Remains Of King Richard III Discovered In Parking Lot

by Sean McLachlan on


Back in September, we reported that the lost tomb of Richard III may have been found in Leicester, England. Now the Daily Mail reports the remains in that tomb have been determined to be those of the king.

Richard III was the last of the Plantagenet kings and fought the Tudors during the War of the Roses for control of the kingdom. The final showdown came in 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth, where Richard was killed. His body was buried in the church of the Franciscan friary of the Grey Friars in nearby Leicester. The church and friary were demolished in the 1530s and its location forgotten. Using old maps, archaeologists from the University of Leicester and the Richard III Society figured out that the church lay beneath the parking lot of the city’s social services department.

The team sunk exploratory trenches and soon located the friary and the remains of a man and a woman. The male skeleton had wounds from an arrow and from a blade to the skull, consistent with accounts of Richard’s death. The skeleton also suffered from scoliosis. Richard was said to have been a humpback, and this disease could have created such a deformity.

There has yet to be an official announcement. The Daily Mail cites an unnamed source with “knowledge of the excavation” and states that an official announcement won’t come until a TV documentary airs in January. A descendant of Richard III was used to provide a DNA match but it’s unclear if this is what has determined the body is that of the dead king.

The Daily Telegraph has also reported that unnamed sources confirm the skeleton is that of the king “beyond all reasonable doubt.”

While royalty are generally buried in Westminster Abbey in London, the Ministry of Justice has ruled that any remains determined to be those of Richard III should be buried in Leicester Cathedral.

Amsterdam’s Most Unusual Teacher

by David Farley on

I first heard about Lieka from her boss. He runs a tour guide company in Amsterdam. And over beers, he listed the types of tours his company offers. “There are Red Light District tours, there are food tours and there are drinking tours.”

“Oh yeah!” he said, “I also have a woman offer a workshop in giving oral sex to men.”

That’s when there was a record scratch across the heavens. Wait, what? It’s for tour groups who want to do a little something different while in Amsterdam and it’s for bachelorette parties. “It’s really quite fun,” he said. And then he mentioned the teacher was going to be stopping by his office – conveniently located next to the pub we were sitting in – and offered to introduce me.

And so, smack in the center of the Dutch metropolis and a herring’s throw from the Red Light District, where packs of guys roam to gawk at the ladies in their little booths, I met with Lieka. An attractive brunette in her mid-20s, and as long as I wouldn’t use her last name (or her photo), she kindly allowed me to interview her about her most unusual profession.Gadling: How does one become such a teacher?

Lieka: First of all, you have to have an interest in the subject matter. I studied social work and psychology and have taught sex ed before, so I felt qualified.

Gadling: Is there, like, a certificate program one can do in order to teach a class like this?

Lieka: [Laughs] No.

Gadling: So how did you prepare or study to teach the class?

Lieka: I interviewed the target group: guys! I asked them what they liked. I also talked to a few prostitutes.

Gadling: How often do you teach the class?

Lieka: It depends. But some months I’ll teach it four times.

Gadling: How do you make the students feel comfortable?

Lieka: I give them a glass of wine at the start. I tell jokes and say there’s no judgment in the class. I also let them pick their own dildos and ask them to give it a name. It’s funny to see who takes the biggest one.

Gadling: Is there a common name that keeps popping up?

Lieka: I often hear “Anaconda.”

Gadling: Have there been any injuries yet, like choking or gagging?

Lieka: [Laughs] Not yet.

Gadling: What’s a common beginners mistake?

Lieka: A lot of the women think you do it the way they do it in porn films – and this intimidates them. It’s just up and down. There’s a lot in between, too!

Gadling: Do you give homework?

Lieka: Sort of. I tell them that the next time they do it, they have to mix all the techniques. Hopefully they’ll learn.

Gadling: So no one’s returned to tell you how they made out?

Lieka: Not yet. Usually the classes are fun and are sort of a joke but once I had a group of Muslim women and it became clear that the bride-to-be had really never had sex. So she was really learning for the first time.

Gadling: Can you spot talent in the class? Is one born with such a talent or is this a skill one can acquire?

Lieka: Everyone can do it! You just have to have an interest in pleasuring the other person.

Gadling: Have any guys been in the class?

