2000 Year Old Blog Recovered

A University of Kentucky professor is attempting to CT scan 2000 year old charred scrolls found in volcano incinerated Herculaneum (Herculaneum is similar to Pompeii, but spelled differently).










The little briquettes of carbon are purported to contain writings of Epicurian philosophy, tax records, and an early form of blogging - the last entry of which is from a Roman woman 'Chillingus Maximus, turn down the thermostat... Owwwwwww, it's effing hot in here... aarrrgggghh....'

I'm hoping that it's not barbeque weekend at the university because they could be mistaken for a bit of Kingsford. Well, not that it would damage them much more than they already are. It is just amazing to me that they can scan into basically carbon and pull out writings in three dimensions. The software has to be at least as complicated as Twitter (except for the day their servers went down).

You can read more about the technical details here.

Any speculation about what you think the writings contain?

Where Is The Rest Of Me? (Dove è il mio corpo?)

The day job is finally slowing down a bit, so I had a chance to get a bit farther on the sculpture of my father. It still needs hair though and a bit more refinement, much like he did in his later years. Stupid cancer!

I'll be casting into plaster and transferring to marble when it is finally finished (soon I hope).

As a fun historical note, after creating marble busts of the deceased, the Romans put cremated remains inside. Not that we will do that, but I think it is kind of interesting.

Just think of the rich 'crematey' center the next time you are in the Louvre or somewhere with ancient marble busts.

In an effort to make more photo-realistic paintings (none of the interpretive modern art crap for me thanks), I bought a 'value finder'. It is basically a $5 little piece of cardboard with different shades of grey running from white to black so you can better isolate the colors in what you are trying to paint. I suppose I could have just printed one myself, but what if I screwed it up or something? I mean, getting ten shades of grey just right? Better to leave that to the experts.

My defacto neoclassical painting mentor Paul has a good article on this kind of Munsellishness here.

Hope that everyone had a good weekend, I did for a change.

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Mio padre è morto di cancro lo scorso dicembre. Qui c'è il busto di lui che ho fatto...

Thoughts of Vacation

Greece is a nice place to unwind for a few weeks if you are not Turkish and you get the chance. Unless they are on strike, protesting, or attempting to rob you, or selling something (which can be like robbing you in Greece), the people are fairly easy going.

Around Athens, the ancient city area of the Plaka is the best. Walking down a dark street (vicambulating nocturnally), you can turn a corner, then suddenly before you is a 2500 year old ruin or monument all lit up like an archaeological Christmas tree complete with sculptural bling. Several bars on rooftops and around the squares have good wine and entertainment, but look out for the wine with the pine tar flavor called Retsina (it's ok to me but lots of people I've discussed with don't like it).

A good day trip out of Athens is the legendary (but still real) ancient Delphi. As in the 'Oracle of Delphi' where rulers throughout history like Kim Jong Il went to listen to a druggy priestess mumble incoherently and real world solutions were applied to the serious issues of the day.I'm fairly sure it is similar in functionality to the Oracle of Bacon at Virginia.

Away from the mainland, the islands are great, particularly Thira (also called Santorini). It seems to be impossible to take a bad picture here, particularly at sunset. I tried... I even used one of those disposable ones and scratched the lens up a bit just to see if a few shots would turn out poorly but no luck. You have all the nightlife of downtown, the unique beauty of the caldera cliffs, and museums and wonderful archaeological sites. Speaking of archaeological sites, I saw this in Minoan Akrotiri. WTF is this? Is it a 4000 year old potty-training device???

Even with all the great aspects, driving was an issue on Santorini. First of all, the road I traveled was directly on the top of the remaining volcano cone sectionwith a 350 meter drop on either side of the road with no trees available to help 'pinball' you down the cliff. Then there were the sudden hair pin turns for some real white knuckle action (and not the good kind, is there a good kind?). On top of all that, the signage everywhere is strange because of the Cyrillic-style characters. So as you might be wondering to yourself 'should I turn left or right' as the truck behind you is bearing down, you also have to read a sign, figure out what the damned words sound like, and then convert them to English all the while not looking over either cliff edge to the right or left.If it was dark when this was happening, I'm sure I'd still be falling.

In Memoriam

Memorial Day found me today at a baseball game in Texas, complete with the national anthem, swearing in of new military members, beer, nine innings of baseball of course, and annoying mascots.

Something I had never really considered until today was that the teams probably don't dryclean the mascot uniforms very often. When the noisome thing passed by, the odor was somewhere between a fetid old box of moldy rags and the body smell of whatever poor soul had to dance around in the heat with that thick polyester-acrylic death suit on. Of course, there were little kids sitting in a section directly behind our group that were repeatedly hailing down this ragged behemoth during the game. It was all very distracting while trying to focus on the actual game (and smelly), but cute I guess.

I tried to draw a parallel to the closest things similar to all this in antiquity. One can almost imagine colosseum gladitorial teams having a horseheaded mascot like the one from today running up and down the stands, knocking over people's beers so they have to buy new ones. Maybe it was all fine, because everything probably smelled bad back then. But really, what is a colorful polyester horse going to add to a gripping life or death combat among circus animals and fire?

