Madden Gone
NFL Hall of Fame coach, broadcasting icon John Madden dies at 85
John Madden, the Hall of Fame coach-turned-broadcaster whose exuberant calls combined with simple explanations provided a weekly soundtrack to NFL games for three decades, died Tuesday morning, the NFL said. He was 85.
The league said he died unexpectedly and did not detail a cause.
Madden gained fame in a decadelong stint as the coach of the renegade Oakland Raiders, making it to seven AFC title games and winning the Super Bowl following the 1976 season. He compiled a 103-32-7 regular-season record, and his .759 winning percentage is the best among NFL coaches with more than 100 games.
“Few individuals meant as much to the growth and popularity of professional football as Coach Madden, whose impact on the game both on and off the field was immeasurable,” the Raiders said in a statement, hours before team owner Mark Davis lit the Al Davis Torch in honor of Madden, the first person to ever light the torch on Oct. 16, 2011.
E.O. Wilson Gone
E.O. Wilson, a Pioneer of Evolutionary Biology, Dies at 92
A Harvard professor for 46 years, he was an expert on insects and explored how natural selection and other forces could influence animal behavior. He then applied his research to humans.
By Carl Zimmer
Edward O. Wilson, a biologist and author who conducted pioneering work on biodiversity, insects and human nature — and won two Pulitzer Prizes along the way — died on Sunday in Burlington, Mass. He was 92.
His death was announced on Monday by the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation.
When Dr. Wilson began his career in evolutionary biology in the 1950s, the study of animals and plants seemed to many scientists like a quaint, obsolete hobby. Molecular biologists were getting their first glimpses of DNA, proteins and other invisible foundations of life. Dr. Wilson made it his life’s work to put evolution on an equal footing.
“How could our seemingly old-fashioned subjects achieve new intellectual rigor and originality compared to molecular biology?” he recalled in 2009. He answered his own question by pioneering new fields of research.
As an expert on insects, Dr. Wilson studied the evolution of behavior, exploring how natural selection and other forces could produce something as extraordinarily complex as an ant colony. He then championed this kind of research as a way of making sense of all behavior — including our own.
Space: 2022
Moon, Mars and asteroid missions top 2022 space goals
by Miriam Kramer, Alison Snyder
Space science next year will be rocketed forward with missions to the Moon, asteroids, Mars and the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope coming online.
Why it matters: The data sent back to Earth from these upcoming missions will help scientists learn more than ever before about objects in the solar system and far beyond it.
What’s happening: Space agencies like NASA, the European Space Agency and Japan’s space agency, JAXA, are all aiming to send probes to various targets around the solar system this year. They include:
Mars: The European Space Agency and Russia are planning to launch their joint ExoMars lander and rover to the surface of the Red Planet in September.
Tutu Gone
Desmond Tutu, anti-apartheid leader and voice of justice, dead at 90
By Todd Leopold, Larry Madowo and Jessie Yeung
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Anglican cleric whose good humor, inspiring message and conscientious work for civil and human rights made him a revered leader during the struggle to end apartheid in his native South Africa, has died. He was 90.
In a statement confirming his death on Sunday, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa expressed his condolences to Tutu’s family and friends, calling him “a patriot without equal.”
“A man of extraordinary intellect, integrity and invincibility against the forces of apartheid, he was also tender and vulnerable in his compassion for those who had suffered oppression, injustice and violence under apartheid, and oppressed and downtrodden people around the world,” Ramaphosa said.
For six decades, Tutu — known affectionately as “the Arch” — was one of the primary voices in exhorting the South African government to end apartheid, the country’s official policy of racial segregation. After apartheid ended in the early ’90s and the long-imprisoned Nelson Mandela became president of the country, Tutu was named chair of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
The Nelson Mandela foundation called Tutu’s loss “immeasurable.”
Merry Christmas
Merry Krampus
How Krampus, the German Christmas Demon, Took Over America
He whips naughty children with branches and eats them, and he’s winning our hearts
BY BONNIE STIERNBERG
What says “Christmas” more than a visit from a horned goat-demon? Westend61
Here in America, we traditionally think of Christmas as being a sweet, cozy holiday full of niceties: brightly wrapped presents, twinkling lights, a genteel old man in a red suit who appears to give you presents, visions of sugar plums, that sort of thing. Sure, there’s the threat of a lump of coal in a stocking, used to keep naughty children in check, but that’s still pretty tame compared to the horned, anthropomorphic goat demon with an affinity for schnapps who shows up to whip misbehaving children with a bundle of birch branches, toss them into a large sack and — depending on which variation of the legend you subscribe to — either eat them or drag them to hell.
