An Egyptian wooden funerary model of a beer brewery in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. US Archaeologist Patrick McGovern is an expert when it comes to identifiying traces of alcoholic drinks in prehistoric finds. Did our Neolithic ancestors turn to agriculture so that they could be sure of a tipple? US Archaeologist Patrick McGovern [...]
Archive for December, 2009
Brewing Up a Civilization
Posted in History, Living on December 26, 2009 | Comments Off
Oh, Brother
Posted in Living on December 25, 2009 | Comments Off
Why, exactly, do our siblings drive us so crazy? It seems like such a trivial reason for murder. When God belittled Cain’s gift to him of produce from his own garden, then praised his brother Abel for offering a sheep, Cain snapped. But as you get ready to gather with your family and unwrap presents, [...]
The Man Who Told A Christmas Story
Posted in Living, tagged Christmas on December 25, 2009 | Comments Off
What I learned from Jean Shepherd. On Christmas Eve, TBS will again present its annual 24-hour marathon of Bob Clark’s modern classic, A Christmas Story. Wrapping presents while watching Ralphie pine for a Red Riding BB gun has become a holiday tradition as beloved and durable as candy canes and eggnog. Yet the author and [...]
Nordic Quack
Posted in Living, tagged Christmas, Sweden on December 25, 2009 | Comments Off
Sweden’s bizarre tradition of watching Donald Duck cartoons on Christmas Eve. Three years ago, I went to Sweden with my then-girlfriend (now-wife), to meet her family and celebrate my first Christmas. As an only partially lapsed Jew, I was not well-versed in Christmas traditions, and I was completely ignorant of Swedish customs and culture. So [...]
Poem of the week
Posted in Poetry, tagged 107 on December 25, 2009 | Comments Off
The Autumn Outings by Maurice Rutherford References to Larkin’s The Whitsun Weddings infuse this week’s poem, a quietly angry look at unemployment and managerial greed by a poet who deserves to be far better known ‘I locked the premises and motored out’. This week’s poem, “The Autumn Outings”, is by the Hull-born poet Maurice Rutherford, [...]
Poem of the week
Posted in Poetry, tagged 91.1 on December 25, 2009 | Comments Off
Accident & Emergency by Nessa O’Mahony An unforgiving look this week at the devaluation of old age in modern society Landing with a bump in A&E. Time travelling merrily across the centuries like Old Nick, as we do on Poem of the week, it’s easy to notice how concepts of poetry have radically changed. Poets [...]
Poster poems
Posted in Poetry, tagged 61 on December 25, 2009 | Comments Off
Christmas The festive season has produced a great deal of mushy doggerel, but plenty of beautiful poetry, too. Please write some more of the latter Michael Landy’s interpretation of the Christmas tree at the Tate Gallery in 1997. Well, it’s that time of year again. Last year I dodged the Christmas bullet somewhat by calling [...]
Your best books of 2009
Posted in Literature on December 25, 2009 | Comments Off
Wolf Hall made an impact commensurate with its vast size, but what were your highlights of the last year of the Noughties Hilary Mantel, and detail from portrait of Thomas Cromwell after Hans Holbein the Younger Our usual exhortation in these books of the decade blogposts that you jog your memory by going to our [...]
Your best books of 2008
Posted in Literature on December 25, 2009 | Comments Off
In an embarrassment-of-riches year, my pick would be Steve Toltz’s A Fraction of the Whole. How about you? Criminally good … Steve Toltz And so to 2008 in our round-up of the decade’s reading. There was so much wonderful fiction published last year – I particularly enjoyed Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland (although I only got around [...]
Your best books of 2007
Posted in Literature on December 25, 2009 | Comments Off
Beyond the Potter hysteria, this year produced some fine writing. My favourite was Sean O’Brien’s The Drowned Book – what about you? There were some other books available in 2007 … Fans buy copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. For anybody finding it a little bracing over on Sam’s worst book of the [...]
