The Last Word On Nothing | "Science says the first word on everything, and the last word on nothing" - Victor Hugo

Is Organized Crime Cashing In at Pompeii?

By: Heather Pringle | October 22, 2010

The Italian press recently had a field day in its coverage of the sad decline of one of Italy’s greatest tourist draws: Pompeii. In early October, a prominent Italian newspaper ran a front-page editorial on the subject, calling the crumbling Roman ruins a “symbol of all the sloppiness and inefficiencies of a country that has lost its good sense.” Soon after, Italian politicians leaped into the fray, taking aim at the deep cuts that Silvio Berlusconi’s government has made in cultural funding since 2007.

Such cutbacks are certainly not helping Pompeii. Its grand villas and delicate frescoes require almost constant maintenance and restoration–a very expensive proposition. And there are a lot of them to maintain. But I keep thinking about a conversation I had with a prominent archaeologist over lunch at Pompeii a few years ago, when he brought up the problem of awarding contracts for such work in a region long controlled by the Camorra, a powerful, secretive criminal organization based in nearby Naples.

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Lies about Astronomy

By: Ann Finkbeiner | October 21, 2010

The coordinate grid was laid against the sky to fix the stars and for centuries it seemed to work as planned.

Recently, slowly, almost asymptotically, the grid begins to move with respect to itself — abrading, degrading — and therefore deteriorates.

In fact, Declination -14 now sags along its whole length so that Declination +14 is taut and hums like a violin string in a high wind. Right Ascension 23 has rusted through and swings from its jointure, knocking the vernal equinox out of line.

This year spring came not late exactly, but more toward the center. Continue reading →

Chronic Fatigue Controversy Continues

By: Cassandra Willyard | October 20, 2010

Allison F. can pinpoint the exact day she fell ill. She was at work talking to her boss. “I suddenly felt like a truck hit me. I was weak, dizzy, achy, nauseous and feverish. It felt similar to the onset to the flu, but exceedingly more intense,” she writes. She went home, thinking she had a virus, but she never recovered. Eventually, she was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome.

Today, she lives with her mother and rarely leaves the house. She struggles with pain, migraines, exhaustion, and neurological problems. “There have been nights when I’ve had serious doubt about whether or not I would make it through until morning (and times when I didn’t care if I did),” she writes. Continue reading →

Napoleon’s legacy: ashes, tombs and DNA

By: Virginia Hughes | October 19, 2010

October 15, 1840: Napoleon's coffin was lifted on board La Belle Poule.

In perhaps the same way that Americans prattle on about the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the French never tire of the death of Napoleon Bonaparte.

In fairness, the circumstances surrounding the Little Corporal’s later years, death and burial are…unusual. At age 46, he was exiled to the godforsaken island of St. Helena. He was still under English custody when he died, five years later, of stomach cancer, and the Brits refused his final wish: to be buried on the banks of the Seine. So the body of Europe’s most famous emperor was buried, sans pomp, underneath three stone slabs and two droopy willow trees.
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The Newest of the People of LWON

By: Ann Finkbeiner | October 15, 2010

May we present the newest of the people of LWON, Richard Panek? Richard thinks that the history of the telescope is a history of mankind’s view of itself; that Einstein and Freud introduced us to the possibility of things both important and invisible; that our knowledge of the universe is constrained by the cosmological Dark Sector; and that the New York Society Library’s open stacks of books talk so loudly he can’t think: “All of history, all those voices, all at once,” he says. We are proud to have him and I’m personally a little worried he’s going to make me and Abstruse Goose look silly. His first post is on Monday.

Photo credit: Tom Murphy VII

The Ladder of Incompetence

By: Cassandra Willyard | October 15, 2010

Incompetency is the rule in Dilbert's office.

While browsing this year’s list of Ig Nobel awardees (improbable research is so much more fun than the kind that wins Nobels), I stumbled across a quirky little study on The Peter Principle. What’s The Peter Principle? I’m glad you asked.

In 1941, a man by the name of Laurence Peter became a teacher. He noticed almost immediately that his supervisors were ignorant boobs (ok, he may actually have used the word “incompetent”). This seemed paradoxical. “When I was a boy, I was taught that the men upstairs knew what they were doing,” he later wrote. Yet in the school where he worked, it seemed they did not. What’s more, the epidemic appeared to be widespread. Peters found numerous examples of top positions filled by blundering dum-dums who weren’t doing their jobs—or at least weren’t doing them well. Peter pondered this phenomenon, and then he came up with a theory—”The Peter Principle.”

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It Started with a Cat Bite

By: Virginia Hughes | October 14, 2010

This is the story of Massachusetts General Hospital case #31-2010: a 29-year-old woman whom I’ll call Melissa.

I’m telling Melissa’s story not for its common-sense lesson—avoid interactions with cats*—but because it shows that doctor detective-work happens outside of TV Land.

Melissa was a veterinary assistant at an animal hospital. One day, at work, a cat bit her right hand, in the meaty part where the thumb meets the palm. Bad kitty.
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