We’re talking, of course, about Krampus, the Christmas villain from German and Austrian folklore who serves as a malevolent foil to Saint Nicholas. As the story goes, every Dec. 5 on a night dubbed Krampusnacht (or “Krampus Night”), St. Nicholas and Krampus go from home to home; St. Nick distributes oranges, dried fruit and chocolate to the good children, while Krampus unleashes his wrath upon the bad ones. Though his exact origins are unclear and believed to date back to pre-Christian Alpine traditions, anthropologists generally believe he’s been terrorizing European children since the 17th Century.
Starless
Astronomers spot up to 170 giant rogue planets floating through space
BORDEAUX, France — Nearly 200 giant planets have been spotted moving aimlessly through space, according to a remarkable discovery by astronomers. Researchers from the European Southern Observatory say these “rogue planets” float in space and don’t orbit a star — like the Earth and the rest of the planets in our solar system do.
The planets are in a star-forming region relatively close to our Sun in the southern constellations of Upper Scorpius and Ophiuchus. Although there may be billions of these rogues out there in the Milky Way, the 170 scientists found in this section of the galaxy represents the largest group of rogue planets discovered to date.
Joan Didion Gone
Joan Didion, Literary Titan, Dies at 87
BY EMILY KIRKPATRICK
Joan Didion, a resounding voice in American literature who insightfully captured the ’60s and California through observant and beautiful language, died on Thursday at home in Manhattan. She was 87 years old.
The famed writer’s cause of death was Parkinson’s disease, according to an email sent by her publisher, Paul Bogaards, an executive at Knopf, to The New York Times. Her friend, the writer Hilton Als, also confirmed the news on Instagram. He posted a black square with the simple caption: “Joan Didion. 12.5.34–12.23.21.”
Didion became renowned for her linguistic froideur, keen insights, and provocative yet elegant prose, writing fiction, nonfiction, and screenplays over the course of her lengthy career. But she saved her most personal subjects for last. Her acclaimed 2005 book, The Year of Magical Thinking, in which she grappled with the unexpected death of her husband, won the National Book Award for Nonfiction. She also attempted to come to terms with the death of her child in 2011’s Blue Nights.
Rods From God
STAR WARS The terrifying future space weapons – ‘rods from God’ meteorites, molten metal cannons and weaponised asteroids
The Sun Online takes a glimpse at the array of weapons and space tech under development which are set to make outer-space the ultimate battleground
by Patrick Knox
WEAPONISED asteroids, “rods from god” raining down on Earth and cannon firing molten metal and — it sounds like something from a sci-fi movie.
But these bizarre weapons may soon become a reality as space becomes the final frontier for superpower warfare.
The reality of a space war moved closer today as Putin revealed a new alliance with China to create space weapons that could unleash havoc in the West if its satellites were targeted.
Speaking at his annual news conference, the Russian strongman leader said the partnership was “strategic” amid growing tensions with NATO.
As previously revealed by Sun Online, Russian and Chinese space weapons could send the West into the Dark Ages should it destroy satellites.
It is feared an orbital onslaught could shut down hospitals, crash the economy, knock out communications, and cause mass blackouts.
Bridge Stealers
A 58-foot bridge disappeared from a field in Ohio. A man hired a crane service to steal it, police say.
by Jaclyn Peiser
For almost two decades, a 58-foot-long, 10-foot-wide and 6-foot-high pedestrian bridge sat idly in an overgrown field in Akron, Ohio. It had been removed from a nearby park for a restoration project, police said.
But early last month, a passerby noticed something was amiss with the structure. The brush around the bridge had been cleared and the deck boards were missing, police said.
A week later, the entire structure was gone.
Battle In New Canaan
Gates Battle of the Bands is Back!
Raising money for Meals on Wheels, New Canaan
by Ms. Tootsie
Live music venue Gates Restaurant will be hosting their third ‘Battle of the Bands’ in January 2022. Hosted by radio presenter Jon Kamal, sponsored by Karl Chevrolet, and produced by Rock Paper Scissors Custom Events, this fierce competition brings in talented bands from all over Fairfield County and beyond.
