de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception
Archaeologists have made a surprising discovery: they found traces of 2,500-year-old chocolate on a plate as opposed to in a cup.
The conclusion suggests ancient Mayans not only drank chocolate but also used it as a condiment.
The AP reports that the discovery was made public by Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History.
The AP adds:
"'This is the first time it has been found on a plate used for serving food,' archaeologist Tomas Gallareta said. 'It is unlikely that it was ground there (on the plate), because for that they probably used metates (grinding stones).'
"The traces of chemical substances considered 'markers' for chocolate were found on fragments of plates uncovered at the Paso del Macho archaeological site in Yucatan in 2001.
"The fragments were later subjected to tests with the help of experts at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, as part of a joint project. The tests revealed a 'ratio of theobromine and caffeine compounds that provide a strong indicator of cacao usage,' according to a statement by the university."
Mexican news outlets are reporting that the find connects modern Mexican food with its ancient roots.
Lindsay Lohan insists ... she did NOT trash Elizabeth Taylor's priceless 1963 "Cleopatra" trailer during the filming of her new movie -- despite accusations from the trailer's owner.
The owner of the trailer -- a woman named Angel Alger -- purchased the lavish trailer for $50,000 in June and agreed to loan it to Lifetime producers during the filming of Lindsay's Elizabeth Taylor biopic "Liz & Dick" this summer.
The trailer was filled with priceless memorabilia from when Liz Taylor used the trailer herself -- while filming "Cleopatra" in 1963 -- but when it was returned to Alger after filming, she claims the thing was TRASHED.
According to Alger, the trailer was covered in cigarette burns, dishes and glasses were broken, and several priceless antiques were missing -- including an old European rocking chair and a French telephone.
Alger told CNN she estimates the damage to be around $100,000 -- and when asked who she thought was responsible ... Alger said Lindsay Lohan.
Alger admitted she had no proof to back her accusation -- explaining she jumped to the conclusion simply because she was told Lindsay and her friends had regular access to the trailer.
Now, Lindsay's rep Steve Honig is firing back, claiming, "Lindsay had nothing to do with it. It's an absurd story."
Alger says she wants the missing stuff returned, and hopes to repair the rest so she can put the trailer on display.
de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception
It’s sometimes easy to forget one particular, elemental truth: We live in a physical world.
In a digital age — when so so much of what we see, hear and act upon is comprised wholly of incorporeal ones and zeroes — the physical world can sometimes seem insubstantial. The games, apps, videos, news articles, photographs and other media we use and “consume” each day might be produced by live human beings occupying real space — but much of what we consider genuine and urgent does not, in some very fundamental ways, actually exist.
If you’re reading this on a handheld or a monitor, the letters that you’re reading right now and the words that make up the sentence that’s conveying this thought are perhaps more accurately conceived of as impulses, or bits of energy, rather than as things.
Old photographs that have been scanned and digitized, meanwhile, occupy a complex place in any discussion of what’s “real.” Obviously, a print, a strip of negatives or a contact sheet that one can hold in one’s hands are objects that have a place in the world. They occupy space. And because a roll of film developed in, say, the mid-1940s had a physical presence, it would also be heir to the perils that all other tangible objects, living and inanimate, happen to share: damage, corrosion, decay, dissolution.
Consider the images in this gallery — photographs made by LIFE’s Thomas D. McAvoy in Stalingrad in 1947.
Strong, accurate representations of a city struggling to rebuild and to regain some sense of normality after suffering unspeakable destruction during the Second World War, the images are, in fact, far removed from the film that McAvoy must have pulled from his camera after shooting the roll (or rather, the photos from many rolls) depicted here.
But it is the damage to the images — the spots created, in all likelihood, by mold eating away at the film’s emulsion — that not only gives many of these pictures an eerie, discordant beauty, but provides yet another way to consider the nexus of the real and what we might call the seemingly real.
The scenes that McAvoy captured, after all, did happen. Stalingrad was reduced to rubble. Years after war’s end, the only things one could find in abundance there were hunger, cold and a rough pride in their Pyrrhic victory over the Reich. And then, by some accident or mischance or plain old human ineptitude, McAvoy’s physical, photographic record of Stalingrad in 1947 suffered damage itself. The images were, in turn, transformed into near-abstract, ghostly works, within which one can still see remnants of the robust photojournalism that McAvoy consciously, intentionally created.
