Monday links

Cool: Jack the Ripper identified via DNA from a shawl found at Ripper murder scene.

First Graders Of 1988 Make Predictions About The Year 2000.

The Truth We Won’t Admit: Drinking Is Healthy: The U.S. public health establishment buries overwhelming evidence that abstinence is a cause of heart disease and early death? Related: Wine and Exercise: A Promising Combination.

Video: If Disney Princes Were Real, you wouldn't want anything to do with them. 

Gallery of hummingbird close-ups.

From What If, what would happen if one person had all of the world's money?

ICYMI, Friday's links are here, including weird medieval books, a rocket-powered motorcycle from the early 20th century, IBM's strange 1937 corporate songbook, and adventures in early dentistry.

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Superheroes photoshopped into Hello Kitty themed costumes

Surprising the difference a whole bunch of pink can make.

More here.

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Video: If Disney Princes Were Real (they're obnoxious and really not very bright)

My favorite is Aladdin, near the end.



via Neatorama.

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It's the 202nd anniversary of the battle of Borodino, on which the War and Peace and the 1812 Overture are based

Larger version here.

Today is the 202nd anniversary of the battle of Borodino (wiki) on 7 September 1812, at which Napoleon's (wiki) Grande Armée grappled bitterly with massed Russian forces defending Moscow under Marshal Mikhail Kutusov (1745-1813)* during Napoleon's invasion of Russia. 

Kutusov suffered significant losses, and the French occupied Moscow a week later, but in a month, Napoleon's disastrous retreat toward the west had begun. As Tolstoy noted in War and Peace,

"The cudgel of the people's war was lifted with all its menacing and majestic might, and caring nothing for good taste and procedure, with dull-witted simplicity but sound judgment, it rose and fell, making no distinctions."

Napoleon's own judgment has become more famous:

"Du sublime au ridicule il n'y a qu'un pas."

(From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step.)

Here's the rousing cannon-puntuated finale of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, conducted by Leonard Bernstein:

Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) was commissioned to write that staple of summer pops concerts, the 1812 Overture (actually Ouverture Solennelle 1812, Op. 49), for an exhibition of arts and industries at Moscow in 1881. It was intended to commemorate the battle of Borodino and Napoleon's ultimate defeat.**

* N.B. Earlier, at the battle of Smolensk, Kutusov had noted, "The battle has already been decided. It is like a river that runs downhill. I can only move it slightly to the right or left. But its outcome will not be changed by me."

** During the Soviet era, Russian performances of the 1812 Overture substituted an anonymous chorale-like tune for "God Preserve the Czar," the "Russian hymn" quoted by Tchaikovsky in the original.

A brief documentary:

Taken from Ed's Quotation of the Day, only available via email.  If you'd like to be added to his list, leave your email address in the comments.

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Cool: Jack the Ripper identified via DNA from a shawl found at Ripper murder scene

Daily Mail has an article written by Russell Edwards, who bought the shawl and had it tested, and a separate one by Dr Jari Louhelainen, the DNA expert who did the testing. Their research shows that Jack the Ripper was Aaron Kosminski (wiki) a Russian Jewish hairdresser who was one of the main suspects at the time. Although there was insufficient evidence to arrest him, the police kept him under surveillance until he ended up in asylums for the rest of his life. More on Kosminski here and here, and at Wikipedia.

Edwards has written a book entitled Naming Jack the Ripper, which will be released Tuesday, September 9th - here's the Amazon blurb:

After 125 years of theorizing and speculation regarding the identity of Jack the Ripper, Russell Edwards is in the unique position of owning the first physical evidence relating to the crimes to have emerged since 1888. This evidence is from one of the crime scenes, and has now been rigorously examined by some of the most highly-qualified forensic scientists in the country who have ascertained its true provenance. With the help of modern forensic techniques, Russell's ground-breaking discoveries provide conclusive answers to many of the most challenging mysterious surrounding the case.

Here's part of the the intro from the article:

It is the greatest murder mystery of all time, a puzzle that has perplexed criminologists for more than a century and spawned books, films and myriad theories ranging from the plausible to the utterly bizarre.

A DNA sample has proven Polish immigrant

Aaron Kosminski was Jack the Ripper

A shawl found by the body of Catherine Eddowes, one of Jack the Ripper’s (wiki) victims, has been analysed and found to contain DNA from her blood as well as DNA from the killer.

The landmark discovery was made after businessman Russell Edwards, 48, bought the shawl at auction and enlisted the help of Dr Jari Louhelainen, a world-renowned expert in analysing genetic evidence from historical crime scenes.

Here's Edwards:

It was March 2007, in an auction house in Bury St Edmunds, that I first saw the blood-soaked shawl. It was in two surprisingly large sections – the first measuring 73.5in by 25.5in, the second 24in by 19in – and, despite its stains, far prettier than any artefact connected to Jack the Ripper might be expected to be. It was mostly blue and dark brown, with a delicate pattern of Michaelmas daisies – red, ochre and gold – at either end.

It was said to have been found next to the body of one of the Ripper’s victims, Catherine Eddowes, and soaked in her blood. There was no evidence for its provenance, although after the auction I obtained a letter from its previous owner who claimed his ancestor had been a police officer present at the murder scene and had taken it from there.

Yet I knew I wanted to buy the shawl and was prepared to pay a great deal of money for it. I hoped somehow to prove that it was genuine. Beyond that, I hadn’t considered the possibilities. I certainly had no idea that this flimsy, badly stained, and incomplete piece of material would lead to the solution to the most famous murder mystery of all time: the identification of Jack the Ripper.

