Is it possible, a century on, to unravel painting from myth?"Les demoiselles" belongs to a handful of works whose celebrity is blinding.

In the summer of 1906, Pablo Picasso retreated from Paris to a village in the Spanish Pyrenees. Had he died there, he would be remembered as a gifted symbolist, painter of pink and blue harlequins. But, says his biographer John Richardson,"there in the isolation of a mountain wilderness the artist, who sometimes chose to identify with Christ, decided that his time had come. He was finally ready to establish that he - as opposed to Matisse - would be the Mahdi of modern art."

During the next year, working in solitude, Picasso flung his energy, knowledge and courage into 800 studies for"Les demoiselles d'Avignon". No painting has ever been so weightily considered, so lengthily elaborated, so consciously created in order to turn art on its axis. Even if Picasso had died in 1907, he would still be remembered as the founder of modern art.

Yet when he showed the painting his avant-garde friends, it was so revolutionary that they all fell silent or, like Matisse, brayed with defensive laughter. Picasso rolled up the canvas and kept it in his studio like some illicit lover. There were no possible buyers. In 1916 the painting made a brief excursion to a private salon organised by Salmon, who prudishly changed the name from"Le bordel d'Avignon" to"Les demoiselles". It was not exhibited again until 1937; two years later New York's Museum of Modern Art bought it and, almost instantly, private masterpiece became public icon. [Image and caption at MOMA here.]

Related Links

Picasso's Demoiselles d'Avignon Turns 100 (NPR, audio)

GUIYANG, China -- Legislators in southwest China's Guizhou Province are mulling a regulation aimed at protecting property rights for traditional knowledge, especially knowledge relating to biological resources, said sources with the provincial bureau of intellectual property right.

For centuries the Miao ethnic group in southwestern China extracted herbal remedies to combat cold, cough and pneumonia from a type of grass called "guanyin cao".

But their failure to patent their traditional knowledge has seen them deprived of the chance to profit from their traditional knowledge, said An Shouhai, vice head of the Guizhou provincial bureau of intellectual property rights.

European Union education ministers have met this week in Heidelberg and discussed the creation of a common European history book. Germany has promoted the idea, but Poland and The Netherlands are skeptical.

At the meeting in Heidelberg, German Minister of Education and Research Annette Schavan said"education is one of Europe's most important resources for power and prosperity."

She also said that education is essential for shaping identity and for social cohesion in Europe. The minister called on her colleagues in EU nations and neighboring countries to stress the shared values and cultural perspectives among Europeans.

One way of highlighting common European culture would be the creation of a pan-European history book for pupils.

A Franco-German school history book was already launched last year -- a project which Schavan said had been a success and could be a model for a European version.

Related Links

Deputy PM proposes joint history texts for Polish, German schools

WASHINGTON -- In a political landscape populated by Bushes, Kennedys and Clintons, the children and kinfolk of longtime U.S. politicians do indeed have a better shot at winning elective office, but not necessarily at holding on or moving up, experts say.

A study last year on political dynasties in the U.S. Congress found that politicians who held office for more than one term were 40 percent more likely to have a relative in Congress in the future than other members.

"Being in power for longer has a causal impact on the chances that someone from the family would access a position of political authority," said Ernesto Dal Bo, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley and one of the authors of the study.

The scene was described by Monet as "dazzling" and "beautiful" and inspired the Impressionist master to paint some of his best loved works.

Now the Palace of Westminster has joined a list of heritage sites that ministers are accused of failing to protect.

A United Nations body overseeing "world heritage sites" is threatening to put several British areas on its Heritage in Danger List, a register of 31 historic places whose futures are in jeopardy, according to documents released under Freedom of Information...

The International Council on Monuments and Sites UK, acting on behalf of the UN, has condemned the decision by John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, to approve the 50-storey Vauxhall Tower in south London...

The council has complained...about three other high-rise buildings in London...and it is also fighting skyscrapers in Edinburgh, Liverpool and Bath...[and has urged] officials to call in an application for high-rise development in the centre of Bath, which was granted heritage site status in 1987.

Vikings navigated the oceans with sundials aboard their Norse ships. But on an overcast day, sundials would have been useless. Many researchers have suggested that the on foggy days, Vikings looked toward the sky through rock crystals called sunstones to give them direction.

No one had tested the theory until recently.

A team sailed the Arctic Ocean aboard the Swedish icebreaker Oden and found that sunstones could indeed light the way in foggy and cloudy conditions.