Finally, to add one last layer of serendipity and happenstance to the entire story, it’s worth noting that this gallery of randomly, naturally altered postwar pictures was not, strictly speaking, planned. It is curated, and the images that appear here were carefully chosen for what they could usefully say, or show — but it did not spring, fully formed, from someone’s brow. No one at LIFE.com blurted out, Hey, I have an idea. Let’s find a collection of mold-mottled photographs, and use them to discuss the fluid nature of reality, the vagaries of memory and the unique power of black and white photography to evoke the past and provide context to the present.
It would be cool if that was the case. But it’s not.
Instead, the creation of the gallery was at-once more workmanlike, and more wholly imaginative than that. We were looking for pictures to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the start of the cataclysmic and pivotal Battle of Stalingrad (August 23, 1942); came across McAvoy’s photos from two years after the war; and as we looked through mold-pocked image after mold-pocked image, gradually hit on the notion of a gallery devoted to pictures that might otherwise never again see the light of day precisely because they’re so glaringly imperfect.
We live in a physical world. This gallery’s insubstantial, digital remnants of one photographer’s labor 65 years ago serve, in their way, as forceful reminders of that fact — no small feat for a series of incorporeal ones and zeroes
de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception
By early 1963, the number of American military personnel in Vietnam had grown from several hundred to more than 10,000 in a few short years. The ramifications of the United States’ direct involvement in a conflict halfway around the globe — less than a decade after the ceasefire in another brutal war in Korea — were certainly part of the national conversation, but in ’63 America’s growing role in Vietnam was not even close to the all-encompassing, divisive issue it would become by the middle of the decade.
Vietnam was on people’s radar, of course, but not as a constant, alarming blip. Military families were learning first-hand (before everyone else, as they always do) that this was no “police action; but for millions of Americans, Vietnam was a mystery, a riddle that no doubt would be resolved and forgotten in time: a little place far away where inscrutable strangers were fighting over … something. All the more remarkable that in January of 1963, LIFE magazine published the powerful cover article, “We Wade Deeper Into Jungle War,” and illustrated it with not one or two photos but with a dozen pictures — most of them in color — by the great photojournalist, Larry Burrows.
Burrows, seen at left in Vietnam in 1963, worked steadily — although not exclusively — in Southeast Asia from 1962 until his death in 1971. His work is often cited as the most searing and the most consistently, jaw-droppingly excellent photography from the war, and several of his pictures (“Reaching Out,” for example, featuring a wounded Marine desperately trying to comfort a stricken comrade after a fierce 1966 firefight) and photo essays (like 1965′s magisterial “One Ride With Yankee Papa 13″) both encompassed and defined the long, polarizing catastrophe in Vietnam.
He and three fellow photojournalists died when their helicopter was shot down during operations in Laos. Burrows was 44.
The pictures here, meanwhile, are striking not only for the clarity with which they document a scary, widening conflict, but for how graphic they are. To American eyes, long accustomed to having their news sanitized by the major media, the notion that these and similarly gruesome pictures routinely ran in a popular weekly magazine five decades ago will likely come as something of a shock. Today, a photograph of blood stains and broken glass on a street after a car bombing is about the extent of what most Americans will ever see on the nightly news, on bale shows or in their newspapers. (Raggedly severed limbs, torched corpses and viscera-covered walls evidently being deemed too upsetting to the fragile American sensibility.)
But it’s worth recalling — or reminding those who weren’t alive at the time — that, starting even before the January 25, 1963, issue in which the photos in this gallery appeared, and throughout the war in Vietnam, LIFE and other major, mainstream American news outlets, in print and on TV, regularly published and broadcast what today would be considered graphic, unsettling content.
That LIFE considered this a significant, indeed a groundbreaking article is evidenced by the highly unusual treatment it received on the magazine’s cover. The first slide in this gallery illustrates this perfectly: rather than the customary horizontal, one-sheet image found on literally thousands of other LIFE covers, the January 25, 1963, issue featured an exceedingly rare fold-out, giving full play to Burrows’ powerful portrait.
Finally: A note on slide #14 in this gallery. In the decades since 1972, when LIFE ceased publishing as a weekly, and in subsequent years when thousands upon thousands of the magazine’s photographs were physically, carefully archived and stored away, very occasionally things have gone awry. Pictures went missing. Negatives went walkabout. Prints have gone off to wherever it is that prints go to hide. In short, some of LIFE’s photographs (very few of them, thankfully, but still enough to cause concern and dismay), both published and unpublished, only exist today in old issues of the magazine itself, or in digital scans made of the pages on which the pictures ran.
