Friday Celebration: We won!

Mitchell and Webb discuss how we triumphed.

It also seems they may have identified the best candidate for the next big professorial post in Ancient History.

Vidi

Links that I’ve bookmarked in the past few days should be below the fold.

Friday Music: Lloyd Cole - Like Lovers Do

If Jimmy Carr ever decides the comedy isn’t working out he could make a living as Lloyd Cole look-alike in my opinion. This is one of Lloyd Cole’s overlooked works. Though that pretty much describes everything he’s done post-Commotions.

Ross Scaife

I’m still working through my RSS backlog and wouldn’t have known about this if I hadn’t noticed a post from Rogue Classicism. I’m not really qualified to talk about him personally. We only exchanged a few of emails, but he was always helpful. I can’t really comment academically either, his professional influence was extraordinarily wide ranging as a read through his entries on the Stoa will show.

It’s a cliché to say that someone’s death is a great loss, but sometimes clichés are true.

There’s an obituary at the Stoa and a post on his influence by Tom Elliot.

Illicit Antiquities linked to Islamic terrorists - Who’da thunk it?

It shouldn’t be news. I mentioned the possibility in 2005, and again late last year. When you buy unprovenanced antiquities you don’t know who you’re buying them from.

Now the Ashland Daily Tidings reports on the work by Matthew Bogdanos, which he says shows that the connection between the trade in illicit antiquities and Islamic insurgents is undeniable. Yes, you read that right. It turns out some members of Al-Qaeda are prone to criminal activity.

Despite that fair-play to Antonia Kimbell at the Art Loss Register who said that she’s seen no evidence of a direct link. The way the Art Loss Register works is they check a database of illicit artefacts. Obviously that means that someone needs to have registered an artefact as illicit, but that’s not a problem so long as Al-Qaeda remember to fill out the paperwork.

I went to look at David Gill’s blog to fact check the workings of the Art Loss Register because Kimbell’s comments seemed unfeasibily moronic. I can’t believe someone that credulous would be able to hold down a job at the Art Loss Register if it worked the way I described it. But it does, and David Gill is also blogging this story.

There’s a lot of things I’d like to see happen with the Iraqi occupation. One is that I’d like to see UK and US governments support our soldiers by making it harder for ‘art collectors’ to fund the enemy. If you’d like to read more about how you can fund the killing of British and American soldiers and pick up a nice antiquity into the bargain then you can read Looting Matters, Illicit Cultural Property and Safe Corner.

Vidi

Links that I’ve bookmarked in the past few days should be below the fold.

…but is it the opiate of the masses?

The Choice of Heracles, Paolo di Matteis, 1712

What is it that makes a happy life? People have been asking that for millennia and I have a few minutes while I wait to collect someone, so I might not have a comprehensive answer. The reason I’m asking is that Religion ‘linked to happy life’ is one of the most emailed stories on the BBC News site today. I have to admit I’m surprised that there are so few responses to the story on Technorati, but maybe everyone like me is wondering what a happy life is.

Or maybe I’m a bit early with the story and when this goes live that Technorati link will prove me wrong.

They say of the Acropolis where the Parthenon is…

Still busy. Among other things I’m preparing for the Classical Association conference in Liverpool later this week. I’ll need to get a haircut, which will be the first for around six months.

In the meantime the B-series of QI is now out on DVD, so I’ll need to make time to watch that. This is a suitably classical outtake from the E-series.

Vidi

Links that I’ve bookmarked in the past few days should be below the fold.

How archaeological discoveries happen

I’m tied up with work and life at the moment, but if you’re interested in how archaeological discoveries happen, spin on to 3m43s.