Yay! Plague pit!
Crossrail is an astonishing engineering project; they’re boring a big-ass new subway tunnel straight across London. Like, 26 miles worth of new track, going through infrastructure, under foundations and within inches of existing tunnels and roads. It’s Europe’s largest construction projects — one of the biggest construction projects EVAH.
If you love big machines and amazing feats of construction, if you sometimes wonder whether we’ve totally lost that audacity the Victorians had so darned much of, you really should follow the link and spend some time exploring. Try their YouTube channel (at least check out the eight ginormous tunneling machines).
Digging a huge trench across London, as you might imagine, is turning up all sorts of ancient junk. They’ve just run across the Bedlam plague pit — 3,000 skellingtons worth — and they’ve got sixty archaeologists on site beavering away at it so construction can continue soonest.
Earlier Underground lines took a stomach-crunching jog to avoid digging up plague pits and taking the chance of unleashing something. But, as it turns out, it’s pretty difficult to extract y. pestis out of old bones. They’re going to do their best.
March 9, 2015 — 9:43 pm
Comments: 12
What weasels is made of
So, my DNA is winging its way to a lab in the Netherlands (I think) even as we speak. It was inevitable, once I got interested in the DNA of the local population, that I would start wondering what was in my own. BTW, dredging up 1cc of spit is surprisingly hard to do. Bubbles don’t count!
I looked around at different services and decided 23andMe suited me best. They report on ancestry (i.e. ethnicity) but also genetic risk factors, inherited conditions, some genetic traits and drug responses. I understand some people really, really don’t want to know those last few things, and for them there’s ancestry (the DNA testing service of ancestry.com) which only does ethnicity.
It’s worth having a poke around and see what they can find in your genes these days. Eye color, birth weight, baldness. Yeah, I know you know all those things about yourself, but knowing we can identify the genes means we can tell so much more about the people whose bones we dig up. Or the people who commit crimes and are careless enough to leave DNA behind.
Even more interesting, in a way, is what they can’t tell: they can’t measure Jewish or Native American ancestry. Well, they can trace Ashkenazi Jews, but not Middle Eastern lines, which are just semitic. And American Indians show up as generic Far Eastern (and ha! ha! to the indigenous campaigners who denied this obvious fact).
My family’s been in the States a long, long time, so I’m not going to be a purebred anything. This post represents my pledge to you: if something distinctly unWASPy shakes out of my family tree — say, a gypsy or hottentot — I will freely confess. And then I’ll start applying for all that sweet, sweet government aid to minorities.
Good weekend!
March 6, 2015 — 9:51 pm
Comments: 22
I found my grandma!
When I was about 18, I was driving around an unfamiliar part of Nashville and I ran across the old city cemetery. I’m a cemetery hag from an old Nashville family, so I absolutely had to stop and have a look around. Very eerie it was, too — all overgrown and neglected, with the stones leaning at all angles. The perfect creepy Deep South cemetery.
I was astonished to find my great-great-great grandmother buried there. Had to be her because she had an unusual name — one that was given to me as a middle name and has dogged me ever since. In fact, much as I love the silliness of it, I tried to drop it when I married and use my old last name as my new middle name. Her Maj would have none of it and the name appears on all my official correspondence. I think when I take my citizenship (soon, by the way) I’ll give up and adopt it officially.
Anyway, I was astonished because I know she died in Louisiana in 1850-something and I hate to think how they got her home to Nashville and what kind of condition she was in. There was an inscription on the stone I couldn’t read, and the grave was surrounded by a high wrought iron fence. I briefly considered climbing over for a closer look, but thought of how many different kinds of hell my father would give me if I got knicked doing something I oughtenta in the City Cemetery.
So yesterday, somebody on FaceBook *spit* mentioned the City Cemetery and how well it’s kept now and what a good website they have. And, sure enough, I went there found my grandma. Her grave has been cleaned, the stone has been restored. It looked nice. I sent them a thank you note.