Crystals such as cordierite, calcite or turmaline work like polarizing filters, changing in brightness and color as they detect the angle of sunlight. From these changes, Vikings could have accurately determined where the polarized sky light was coming from and pinpointed the direction of the sun, said biophysicist Gabor Horvath.

The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE) and the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) today condemned the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan for asking the Federal Bureau of Investigation to investigate a complaint that books used in the public schools of Howell, Michigan, are obscene. The complaint was filed by a woman who was unsuccessful in persuading the Howell Board of Education to remove several books that she dislikes, including Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Richard Wright’s Black Boy, and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. “It is absolutely bizarre that a high official in the Justice Department would take such a step. Under the law, the books cannot be found obscene if they have literary merit, which in this case cannot reasonably be questioned,” NCAC Executive Director Joan Bertin said. ABFFE President Chris Finan said that U.S. Attorney Stephen J. Murphy III had abdicated his responsibility to protect free speech. “We are told that Murphy ‘routinely’ refers all obscenity complaints to the FBI. But he has a duty to reject frivolous claims to ensure that there is no chilling effect on books that are protected by the First Amendment,” Finan said. He added that Murphy has been nominated to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals. “This is not the kind of judgment we expect from a man who has been nominated for a seat on one of our highest courts,” Finan said.

The challenged books are used in 11th grade English class in Howell and many other schools around the country. On February 12, the Howell Board of Education voted 5-2 to retain the books challenged by the Livingston Organization for Values in Education (LOVE), a group of parents and other community members that charged that the books are inappropriate for minors because they contain sexual themes and profanity. When the LOVE challenge failed, one of its members, Vicki Fyke, filed a complaint with the Livingston County prosecutor, the Attorney General of Michigan and the U.S. Attorney alleging that the Morison, Wright and Vonnegut books are legally obscene and also violate the laws against child pornography and child sexual abuse. (The Bluest Eye describes the rape of a child.) LOVE also asked for a ruling on the legality of Augusten Burroughs’ Running with Scissors, another book used in the Howell schools.

Newspapers in the Detroit area confirmed today that Murphy had referred the books to the FBI. “Absolutely. We’re looking into it,” Gina Bilaya, a spokesman for Murphy’s office, told the Daily Press & Argus. “We do it with all complaints,” she said. The local prosecutor and the Michigan Attorney General are also reported to be conducting investigations.

In early February, ABFFE and NCAC joined a number of free speech advocates in sending a letter to the school board opposing the censorship of the books targeted by LOVE. A copy of the letter is online at http://www.ncac.org.

Founded in 1974, NCAC is an alliance of 50 national non-profit organizations, including literary, artistic, religious, educational, professional, labor, and civil liberties groups. ABFFE is the bookseller's voice in the fight against censorship. It was founded in 1990 by the American Booksellers Association.

... Through Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era, black landowners tended to stay away from the courts and rarely put their wills through the legal system; without those official filings, title dispersed over time among all of an original owner's descendants. Fractured ownership isn't generally a problem unless the land becomes valuable—at which point someone typically discovers a provision in the law allowing any heir to file suit for his cut at any time. An auction is a common result, and developers, knowing that auctions mean deals, have been known to recruit an heir to file suit against his family, or to buy the heir's share outright and file suit themselves. They appear at auction, as one observer puts it, "rubbing their hands and licking their lips."

It has happened with particular frequency in Charleston County [South Carolina], where the coast is lined with old plantations and as many as 2,000 parcels of heirs' property. ...

Many people know that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's father was from Kenya and his mother from Kansas.

But an intriguing sliver of his family history has received almost no attention until now: It appears that forebears of his white mother owned slaves, according to genealogical research and census records.

The records - which had never been addressed publicly by the Illinois senator or his relatives - were first noted in an ancestry report compiled by William Addams Reitwiesner, who works at the Library of Congress and practices genealogy in his spare time. The report, on Reitwiesner's Web site, carries a disclaimer that it is a "first draft" - one likely to be examined more closely if Obama is nominated.

According to the research, one of Obama's great-great-great-great grandfathers, George Washington Overall, owned two slaves who were recorded in the 1850 census in Nelson County, Ky. The same records show that one of Obama's great-great-great-great-great-grandmothers, Mary Duvall, also owned two slaves.

The Sun retraced much of Reitwiesner's work, using census information available on the Web site ancestry.com and documents retrieved by the Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives, among other sources. The records show that Overall, then 30, owned a 15-year-old black female and a 25-year-old black male, while Mary Duvall, his mother-in-law, owned a 60-year-old black man and a 58-year-old black woman. (Slaves are listed in the 1850 census by owner, age, "sex," and "colour," not by name.)