Lieka: No. But the women always suggest we offer a class to guys teaching them how to reciprocate.

Gadling: Who would teach that course?

Lieka: I would!

[Photo by David Farley]

Traveling With Food Allergies Easier With Smartphone Add-On

by Chris Owen on

Traveling with food allergies requires an extra measure of caution for those affected. In the past, that caution may have kept them from sampling local fare, a big part of any travel experience. Now, a new smartphone add-on will allow allergy-suffering travelers to test their meal at restaurants, food trucks, sidewalk cafes or any other dining venue around the world.

I have a friend in the UK who has a fish/seafood allergy so severe that if she so much as smells fish, a reaction occurs. If a tiny speck of fish accidentally makes its way in or on to something she eats? Off to the hospital she goes. She is far from alone.

Unique food allergies, sensitivities or restrictions with reactions that can be severe, and even life-threatening, affect millions of people, both children and adults. While traveling, those affected can’t rely on others to help; the down side to them being wrong is just too much of a gamble.Airlines provide special meals for these travelers if notified in advance. Food labels can indicate potential problem ingredients. Asking servers what is in food can help too. But until now, nothing allergic travelers could do would guarantee food safety.

To give allergic travelers a high level of confidence that what they are about to eat is safe for them, researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) developed the iTube.

Using the cellphone’s built-in camera, the iTube, along with a smartphone app, runs a test with the same high level of sensitivity of a laboratory. Unlike other mobile devices that detect allergens, the iTube is easy to use and much less bulky, according to the UCLA researchers at the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science.

“We envision that this cellphone–based allergen testing platform could be very valuable, especially for parents, as well as for schools, restaurants and other public settings,” says Aydogan Ozcan, leader of the research team and a UCLA associate professor of electrical engineering and bioengineering in the UCLA Newsroom.

Can’t wait for the iTube to hit the shelves of your favorite gear store? A Food Allergy Translation Card iPhone App may help while you wait, as we see in this video:


[Photo Credits- Flickr user sweenpole2001 and UCLA Newsroom]

The Caucasus, Central Asia And British Airways

by Alex Robertson Textor on

I traveled to Beirut earlier this year with bmi (British Midland International), the East Midlands-based airline partially absorbed into British Airways in the spring. My Beirut trip was meant to be the third installment in an ongoing series called “Far Europe and Beyond,” which reached a premature end in the lead-up to the airline’s sale to International Airlines Group (IAG), the parent of British Airways and Iberia.

“Far Europe and Beyond” was, as its title suggests, focused on several cities along on Europe’s margins and just beyond. I visited Tbilisi and Yerevan last year, Beirut earlier this year, and had hoped to carry on to three additional cities, one (Baku) within Europe and Almaty and Bishkek (see above), both indisputably outside of Europe.

BA has absorbed many bmi routes and withdrawn others. I did a little cursory research and discovered that two of the cities I originally proposed for the series (Bishkek and Yerevan) have been dropped – as has Tehran, where the Yerevan-London bmi flight I took last October originated.

Last week, in response to an email query, a helpful British Airways spokesperson confirmed that the above destinations have indeed not been included in BA’s winter schedule. When I asked whether or not BA had any intention to initiate new routes to the Caucasus and Central Asia, she told me that there were no immediate plans to do so, and added that she suspected that future route development would focus on destinations further east. She also pointed out that the airline has just begun to fly nonstop between London and Seoul, an exciting development in light of the ascendance of Korean popular culture and the recent debut of a Seoul-based correspondent at Gadling.

Here’s a little plea to British Airways: please bring these cities back, perhaps looped into other routes on a once-a-week basis. What about a stop in Bishkek coming back from Almaty or a stop in Yerevan en route to Tbilisi?If these routes can’t be returned to service, perhaps they could be replaced with similarly enthralling new destinations in the general neighborhood, all direct from London. What about a flight to Uralsk, gateway to the gas reserves of West Kazakhstan’s Karachaganak Field? How about seasonal flights to Georgia’s Black Sea holiday town of Batumi? What about making a big pre-Olympic fuss over Sochi? (The 2014 Winter Olympics are just 15 months away.) Why not resume a previously abandoned route to Ekaterinburg?