He ends up buying it and taking it to Dr. Jari Louhelainen, a leading expert in genetic evidence from historical crime scenes.

The tests began in 2011, when Jari used special photographic analysis to establish what the stains were.

Using an infrared camera, he was able to tell me the dark stains were not just blood, but consistent with arterial blood spatter caused by slashing – exactly the grim death Catherine Eddowes had met.

But the next revelation was the most heart-stopping. Under UV photography, a set of fluorescent stains showed up which Jari said had the characteristics of semen.

Here's Dr. Louhelainen, after explaining the extraction techniques he used:

Once I had the profile, I could compare it to that of the female descendant of Kosminski’s sister, who had given us a sample of her DNA swabbed from inside her mouth.

The first strand of DNA showed a 99.2 per cent match, as the analysis instrument could not determine the sequence of the missing 0.8 per cent fragment of DNA. On testing the second strand, we achieved a perfect 100 per cent match.

Documentary on Re-investigating the Evidence and Suspects:



Read the whole thing at Daily Mail.

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Not safe for work or kids (language and violence) Fight To The Death: Power Rangers Vs Cookie Monster!

Definitely NSFW. Poor Power Rangers!

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Medieval rap video "Teach Thee How To Curtsy", bonus "Nine Drawn and Quartered at Renaissance Fair" by The Onion

Useful information from Sir Jarlsberg to learn prior to this year's expedition to the Renaissance Faire in Crownsville, MD, which my kids/grandkids attend (in continuously evolving/mutating costumes) every year.

Scott, that familiar looking horse head mask apparently belongs to a member of this guy's band - he's known as Steed, which I may start calling you.

I am unable to think about renaissance fairs without remembering The Onion's excellent article from 1995, entitled, Nine Drawn and Quartered at Renaissance Fair:

RICHMOND, VA—Nine people were torn limb-from-limb and skewered through the anus with wooden stakes this weekend at the city’s annual Renaissance Fair. Organizers boast that the “Drawn and Quartered” show made this year’s fair one of the most authentic ever.

Richmond, Virginia's annual Renaissance Fair featured plenty
 of exciting, historically accurate action, such as jousting,
 swordfighting, archery competitions, and the evisceration
 of condemned heretics' vital organs.

The early-Renaissance torture demonstration was one of many improvisations that peppered the fair ground, performed by actors from the local theatre community dressed in period costumes. These performances have been a fixture of past years’ fairs.

“The skits where we publicly tortured and humiliated ‘condemned heretics’ gave us by far the most response we’ve ever gotten,” actor Paul Mealen said. “Who would have thought that violence would appeal to people?”

In the skit, victims were randomly selected from the crowd, strung up on posts, and read official “charges.” A dirt-encrusted dagger was then used to saw off vital parts of the condemned. One man’s scrotum was cut off, causing his testicles to fall to the ground. According to witnesses, children at the festival then tossed the testicles back and forth as the victim watched.

Vital organs such as the liver were cut out of further victims, then cooked and force-fed to them. The pale and barely conscious victims were then taken down from the posts and prepared for the next stage of their torture amid taunts and bellows from the crowd.

“We loved it,” said Both University of Virginia student Steve Limeneg, who, along with his friend Alicia Ponfret, was attending the fair for the first time. “It was like we were transported back to the real Renaissance. We got turkey drumsticks at the Ye Olde Grille, threw stones at the Drench a Wench booth—I won a stuffed jester doll—then we got to see this heretic forced to eat his own kidney.”

Added Richmond middle-school teacher Linda Rougfas: “It was a lot of fun. They picked my husband out of the crowd and he thought it was a kick. When they eviscerated him and he started screaming and begging for his life and crying out to me, the kids and I did our part, yelling ‘heretic!’ and so on.”

Next, four horses were tied to the arms and legs of each victim, and each horse was made to pull in opposing directions, summarily causing limbs to tear off and go skipping in every direction. Finally, the disembodied and helpless torsos were fed to packs of ravenous dogs. The victims’ horrific, wheezing screams caught the attention of the entire fair.

“I thought it was very impressive,” said Her-man Kline-mest, an executive at a nearby bank who partook of the fair with his wife and three children. “I en-joyed taunting the condemned, and my children enjoyed playing with the testicles.”

One volunteer was tied up and laid on his back spread-eagled, his legs held apart by a short beam roped to a horse. A long wooden stake was braced against a rock and inserted just a few inches into the participant’s anus. When the horse was given a snap from the whip, it bolted, causing the participant to be driven onto the stake until it thrust out of his mouth.

Festival organizer Liz Fendamn has been under pressure to compete with nearby Colonial Williamsburg for tourist dollars, and she said the event was popular enough to guarantee a return next year.

“We try to give people a merry ol’ time, m’Lord,” she said with a smile. “Ye can bet yer knickers we’ll be doing it again.”

She hinted they may even have the performing troupe dress like Spanish soldiers and wantonly slaughter masses of heretical fair visitors.

Though most everyone thought the fair was the most successful ever, several family members of the killed were not so enthusiastic.

“My husband and I came to the fair as part of our honeymoon,” Jacklyn Welden said. “When he was stabbed through the heart and killed for blaspheming the Pope, the fair suddenly became less fun.”

Welden added that she will not be returning next year.

Rap video via Neatorama.

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