The expert panel of judges include International best-selling author James Frey and Jon Kamal. The four heats are FREE to the public. To attend the final costs $20 per person, with 50% of every sale being donated to Meals on Wheels, New Canaan. Previous winners include Mind The Gap (2019) and All Night Thing (2020). Space is limited so book your tickets early. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/gates-battle-of-the-bands-final-tickets-80118511625
Gates Restaurant, 10 Forest Street, New Canaan, CT 06840 / www.gatesrestaurant.com
Web3
Jack Dorsey and the Unlikely Revolutionaries Who Want to Reboot the Internet
Members of the tech elite are banding together to bring the Web back to its idealist origins. They call their vision ‘Web3.’
By Christopher Mims
The internet hasn’t turned out the way it was supposed to.
In its earliest incarnation, before some Wall Street Journal readers were born and the rest had fewer automatically renewing digital subscriptions, it was supposed to be distributed, user-controlled and, in a word, democratic.
Then came Big Tech and the attendant centralization, windfall profits, culture wars, misinformation campaigns, Congressional hearings, EU rulings, antitrust battles and techno-nationalism that have characterized the past decade.
What if there was another way?
What if, to take but one example, users of social networks collectively owned them, or at least could vote on how they were run and what kind of speech they allowed? And what if similar questions could be asked of just about any tech company whose primary product is software and services—whether financial, cloud computing, or even entertainment-related?
The Meh Courses
What’s So Great About Great-Books Courses?
The humanities are in danger, but humanists can’t agree on how—or why—they should be saved.
By Louis Menand
Roosevelt Montás was born in a rural village in the Dominican Republic and immigrated to the United States when he was eleven years old. He attended public schools in Queens, where he took classes in English as a second language, then entered Columbia College through a government program for low-income students. After getting his B.A., he was admitted to Columbia’s Ph.D. program in English and Comparative Literature when a dean got the department to reconsider his application, which had been rejected. He received a Ph.D. in 2004 and has been teaching at Columbia ever since, now as a senior lecturer, a renewable but untenured appointment. He is forty-eight.
Arnold Weinstein is eighty-one. Although he was an indifferent student in high school, he was admitted to Princeton, spent his junior year in Paris, an experience that fired an interest in literature, and received a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1968. He was hired by Brown, was tenured in 1973, and is today the Richard and Edna Salomon Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature. These two men started on very different life paths and ended up writing the same book.
They are even being published by the same university press, Princeton. Montás’s is called “Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation”; Weinstein’s is “The Lives of Literature: Reading, Teaching, Knowing.” The genre, a common one for academics writing non-scholarly books, is a combination of memoir (some family history, career anecdotes), criticism (readings of selected texts to illustrate convictions of the author’s), and polemic against trends the author disapproves of. The polemic can sometimes take the form of “It’s all gone to hell.” Montás’s and Weinstein’s books fall into the “It’s all gone to hell” category.
Both men teach what are called—unfortunately but inescapably—“great books” courses. Since Weinstein works at a college that has no requirements outside the major, his courses are departmental offerings, but the syllabi seem to be composed largely of books by well-known Western writers, from Sophocles to Toni Morrison. At Columbia, undergraduates must complete two years of non-departmental great-books courses: Masterpieces of Western Literature and Philosophy, for first-year students, and Introduction to Contemporary Civilization in the West, for sophomores. These courses, among others, known as “the Core,” originated around the time of the First World War and have been required since 1947. Montás not only teaches in the Core; he served for ten years as the director of the Center for the Core Curriculum.
The Apocalypse Has Arrived
Are Flamin’ Hot Cheetos being discontinued?
by Nina Clevinger
While the Frito-Lay company has not commented on the reported shortage of Flamin’ Hot Chips, social media users have adamantly said supplies of the snack are becoming harder to find.
In September of 2021, someone posted to the Sacramento Reddit thread asking if anyone knows where they can find a specific flavor of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, adding that they are seemingly “vanished.”
One user commented on the post, writing: “There’s a chip shortage because of supply and labor issue.”
On November 29, 2021, a Twitter account by the name of SAY CHEESE! posted about the rumored shortage, writing: “Theres a Hot Cheetos Shortage in the U.S right now. This shortage is mainly because of increased demand and tightening supply.
“Some stores are putting limitations on how many you can buy,” the account continued.
Anne Rice Gone
Anne Rice Dies: ‘Interview With The Vampire’ Author Was 80
By Tom Grater
Anne Rice, the American writer whose Interview with the Vampire sold more than 150 million copies, has died. She was 80.
“The immensity of our family’s grief cannot be overstated,” he wrote. “As my mother, her support for me was unconditional — she taught me to embrace my dreams, reject conformity and challenge the dark voices of fear and self-doubt.”
