Sunday, October 20, 2013

NBC News
Titanic violin fetches £900,000 record price
The violin that was apparently played to calm passengers on the Titanic as it sank was sold for £900,000 in just 10 minutes at auction in Wiltshire.
It was played by band leader Wallace Hartley, who died along with 1,517 others as the ship went down. It had a guide price of £300,000.
The BBC's Duncan Kennedy said the buyer was believed to be British.
Auctioneer Alan Aldridge said the violin was the "rarest and most iconic" piece of Titanic memorabilia.
Fierce bidding
Many of the other items up for sale, such as photographs, newspapers and crockery, were sold for between £10 and a few hundred pounds.
Duncan Kennedy BBC News

What would Wallace Hartley have made of it all?
Well, the modest, jobbing, musician from Dewsbury in West Yorkshire, would probably not have believed it.
His violin, given to him by his fiancee, Maria, as an engagement present, going at auction for £900,000 (just over £1m when you add in buyers premium and VAT).
He'd only just got off the RMS Mauretania when his agent asked him if he wanted to go straight onto another voyage, the Titanic.
Hartley agreed, a move that would cost him his life but also create a legend.
There were gasps at the auction when the bidding passed half a million pounds.
But it kept climbing, the bidders in the room soon over taken by the serious money on the phones.
Any suggestion the violin wasn't authentic, as some have claimed, was swept away in a torrent of successively higher bids.
In the end, it beat the old world record for a single Titanic item four times over.
Played by a man who personifies a bygone era of high morals and values, it's more than just a violin, it's an instrument of history.
Mr Aldridge set the bidding at £50 for the violin, which was lot 230 of 251, so "two of his friends could bid" - but after just a couple of minutes it had passed £100,000.
Hartley has become part of the ship's legend after leading his fellow musicians in playing as the vessel sank. They are famously said to have played the hymn Nearer My God To Thee.
It had taken seven years for the Devizes auction house, Henry Aldridge & Son, to authenticate the instrument.
Several experts were used, including forensic scientists who said the wood still contained salt deposits from the sea water.
Some people still doubt whether the violin is the genuine article, however, and believe it could not have survived being submerged in the sea.
But it is claimed the violin survived in a leather case strapped to Mr Harley's body who was found wearing his cork and linen lifejacket.
A diary entry by his fiancee, Maria Robinson, said it was saved from the water and returned to her.
Following her death in 1939, the violin was given to her local Salvation Army citadel and was later passed on to the current anonymous owner's mother in the early 1940s.
The auction house said it had attracted interest from collectors all over the world and added that more than 315,000 people viewed it during a three-month exhibition in the United States.
The most money previously paid for a piece of Titanic memorabilia is thought to have been a plan of the ship used in the 1912 inquiry into the sinking. This was bought by a private collector at auction for £220,000 in 2011.


A Fox News article stated that the American monetary value of the violin is $1.6 million. The buyer, who bid over the phone, chose to remain anonymous.



Changes to FL Stand Your Ground law
10/9/13 Senate Panel – from the Huffington Post
If you hear the pitter patter of tiny feet, it's Florida finally taking baby steps to amend its controversial 'Stand Your Ground' law.
Tuesday a Senate panel voted 7 to 2 approving revisions to the state's self-defense law, which removed the duty to retreat from the "Castle Doctrine," granting residents the right to use deadly force in their home.
And remarkably, one of the most vocal supporters of the revisions came from one of the drafters of the original 2005 law, David Simmons (R-Altamonte Springs), who told the panel: "It is an excellent common-sense law, but it is not perfect."
The bill approved Tuesday requires local sheriffs to issue guidelines to neighborhood crime watch programs, particularly that participants are prohibited from pursuing and confronting suspects.
It also further clarifies existing language in 'Stand Your Ground' that individuals acting as aggressors are barred from using the law as a defense, and removes language so that any bystanders injured by 'Stand Your Ground' fire can pursue civil action.
Chris Smith (D-Fort Lauderdale), who co-sponsored the bill, acknowledged the small victory of the panel's approval: “Today was significant that we got something done, that we moved a comma.”
Matt Gaetz (R-Fort Walton Beach), charged with chairing the House hearing on Stand Your Ground, had previously commented that he wasn't interested in changing "one damn comma" of the law.
Smith has repeatedly tried to revise and repeal the law in past legislative sessions with no success.
Tuesday's bipartisan support is Florida's first step towards fixing the problematic law that has been tied to hundreds of cases involving death or serious injury across the state.
Yet the changes approved Tuesday are a clear response to the George Zimmerman case, in which a neighborhood watch volunteer shot and killed an unarmed teen in Sanford, Fla. and was acquitted.
"Even if you think what Mr. Zimmerman did was legal, it's important to show that it wasn't appropriate," Smith said according to the Tampa Bay Times.
There are also House and Senate bills calling for a complete repeal of Stand Your Ground this legislative session.

