| Mind: Lasting Pleasures, Robbed by Drug Abuse Drugs have a competitive advantage over natural rewards and can hijack the brain’s reward system. feeds.nytimes.com |
Melting sea ice forces walruses ashore in Alaska By SETH BORENSTEIN 2010-09-13T22:12:36ZWASHINGTON (AP) -- Tens of thousands of walruses have come ashore in northwest Alaska because the sea ice they normally rest on has melted.... hosted.ap.org |
A singular discovery provides clues to whale sharks breeding They have an in-built sperm bank which allows them to fertilise hundreds of eggs at different times within their body and then stagger the births after mating just the once. abc.net.au |
I can't bury my hatred for Antiques Roadshow any longer | Jonathan Jones It may be a national treasure, but Antiques Roadshow is an advert for a sleazy industry in which people only want to make a quick buckThere are some rages buried so deep that you forget to verbalise them. Irritations that you take for granted, and somehow never get around to complaining about. This is how it has been with my contempt for Antiques Roadshow.This ever-popular television programme was a fixture of the Sunday evening schedule when I was a child, and indeed still is. It is part of the furniture, a fine old Chippendale cabinet in the corner of the room. Attacking it feels like smashing your mum's cut-glass vase. But it is high time I did.Last week an ancient Roman helmet, only discovered a few months ago by a young man with a metal detector, was sold at auction for £2.3m. The museum that hoped to get it was outbid, despite raising an impressive sum. To add insult to injury, the buyer has remained anonymous – in other words, this remarkable piece of British history (see my blog last week for why it is so special) is being spirited from public view to an undisclosed place, one supposes behind closed doors.Reports in the press have focused on the fact that the money made will be shared between the man who dug it up and the farmer whose field it was. Concern for the fate of a beautiful and fascinating object that logically belongs in a British public collection has been eclipsed by the narrative of treasure-hunter-gets-rich. Buried treasure has dazzled the media. The Antiques Roadshow view of the world has prevailed.It is any wonder we are confused about the value of old art and artefacts?The show looks so comfortable, so British, and so superficially cultured. Its army of experts can identify the style of a forgotten Canadian painter or a lacquered syringe case from the Opium Wars. But there is more than meets the eye.Most old things lying around the house that someone thinks "must be worth something" are worth nothing. Yet week in week out, Antiques Roadshow presents the viewer with golden fables of art and money.It is curious to see so many people pretend they are there out of pure historical curiosity, only for eyes to light up when a good price is quoted – or go dull when the fascinating find turns out not to have a huge financial value. You can almost picture Great Uncle Albert's letters from the trenches being chucked out of the car on the way home when it is discovered they are not a gold mine, just history.There are much healthier approaches to archaeology and history on television. The popularity of programmes that dig up the past is terrific – and it has nothing to do with dosh. The Time Team don't hold a car boot sale at the end and sell off the stuff they have found. But Antiques Roadshow is an advert for a sleazy industry. The antiques business prospers by turning heritage and culture into a racket. It turns us all into money-grasping cynics who would sell Magna Carta, given half a chance.MuseumsArchaeologyHeritageTelevisionArtJonathan Jonesguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
In Hawaii, Birds’ Friday Night Flights Turn Out the Lights on Prep Games The death of Newell’s shearwaters due to the lights of night games has changed when most high school football games on the Hawaiian island of Kauai now are played. feeds.nytimes.com |