The originals, as the vernacular has it, are “lost in circulation.” Maybe someone pulled a strip of negatives from the archive 20 years ago for a research project only to have it fall, unnoticed, behind a desk, or under a radiator. Perhaps someone mistakenly mailed the only remaining original, photographer-sanctioned print of a picture to another publication, and it was never returned. Maybe the prints and the contact sheets from an assignment were destroyed in a fire, or mold destroyed a small set of poorly stored negatives.
The point here is that the image in slide #14 in this gallery was scanned from an old issue of LIFE, because the original is “lost in circulation.” It’s gone. And no one knows where it is.
We thought some people might find that interesting. We certainly do
de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception
Are the New Testament gospels the true eyewitness history of Jesus Christ, or could the story have been changed through the years? Must we simply take the New Testament accounts of Jesus by faith, or is there evidence for their reliability?
The late ABC News anchor Peter Jennings was in Israel broadcasting a television special on Jesus Christ. His program, “The Search for Jesus,” explored the question of whether the Jesus of the New Testament was historically accurate.
Jennings featured opinions on the Gospel accounts from DePaul professor John Dominic Crossan, three of Crossan’s colleagues from the Jesus Seminar, and two other Bible scholars. (The Jesus Seminar is a group of scholars who debate Jesus’ recorded words and actions and then use red, pink, gray, or black beads to cast votes indicating how trustworthy they believe statements in the Gospels are.)[1]
Some of the comments were stunning. There on national TV Dr. Crossan not only cast doubt on more than 80 percent of Jesus’ sayings but also denied Jesus’ claims to divinity, his miracles, and his resurrection. Jennings clearly was intrigued by the image of Jesus presented by Crossan.
Searching for true Bible history is always news, which is why every year Time and Newsweek go on a cover story quest for Mary, Jesus, Moses, or Abraham. Or—who knows?—maybe this year it will be “Bob: The Untold Story of the Missing 13th Disciple.”
This is entertainment, and so the investigation will never end nor yield answers, as that would eliminate future programming. Instead, those with radically different views are thrown together like an episode of Survivor, hopelessly convoluting the issue rather than bringing clarity.
But Jennings’s report did focus on one issue that ought to be given some serious thought. Crossan implied that the original accounts of Jesus were embellished by oral tradition and were not written down until after the apostles were dead. Thus they are largely unreliable and fail to give us an accurate picture of the real Jesus. How are we to know if this is really true?
So, what does the evidence show? We begin with two simple questions: When were the original documents of the New Testament written? And who wrote them?
The importance of these questions should be obvious. If the accounts of Jesus were written after the eyewitnesses were dead, no one could verify their accuracy. But if the New Testament accounts were written while the original apostles were still alive, then their authenticity could be established. Peter could say of a forgery in his name, “Hey, I didn’t write that.” And Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John could respond to questions or challenges aimed at their accounts of Jesus.
The New Testament writers claimed to be rendering eyewitness accounts of Jesus. The apostle Peter stated it this way in one letter: “We were not making up clever stories when we told you about the power of our Lord Jesus Christ and his coming again. We have seen his majestic splendor with our own eyes” (2 Peter 1:16NLT).
A major part of the New Testament is the apostle Paul’s 13 letters to young churches and individuals. Paul’s letters, dated between the mid 40s and the mid 60s (12 to 33 years after Christ), constitute the earliest witnesses to Jesus’ life and teaching. Will Durant wrote of the historical importance of Paul’s letters, “The Christian evidence for Christ begins with the letters ascribed to Saint Paul. … No one has questioned the existence of Paul, or his repeated meetings with Peter, James, and John; and Paul enviously admits that these men had known Christ in the flesh.”
Read on ...http://y-jesus.com/wwrj/4-are-gospels-true.php/2/
de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception
Did Jesus Christ really exist, or is Christianity a legend built upon a fictitious character like Harry Potter?
For nearly two thousand years most of our world has considered Jesus a real man who had exceptional character, leadership and power over nature. But today some are saying he never existed.
The argument against Jesus’ existence, known as the Christ-myth theory, began seventeen centuries after Jesus is said to have walked the rocky hills of Judea.
Ellen Johnson, president of American Atheists, summarizes the Christ-myth view on CNN TV Larry King Live:
There is not one shred of secular evidence there ever was a Jesus Christ … Jesus is a compilation from other gods…who had the same origins, the same death as the mythological Jesus Christ. The stunned host, replied, “So you don’t believe there was a Jesus Christ?”
Johnson fired back, “There was not…there is no secular evidence that Jesus Christ ever existed.”
