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A metal-detector enthusiast has found one of the biggest ever hoards of Roman coins. It is the biggest hoard ever found in a single vessel in Britain, numbering 52,500 Roman coins of varying denominations.

Dave Crisp was in a field near Frome, Somerset, when he found what turned out to be an earthenware pot full of coins from the third century AD. The coins, held in a metal jar weighing 160kg, is estimated to have been worth around four years' pay for a Roman legionary soldier.

The find was initially made at the end of May. Since then the site has been excavated and the British Museum has begun a conservation process. A total number for the coins was only reached last week.

Experts involved in the excavation have nothing but praise for Mr Crisp. “The discovery at Frome stands out as a story, mainly because Dave Crisp reported it immediately to his local coroner,” says Somerset Finds Liaison Officer Anna Booth.

“This meant we got to excavate the site in its original, undisturbed state. Mr Crisp took part in this process with us, even going to the extent of camping there one night with his grandson, to make sure that the site was safe over night.”

The 'coarse, average type of vessel' in which the coins were kept is made from black burnished ceramic ware, and measures around 50cm in diameter. Though the pot was intact in the ground, it had been cracked, making it easier to get the coins out.

“The pot was enormous, there is no way that anyone could have carried it, which we think makes it unlikely that the money was hidden by someone who intended to return to it,” adds Booth. “The pot has been carefully placed in the ground using packing material such as reeds and grass, so we think it could be a ritual offering.”

An inquest on 22 July will rule whether the find is classed as treasure or not. Under the 1996 Treasure Act (for England, Wales and Northern Ireland), objects that might be considered treasure, or are more than 300 years old, must be reported to the local coroner within 14 days of discovery.

In the case of coins, if there are more than 10 from the same hoard with a silver or gold content of at least 10 per cent, then it is classed as 'treasure' and must be offered for sale to a museum (the British Museum has first refusal) at a value determined by the Treasury Valuation Committee.

If the hoard is declared to be treasure, and it seems certain this will, then Somerset County Museum Service has declared its interest in buying it and a reward would be shared between the finder, Dave Crisp, and the owner of the field.

Last year's Staffordshire Hoard of Saxon jewellery earned finder Terry Herbert a cool £1.3m. Yet Booth insists that it is too early to tell how much Mr Crisp stands to make from his discovery. “I can't comment on the value of the coins, partly because I don't know and also because there are just too many variables. It will depend on how many rare coins there are and the condition they're in.”

The hoard will eventually go on display at Taunton Museum, which is undergoing refurbishment and will be reopened in spring 2011, when conservation work is complete.

Whatever the value of the haul, it is of great historical interest, including coins minted by 21 emperors and three emperors' wives. Famous rulers include Gallenius, Diocletian and Maximian, but perhaps more interesting is that 766 coins feature the notorious Carausius, a brutal usurper who ruled Britain and parts of northern Gaul independent of the empire from 286-293 AD. Coins of Carausius are rarely found in hoards.

Carausius also struck his own coins, and reinstated the silver denarius. There are up to ten of these in the hoard. The second half of the third century was a troubled time for Britain, with Carausius's play for power causing political instability. It was also the tail-end of the third century crisis, during which the empire was hit by disease, unrest and economic depression. It is possible this huge haul was actually deflated in value at the time. It could explain why such a large number of them were buried together.

driver from www.independent.co.uk

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Money will get you a lot of things, including a 60-ft catamaran built almost entirely out of recycled plastic bottles, held together with organic glue made from cashew nuts and sugar cane. But the joy of stepping on to dry land after navigating such a vessel on a gruelling 128-day journey across the Pacific is one of those things that money simply can't buy.

Yesterday David de Rothschild, scion of one of the world's richest banking fortunes, could finally put the regular bouts of chronic sea-sickness behind him as he and his five crew mates birthed their unusual vessel, the Plastiki, in Sydney Harbour after four months at sea.

De Rothschild, who set off from San Francisco in March, was hit particularly hard. The billionaire environmentalist admitted spending much of the opening stages of his odyssey bent over the side of his ship's recycled hull before his sea legs finally returned and he could keep a meal down.

But as the crew struggled to manoeuvre the notoriously tough-to-steer vessel into port outside the Australian National Maritime Museum yesterday, the 31-year-old joked that they had one final challenge to complete – parking. "This is the hardest part of the journey so far – getting it in!" he yelled from the boat.

