Spain near the bottom. My own sense of things is that Spaniards live far better than Scandinavians. In Norwegian pubs, for example, anyone rich or insane enough to order, say, a gin and tonic is charged about $15 for a few teaspoons of gin at the bottom of a glass of tonic; in Spain, the drinks are dirt-cheap and the bartender will pour the gin up to the rim unless you say "stop."
I can unfortunately only confirm his words about the prices in Norwegian pubs.
In late March, another study, this one from KPMG, the international accounting and consulting firm, cast light on this paradox. It indicated that when disposable income was adjusted for cost of living, Scandinavians were the poorest people in Western Europe. Danes had the lowest adjusted income, Norwegians the second lowest, Swedes the third. Spain and Portugal, with two of Europe's least regulated economies, led the list. [...]
The thrust, however, was to confirm Timbro's and Mr. Norberg's picture of American and European wealth. While the private-consumption figure for the United States was $32,900 per person, the countries of Western Europe (again excepting Luxembourg, at $29,450) ranged between $13,850 and $23,500, with Norway at $18,350.
Mr Bawer is unfortunately right that the rhetorical question "how come the world's richest country can't afford..." will keep being asked, especially in the upcoming election campaign. We may be rich, but then, we have to be to afford living here.
PS: Bruce Bawer's webpage, and his very useful European blog/newspaper link page.
PS 2: Thinking a bit about this, I wonder exactly how the private consumption figure is calculated. Does the US figure include the cost of health insurance? That would be slightly misleading, as you get a decent state health care plan simply on the merit of being a resident in Norway. True, this sum is not disposable here, but sane working Americans will pay for health insurance, thus deducting a substantial figure from your available income. This just shows there are many ways to compare incomes across different countries and political systems.
8:12:15 AM
|
|
Love him or hate him, if you are a comics fan you know about Robert Crumb. Then you definitely should read this NYT piece about art critic Robert Hughes and R. Crumb sharing a stage.
1:28:37 AM
|
|
WatchingAmerica is a quite new site that brings news about (or relevant to) the United States from across the world. Perhaps the most valuable service from the site is that many articles are translated into English.
Judging from the stories on the front page right now, there is an eclectic choice of various political positions represented.
12:29:12 AM
|
|
|
© Copyright 2005 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.05.2005; 01:55:38.
|
|
|
