Yesterday in Madrid somebody detonated a number of bombs on trains and killed something like 200 with something like 1400 wounded. I think we all know how the Spaniards feel today, with relentless images, speculation, pain, and shock. I have a lot of sympathy for them, regardless of who detonated the bombs.
AS WE APPROACH SAINT PATRICK'S DAY
The Boston Globe carried a story about the theft of a number of priceless art pieces from the Gardner Museum in Boston in 1990. Personally, I had no idea that this happened. I blame the fact that I was a freshman in college and probably home on Spring Break for my dearth of knowledge. Anyway, the story is really fascinating.
In the predawn hours of March 18, 1990, as all of the drunken St. Patrick's Day revelers were passing out, two men dressed as Boston police officers talked their way past the museum's security guards. They walked off with 13 pieces of art, including Vermeers and Rembrandts. The pieces were essentially priceless, which seems like a big problem if you steal the art to sell it instead of display it. The case has not been solved.
One of the main focuses in the case has apparently been the possibility that the Irish Republican Army was involved in the heist. Apparently a local gangster had indicated that he could get the paintings back if a certain IRA member jailed in England were released. What makes it more interesting is that there is a whole cast of characters who have convictions for things like trying to run guns to the IRA who are weaved into the narrative. Crazy story, especially if the IRA did it on St. Patrick's day.
The FBI has a page with pictures of everything stolen here.
Oh, and by the way, apparently the first public St. Patrick's Day celebration in the United States was in 1737 in—Boston.
A SO-CALLED COUNTRY
Indonesia is really, really big. The CIA World Factbook says that it is "slightly less than three times the size of Texas." I have no idea whose job it is to look up area figures and create these comparisons, but it is clearly a full-time job. Indonesia has about 235 million people. It is the largest Muslim country in the world. It is the largest archipelago in the world. With all of that, the fact is it is barely a cohesive country. I could make a bunch of long, political science arguments about why, but the International Herald Tribune really nailed it with this story of a man searching for the wild, lost white tribe of Indonesia.
The strange thing is not that he heard rumors of a wild, xenophobic white tribe that throws rocks with their feet and eats unwelcomed visitors raw. We have Big Foot stories in the U.S. Not really all THAT different. No, the strange thing is that when he went looking for them, a man who wears a loin cloth for clothes, and hunts with a hand made bow and bamboo arrows told him that the group did exist, but that he had never seen them. He wouldn't go looking for them either, since he had heard that they were really savages, with "eyes like sharks. Powerful magic. They eat people raw." When you have that sort of hierarchy of savagery, where the guy in the loin cloth is cracking on the magic tribe, you just barely have a country.
That also reminds me of the comedian who claimed that boxing was a socioeconomic mirror on the United States, with champions over the decades showing who was at the bottom of the hierarchy at any given time. I guess in Indonesia they don't have professional boxing. They just have rock throwing.
LOOK OUT BELOW
Reuters has a cool story about the area below one of the bridges in Edinburgh. They are vaults that were formed by the of the South Bridge, built between 1785 and 1788. Bricked in and built around, the vaults became a warren of nooks, crannies and tunnels forming the historic city's underworld. Apparently people lived down there in incredible conditions, and it is now the most haunted place in Britain. Pretty cool. Also, the creator of Sherlock Holmes spent time in these vaults during his time in medical school. Too bad they never appeared in a Holmes story.
AS WE APPROACH SAINT PATRICK'S DAY
The Boston Globe carried a story about the theft of a number of priceless art pieces from the Gardner Museum in Boston in 1990. Personally, I had no idea that this happened. I blame the fact that I was a freshman in college and probably home on Spring Break for my dearth of knowledge. Anyway, the story is really fascinating.
In the predawn hours of March 18, 1990, as all of the drunken St. Patrick's Day revelers were passing out, two men dressed as Boston police officers talked their way past the museum's security guards. They walked off with 13 pieces of art, including Vermeers and Rembrandts. The pieces were essentially priceless, which seems like a big problem if you steal the art to sell it instead of display it. The case has not been solved.
One of the main focuses in the case has apparently been the possibility that the Irish Republican Army was involved in the heist. Apparently a local gangster had indicated that he could get the paintings back if a certain IRA member jailed in England were released. What makes it more interesting is that there is a whole cast of characters who have convictions for things like trying to run guns to the IRA who are weaved into the narrative. Crazy story, especially if the IRA did it on St. Patrick's day.
The FBI has a page with pictures of everything stolen here.
Oh, and by the way, apparently the first public St. Patrick's Day celebration in the United States was in 1737 in—Boston.
A SO-CALLED COUNTRY
Indonesia is really, really big. The CIA World Factbook says that it is "slightly less than three times the size of Texas." I have no idea whose job it is to look up area figures and create these comparisons, but it is clearly a full-time job. Indonesia has about 235 million people. It is the largest Muslim country in the world. It is the largest archipelago in the world. With all of that, the fact is it is barely a cohesive country. I could make a bunch of long, political science arguments about why, but the International Herald Tribune really nailed it with this story of a man searching for the wild, lost white tribe of Indonesia.
The strange thing is not that he heard rumors of a wild, xenophobic white tribe that throws rocks with their feet and eats unwelcomed visitors raw. We have Big Foot stories in the U.S. Not really all THAT different. No, the strange thing is that when he went looking for them, a man who wears a loin cloth for clothes, and hunts with a hand made bow and bamboo arrows told him that the group did exist, but that he had never seen them. He wouldn't go looking for them either, since he had heard that they were really savages, with "eyes like sharks. Powerful magic. They eat people raw." When you have that sort of hierarchy of savagery, where the guy in the loin cloth is cracking on the magic tribe, you just barely have a country.
That also reminds me of the comedian who claimed that boxing was a socioeconomic mirror on the United States, with champions over the decades showing who was at the bottom of the hierarchy at any given time. I guess in Indonesia they don't have professional boxing. They just have rock throwing.
LOOK OUT BELOW
Reuters has a cool story about the area below one of the bridges in Edinburgh. They are vaults that were formed by the of the South Bridge, built between 1785 and 1788. Bricked in and built around, the vaults became a warren of nooks, crannies and tunnels forming the historic city's underworld. Apparently people lived down there in incredible conditions, and it is now the most haunted place in Britain. Pretty cool. Also, the creator of Sherlock Holmes spent time in these vaults during his time in medical school. Too bad they never appeared in a Holmes story.
posted by David at 1:23 PM
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