Your best books of 2006
Posted in Literature on December 25, 2009 | Comments Off
Desai and Penny stole the awards, but O’Hagan’s Be Near Me and Jacobson’s Kalooki Nights were my choice for 2006. What were your favourites? Kodi Smit-McPhee and Viggo Mortensen in the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s 2006 novel The Road Looking back at the lists of 2006′s publishing highlights was a reminder not only of [...]
A Gloomy Crystal Ball, With Glimmers
Posted in Editorials and opinion on December 25, 2009 | Comments Off
Predicting the Teens: Debt, War — and a Resilient Economy Ten years ago, as the world peered uncertainly toward a new decade, it spied an impending catastrophe: Telecom networks would crash. Banks would be unable to dispense cash. Your dishwasher might not work. Y2K proved an empty threat. But we had barely finished congratulating ourselves [...]
Ten Years of 15 Minutes
Posted in Arts and Entertainment on December 25, 2009 | Comments Off
The Web and Reality TV Helped Make Fame a Commodity The Do-It-Yourself movement took on great popularity these past 10 years: Putting up drywall. Refinishing kitchen cabinets. Getting famous. Once, there were but a few ways to land in the limelight, and they mostly entailed your involvement in professional sports, politics or show business. All [...]
For Their Next Trick . . .
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Health, Politics on December 25, 2009 | Comments Off
The latest example of violating principles of transparency and accountability in the single-minded pursuit of legislative victory. Look for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to try to circumvent the traditional conference committee process by which the different versions of health care reform passed by each house will be reconciled. If [...]
A 10-Year Dose of Reality
Posted in Other on December 25, 2009 | Comments Off
What Terrorism, War, Boom and Bust, Business Scandals and Susan Boyle Taught Us If you could travel back in time to 1999, you’d be struck by a remarkable air of unreality. The Cold War had ended, communism had been defeated, capitalism had triumphed, history was over. The Internet had conquered distance, melted borders, offered a [...]
Christopher Hart’s top 10 erotica books
Posted in Literature on December 25, 2009 | Comments Off
Christopher Hart is literary editor of the Erotic Review. His second novel, Rescue Me (Faber), a farcical comedy about a reluctant and incompetent male gigolo, is in no way autobiographical. 1. Song of Solomon The Bible’s a much sexier read than most people realise nowadays. In fact it’s a much better read all round than [...]
John Armstrong’s top 10 books on love
Posted in Literature on December 25, 2009 | Comments Off
John Armstrong is the author of The Conditions of Love, a book which aims to raise one of the deepest and most puzzling questions we can put to ourselves: “What is love?” 1. The Symposium by Plato Discussion of same-sex love at an Athenian drinking party; perhaps the most entertaining work of philosophy ever written [...]
John O’Farrell’s top 10 funny books
Posted in Literature on December 25, 2009 | Comments Off
John O’Farrell is the author of Things Can Only Get Better, a hilarious account of his “18 miserable years as a Labour supporter”. His new novel, This Is Your Life, is published on November 4 and his collection of newspaper columns, Global Village Idiot, is available now in paperback 1. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller War [...]
Peter Watson’s top 10 20th century non-fiction books
Posted in Literature on December 25, 2009 | Comments Off
Peter Watson is a journalist, academic and author of 13 books. His latest, A Terrible Beauty, presents a narrative of the 20th century based on its significant thinkers and intellectual movements. 1. The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud (1900) The book that introduced the idea of a systematic unconscious, created the psychological age and [...]
Simon Napier-Bell’s top 10 books on music
Posted in Literature on December 25, 2009 | Comments Off
During a career in the music business spanning over 30 years, Simon Napier-Bell discovered Marc Bolan and managed 80s groups Japan and Wham! Black Vinyl White Powder is his insider’s account of the music business. His first book, You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me, is a history of 60s pop. “Just 10 out [...]