King immediately requested a commercial break. The international television audience was left wondering.[1]
In his early years as an atheist Oxford literary scholar C. S. Lewis also considered Jesus a myth, thinking all religions were simply inventions.[2]
Years later, Lewis was sitting by the fire in an Oxford dorm room with a friend he called “the hardest boiled atheist of all the atheists I ever knew.” Suddenly his friend blurted out, “The evidence for the historicity of the Gospels was really surprisingly good…It almost looks as if it had really happened once.”[3]
Lewis was stunned. His friend’s remark that there was real evidence for Jesus prompted Lewis to investigate the truth for himself. He writes about his search for truth about Jesus in his classic book Mere Christianity.
So, what evidence did Lewis’ friend discover for Jesus Christ?
Let’s begin with a more foundational question: How can we distinguish a mythical character from a real person? For example, what evidence convinces historians that Alexander the Great was a real person? And does such evidence exist for Jesus?
Both Alexander and Jesus were depicted as charismatic leaders. Both reportedly had brief careers, dying in their early thirties. Jesus is said to have been a man of peace who conquered by love; Alexander a man of war who ruled by the sword.
In 336 B.C. Alexander the Great became king of Macedonia. A military genius, this handsome, arrogant leader swept through villages, towns, and kingdoms of Greco-Persia until he ruled it all. It is said that he cried when there were no more worlds to conquer.
The history of Alexander is drawn from five ancient sources written 300 or more years after he died.[4] Not one eyewitness account of Alexander exists.
However, historians believe Alexander really existed, largely because the accounts of his life are confirmed by archaeology and his impact on history.
Likewise, to determine if Jesus was a real person, we need to seek evidence for his existence in the following areas:
de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception
Mother's Day usually celebrates all of the sweet and loving moms out there. But there's another breed of moms that aren't all fresh-baked cookies and warm milk. These historical moms wanted what's best for their kids (and themselves). Some took a tough but fair approach to getting things done -- and others were more than willing to crush rebellions and murder family members to make things happen.
Olympias, mother of Alexander the Great. CREDIT: Guillaume Rouille/Public Domain
1. Olympias, Mother of Alexander the Great
Alexander the Great was one of the most successful military commanders of all time, securing an empire that stretched from the Mediterranean to the Himalayan Mountains. He seems to have inherited much of his moxie from mom.
Alexander's mother, Olympias, was the fourth wife of Alexander's father. Even in ancient times, Olympias got a bad rap: The historian Plutarch accused her of sleeping with snakes as part of her religious rites.
When Alexander's dad took another wife, a Macedonian named Cleopatra, Olympias went into voluntary exile, only to return after her husband was assassinated -- an event that some historians suspect Olympias had a hand in. She then had Cleopatra murdered, along with Cleopatra's infant child, helping secure her own son's succession to the throne. Olympias has also been accused of poisoning another child of Philip II, Philip III, who would survive with brain damage.
Exactly how ruthless Olympias really was is hard to say, said Brian Pavlac, a historian at King's College in Pennsylvania. Historical women often get painted as especially cruel and vicious, Pavlac told LiveScience. [Fight, Fight, Fight: The History of Human Aggression]
Cruel or not, Olympias' political mechanizations put her at odds with Macedonia's regent Antipater and his son Cassander while Alexander was off conquering the globe. Cassander's army eventually captured Olympias, and she was put to death in 316 B.C., outliving her famous son by seven years.
2. Cleopatra, Egyptian queen
A painting of Antony and Cleopatra by Lawrence Alma-Tadema in 1885 CREDIT: Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 1885
Motherhood played a key role in the Egyptian queen's grip on power. Her romances and children with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony cemented her political influence in Rome and allowed her free reign to rule her own kingdom in Egypt. As a woman, Cleopatra needed a male consort to keep the throne; she found a convenient one in her son by Caesar, Caesarion. In 44 B.C., Cleopatra poisoned her current co-regent and younger brother, according to Stacy Schiff's "Cleopatra: A Life" (Little, Brown and Company, 2010). Three-year-old Caesarion became the official king of Egypt, with Cleopatra running the show.
She died at 39 after a 22-year-long reign, defeated along with Mark Antony by Caesar's legal heir, Octavian. After Cleopatra's death, Rome annexed Egypt. Caesarion was killed, but Cleopatra's three children by Mark Antony were spared. Her daughter, Cleopatra Selene, eventually became queen of what is now Algeria.
3. Wu Zetian, China's only empress
Wu Zetian broke all the rules. As a young teenager in the 630s, Wu became a low-ranking concubine to the Chinese emperor Taizong. When he died, Wu should have been shipped off to a Buddhist nunnery to live out her days. Instead, she became a concubine to Taizong's son and successor, Emperor Gaozong.