It was the end of a remarkable journey which had been made to raise awareness over the huge levels of plastic waste in our oceans and saw the Plastiki's crew having to battle near hurricane winds, temperatures of 38C, a diet of rehydrated food and that scourge of land lubbers and hardy sailors alike – sea sickness.

De Rothschild came up with the idea after reading a UN report on plastic pollution in the world's oceans. A poster boy for the modern environmental movement, he prides himself on using none of his family fortune to fund his eco-adventures. He named his ship after the original Kon-Tiki voyage in 1947 by Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl who sailed 4,300 miles on a raft made from balsa wood and other materials from South America to the Tuamotu Islands in French Polynesia in the Pacific Ocean.

Despite the unusual materials used in its construction, the ship held up remarkably well despite meeting a series of major storms in the Tasman Sea. At one point the crew had to negotiate winds of 60 knots, 12 knots less than a hurricane. Recalling the storm in a video blog, De Rothschild said: "I remember being woken up by Mr T [co-skipper David Thompson] shouting 'all hands of deck'. I'd always been apprehensive of the Tasman Sea and what we were going to face. This was kind of like my own worse nightmare coming to fruition."

The route took the vessel close to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an enormous mesh of plastic and chemical sludge that circles a series of gyres in the heart of the ocean. The vortex is thought to be up to six times the size of Britain, containing millions of tonnes of non-biodegradable rubbish that wreaks havoc with marine and bird life.

Some of the crew members had to wrestle with more than just the day-to-day discomforts of living in a cabin of just 20ft by 15ft as it ploughs through 8,000 miles of ocean. Jo Royle, the ship's captain, was the only woman on board and said she was looking forward to spending some time with less hirsute companions in the coming weeks. "I'm definitely looking forward to a glass of wine and a giggle with my girlfriends," she said.

Vern Moen, a filmmaker who was documenting Palstiki's voyage, had a particularly emotional end to his journey. He was greeted by his newly born son on arrival in Australia. He was able to watch the delivery of his child on a grainy internet connection using Skype. "It was very, very surreal to show up on a dock and it's like, 'here's your kid'," he said.

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LIKE its sister property in Las Vegas but twice as large, the Venetian Macao is built for MICE—meetings, incentives, conventions (or conferences) and exhibitions. It has 3,000 hotel suites, a 15,000-seat arena that has hosted concerts by Lady Gaga and the Police, expensive shops and restaurants and a warren of immense gaming rooms. Next door is the Plaza Macao, featuring yet more gaming, shops and spas, as well as a Four Seasons hotel and the grand residential Plaza Mansions.

Mr Adelson, the owner of the complex, rejects the traditional “hub and spokes” casino-hotel design that forces guests to pass through the gaming floor to do anything outside their hotel room, just in case they feel a sudden urge to chuck some money into a slot machine. His Plaza Macao has a separate entrance to the Mansions and Four Seasons, a long way from the gaming floor. This is for the benefit of Chinese government officials, who may not be photographed in a gambling environment.

Macau is the world’s biggest gambling market, and until 2001 it was entirely controlled by one company, Sociedade de Turismo e Diversões de Macau (STDM), headed by Stanley Ho. Mr Ho’s garish pair of casinos, the flagship Casino Lisboa and the newer Grand Lisboa, remain the most prominent gambling establishment in central Macau, but he now faces stiff competition from a pair of seasoned Las Vegas companies, Wynn Resorts and Sands China, a subsidiary of Las Vegas Sands, as well as China’s Galaxy Entertainment Group.The contrast between Mr Ho’s flagships illustrates the way that Macau’s gambling market has evolved. Casino Lisboa is small, tightly packed, loud and smoky. Nearly all of the gaming floor is taken up by tables offering Macau’s two most popular games: baccarat—in which punters bet on the turn of a card—and sic bo, in which they bet on the value of three rolled dice. Both involve about as much skill as betting on coin flips. The Grand Lisboa, by contrast, has craps and blackjack tables, a poker room, a sports book, a number of restaurants ranging from the upmarket to an excellent noodle shop, and hundreds of slot machines. However, on a recent visit the sportsbook stood empty and unattended; a single poker table was occupied; blackjack action was scant; four employees stood around a craps table enticing passers-by to try their luck. By contrast baccarat and sic bo were going at full tilt. Old gambling habits die hard.