From WJCT – Bullard
Another Florida lawmaker has filed a bill to make changes to Florida’s Stand Your Ground law. Miami Senator Dwight Bullard says his goes further than a bipartisan proposal starting to move through the Florida Legislature.
“The sort of bits and pieces that they took from the two bills could have gone further,” said Bullard.
That’s why Bullard says he refiled a bill that aims to, in his words, “tie up any loose ends that most Floridians are concerned about.” That includes explicitly defining that an aggressor is someone engaged in an overt act of violence, such as brandishing a weapon…
“...but, it would also again switch up that aggressor language so that one could not be provoked and then upon provocation, choose to defend themselves. And, then the person who did the provoking is able to use deadly force—that little loophole is what led to the unfortunate acquittal of George Zimmerman,” he added.
The “aggressor” term is not fully defined in Simmons and Smith’s bill—though Smith says he’s working to get that included in the finished product.
Bullard’s bill also includes a provision similar to one in Smith and Simmons’ bill that would take away the immunity of the person claiming self-defense if an innocent bystander gets hurt or killed. But, critics of that particular provision say the responsibility should lie with the aggressor.
Stay tuned to Friday's Capital Report for more on this story! CLICK HERE for the story.


The key revision to the proposed law seems to be the mandate to Sheriffs to inform Neighborhood Watch groups that they are not to pursue or confront anyone observed in the area, and that anyone who is the aggressor in a conflict is barred from using the law as a defense. Bullard's proposal would further define “aggressor.” Likewise, bystanders who are injured are not barred from pursuing civil court justice from the shooter, as they are under the current law. The changes would also repeal the current law which removed the “duty to retreat” from the Castle Doctrine, applying within the citizen's home. I will follow the votes and discussions of this amendment through the FL Senate and House as they are announced. An article called “Florida's Stand Your Ground Law” in the Tampa Bay Times gives other cases in which the Stand Your Ground Law was used as a defense and specifics about each case. The listing was updated through 10/13/13.

The following clip from Wikipedia concerns such laws in other states:
Forty-six states in the United States have adopted the castle doctrine, that a person has no duty to retreat whatsoever when their home is attacked.[1][2] Twenty-two states go a step further,[3] removing the duty of retreat from other locations outside the home. Such "stand your ground", "Line in the Sand" or "No Duty to Retreat" laws thus state that a person has no duty or other requirement to abandon a place in which he has a right to be, or to give up ground to an assailant. Under such laws, there is no duty to retreat from anywhere the defender may legally be.[4] Other restrictions may still exist; such as when in public, a person must be carrying firearms in a legal manner, whether concealed or openly.




Culture clash in East Jerusalem as Palestinian students offered Israeli coursework

JERUSALEM - A quiet culture war has broken out in East Jerusalem, the part of the ancient city that Israel conquered during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
Palestinian students have for the first time been given the option to study an Israeli curriculum instead of an outdated Palestinian one, hoping this will help ensure future professional success.
But now, some of the 190 students who enrolled in the program say they feel they were fooled into participating and claim they are being indoctrinated.
“They teach us Torah [the Jewish holy book] during history and Hebrew lessons. And they don’t teach us anything about the history of Palestine,” said A.J., a 13-year-old student who enrolled in the pilot program last year in hopes of eventually being accepted into an Israeli university.