Point is — as I’m discovering, working for an historical society — more and more stuff is being conserved all the time. And more and more of the stuff that is conserved is coming online. If you have a particular family interest, it’s worth rechecking on a regular basis.
Bonus read: visual guide to gravestone symbolism.
March 5, 2015 — 10:56 pm
Comments: 15
I hope you weren’t eating
Romance novel covers as recreated by ordinary-looking people.
I was struck by how often the woman is clothed and the man is buck nekkid. I know romance novels are hardcore porn for women, so naturally would leave her with a little more dignity, but it seems like story mismatch for them not to be in a similar state of undress.
When I see a naked man in a clothed situation, I expect him to be snapping a towel, waving his winky about and bellowing “WAAAAUUUUGH!” or “woowoo!”
No, I have not just told you something you didn’t know about Uncle B.
March 4, 2015 — 7:36 pm
Comments: 15
It’s Spam appreciation week!
Spam Appreciation Week, I say! I’m sure Hormel sponsors this with the purest of motives.
If nothing else, you must listen to the Spam jingle from 1963. Scrub to 2:37 to hear the theme, words and all. Dude with a cut-glass accent teases it 4EVA.
My mama told me Spam was just made from the bits they had to trim off to fit Danish ham in those cans. It’s not true, but it’s nothing nasty. It’s just pork that’s been cooked in the can, like soup and dogfood. They’re cooked in the can, I mean. Not pork. We don’t feed cats and dogs pork and we don’t make pork soup, though I’m damned if I know why.
Anyhoo! Sliced thin, fried until crispy, covered in melted cheese on a toasted bagel half with mayo. How do you take your spam?
WARNING – WARNING – WARNING…geez, that Spam song is an earworm. Uncle B and I are rolling around on the floor clutching our heads like something out of a Star Trek episode and it Will Not Go Away.
March 2, 2015 — 8:36 pm
Comments: 34
Oooo…so close!
Almost! Commenter Cup-o-Puddin nipped in and snagged Leonard Nimoy just in time. And a fine Dead Pool maneuver it would have been, too, if commenter currently hadn’t noticed it was a second pick. Goodness knows I would’ve been too lazy to check.
Sorry to be hardass, Puddin. My inbox explodes when I make a questionable ruling — people take this whole ‘rules’ and ‘fair play’ thing really seriously.
Years ago, I read…it was either I Am Spock or I Am Not Spock. Seriously, he wrote both. They were autobiographies. In it, Nimoy said the pressure of acting like a character without emotions made him burst into tears between takes. I’m not sure if it was just the once or with depressing regularity.
Anyway, he went into my mental “meh” file at that moment.
Still, I feel kind of bad for actors who get hired to work on projects that have a powerful fandom. Most of them wander through conventions with bewildered and blindsided looks on their faces, at least at first.
Awesome attempted sneaky-sneak and better luck next time, Puddin. Dead Pool 72 rolls on. Good weekend, all!
February 27, 2015 — 7:22 pm
Comments: 37
It doth suck, and verily doth it blow
Here’s a nicer bit of architecture: the Landgate Arch in Rye. There were originally four fortified gates into Rye, of which the Landgate (1329) is the last survivor. Unfortunately, it’s still the main route through Rye, and satnav keeps sending buses and trucks through it. They don’t fit. It’s been chipping away at the stones for years.
Worse, there’s no roof. So the council hung netting up across the top to keep birds out, which didn’t keep the birds out at all, but does occasionally tangle one up and kill it. Hence the arch is full of shit and the whole top is festooned with rotting birds. Nice.
Oh, also the clock stopped working because nobody was willing to wade through birdshit to fix it.
The town council finally needled the county council into doing stuff. These guys turned up in moon suits with a specialized truck. See that tanker? It simultaneously blows water out one hose and draws it up with another. They have hoovered up 25 tons of birdshit using this process!