Born on October 4, 1941, in New Orleans, Rice initially struggled to find popularity, with her debut novel Interview with the Vampire receiving mixed reviews upon its release in 1976. The book, penned while she was grieving the loss of her daughter to leukemia, since has been reappraised as a key text in the modern vampire genre and spawned 11 sequels, collectively known as The Vampire Chronicles.
[ click to continue reading at Deadline ]
Jiggle Jiggle Tinkle
Workers Are Using ‘Mouse Movers’ So They Can Use the Bathroom in Peace
“The tables have turned in favor of the Worker,” said one mouse jiggler company. “They are in power today.”
By Samantha Cole
Leah didn’t expect her TikTok video about a work-from-home hack to go viral. She started using a mouse mover—a small device placed under her computer mouse, to keep the cursor active—after her job as a business lead in advertising transitioned to remote work at the start of the pandemic. Her company-issued computer set her status to “away” whenever she stopped moving her cursor or got up from her desk for more than a few seconds, and with three kids at home who needed help doing remote classes during school lockdowns, that little “away” signal was driving her nuts.
“Working remotely, your colleagues can’t physically ‘see’ when you get up to go to the bathroom or grab lunch. Or even take 30 minutes to reset on the couch,” Leah told me. “The last thing I wanted during those moments was to be paranoid that people thought I wasn’t working—especially since I felt like I was working more than ever.”
The New Present
Is the Metaverse Really the Next Big Thing?
Its advocates say more immersive interfaces will increase our sense of presence. I think they have their definitions wrong.
By Steven Johnson
Mark Zuckerberg would like you to be a little more present.
That’s the message that the Facebook founder hammers home in one of the most elaborate concept videos ever produced by a tech company: an 80-minute video rolling out his company’s vision of “the metaverse,” which Mr. Zuckerberg believes is the next paradigm shift in computing. The video—and Facebook’s decision to re-christen itself with the new corporate name Meta Platforms Inc. —marked a fitting endpoint for a year in which the somewhat murky concept of the metaverse became one of the most hyped buzzwords in technology.
Mr. Zuckerberg’s primary complaint about the existing interfaces we use today is that they aren’t immersive enough. When we interact with our friends or colleagues virtually, we’re experiencing a heavily mediated version of them—email threads, text messages, grainy Zoom videos with choppy audio. And all of that interaction is compressed through a two-dimensional screen, often the size of a pack of playing cards.
“Screens…can’t deliver that deep feeling of presence,” he says at one point in the video. “Presence is the defining quality of the metaverse.”
Robbie Shakespeare Gone
Robbie Shakespeare has died
POPULAR bass guitarist Robbie Shakespeare of ‘Riddim Twins’ Sly and Robbie is dead. He passed away earlier Wednesday.
According to sources, Shakespeare was ailing for sometime.
“Robbie’s loss will be severely felt by the industry at home and abroad. My condolences to those he leaves behind,” said Olivia “Babsy” Grange, Minister of Entertainment and Culture, in a release sent to the Jamaica Observer.
Throughout the 1980s, Sly and Robbie worked with some of the biggest and brightest names in pop. Among them, Grace Jones, Joe Cocker, Gwen Guthrie and rapper KRS 1.
Their patented sound ensured mainstream interest in Jamaican music following the death of Bob Marley in 1981. Indeed, they were the driving force behind Black Uhuru, a Waterhouse group marketed by Island Records, the company that helped break Marley’s music internationally.
I’m sorry, I’m afraid I don’t know how to unlock your front door.
How Amazon Outage Left Smart Homes Not So Smart After All
by Isabella Steger
The outage at Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud-computing arm left thousands of people in the U.S. without working fridges, roombas and doorbells, highlighting just how reliant people have become on the company as the Internet of Things proliferates across homes.
The disruption, which began at about 10 a.m. Eastern time Tuesday, upended package deliveries, took down major streaming services, and prevented people from getting into Walt Disney Co.’s parks.
Affected Amazon services included the voice assistant Alexa and Ring smart-doorbell unit. Irate device users tweeted their frustrations to Ring’s official account, with many complaining that they spent time rebooting or reinstalling their apps and devices before finding out on Twitter that there was a general Amazon Web Services outage. Multiple Ring users even said they weren’t able to get into their homes without access to the phone app, which was down.