The competition from Messrs Adelson and Wynn ended Mr Ho’s monopoly (though his company still accounts for about one-third of the territory’s gambling market) and boosted Macau’s overall revenue. Last year the island’s 30-odd casinos generated income of around $15 billion. According to GBGC, a consultancy that specialises in the gambling industry, its overall gambling revenue in that year rose by nearly 10%, whereas North America’s fell by 7% and Europe’s by 12%. And Macau is going from strength to strength: in the first quarter of 2010 its gambling revenues were 57% up on a year earlier.

Mainlanders’ playground

The Chinese are known as passionate gamblers, and Macau is where they come to play. Steve Jacobs, the head of Sands China, reckons that four-fifths of his visitors hail from the mainland and the rest mainly from other Asian countries, notably Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam and India. Most of the Venetian Macao’s revenue comes from wealthy guests, many of whom are on junkets organised by businesses in China that market them to visitors, plan the travel and extend credit to gamblers. The casinos provide the gaming and generally split the proceeds with the junket operators.

Chinese visiting rights, however, are tightly controlled by the government. Mainlanders need a visa to go to Macau, and the authorities are apt to change the frequency and duration of permitted visits on a whim. Last year, after a number of embarrassing stories about government officials using public funds to bet in Macau, mainlanders were limited to one visit every three months. Even so, Mr Jacobs said that visa restrictions are “one of the things I think least about”: the Chinese government is clearly happy maintaining Macau as a source of steady gambling revenue, close to but politically separate from the mainland. And with a population of over 1 billion, mainland China has enough people to keep the visitors coming despite the restrictions.

In fact, Macau draws so many punters that casinos are literally rising from the sea: the Venetian and the Plaza anchor a development known as the Cotai Strip, built on a five-kilometre piece of reclaimed land that links the two Macanese islands of Coloane and Taipa. The “Cotai” part of the new plot’s name comes from the first syllables of the two islands; the Strip part of it is clearly meant to evoke Las Vegas. Galaxy opened the Grand Waldo, the first resort there, in 2006; the Venetian and Plaza followed soon after and will be joined by two more Sands developments. There will also be new hotels from Raffles, Conrad, Hilton, Sheraton, Swissotel and St Regis.

Busting out all over

The Cotai Strip may be the most high-profile gambling development in Asia, but there are plenty of others. In the past few months Singapore has seen the opening of two large integrated resorts, Resorts World Sentosa and Marina Bay Sands, which cost about $10 billion. The Philippines Amusement and Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR) has launched a hotel-and-casino complex on a large chunk of reclaimed land in Manila Bay. According to PAGCOR, its partners in the venture—Australia’s Bloomsbury Investments, Malaysia’s Genting Group and Aruze, a Japanese company known mainly for its pachinko and slot machines—each stand ready to invest $2 billion-3 billion in the venture.

In 2008 the government of Vietnam granted Asian Coast Development, a Canadian company, the right to construct five integrated resorts on 169 hectares of beachfront land near Ho Chi Minh City. The first of them, the MGM Grand Ho Tram, is scheduled to open in 2013. In Bavet, Cambodia, south-east of Phnom Penh, the $100m Titan King Casino opened in February this year. It joins a number of other Cambodian casinos near the country’s borders with Vietnam and Thailand. In Japan the only legal forms of gambling at the moment are pachinko, the lottery and horseracing, but that could soon change. Mr Jacobs predicts that if the Japanese market were to open up, it would be five to ten times the size of Macau’s.

Yet many Asian governments, for all their eagerness to get their hands on more tax revenue, still remain ambivalent about gambling. Singapore charges its own citizens S$100 ($72) to enter its casinos but foreigners pay nothing. Only one of South Korea’s 14 casinos is open to the locals. Egyptian and North Korean casinos too will happily take foreigners’ money yet bar their own citizens. China rations mainlanders’ access to Macau. On the Chinese mainland the only legal form of gambling is a thriving lottery.

driver from www.economist.com

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Examining a culture's tools and technology can tell us about the group's history and way of life.Similarly,research into the material culture of music can help us to understand the music-culture.The most vivid body of "things" in it,of course,are musical instruments.We cannot hear for ourselves the actual sound of any musical performance before the 1870s when the phonograph (S^#l)was invented,so we rely on instruments for important information about music-cultures in the remote past and their development.Here we have two kinds of evidence: instruments well preserved and instruments pic-tured in art.Through the study of instruments,as well as paintings,written documents,and so on,we can explore the movements of music from the Near East to China over a thousand years ago,or we can outline the spread of Near Eastern influence to Europe that resulted in the development of most of the instruments in the symphony orchestra.