Wu Zetian, Empress of China CREDIT: Imperial painter, Tang dynasty
Wu then clawed her way up to the position of Empress, by having two sons and accusing the Emperor's current (childless) wife of killing her daughter -- though some historians have wondered if Wu didn't kill the baby herself. [Read: History's Most Overlooked Mysteries]
As the Emperor's health began to fail, Wu's influence grew. She became empress dowager and regent after he died. In 690, she broke the rules again, claiming the throne as her own, the only woman to rule China as an independent sovereign.
Unlike many of the other tradition-busting moms on this list, Wu Zetian didn't get punished for her ambition (or her tendency to murder rivals). She ruled until the age of 82, when, seriously ill and facing challenges for the throne, she relinquished power to her third son. She died soon after.
4. Catherine de Medici, mother of three kings
Catherine de Medici mothered three French kings. CREDIT: Public domain
The mother of three French kings, Catherine de Medici didn't get off to a great start. An Italian married off to a French prince in love with another woman, de Medici "was at first this very marginalized person who could have been removed at any moment," Pavlac said.
But 10 years after her marriage began, she started producing heirs. When de Medici's husband, King Henry II, died, one of their sons became king at the age of 15, only to die a year later. That brought de Medici's 10-year-old son Charles IX to the throne and promoted de Medici to regent.
Catherine de Medici ruled over a France divided by civil and religious warfare. She was no political genius, Pavlac said, but "she did what she could to hold things together for her and her children."
In 1572, the Catholic Charles IX took a genocidal step, ordering Paris' city gates closed and thousands of visiting Protestants killed. Blame for the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, as it became known, fell into the queen mother's lap, cementing her reputation as treacherous and scheming. Nonetheless, she remained a powerful advisor to the next king, her third son Henry III.
"She was at least brighter than her sons," Pavlac said. "They made a lot of bad decisions."
5. Isabella I, unifier of Spain
Known in U.S. history for funding Christopher Columbus' journeys, Isabella was a driving force in unifying Spain. She straightened up her inherited kingdom of Castile, instituting criminal reform and bringing down the debt left to her by her brother, the previous ruler.
She's remembered with affection today, but Isabella was "a bit ruthless," Pavlac said. Part of her strategy to unite the kingdom involved compulsory Catholicism. Muslims and Jews had to convert or flee the country. In 1480, Isabella and her husband launched the Spanish Inquisition to enforce these edicts. All that, and she had six children to boot.
6. Maria Theresa, enlightened despot
Like Catherine de Medici, Maria Theresa of Austria did not have an auspicious upbringing.
"She's basically raised without much training," Pavlac said. "She gets married to her cousin, and they don't expect anything from her."
Nonetheless, she was destined to inherit the Austrian throne. When the kingdom fell to her in 1740, it was broke and under attack from other European sovereigns. Pregnant (as she would be almost constantly over the next 20 years -- she had 16 children), Maria Theresa fought back. She held on to the Austrian Empire and during her 40-year reign would institute reforms in medicine, education and criminal justice.
7. Emmeline Pankhurst, militant suffragette
In late 1800s Britain, Emmeline Pankhurst grew up in an activist home with parents who supported women's right to vote but believed their own daughter couldn't compete with the boys. A budding suffragette at age 20, she met and married a like-minded man. They had five children together, but Pankhurst continued her political work for women's rights. Many of her children would follow in her activist footsteps.
Suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst CREDIT: Library of Congress
By 1903, Pankhurst became disillusioned with the lack of progress on women's suffrage. She founded the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). WSPU took agitating for the right to vote to new levels: First peaceful protests, then window smashing, and finally arson. Pankhurst went to jail multiple times, where she and other suffragettes launched hunger strikes to protest the conditions. Prison guards would often force-feed the women through tubes inserted into their noses and mouths. It's said that Pankhurst threatened guards with a clay jug to avoid the treatment.
Pankhurst would live to see women achieve equal voting rights with men in 1928.
8. Harriet Tubman, Underground Railroad conductor
Harriet Tubman, conductor on the Underground Railroad CREDIT: National Portrait Gallery
Born into slavery, Harriet Tubman escaped to the North in 1849. But she returned into slave territory at least 13 times, escorting dozens of escaped slaves to freedom. She was known for being tough: She carried a revolver not only to ward off dogs and slave owners, but also to threaten frightened fugitives with should they lose their nerve. According to one tale, she once held at gunpoint a man threatening to turn back, telling him, "You go on or die."
