A former French foreign minister has been accused of swindling the estate of sculptor Alberto Giacometti. “Prosecutors and the Giacometti heirs allege that Roland Tajan illegally kept back more than €1.22m of the auction’s total proceeds of €6.5m, shoring up his bank balance and hiving off a substantial sum in interest.”
Tag: 12.17.04
World’s Oldest Flute
“German archaeologists revealed yesterday that they had discovered one of the world’s oldest musical instruments, a 35,000-year-old flute carved from the tusk of a now-extinct woolly mammoth. The flute was dug up in a cave in the Swabian mountains in south-western Germany, and pieced back together again from 31 fragments.”
The All-Beethoven Network
BBC3 Radio plans to broadcast every note Beethoven wrote. “The schedules will be cleared for a week in June, the Radio 3 airwaves will be unsullied by music by any other composer, and listeners will be treated to such little-known delights as Beethoven’s 100 or so settings of Scottish, Irish and Welsh folksongs. Over the six days and nights some of Beethoven’s works will even be heard twice. ‘There are about 100 hours of Beethoven’s music, but we are devoting 136 hours to him’.”
Iran Dams Threaten Archaeological Sites
An aggressive program of dam-building in Iran is threatening important archaeological sites. “There are currently 85 dams under construction across the country, part of a programme that the Iranian government promotes with a considerable amount of national pride. At least five dams, all in advanced stages of construction, have been identified as threatening sites of particular importance .”
Returned Looted Art Coming To Market
More and more art looted in World War II is coming to market. “Since 1996, Sotheby’s and Christie’s alone have sold a combined total of about £140 million ($252 million at today’s exchange rate) of art returned to families from museums and private collections. As more and more art, primarily looted by the Nazis as well as the Red Army, is being identified and returned, it is becoming an increasingly important source of supply for the auction houses.”
Being Smart – Is It OverRated?
In academia, the top complement these days is to be called smart. “But why this preponderance of smart? What exactly does it mean? Why not, instead, competent? Or knowledgeable? Or conscientious? We might value those qualities as well, but they seem pedestrian, lacking the particular distinction of being smart. Historically, smart has taken on its approbative sense relatively recently.”
How Common Is Academic Plagiarism? (Quite!)
We only seem to hear about plagiarism when famous writers get caught. But in academia, plagiarism flourishes. According to one survey, 40 percent of academics believe they’ve been plagiarized. But academia “discourages victims from seeking justice, and when they do, tends to ignore their complaints — a kind of scholarly “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. “It’s like cockroaches. For every one you see on the kitchen floor, there are a hundred behind the stove.”