Sheet music or printed music, too, is material culture.Scholars once de-fined folk music-cultures as those in which people learn and sing music by ear rather than from print,but research shows mutual influence among oral and written sources during the past few centuries in Europe,Britain,and America.Printed versions limit variety because they tend to standardize any song,yet they stimulate people to create new and different songs.Besides, the ability to read music notation (flsilf ) has a far-reaching effect on musi-cians and,when it becomes widespread,on the music-culture as a whole.

One more important part of music's material culture should be single out:the influence of the electronic media, radio,record player,tape recorder,television,and videocassette.with the future promising talking and singing computers and other developments. This is all part of the "informa¬tion revolution",a twentieth-century phenomenon as important as the indus-trial revolution was in the nineteenth.These electronic media are not just limited to modern nations;they have affected music-cultures all over the globe.

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Many women, according to this hypothesis, would rather work than marry. The converse( fi. Bf ) of this concern is that the prospects of becoming a multi-paycheck household could encourage marriages. In the past, only the earnings and financial prospects of the man counted in the marriage decision. Now, however, the earning ability of a woman can make her more attractive as a marriage partner. Data show that economic downturns tend to postpone marriage because the parties cannot afford to establish a family or are concerned about rainy days ahead. As the economy rebounds, the number of marriages also rises.

Coincident with the increase in women working outside the home is the increase in divorce rates. Yet, it may be wrong to jump to any simple cause-and-effect conclusions. The impact of a wife's work on divorce is no less cloudy than its impact on marriage decisions. The realization that she can be a good provider may increase the chances that a working wife will choose divorce over an unsatisfactory marriage. But the reverse is equally plausible. Tensions grounded in financial problems often play a key role in ending a marriage. Given high unemployment, inflationary problems, and slow growth in real earnings, a working wife can increase household income and relieve some of these pressing financial burdens. By raising a family's standard of living, a working wife may strengthen her family's financial and emotional stability.

Psychological factors also should be considered. For example, a wife blocked from a careeroutside the home may feel caged in the house. She may view her only choice as seeking a divorce.On the other hand, if she can find fulfillment through work outside the home, work and marriage can go together to create a stronger and more stable union.

Also, a major part of women' s inequality in marriage has been due to

the fact that, in mostcases, men have remained the main breadwinners. With higher earning capacity and status occupations outside of the home comes the capacity to exercise power within file family. A working wife may rob a husband of being the master of the house. Depending upon how the couple reacts to these new conditions, it pould create a stronger equal partnership or it could create new insecurities.

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Its promoter was an Irish-American labor leader amed Peter J. McGuire. A carpenter by trade, McGuire had worked since the age of eleven, nd in 1882 was president of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners (UBCJ). pproaching the City's Central Labor Union that summer, he proposed a holiday that would pp/aud (.^fr-Vf-) "the industrial spirit — the great vital force of every nation. " On September his suggestion bore fruit, as an estimated 10,000 workers, many of them ignoring their asses' warnings, left work to march from Union Square up Fifth Avenue to 42nd Street. The event gained national attention, and by 1893 thirty states had made Labor Day an annua holiday.

The quick adoption of the scheme may have indicated less about the state lawmakers respect for working people than about a fear of risking their anger. In the 1880s the Unitec States was a land sharply divided between the immensely wealthy and the very poor. Henn George was accurate in describing the era as one of "progress and poverty". In a society ir which factory owners rode in private Pullmans while ten-year-olds slaved in the mines, stronc anti-capitalist feelings ran high, Demands for fundamental change were common throughout the labor press. With socialists demanding an end to "wage slavery" and anarchists( fcn^ffrs. ;5O singing the praises of the virtues of dynamite (#£ J§) , middle-of-the-roaders like Samue Gompers and McGuire seemed attractively mild by comparison . One can imagine practica capitalists seeing Labor Day as a bargain-. A one-day party certainly cost them less thai paying their workers decent wages.