Tubman wasn't a mother when she made these daring raids. But in 1874, she and her second husband adopted a baby girl named Gertie. Despite her heroism and work for the Union Army during the Civil War, she was denied compensation and would struggle with poverty for the rest of her life. Nevertheless, she continued working for equality: She supported women's suffrage and donated land to a church for a home for the elderly and indigent.
9. Jiang Qing, "Madame Mao"
Former actress and radical Jiang Qing married Mao Zedong in 1938. She played a small role in politics from the 1940s on, first as her husband's secretary, and then as head of the film section of the Communist Party's propaganda department. A pivotal figure in China's destructive Cultural Revoltion, Jiang made -- and punished -- many political enemies during the 1960s.
In the power transition after Mao died, Jiang was arrested along with the rest of the Gang of Four. She was sentenced to death but granted life imprisonment instead. As late as 1991, right before Jiang took her own life, Chinese newspapers reported that she was unapologetic in her support of radical revolutionary policies.
Her daughter, Li Na, regularly visited her mother in prison, the New York Times reported in 1991. But the daughter's refusal to request her mother's release reportedly drove a wedge between the two. "Even you do not care for me," Jiang is said to have told her child. "You are heartless."
10. Meena Keshwar Kamal, activist for Afghan women
Meena Keshwar Kamal was only 20 when, in 1977, she launched Afghanistan's first organized movement for women's rights -- the Revolutionary Association for the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA).
With Kabul University student Meena at its helm, RAWA protested both the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and oppressive fundamentalists. Meena, a mother of three, also established schools and hospitals for refugee women in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In 1987, Meena was assassinated in Quetta, Pakistan. Two Afghan men were hanged for her murder in 2002; RAWA and the prosecutor say the men were associated with KHAD, the intelligence and security agency of Afghanistan.
RAWA still works in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, helping refugee women and children and advocating for women's rights.
Erin Brokovich in 2007 CREDIT: Office of United States Senator Daniel Akaka
11. Erin Brockovich, anti-pollution crusader
Made famous by Julia Roberts in the 2000 movie "Erin Brockovich," this single mom starting making a name for herself in 1991. While working as a law clerk, Brokovich discovered a link between chromium 6 released into groundwater by Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) and illnesses in the town of Hinkley, Calif.
The case against PG&E ended with a settlement of $333 million paid to Hinkley's residents, the largest direct action settlement in U.S. history. Brokovich has continued as an environmental crusader, bringing attention to allegations of industrial contamination across the country.
12. Michelle Obama, leader of the fight against fat
One of the famous stories from President Barack Obama's 2008 campaign is that his wife would only let him run for president if he quit smoking. That demand would foreshadow Michelle Obama's interest in health and her first lady focus on ending childhood obesity.
The Obamas are the first family since the Clintons to have children in the White House, and Michelle Obama is known for protecting her daughters from publicity. Meanwhile, she's focused on her "Let's Move!" campaign, planting the first vegetable garden at the White House since Eleanor Roosevelt's era and bringing Beyoncé on board with a music video encouraging kids to get their hearts pumping.
de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception
MADRID — A case of suspected vandalism in a church in a northeastern village in Spain has turned out to be probably the worst art restoration project of all time.
An elderly woman stepped forward this week to claim responsibility for disfiguring a century-old “ecce homo” fresco of Jesus crowned with thorns, in Santuario de la Misericordia, a Roman Catholic church in Borja, near the city of Zaragoza.
Ecce homo, or behold the man, refers to an artistic motif that depicts Jesus, usually bound and with a crown of thorns, right before his crucifixion.
The woman, Cecilia Giménez, who is in her 80s, said on Spanish national television that she had tried to restore the fresco, which she called her favorite local representation of Jesus, because she was upset that parts of it had flaked off due to moisture on the church’s walls.
The authorities in Borja said they had suspected vandalism at first, but then determined that the shocking alterations had been made by an elderly parishioner. The authorities said she had acted on her own.
But Ms. Giménez later defended herself, saying she could not understand the uproar because she had worked in broad daylight and had tried to salvage the fresco with the approval of the local clergy. “The priest knew it,” she told Spanish television. “I’ve never tried to do anything hidden.”
Ms. Giménez said she had worked on the fresco using a 10-year-old picture of it, but she eventually left Jesus with a half-beard and, some say, a monkeylike appearance. The fresco’s botched restoration came to light this month when descendants of the 19th-century artist, Elías García Martínez, proposed making a donation toward its upkeep.