Families of students interviewed about the program, which was unveiled in 2012 in the Ibn Rushd Boys School and rolled out in four other schools earlier this year, asked not to be identified out of fear that they would be punished by school officials or local authorities.
Among the complaints that some Palestinians have about the Israeli curriculum is that it teaches that Jerusalem is united, and that it is the capital of Israel.
The curriculum also uses the Biblical terms Judea and Samaria to describe the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, but which Palestinians hope will one day form part of their independent state. While Israel cites historical claims to the West Bank, the United Nations considers the occupation illegal and most world powers say Israeli settlements there stand in the way of peace.
A.J.’s father said he initially thought the Israeli curriculum – which allows students to take the exams necessary to apply to Israeli universities – would open up more opportunities for his son.
“They didn’t say they will teach him Torah. So we were fooled. They want to make my son forget his cause,” he said.  A.J.’s father said he has requested his son drop the Israeli classes. 
Ibrahim Al-Khatib, principal at Ibn Rushd in Sur Baher, a neighborhood of East Jerusalem, disagrees with the boy, his father and others complaining about the curriculum. The Israeli material is “more comprehensive and objective, especially in sciences and the Hebrew language,” he said.
A high level of Hebrew is essential to get into Israeli university, and not being completely fluent in it handicaps many Palestinians students.
According to Israeli census figures, Palestinians form more than a third of the population of the whole of Jerusalem. Still, the population is under-served, according to Israel’s oldest civil rights organization ACRI, which says there’s a shortage of 2,200 classrooms in East Jerusalem’s schools.
Indeed, it was Palestinian parents who first asked for the Israeli curriculum, according to Lara Mbariki, who is the official in charge of education in East Jerusalem.
She dismissed the idea that studying an Israeli curriculum hurt Palestinian students’ sense of identity.
“It’s not just books that affect your sense of identity, but also your upbringing and your immediate environment,” she said.
Zakaria Odeh, executive director of the Civic Coalition for Defending the Palestinians’ Rights in Jerusalem, disagreed.
“Education is an act of occupying the mind and thought, he said. “A house or a street that have been demolished could be rebuilt, but if a person is destroyed intellectually and culturally, it is very difficult to restore him.”


This reminds me of the complaint against American authorities for teaching American Indian students on the reservation in a biased way, and especially banning the speaking of their native languages in school. This was in the 1800's, as Indians were being mainstreamed. I can see why the American teachers would do it, to promote acculturation, but it does destroy the native cultures. Of course, as a modern nation, we do need for minority groups to merge with the larger group and follow the laws and mores of the majority. We need peace and order. It's a complicated issue.

Israel is widely viewed as being a spoiler in the achievement of peace in the Middle East. They did wage a war of conquest in 1967. It would be interesting to look back in the history of the region to see what provocation they may have had for that. The Arabs, after all, want Israel essentially to disappear. Their very existence as a nation is the source of conflict, so the Israelis aren't the only party being stubborn and aggressive.




Suspect held over bag full of knives, other weapons at JFK

A would-be airline passenger was arrested at New York's JFK airport Saturday after security workers found a trench knife and a collection of other blades in his carry-on bag, police said.
Timothy Schiavo Jr. was also carrying several pairs of scissors, a number of lighters and matches, according to a statement from Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Police spokesman Joe Pentangelo.
The 29-year-old, from Patchogue, N.Y., was charged Saturday with two counts of criminal possession of a weapon, Pentangelo said.
The haul was uncovered at a security screening area of the airport’s Terminal 5.