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The boys and the girls live in separate worlds. The boys in their universe and we in ours. My brothers for example. They've got plenty to say to me and Nenny inside the house. But outside they can't be seen talking to girls. Carlos and Kiki are each other's best friend... not ours.

Nenny is too young to be my friend. She's just my sister and that was not my fault. You don't pick your sisters, you just get them and sometimes they come like Nenny.

She can't play with those Vargas kids or she'll turn out just like them. And since she comes right after me, she is my responsibility.

Someday I will have a best friend all my own. One I can tell my secrets to. One who will understand my jokes without my having to explain them. Until then I am a red balloon, a balloon tied to an anchor.

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Native Americans greets him, offering gifts of corn. Columbus found little gold on that trip, but he collected many plants, including corn to bring back to Spain. Columbus didn't know it. But the corn was much more valuable than gold. Farmers from Europe to Asia accepted it immediately. They grew it on cold mountain sides and in tropical forest. Today it feeds millions of people all over the world, on his second trip, Columbus brought back a bag of chocolate beans to make chocolate. Europeans and Asians love this new drink, and soon they were paying a great deal of money for the beans. Chocolate beans became so valuable in central America that they were used as cash for 200 years. Tomatoes and potatoes took same time to become popular. Eventually, however, they became the basis of a lot of popular food. It is hard to imagine life without fried potatoes and chocolate. Thanks to native American cultures, many people are able to enjoy lots of tasty food.

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When he came to analyze their embarrassing lapses (Ulili) in a scientific report, he was surprised to find that nearly all of them fell into a few groupings, Nor did the lapses appear to be entirely random (ffi^/l^I).

One of the women, for instance, on leaving her house for work one morning threw her dog her earrings and tried to fix a dog biscuit on her ear. "The explanation for this is that the brain is like a computer," explains the professor. "People programmed themselves to do certain activities regularly. It was the woman's custom every morning to throw her dog two biscuits and then put on her earrings. But somehow the action got reversed in the program," About one in twenty of the incidents the volun¬teers reported were these "program assembly failures."

Altogether the volunteers logged 433 unintentional actions that they found themselves doing — an average of twelve each. There appear to be peak periods in the day when we are at our zaniest (^Tp"RT ^&^1). There are two hours some time between 8:00 a.m. and noon, between 4:00and 6:00 p.m. with a smaller peak between 8:00 and 10:00 p.m. "Among men the peak seems to be when a changeover in brain 'programmers' occurs, as for instance between going to and from work." Women on average reported slightly more lapses — 12.5 compared with 10.9 for men and probably because they were more reliable reporters.

A startling finding of the research is that the absent-minded activity is a hazard of doing things in which we are skilled. Normally, you would expect that skill reduces the number of errors we make. But trying to avoid silly slips by concentrating more could make things a lot worse and even dangerous.

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PORTLAND, Ore. — Kellogg Co. said Wednesday that higher-than-normal amounts of certain chemicals in its package liners caused the unusual smell and flavor that prompted a recall of 28 million boxes of its cereal in late June.

The food maker recalled Apple Jacks, Corn Pops, Froot Loops and Honey Smacks after about 20 people complained, including five who reported nausea and vomiting.

Consumers reported the cereal smelled or tasted waxy and others said the taste or smell was similar to that of metal or soap. Others simply described it as stale.

The company, based in Battle Creek, Mich., said it has identified elevated levels of chemicals called hydrocarbons as the source. Those chemicals include methyl naphthalene.

Kellogg said those chemicals are normally found at lower concentrations in the wax and film used for food packaging. The company said the wax used in its liners is commonly used as a protective coating for foods including cheese, raw fruits and vegetables.

Little is known about the risks of moderate exposure to methyl naphthalene.

The Food and Drug Administration said it is reviewing Kellogg's information and conducting its own risk assessment.

Kellogg said the amount of the chemicals wasn't at a level thought to be harmful and that it is working with its supplier to ensure the situation does not happen again.

The advocacy group Environmental Working Group said Kellogg and the FDA have an obligation to follow up, given the lack of knowledge about the chemical. The group said it also underscores the need for improved food and food packaging oversight.

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