Terence Blacker’s top 10 tales of literary villainy
Posted in Literature on December 25, 2009 | Comments Off
Kill Your Darlings is a sly swipe at literary jealousy and celebrity. After a brilliant first novel, the author-narrator is mired in writer’s block, hack work and jealousy of a certain successful author named Martin. Then a talented but suicidal student presents him with a ready-made masterpiece… Here Terence Blacker takes a tour of some [...]
Tom Shippey’s top 10 books on JRR Tolkien
Posted in Literature on December 25, 2009 | Comments Off
Tom Shippey is the author of JRR Tolkien: Author of the Century, a companion to Tolkien’s work and a spirited defence of fantasy writing, which puts Tolkien in the context of the legendary storytelling tradition. Tolkien’s fame rests on The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. When these books first appeared, they were completely [...]
Ten of the best child narrators
Posted in Literature on December 25, 2009 | Comments Off
Down With Skool! by Geoffrey Willans The four Molesworth books, of which this is the first, are narrated by Nigel Molesworth and were banned in my school, ostensibly because of their wonderfully bad spelling. Utterly subversive, they imagine the world of the English prep school (St Custard’s) through the eyes of this cynical, self-interested, irreverent, [...]
At 13,000 years, tree is world’s oldest organism
Posted in Natural sciences on December 25, 2009 | Comments Off
It began life during the last ice age, long before man turned to agriculture and built the first cities in the fertile crescent of the Middle East. It was already thousands of years old when the Egyptians built their pyramids and the ancient Britons erected Stonehenge. The Jurupa Oak tree first sprouted into life when [...]
Look out! A great step for locust-kind
Posted in Animals, Natural sciences on December 25, 2009 | Comments Off
University of Cambridge undated handout photos of a locust walking along a ladder. Scientists have shown for the first time that insects, like mammals, use vision rather than touch to find footholds. They made the discovery thanks to high-speed video cameras that they used to film desert locusts stepping along the rungs of a miniature [...]
Habitable alien moons like the one depicted in the blockbuster movie Avatar may become science fact within the next few years, according to a leading astronomer. In the 3D film, a race of 10ft blue-skinned giants inhabits an Earth-like moon called Pandora. Their world orbits a gas giant planet similar to Jupiter that cannot support [...]
Vatican defends sainthood moves for controversial wartime pope
Posted in Politics, Religion on December 25, 2009 | Comments Off
Pope Pius XII: wartime role questioned <!– Tip: This here with the id “dynamic-image-navigation” is used so that the innerHTML can be written to by the JS call below. –> The Vatican has sought to defuse a growing row with the Jewish community after an outcry over its decision to move the controversial wartime Pope, [...]
Pope Benedict gives Christmas message after assault
Posted in Other, Religion on December 25, 2009 | Comments Off
Pope Benedict XVI has delivered his traditional Christmas message at the Vatican, hours after a woman vaulted a barrier and knocked him to the ground. The Pope spoke in a firm voice in front of thousands of pilgrims, appearing undaunted by the earlier incident. The 82-year-old pontiff was unhurt in the melee on Thursday night, [...]
Pakistan’s transvestites to get separate gender
Posted in Human rights, Law, Living on December 25, 2009 | Comments Off
Supreme Court tries to ensure rights of transvestites Hijras are both feared and pitied in Pakistan Pakistan’s Supreme Court ordered authorities on Wednesday to allow transvestites and eunuchs to identify themselves as a distinct gender as part of a move to ensure their rights, a lawyer said. Known by the term “hijra” in conservative Muslim [...]
Molecules and synapses cement memories, say scientists
Posted in Health on December 25, 2009 | Comments Off
Neurons are core components of the brain, transmitting and processing data US scientists believe they have uncovered one of the mechanisms that enables the brain to form memories. Synapses – where brain cells connect with each other – have long been known to be the key site of information exchange and storage in the brain. [...]