Unreality
The Metaverse Will Change the Way We Live, Think and Work
At GeniusU we talk a lot about the metaverse and how it will usher in – like the first iteration of the internet – a new era and change the way the way we learn, interact, collaborate, and run our businesses.
This is the year 1995 (the year the internet was launched) all over again, but much much bigger. The metaverse is only in the first stage, but it is here. Now, its participants are wearing goggles and glasses to enter a new 3D world, but the day will come in the not-too-distant future when there will not be virtual headsets or augmented reality glasses, but chips implanted in humans that allow them to connect in real-time by simply thinking the name or business or organization or friend with whom they want to interact.
Let’s start with Fortnite as an example. Fortnite is an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) in which 100 players fight it out until the last man standing in a fast-paced, action packed 3D environment which was developed by Epic Games. It was recently valued at $17 billion. In 2020, 15,000,000 gamers experienced Fortnite’s Galactus event. According to Charlieintel.com, Epic has nearly 400 million registered users. The demand for 3D virtual reality games is off the charts and growing. Roblox, a gaming/educational platform, has 160 million users.
Keep in mind, the very first MMORPG, Everquest, launched in 1999, and barely a year later, Everquest creators Ken and Roberta Rucker sold their company, Sierra Online, to Cendant for $1 billion (with a B). That’s $1.6 billion in 2021 dollars, and that was just the first glimmer of the metaverse.
While the internet was built on code, today’s metaverse is built on engines that build 3D universes. Discover Unity, a game engine that can create 3D, VR, and AR experiences for any industry, including “Auto, AEC, Film, and More.” Fifty-three percent of the 1,000 top-grossing mobile games globally are powered by Unity, according to their website.
Anything Brooks
Mel Brooks says his only regret as a comedian is the jokes he didn’t tell
by Terry Gross
As a child in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Mel Brooks assumed he would grow up to work in Manhattan’s garment district. That’s what most of the kids in his working-class Jewish neighborhood did.
But everything changed when he saw his first Broadway musical — Anything Goes, starring Ethel Merman.
“My hands stung from applauding so much after it was over,” he says. “And I remember going back in Uncle Joe’s cab and I remember saying as he was driving me back home to Williamsburg, ‘Uncle Joe, Uncle Joe! I’m going to do that! … I want to be in show business!’ “
D
Denzel Washington, Man on Fire
The actor never leans in — he’s all in. And in his latest, “Macbeth,” conjured by Joel Coen, he is as sharp and deadly as a dagger.
By Maureen Dowd
When Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand began rehearsing to play the Macbeths, he asked her how she thought the couple had met.
Oh, she replied blithely, the Macbeths met when they were 15. They were Romeo and Juliet, but they didn’t commit suicide. They just stayed married for 50 years. But they didn’t have any kids and his career stalled, so thinking legacy, they suddenly went gangster and killed their nice, old friend, the king.
“This is one of the only good marriages in Shakespeare,” said Joel Coen, who adapted and directed “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” opening widely on Christmas Day. “They just happen to be plotting a murder.”
James Shapiro, a Shakespeare scholar at Columbia, backed up the director, adding dryly, “But there’s not much competition, is there? The Capulets? Richard II and his nameless Queen? Richard III and the doomed widow, Anne?”
Depressed Shrooms
from The Daily Beast via Yahoo! News
Are Psychedelics the Next Big Treatment for Depression?
by Hannah Thomasy
In 2019, the FDA made a groundbreaking decision to approve a form of ketamine as a clinical treatment for patients suffering from treatment-resistant depression, a condition which is estimated to affect nearly three million Americans. The drug, called Spravato, is the first psychedelic drug to be approved for the treatment of mental illness. This approval, along with large-scale clinical trials of LSD, MDMA, and psilocybin (the active component of magic mushrooms), marks a sea-change in the medical community’s perception of psychedelics: Instead of viewing them purely as drugs of abuse, many clinicians are now seeking to repurpose them as therapeutics.
So far, Spravato has been revolutionary for the field of psychiatry as a whole, in part because it seems to act very differently than other available antidepressants. This drug, Yale-New Haven Hospital Chief of Psychiatry John Krystal told The Daily Beast, “has caused us to question most of our prevailing assumptions about the treatment of depression.”
“All prior antidepressants needed weeks to months to produce meaningful clinical improvement, whereas ketamine produces clinical improvement rapidly, sometimes within hours of the first dose,” said Krystal.
12 Tones Of Christmas
You wanna run your f†cking mouth no problem, you came to the right guy….