Pleasing me would form a terrible basis for route development decisions, granted, but there have to be profitable routes in this general region that are not served by other oneworld alliance airlines.

Do it for the love of commerce and industry in the post-Soviet space, BA.

[Image: Flickr | Thomas Depenbusch]

My Own Personal Krampus

by Pam Mandel on

I have a photo, printed from film, old school … my husband and I are standing in a snowstorm in the Austrian alps. The flash from the camera reflects off giant fluffy flakes. The sky behind us is black – it’s early evening, but an alpine evening, so it is dark. We are wearing big coats and big hats and big snow boots. We are surrounded by a group of Krampus, the alpine monster of the season, big shaggy horned devils who strike fear into the hearts of small children, who chase taunting teenagers down the streets of snow-globe villages, who torment tourists and locals alike.

Only we don’t look the least bit rattled. We are smiling big holiday smiles. It looks like a family portrait with our pets.

The Krampusspiel – or, as I like to call it, The Running of the Krampus – takes place every year on December 6. It’s part of a series of deep winter alpine traditions around Christmas and the solstice that acknowledge the change of the season. Three Kings come to your house and chalk your doorways, and there are little sprites that rattle around in your fireplace until you give them candy to go away, and there are runners in all white who carry beautiful lanterns and ring bells to scare away the bad spirits of the previous year.

But the Krampus has taken the spotlight. His shaggy coat, his massive size, his devil’s face, and his swinging broomstick, have captured the collective imagination, perhaps targeting the same people that like slasher movies. Krampus parades take over the streets of popular ski villages in Austria (and some parts of Bavaria) in a pageant of Alien meets Satan. Removed from the context of all those winter traditions, the Krampus is now the star in a winter nightmare of swinging chains, of orcs set free from Middle Earth, of underworld creatures released from the pits of hell.Every year we read at least one story of a tourist absolutely terrorized by an out of control Krampus at a Krampusspiel. And every year we have to wade through a swamp of nostalgia and annoyance. These are not our Krampus’, they are not the Krampus my Austrian husband grew up with, they are not the Krampus he dressed up as when he was in his twenties. They are not the Krampus in our family portrait.

I was utterly enchanted with the Krampus the first time I saw him. He was in the hallway of our apartment building. I heard him before I saw him; he wore giant cowbells and rattled through the streets in the dark. I opened the door and he was standing there, filling the stairwell, while the neighbor’s kids stood silent, wide eyed in wonder. They looked tiny, awestruck, but not afraid. I’m quite sure if they’d looked up, past the shaggy monster’s waist, they’d have seen their expressions reflected on my own wondering face.

While locals line the sidewalks and await his (pre-scheduled) arrival at their homes, the Krampus runs through town, shaking his bells, swinging his broomstick, and admonishing the little ones about their behavior throughout the year. He’s got friends with him who carry baskets of treats for kids – peanuts and tangerines and maybe little chocolates. Sometimes, St. Nikolaus is there too, giving stern but affectionate lectures, asking the children to recite rhymes about Christmas.

The story of the Krampus is scary. He will beat you with his broomstick, stuff you in his sack, drag you back to his lair if you’ve been bad. He’s a terror. There’s no denying it. But our Krampus, the one that runs the streets of my husband’s tiny village, he’s more “Where the Wild Things Are” than hatched from James Cameron’s green glowing alien planet. His face is a carved wooden mask, not shiny resin and plastic. He carries a bundle of twigs bound into an old fashioned broom, not a length of chain or a whip. He will raise his hands over head and roar at the cocky teenager who taunts him with the traditional Krampus rhyme, but he will not chase a tourist four blocks in an act of aggression. He is campfire ghost-story scary, not “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” scary.

It is strange that I have affection for this alpine myth, for this black devil from places unknown, but each winter I find myself an unlikely defender of the Krampus. People send me videos of vicious looking beasts running rampant through snow covered hamlets and I think, “No, no, no. You don’t understand, this is not what the Krampus is.” My memory will not be ruined by this. I hold the picture in my hand and think, “Ah, there you are! This is the Krampus I know, the one my husband grew up with!” I stand in the snow surrounded by creatures imagined. There are big snowflakes and the sound of bells and eyes big with wonder and I am not even a little bit afraid.

[Photo credit: Pam Mandel]