News of the disfiguring prompted Twitter users and bloggers to post parodies online inserting Ms. Giménez’s version of the fresco into other artworks. Some played on the simian appearance of the portrait.
The Borja authorities said they
were now considering taking legal action against Ms. Giménez, although they insisted that their priority was to try to return the work to its original state, under the guidance of art historians.
de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception
The back of the newly deciphered papyrus. It wasn't unusual in the ancient world for texts to be written on both sides. CREDIT: Image courtesy Egypt Exploration Society
A just-deciphered ancient Greek poem discovered in Egypt, deifies Poppaea Sabina, the wife of the infamous Roman emperor Nero, showing her ascending to the stars.
Based on the lettering styles and other factors, scholars think the poem was written nearly 200 years after Nero died (about 1,800 years ago), leaving them puzzled as to why someone so far away from Rome, would bother composing or copying it at such a late date.
In the poem, Poppaea ascends to heaven and becomes a goddess. The ancient goddess Aphrodite says to Poppaea, "my child, stop crying and hurry up: with all their heart Zeus' stars welcome you and establish you on the moon..."
Nero was one of the most infamous rulers who ever lived. Ancient writers say that he killed his own mother, Agrippina, and his first wife Octavia. He is also said to have killed Poppaea herself with a kick to her stomach while she was pregnant. If that wasn't enough, the well-known line — "Nero fiddles while Rome burns" — is an apocryphal phrase related to a great fire that ravaged Rome for six days during his reign.
Poppaea herself is also depicted in a less-than-positive light by ancient writers. When Octavia was killed, Poppaea was said to have been presented with her head. Some sources also speculate that she was the power behind the throne that encouraged Nero to murder his mother.
Headed for the heavens
The newly deciphered poem, however, shows a very different side to this ancient couple. In the poem, Poppaea is depicted being taken away by Aphrodite and told "your children for Nero [both deceased] you will guard them for eternity."
This papyrus leaf has 42 lines of Greek text on each side. It contains a poem deifying Poppaea Sabina, the second wife of Nero, the infamous Roman emperor. The papyrus was found at Oxyrhynchus in Upper Egypt. CREDIT: Image courtesy Egypt Exploration Society.
Poppaea does not want this, wishing to stay with Nero. "[S]he was downcast and did not rejoice in the offered (favor). For she was leaving her husband, (a man) equal to the gods, and she moaned loudly from her longing..." part of the poem reads.
"The poet is trying to tell you [that] Poppaea loves her husband and what it implies is this story about the kick in the belly cannot be true," said Paul Schubert, a professor at the University of Geneva and the lead researcher who worked on the text, in an interview with LiveScience. "She wouldn't love him if she had been killed by a kick in the belly."
The poem records her ascending to heaven, mentioning all the planets known to the ancients including "the Cyllenaean star" (Mercury), "belt of the Aegis-bearer" (Jupiter) and "Rhea's bedfellow" (Saturn).
Her arrival among the stars is also triumphant, "under a clear (moon), the dance of the blessed (gods) she viewed..." with her then going to the northern pole to watch over Nero "looking around for her husband under the darkness..."
Deciphering the text
The story of the text's deciphering begins in the late 19th century with excavations at Oxyrhynchus by Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt. During the time that the Romans ruled Egypt, Oxyrhynchus was a sizable town of about 10,000 people located in Upper Egypt. Among their discoveries, Grenfell and Hunt found hundreds of thousands of papyri in ancient dumps at the site. [See Photos of the Papyrus Poem]
Over the past 100 years, scholars have gradually been analyzing, translating and publishing the papyri. This particular text, along with many of the other papyri, is now at the Sackler Library at Oxford University. Schubert said that before he and his team began work, all they knew about this papyrus was that it was written in Greek and contained a poem; "we had no idea what it was going to be."
Why was it written?
As for why someone in Egypt would write or copy a poem like this so long after Nero's death, one possibility is that the poem itself was composed after Poppaea's death, but when Nero was still alive. Then, over a period of 200 years, the text was popular enough that it was retold again and again until someone in Oxyrhynchus wrote it down.
Schubert said that, although none survive, it is possible that deification poems like this were written for members of the Roman imperial family after they died. "There is a possibility that the poem we have here recovered actually belongs to this lost genre, but we can't be sure," Schubert said. He points out that a writer named Seneca wrote a satire that mocked the deification of a Roman emperor named Claudius.