An Obama spokesman did not dispute the information and said that the senator's ancestors "are representative of America."...

Reitwiesner's research identifies two other presidential candidates, Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona and former Democratic Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, as descendants of slave owners. Three of McCain's great-great-grandfathers in Mississippi owned slaves, including one who owned 52 in 1860. Two ancestors of Edwards owned one slave each in Georgia in 1860.

It was unclear last night whether Obama was aware of any slave-holding ancestors, but he makes no mention of them in his 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance.

On February 28, 2007, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held a hearing on changing the presidential library funding disclosure process. Sharon K. Fawcett, Assistant Archivist for Presidential Libraries, testified on behalf of NARA. Also testifying were Celia Viggo Wexler of Common Cause and Sheila Krumholz of the Center for Responsive Politics.

On March 1, Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) introduced legislation (H.R. 1254) to require presidential library foundations to disclose the identity of their donors to Congress and the National Archives while the President is in office and up to such time as the foundation officially turns the facility over to the National Archives. The minimum reporting period would be four years after the end of a president’s term, and requires the amount and date of each contribution in excess of $200 to be disclosed. If the contributor is an individual, the occupation of the contributor must also be disclosed. Chairman Waxman stated that he plans to markup the bill next week.

Ms. Fawcett, stated that the Administration had no official comment to make on Waxman’s proposal. She said the Archives appreciated Waxman’s requirement to end disclosure at the point when the facility is turned over to the government as opposed to a longer period of time. Ms. Fawcett questioned whether NARA was the proper agency to police the disclosure requirement since it would require additional financial resources and the agency lacks the expertise in this regard. She also expressed concerns about possible conflicts of interest since the presidential libraries are a partnership between NARA and the foundations that support them.

A link to the testimony presented at the hearing, and the legislation, is available at the Committee’s website at: http://oversight.house.gov

The Australian Government may join an attempted mediation between Aborigines and a leading British museum over tests on indigenous remains.

London's Natural History Museum has offered to try mediation in the dispute over its plans to conduct DNA and other tests on the remains of 17 Tasmanian Aborigines.

Yesterday, Aboriginal representatives responded to the offer with caution and surprise, while federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough flagged a role for the commonwealth.

Public access to presidential records came under scrutiny in the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday as a panel of archivists, historians, and lawyers told a subcommittee about threats to access, and lawmakers introduced two bipartisan bills that would reform key aspects of how presidential documents are preserved and controlled.

At a hearing of the Subcommittee on Information Policy, Census, and National Archives, witness after witness told lawmakers that public access to those records was in serious jeopardy. The hearing had been convened to assess how the executive branch has complied with the Presidential Records Act of 1978.

Thomas S. Blanton, director of George Washington University's National Security Archive, called the act "one of the glories of our democracy," and said it was facing a "crisis."

Two leading historians, Anna K. Nelson and Robert Dallek, talked about the importance of access to presidential records. "We need to think of presidential records as raw material, like iron ore," Ms. Nelson, a distinguished historian in residence at American University, said.

There was no annually published Guinness Book of Records to keep track, but the ancient Greeks and Romans were crazy about setting and breaking records. Now two Swedish archaeologists have compiled a selection.

The Ancient Greeks and Romans liked to keep records of top achievements in sport, nature, anatomy and sex. Not long after the birth of Christ, when the most debauched phase of Roman history began, the wife of Emperor Claudius -- Messalina, 34 years his junior -- made a name for herself by challenging the city's best known whore to a sex marathon. Who can keep going for longer, the licentious wife wanted to know. She won by holding out for "25 rounds."

Details on the wanton competition can be found in the "Book of Ancient Records," compiled by Allan and Cecilia Klynne and published in Germany by the C.H. Beck publishing house. How fat was the fattest snail? What was the price of the most expensive slave? Swedish archaeologists Cecilia and Allan Klynne provide the answers, free of "academic commentary and lengthy footnotes."

The scientists combed through hundreds of old texts in their search for superlatives. Here are some of the results: The tallest man in the ancient world measured 288 centimeters (9 foot 5 inches), while the shortest (60 centimeters -- 2 feet) was barely as tall as a bedside table...

