Death of Roxana Brown

Dr. Roxana Brown, an expert on southeast Asian ceramics who lived in Bangkok, Thailand, died while in custody in a Seattle prison on Wednesday morning. Dr. Brown had been arrested for a single count of wire fraud, the first arrest to come out of the federal government's aggressive probe into the antiquities trade and donations to Los Angeles museums. According to a story in today's Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Dr. Brown died of peritonitis from a perforated gastric ulcer. Her brother, Dr Fred Brown of Chicago, previously reported that she died of a heart attack which he believed was brought about by the stress of her arrest.

Dr. Brown was the director of the Southeast Asian Ceramics Museum at Bangkok University in Thailand, and she had been confined to a wheelchair after losing her leg in the 1980s. She was in Seattle visiting family as she prepared to speak before an academic conference.

Federal investigators asserted Wednesday that Dr. Brown allowed her electronic signature to be placed on appraisal forms that were part of a tax fraud scheme in California. The perpetrator of the tax fraud scheme, Jonathan Markell, operated the private gallery "Silk Roads." Markell allegedly inflated the value of ceramic artifacts donated to museums, allowing collectors to claim fraudulent tax deductions. Archaeologists and museum curators interviewed in Thailand by the Bangkok Post expressed considerable skepticism regarding the evidence so far presented against Dr. Brown.

Derek Fincham gives some of the back story of the federal antiquities probe in his post at Illicit Cultural Property. I also wrote a previous post in this blog about the museum raids back on January 27th.

Voting Hillary Off

The Democratic Party has finally decided who's going to break it to Hillary that it's time to get out of the race:

Global Cooling? Pound vs. Euro




A letter to Nature in the May 1 issue by a group of German scientists postulates a slight cooling trend for the current decade. The climate scientists at Real Climate question the reliance of Keenlyside et al., the German group, upon short-term decadal data at the expense of the persistent 20th century warming trend. The Real Climate authors also cast their critique as a "wager," which has caught the attention of bloggers at the German blog Klimalounge as well as such familiar voices as Andy Revkin, Anna Barnett, William Connolley, and James Annan. If Keenlyside et al. decline to pony up, perhaps they will find their mark in Roger Pielke.



P.S. I wrote initially that it might be a sign of the state of the U.S. economy that the Real Climate authors, most of whom hold university positions in the United States, made their wager in British pounds sterling. It looks as though the wager is actually in euros. The slip-up may just be a sign of my own ignorance of world economic affairs.

Sweet Crude director released by Nigeria

Sandi Cioffi, director of the documentary movie "Sweet Crude" about the Niger delta, was recently captured and interrogated by Nigerian authorities. She talked on Friday, May 10th to Amy Goodman of Democracy Now about her experience as a prisoner in the Nigerian system and the current political situation both in the delta and on the national scene in Nigeria.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/5/9/free_from_nigerian_military_custody_sweet

Barack O'bollywood

Racist Treatment of Nigerians by British Airways

from The Nigerian Village Square

Time and time again, Nigerians have been unfairly treated by various airlines during their travels. Recently, this kind of unfair treatment was meted out by British Airways to a Nigerian passenger, Mr. Ayodeji Omotade.

• Read Mr. Omatade's story in his own words.

• Read the story in the London newspaper "The Mirror" about Mr. Omotade.

• Read and sign the petition protesting Mr. Omotade's treatment by British Airways.

• Listen to the interview on the BBC with Mr. Omotade

Professor Obama

The University of Chicago Law School has issued a statement acknowledging that Senator Barack Obama can also claim the title of "Professor" for his service as a Senior Lecturer from 1992 until his election to the U. S. Senate in 2004. Although not full-time or tenure-track,

Senior Lecturers are considered to be members of the Law School faculty and... have high-demand careers in politics or public service, which prevent full-time teaching. Several times during his 12 years as a professor in the Law School, Obama was invited to join the faculty in a full-time tenure-track position, but he declined.

Campaign staffers working on behalf of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton had questioned Senator Obama's claim to have worked as a professor at the University of Chicago.

Swift Kids: Snow Job

Is it snowing in here?

Nuclear Plant trouble in SC

Reactor Unit 1 of the Oconee Nuclear Station north of Clemson, South Carolina was shut down last Tuesday because of an "internal water leak." According to a press release from parent company Duke Energy, the plant will operate at a reduced level of power production until "mid-April" when the reactor can be taken completely offline for refueling and routine maintenance.

FLOODING THE GRAND CANYON

Barack Obama's Church

Larry Sinclair deceptive

The picture at left is of a fellow called Larry Sinclair, a gay man who claims to have enjoyed a night of debauchery with Barack Obama in November, 1999. Allegedly, Barack received a blowjob from Sinclair and purchased cocaine for both of them somewhere in Chicago, Illinois. Even more surprisingly, I think, Barack is supposed to have come back two days later to visit Larry Sinclair in his hotel room where they both again engaged in sex and cocaine use.

A polygraph test administered by Ed Gelb, a top polygraph expert, indicated that Mr. Sinclair was being deceptive in his story regarding both the sex and the drug taking. In taking this test, Mr. Sinclair claimed a reward of $10,000 from Dan Parisi of the blog WhiteHouse.com. The full report on the test is to be posted later this afternoon. Another expert is also going to review the test results to verify Gelb's finding of deception on the part of Mr. Sinclair. It looks like Barack Obama has dodged a bullet on this one, although I suspect that he and his wife Michelle have been having some long and serious talks about how best to detail with overly affectionate and potentially delusional supporters on the campaign trail. We do not need another den of debauchery being set up in our White House if we vote in a Democratic administration.