I see the future and it will be
Futurists predict how we’ll one day eat, vacation and work
Forget about Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook and all the talk about a metaverse. The real future will be a world that is convenient and scary and fantastical — at least according to futurologists. As this year ends, here’s a glimpse at what life might be like … one day.
Your pockets will be empty
Facial recognition is already common for phones, but “In 30 years it’s quite possible that you will not use a key or even a credit card. You’ll use your face or iris to make purchases and open locks. Recognition will be that good,” said Martin Ford, author of “Rule of the Robots: How Artificial Intelligence will Transform Everything.”
“The scary thing, though, will be if someone hacks your biometric data. Right now you can call the bank to change your pin or cancel a credit card. But you can’t cancel your biometrics.”
But the solution to that might be as simple as swapping out your eyes and implanting them with bionic peepers that provide updated and impenetrable information to open your house door or buy a bagel at the local deli. According to Future Timeline, by the late 2040s, lab made retinas will not only be as good as biological eyes but will also come souped up with add-ons such as built-in cameras, zooming capabilities and special night-vision adapters.
Meanwhile, digital currency will be more than just money. Coins and other crypto-related items, according to will come implanted with inflexible contracts.
Virgil Abloh Gone
Virgil Abloh Dies of Cancer at 41
The designer had privately battled the disease for several years.
By JOELLE DIDERICH, LUISA ZARGANI, ALESSANDRA TURRA
PARIS — Virgil Abloh, the founder of luxury streetwear brand Off-White and artistic director of men’s wear at Louis Vuitton, has died from cancer at the age of 41.
One of the most influential designers of his generation, Abloh had been privately battling the disease for several years, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton said in a statement on Sunday. The designer died in hospital in Houston on Sunday, according to sources familiar with the matter.
“We are all shocked after this terrible news. Virgil was not only a genius designer, a visionary, he was also a man with a beautiful soul and great wisdom,” Bernard Arnault, chairman and chief executive officer of LVMH, said in the statement.
Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree
Large asteroid stronger than nuke heading towards Earth late December
2018 AH is estimated to be around 190 meters long, similar to the Tunguska asteroid, meaning it would be far more powerful than a nuclear bomb.
By AARON REICH
A large asteroid the size of the Washington Monument is heading for Earth in late December that, if it impacts, would cause devastation far greater than an atomic bomb, according to NASA’s asteroid tracker.
Known as 2018 AH, this asteroid is estimated to be about 190 meters wide and is set to pass by the Earth on December 27.
The asteroid is unlikely to hit the planet, however, expected to pass by at a distance of more than 4.5 million kilometers. For comparison, the distance between the Earth and the Moon is around 384,000 km. – about a twelfth of that.
Primal Bling
Archaeologists Just Discovered the World’s Oldest Jewelry: This Set of 150,000-Year-Old Snail-Shell Beads in Morocco
Archaeologists found 33 snail shell beads in Morocco’s Bizmoune Cave.
In a cave in the western Morocco desert, archaeologists have discovered the world’s oldest jewelry: a set of shell beads dated from 142,000 and 150,000 years ago.
Made from half-inch-long sea snail shells, the 33 beads turned up during excavations conducted between 2014 and 2018 near the mouth of Bizmoune Cave, about 10 miles inland from the coastal city of Essaouira.
Surveyors first found the cave in 2004, and initial excavations had been conducted in 2008 and 2009. The team behind the discovery published their findings earlier this fall in the journal Science Advances.
“[The beads] were probably part of the way people expressed their identity with their clothing,” Steven L. Kuhn, a professor of anthropology in the University of Arizona and one of the paper’s authors, said in a statement. “They’re the tip of the iceberg for that kind of human trait. They show that it was present even hundreds of thousands of years ago, and that humans were interested in communicating to bigger groups of people than their immediate friends and family.”
Sondheim Gone
Stephen Sondheim, Composer of ‘Follies,’ ‘Sweeney Todd,’ Dies at 91
Stephen Sondheim, the dominant voice in American musical theater in the second half of the 20th century and the composer with the most Tony Awards, has died. He was 91. The Broadway icon died Friday, November 26th at his home in Roxbury, Conn. He was 91.
His shows, from the comedic “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” to the ground-breaking “Company” to the operatic “Sweeney Todd” to the experimental “Pacific Overtures,” transformed the Broadway musical stage, influencing and advancing the medium. Sondheim, a protege of Oscar Hammerstein II, slowly moved away from that melodic tradition to incorporate complex and dissonant themes and structures of 20th century classical music into his works.