I really would like to see more information than this article gave! There was a photograph of the weapons, and I counted 10 pocket knives, two hunting knives, two or three small pairs of scissors and what looked like a gun. The rest of the objects seemed to be cigarette lighters. Maybe they will do a follow-up if any attempt to threaten the airline passengers emerges. It almost looked to me like an immature or unbalanced person's attempt to show his objection to the restrictions on the flying public. I did look at a number of other articles under Timothy Schiavo, but there was no indication of what his affiliations may have been. One of the articles did say that the “gun” was a novelty cigarette lighter.





Did the human family tree just get simpler? Skull stirs up debate

Putting together the pieces of a 1.8 million-year-old skull from the former Soviet republic of Georgia has led researchers to a surprising conclusion: Specimens that supposedly represent several early human species might be merely different-sized individuals from the same species.
If the conclusion holds up, the skull discovery would require a major rewrite for the story of early human evolution. Such species as Homo habilis and Homo rudolfensis, long a part of humanity's "bushy" family tree, could be folded into a wide-ranging species known as Homo erectus.

The key to the claim is the assembly of a fossil called Skull 5. The specimen was discovered in separate pieces at a sprawling excavation in Dmanisi, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) from Tbilisi, Georgia's capital. Over the past eight years, Skull 5's jaw and the cranium were painstakingly matched up and compared with four other hominid skulls unearthed at the site.
The researchers were struck by the fact that Skull 5's braincase was relatively small, while the face was relatively large. What's more, other skeletal fossils associated with Skull 5 suggested that the individual's body proportions were much like a modern human's.

"Had the braincase and the face of Skull 5 been found as separate fossils at different sites in Africa, they might have been attributed to different species," Zollikofer said in a news release. He and his colleagues also noticed size variations among all five of the Dmanisi skulls — which led them to wonder whether different species in the genus Homo were being defined too narrowly.
An analysis of the various early Homo skulls from Africa, dating from 2.4 million and 1.2 million years ago, found that the size variations were no wider than the variations found in modern humans. The size differences were also in the range for chimpanzees and bonobos, the modern species that are considered closest to humans on the evolutionary tree.
"Since we see a similar pattern and variation in the African fossil record ... it is sensible to assume that there was a single Homo species at that time in Africa," Zollikofer said. "And since the Dmanisi hominids are so similar to the African ones, we further assume that they both represent the same species."
That claim will have to be debated over the months and years ahead. Science quoted other experts as saying Skull 5 and the other fossils from Dmanisi may represent yet another new species in the genus Homo, or perhaps Homo habilis. One paleontologist, Fred Spoor of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, told Science's Ann Gibbons that Skull 5 may well represent Homo erectus. But he balked at the idea that all the early Homo fossils from Africa should be classified as Homo erectus as well.

Although the researchers' hypothesis would trim back the earlier branches of the human family tree, it doesn't address what happened during later eras of human evolution. The conventional wisdom is that the descendants of early Homo species differentiated into Neanderthals, Denisovans, so-called "hobbits" and modern Homo sapiens.
"There is a big gap in the fossil record," Zollikofer told NBC News. "I would put a question mark there. Of course it would be nice to say this was the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and us, but we simply don't know."

Update for 3:25 p.m. ET Oct. 17: Arizona State University paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson, who discovered the famous 3.2 million-year-old Lucy fossil skeleton almost four decades ago, said Lordkipanidze and his colleagues have produced "a beautiful little paper" — but he doesn't buy the claim that all of the earliest human species should be lumped together.


The scientists who study early human forms have to make classification decisions based on the smallest bits of evidence, and they compete among themselves for credit about their theories. I simply assume that modern man developed from more primitive forms and that the apes branched off from that early family tree of primates. My main interest in early man starts when they began to use stone tools and fire and show signs of “higher functions” like language, which the paleontologist deduce from the formation of the mouth. Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens show signs of “culture,” including simple religion, burial of their dead, planning and cooperation in hunting with weapons, and art. The human story gets really fascinating in the Neolithic when animals were tamed, grains and other seeds were purposely grown, population centers developed, some stone structures were built, etc. We also have more evidence from these more recent times, so our theories are more likely to be correct.