Another possibility, researchers say, is that a writer in the third century wrote this as a "poem of circumstance" when the wife of an Egyptian official died, using Poppaea and Nero as an example of two lovers separated by death. Yet another possibility is that this was part of a longer astrological poem. [The 6 Most Tragic Love Stories in History]
The text and analysis are detailed in the most recent volume of the series The Oxyrhynchus Papyri.
de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception
An extraordinary collection of items belonging to the late Swedish actress and Hollywood icon Greta Garbo is to go under the hammer in LA.
But it's not only designer clothes and shoes worn by the classic film star who dazzled on screen between the 1920s and 1940s that are up for grabs. A multitude of more obscure items - including a huge inflatable brightly coloured plastic snowman, a vintage waffle iron, salt and pepper sellers shaped like geese and a mechanical chef toy that fries eggs - feature in the eye-opening lot.
The auction of Greta Garbo's enormous, colourful estate will take place at Julien's Auctions in Beverly Hills, California, in December
A 'yoga costume', an old passport, a massage table, several pairs of silk pyjamas and a papier mache cat made in Mexico will go under the hammer at Julien's Auctions in December, with prices ranging from $25 (£16) for some little toys, to $8,000 (£5,057) for her Louis Vuitton steamer trunk. The estate - comprising the contents of Garbo's New York apartment and Swedish mansion - reveals a playful, funny and eccentric side to the actress who died in New York in 1990, aged 84, of pneumonia and renal failure, without ever having married or had any children.
Calling Garbo 'extremely funny', 'a comedienne', and 'a magical presence in our lives', the screen icon's great-nephew Derek Reisfield has written a revealing foreword about the sale of the estate.
giant inflatable snowman which Garbo kept in her living room to amuse her nieces and nephews is expected to fetch between £32 and £64 at auction
A colourful papier mache cat from Mexico, priced $100-$200 (£64-£128), and a giant leather ' G' lint brush, priced $75-$125 (£43-£79) are a couple of items available to buy that reveal Greta Garbo's more playful side
Toys including this $250 (£158) egg-frying mechanical chef and a $200 (£126) mechanical jolly chimp are included in Greta Garbo's estate
As well as more left-field items such as a vintage waffle iron and recipe, a lamp shaped like a pineapple, a pencil case full of used pens and a fit-to-bursting collection of buttons, the lot features Garbo's enormous wardrobe.
Clothes, shoes, hats, handbags, coats, jewellery, gloves, eye glasses and a number of silk pyjamas made by designers including Gucci, Valentina, Emilio Pucci, Louis Vuitton, Givenchy and Salvatore Ferragamo are being auctioned for prices between $100 (£63) and over $1,200 (£757).
Garbo's vanity items - including a box of mascara brushes, hair accessories and a vintage Gillette razor - will be sold alongside plenty of smoking paraphernalia, such as ashtrays, matchbooks and boxes and cigarette lighters and cases . Home furnishings including silverware, glassware, furniture and kitchen utensils will appear on the lot beside traditional collectors items including signed scripts, film stills and photographs.
Of her estate, the Beverly Hills-based auctioneers said the very personal collection 'has never been previously available and (is) rarely seen by others'.
The sale is set for December 14 and 15. To see the full collection visit Julien's Auctions.
Plenty of ashtrays feature on the estate, including a $400 (£253) Gucci roulette, left, and a covered brass one, which comes as part of a brass set being sold for up to $200 (£126)
A green glass ashtray looks to go for up to $400 (£253), while a vintage waffle iron and recipe could fetch $250 (£158)
A keen smoker, Garbo's many ashtrays and lighters are being sold at auction from $100 (£63)
Garbo's $500 (£316) yoga costume, a $600 (£379) massage table, tennis rackets ($75/£47) and an inscribed copy of Giant ($250/£178) are going under the hammer
Garbo's passport, left, has a price tag of some $5,000 (£3,156) while a still of her in the 1930 film Romance, right, will fetch $3,000 (£1,894)
Swedish actress and Hollywood icon Greta Garbo was born in 1905 and died in 1990
Garbo's Louis Vuitton steamer trunk is expected to fetch up to $8,000 (£5,050)
Fun items such as this ceramic table lamp shaped like a pineapple ($75/£47), left, are being sold alongside this turquoise Valentina Ottoman silk shirt dress ($800-$1,200/£757)
Classic designer clothing worn by Garbo, such as this cowhide coat ($300/£189), Gucci purse ($400/£253) and Valentina crescent moon dress ($800/£505) are also being sold
Alger told CNN she estimates the damage to be around $100,000 -- and when asked who she thought was responsible ... Alger said Lindsay Lohan.