Are you going to cheer just a little bit louder? Honest?

Perhaps the ancients' version of North American car racing (NASCAR), the chariot races of the Circus Maximus, had their own goofy mascots. It would be fun to think that the chariots might be covered with advertising like the racecars of today. Pit crews frantically changing the metal bands around spiked wheels, women with excessively low tube tops with short blue denim cutoffs wandering around.

The game actually ended up being not all that interesting. Even without life or death gladatorial struggles on the baseball diamond today, it was good to be out on a nice day doing what they say is America's pastime. But next time, I think I'll roll like the emperor and get everyone to pitch in for a suite.

Terrific Tableware to Ta Ta To Tut Today

The upcoming June auction at Christie's in New York has a great tater salad bowl I must have. Good idea? It would probably take a while to carve this myself, assuming I could locate the original quarry. And since the day job has been busy lately, it's probably the right thing to do.











Although I love it, I need a holiday away from this place because I'm tired of real work which doesn't leave enough time for creativity. I might sign up for one of those archaeology dig-cations...


In other news, the King Tut exhibit is finally shutting down here in Dallas. The after-dark donor event tomfoolery with the priceless artifacts will be sorely missed. For the record, I was not one of those crazy type party goers that climbed into the sarcophagus to take a body shot.
It was kind of weird they left the door of the exhibit open without much visible security when they were unpacking. Maybe they were just hoping to make a claim on their museum owner's insurance? *whistling inconspicuously as I leave the museum*

Ancient Navigation (Navigazione Antica)

So I saw the new Star Trek film with some friends yesterday and it was better than expected. I was not a big fan of all the various television and movie versions, but this one was fairly fast paced and didn't involve long scenes with uncomfortable singing of 'Row Row Your Boat'.

All those stars and such (the stars in the scientific sense, not the sexy green alien chick) had me thinking about ancient navigation techniques and how it was even close to possible for people several thousand years ago to have the slimmest chance of getting back to the port they started from and not being devoured by the sea monsters that I have no doubt lived back in the olden days. In retrospect, I suppose I shouldn't have been talking about all that during the actual movie.


Since the double AA battery had not been invented yet, the use of their Garmin GPS devices was completely out of the question. Maps were all sketchy, and even the lowly but useful sextant had not been invented yet.


However, evidence shows that the ancients had a 'half-sextant' to determine latitude (North-South location) based on the height of North Star off the horizon. Longitude (East-West for fellow Texans that might not be familiar) was more difficult to determine because they had to burn candles or use hour glasses to take into account the time because the earth was spinning back then. Examples of these angled inclination measuring devices have been found in Egypt, and surprisingly, the same angle and design has been scribbled on cave walls in South America. Could there have been Egyptians at some point in South America? No, the pyramids in South America are completely different than the Egyptian ones. Or, maybe the peoples of ancient South America just happened to have had the same good idea?

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A word of warning for everyone though... Some research shows the axis tilt of the earth varies between 22 and 24.5 degrees in a cycle of 41,000 years. So if you happen to be using an ancient incline measuring navigational instrument because the backup batteries in your GPS are out, please be careful, because it will probably get you lost a little.

Egiziani antica dispositivi utilizzati per trovare la latitudine... Forse sono stati anche in Sud America??????

Poisonous Paints of Antiquity

How many poisonous paints do you count in this ancient fresco?

I count at least three, white lead, orpiment / realgar for the yellows, and cinnabar (the ultra-bright Pompeiian red). I'm happy to say that I've recently obtained all of these grey market, semi-illicit and authentic ingredients for the next fresco project from a great US vendor. Maybe modern colors are technically better, but if you are going to recreate something,why do it half-way?


I was thinking of doing this very image, except maybe including a small 'Where's Waldo' (small to make it challenging for the viewer, with poisonous cinnabar and white lead stripes on his shirt of course).


The cinnabar (mercuric sulfide) is a wonderful warm shade of red, although I'm not sure if it is prepared exactly as research indicates the ancients did. The Chinese also used cinnabar back in the day, but it was usually on that red furniture and boxes. They loved themselves some red boxes.

White lead powder is fairly nasty stuff even though it looks authentic on fresco because the powders are ground down with the water before applying, which gives rise to lead dust inhalation.


And, we all know what happened to cousin Vinnie Van Gogh who used to lick the tips of his brushes containing lead paint to point them. By the way, here is an evening photo I took in Arles of the outside of the real Cafe de Nuit. It had nothing to do with coffee or squirrels, so I was mildly disappointed. But, I tried to get the same vantage point and lighting conditions of one of his paintings.















Realgar/Orpiment is basically arsenic (rat poison), but in pure crystaline form. It creates themost wonderful deep orange and yellow warm hues. I also received some actual crystals of this from a Chinese supplier, so I can't wait to grind them down and see what kind of colorific magic will happen.

There are other poisonous and difficult to find paints of course, but these are my favorite old style ones. Which is your favorite?