Even the Ancient Greeks kept records of top achievements in the areas of sports, nature and anatomy, according to the book. The most resilient runner covered 238 kilometers (176 miles) in a day. A soldier from Alexander's army drank 13.5 liters (3.6 gallons) of wine during a drinking competition -- and then fell over dead...

While Leona W. Martin's forebears were fighting for the British during the Revolutionary War, the freed slave that genealogist David Lambert counts as an adopted ancestor was performing heroically for the patriots at Bunker Hill.

For that, Salem Poor was honored in 1975 with his image on a 10-cent postage stamp. Details of Poor's life after the Revolution -- his troubled marriage, his death as a pauper -- were unknown, however, until Lambert pieced them together over the past decade.

Lambert, 37, online genealogist at the New England Historic Genealogical Society on Newbury Street, claims no blood relation to Poor, who shares his grandmother's maiden name. He is, however, descended from the Massachusetts family that owned Poor in Andover. Ever since an uncle gave him a first-day cover of Poor's stamp, he's been interested in his story.
"He was one of the first American heroes," says Lambert. "I'm glad to have found the final chapter."

Poor purchased his freedom in 1769 for 27 pounds -- almost $5,600 in today's dollars. He is believed to have killed British Lieutenant Colonel James Abercrombie in Charlestown and fought, too, at Saratoga and Valley Forge. Fourteen officers present at Bunker Hill sought recognition for Poor, saying, "Wee Would Only begg leave to say in the Person of this said Negro Centers a brave and gallant soldier."

In 1780, Poor married his second wife , the widow Mary Twing, described, like Poor, as a "free negro." The couple moved to Providence, where, according to city records Lambert found, they were ordered to leave, presumably because they could not support themselves. In 1785, Poor placed an ad in the Boston Gazette to disavow his wife's debts and "forewarn all Persons from trusting MARY, the Wife of the Subscriber."...

Although this provocative special features a few voices of skepticism, Discovery doesn't bother to qualify the title with, say, a question mark at the end, and why should it? Anything pertaining to Jesus -- in this case, the assertion that his family tomb was found in 1980 on the site of what now houses a Jerusalem apartment complex -- is going to stir up a response, and one suspects that's precisely what the channel wanted. As for the merits of the show itself (which bears director James Cameron's imprimatur), it's actually pretty standard Discovery fare and far from, er, titanic.

Readers of"The Da Vinci Code" will doubtless enjoy the implications contained in this special...Meticulously building the case, writer-producer-director Simcha Jacobovici enlists archaeologists, statisticians, and experts in ancient languages and DNA testing to help decipher the scrawl on the tombs...

Despite the explosive subject matter, however, the special itself is a bit of a slog...All told, the net effect is much like one of those old"In Search Of" movies, which claimed to find Noah's Ark or ancient Aztecs or alien landings...

Of course, for biblical scholars, conspiracy buffs and the Catholic Church, whether Jesus had a large extended family and was buried with them in the heart of Jerusalem is very big news. As presented here, the evidence appears pretty compelling, though perhaps it's just a layman's eyes, but some of the moments that excite the scientists seem less than overwhelming...

"CSI: Jesus?" Seriously, how the hell did CBS overlook that one?

Related Links

The Jesus/Talpiot Tomb: around the blogosphere (James Tabor, Codex blog)

Christian documentary producer challenges 'Lost Tomb' (ChristianNewsWire)

The Tomb of the Reputation of James, Son of Philip

Ted Koppel to moderate panel discussion following 'Lost Tomb of Jesus'

The oldest solar observatory in the Americas has been discovered in coastal Peru, archeologists announced today. The 2,300-year-old ceremonial complex featured the Towers of Chankillo, 13 towers running north to south along a low ridge and spread across 980 feet (300 meters) to form a toothed horizon that was used for solar observations. [See aerial photo here.]

Researchers excavated the solar observatory between 2000 and 2003. They found buildings-in exact mirror position of each other-to the east and west of the towers with observation points for watching the Sun rise and set over the toothed horizon...

As viewed from the two observing points of Chankillo, the spread of towers along the horizon corresponds very closely to the range of movement of the rising and setting positions of the Sun over the year, the authors write in the March 2 issue of the journal Science.

Once the Sun started to move away from any of its extreme positions, like the solstices or equinoxes, the towers and gaps between them provided a means to track the progress of the Sun up and down the horizon, to within a couple of days accuracy.

'Chankillo is arguably the oldest solar calendar that can be identified as such with confidence within the Americas,' said lead study author Ivan Ghezzi from Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru.

Tree-ring samples dated these structures back to the fourth century B.C.