I don’t know what they’re going to do to keep it from filling up with birdshit again. A roof is a possibility. I can’t help thinking that whenever we visit a ruin — if you put a roof on that thing, it would last a thousand years longer! (And you could live in it, too).
Anyway, there you go. As private owners of a listed building, we could go to jail if we neglected this place or fixed it wrong (in theory — it’s a criminal, not a civil, offense). But when government does it…
February 26, 2015 — 9:10 pm
Comments: 14
art.
There are not many ugly cement box buildings in the UK, but there are some and they stick out like gangrenous thumbs. Uncle B heard on the radio the other day they’re trying to save one in London that’s in danger of the fate it so obviously deserves.
“Brutalist architecture” is not called that because it’s brutal and awful, believe it or not, but because le Corbusier liked to work in raw concrete — béton brut in Frog. The style that says, “fuck you, aesthetics!”
Anyway, I ran across this delightful concrete abomination on the interwebs tonight. It’s a fountain, put up in Swindon in 1966. The good burghers of the town hated it from the start.
Cast in concrete and seven feet to an edge, it was greeted by widespread burst of public outrage which soon mellowed into chronic disgust and loathing.
Within a remarkably short time the Cube was covered with slime. It soon became a popular gathering place for drunks, tramps and vandals. It was set in a pool which eventually became stagnant and doubled as an open-air lavatory and garbage receptacle.
Said one local wag, “It would be very fitting if the characters who voted to squander our money could be chained to the Thing for a few hours on a Saturday.”
It was pulled down before the Seventies were out. Honestly, look at this fucking thing. Can there be any more persuasive evidence that our rulers hate our guts?
February 25, 2015 — 10:47 pm
Comments: 12
Would you lease a car from this woman?
This is Ling Valentine. She runs — almost singlehandedly — a car leasing company in the UK that moved £35 million in cars in 2008. She keeps citing that 2008 number, so the crash probably put a dent in her bottom line, but the business is still doing well and growing. She’s internet famous over here.
Ling was born in Chengdu Province, China and worked her way through a BSc in Chemistry in Jinan. She decided to do her master’s in Finland (because it was free) and describes herself standing in the Helsinki airport, crying. She took a course in wood chemistry and flunked on account of her bad Finnish.
But by then she had met and married an Englishman named Jon Valentine and emigrated to the UK. Her English wasn’t so great, either, but she managed to push herself through a Masters in Environmental Quality at Bournemouth.
Which is where she became fascinated with programming and databases. Which is how she swears she’s able to operate the business with such a small staff and undercut the competition — crazy efficient computer systems, designed by her.
All of which leads up to this:
the greatest website on the internet
No, now…don’t be like that. Don’t just scream, “my eyes are bleeding!” and wuss out. I seriously recommend you follow links, watch YouTubes and generally treat yourself to a happy half hour of Ling. (Though I didn’t link directly to the top page — autoplay music warning). You’re welcome.
February 24, 2015 — 6:36 pm
Comments: 20
Careful, that shit’s flammable
That there is a vial of Winston Churchill’s blood, which is going up for auction.
One night in 1962 in Monte Carlo, he fell out of bed and broke his hip. He was 87. He spent several weeks in the hospital getting sicker, but he did ultimately recover enough to leave the hospital and die of something else entirely three years later
After he left the hospital, a student nurse was cleaning up his room and asked if she could keep the blood sample. I’m kind of surprised they said yes, even back then. Now she dead and it’s going up for auction.
She reported that he read the first edition of all the major papers before he’d settle at night, and that he’d regularly mix the first two courses of his dinner together in a bowl before he ate them. I’d like to see some examples of that latter behavior before passing judgment.
Also, his beloved poodle died when he was in the hospital, causing him much grief. Winston Churchill’s poodle. It doesn’t seem feasible, does it? On the other hand, what a cracking band name!
They’re expecting it to fetch between £300-600, which strikes me as stupid low for something you could use to clone Winston Frickin’ Churchill.
February 23, 2015 — 10:06 pm
Comments: 15