Giornale Nuovo on The Mantegna Tarot, a Tarot-like set of 50 illustrations, from about 1460-70:
The so-called Mantegna Tarot (I Tarocchi del Mantegna) is not a Tarot, nor, according to most authorities, is it Mantegna’s.
He points to further descriptions of the deck and the fifty cards it contains on Andy Pollett’s extensive site about playing cards and at an The Alchemy Web Site
WWW.POSTCARDMAN.NET – Old Vintage Antique Postcards from around the world. (via boingboing)
Reuters: Gene Blocker Turns Monkeys Into Workaholics
The researchers used anti-sense RNA to lower the levels of a dopamine receptor in the brains of rhesus monkeys who had to push levers in response to visual cues.
Procrastinating monkeys were turned into workaholics using a gene treatment to block a key brain compound, U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday.
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Monkeys and humans both tend to wait until the last possible minute to finish up the work, and become very adept at estimating how long they have.
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Nature has another rewrite of the same press release.
Update: More discussion on Gaal’s LJ, with my reaction to his comment below, noting that (in the Nature version, at least), it explains that this "gene theraphy" is temporary.
Ken Hite mercilessly summarizes the latest film’s take on king Arthur:
Its "Arthur" is the (imaginary) lineal descendant of Lucius Artorius Castus (fl. ca. 185 A.D.), himself the only Roman official in Britain known to have borne the name Artorius.
Its "knights" are Sarmatian cataphracti, an interesting (if ridiculously presented) take on a theory proposed first (AFAIK) in the 1920s, and elaborated well beyond all sanity in the terrifically interesting From Scythia to Camelot by Littleton and Malcor.
Its "Britain" is the Land of Silly Stupid Pretend.
For further reading, he recommends Tom Green’s Arthurian Resources (or N.J. Higham’s King Arthur: Myth-Making and History, but warns:
Do not come to either Green or Higham with a romantic spirit, however, or they shall crush you like Arthur may or may not have crushed the Saxons, possibly at Badon Hill, wherever that was, around 540 A.D. or thereabouts, if he existed at all, which there’s barely any scholarly reason to say that he did.
There. I’ve copy-pasted practically all of his entry, except for the bit about The number of Keira Knightley square-inch-seconds
being worth the price of the ticket.
Oops.