Archaeologists Digging At Lincoln Castle Uncover Early Christian Community

by Sean McLachlan on

Archaeologists excavating at Lincoln Castle have discovered the remains of an early Christian community, according to a Lincolnshire County Council press release.

The team, which was digging inside the castle to clear the way for an elevator shaft, found the remains of a church that dates back at least 1,000 years. Inside a sealed niche in the wall they found human bones. They had been wrapped in finely woven cloth and while the cloth has long since disappeared, it left its impression on the surrounding mortar. Excavators theorize that these may be the remains of a holy person, as it was common to put relics in church walls and altars in order to make them holy.

An even older find included several skeletons and a stone sarcophagus. The archaeological team is planning to put an endoscopic camera into the coffin to see what’s inside without disturbing it.

%Gallery-188672%Both the cemetery and church date to the Anglo-Saxon period, when England was a patchwork of different kingdoms before the Norman conquest. Lincoln had been a walled Roman town. The Romans left Britain in the early fifth century and were soon replaced by Anglo-Saxons coming from Denmark and northern Germany. They took up residence in Lincoln and many other Roman towns.

The present castle was built by the Normans in 1068 on the foundations of a Roman fort. William the Conqueror, after defeating the English King Harold Godwinson at Hastings in 1066, built this castle to control the important town of Lincoln and its surrounding area. While the castle has been modified over the centuries, it’s still one of the best-preserved Norman castles anywhere.

The typical Norman castle has a tower on an artificial mound at the center and with a wall encircling it. Lincoln Castle has two mounds, each with its own fortification and a long wall encircling them both. This tough fortification was besieged twice. The second time, in 1216, was during the Baron’s War, which led King John into making concessions to the nobility in the form of the famous Magna Carta. One of the original copies is on display here.

Back in 2010, an earlier excavation uncovered a secret tunnel at Lincoln castle. Excavations continue at in the castle grounds.

If you visit the castle, also check nearby Lincoln Cathedral, a beautiful Gothic building from the 11th century.

A Creative Way To Market In-Room Porn: No Malware! No Spyware! No Viruses!

by Dave Seminara on

The pretty young woman in a miniskirt on my TV screen had an interesting sales pitch that caught my attention.

“Access your in-room adult movie selections,” she purred. “Where there’s no spyware, no malware and no viruses!”

Here, on my television screen at an inn in Oregon, was proof positive that purveyors of in-room hotel porn are getting desperate. Given the choice between accessing porn for free on their computers or paying through the nose for it on pay-per-view, most randy hotel patrons are voting with their pocketbooks.

Indeed, LodgeNet, one of the companies that provides in-room entertainment options to a variety of major hotel chains, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection earlier this year; and, according to The New York Times, some of their competitors are also struggling. Meanwhile, some hotel chains, like Omni and Marriott, have gotten rid of in-room porn altogether.An industry expert cited by NBC News estimated that adult movies comprise 85 percent of the in-room entertainment revenues hotels collect, so the option to either market in-room porn more effectively or declare defeat and stake out the high moral ground, like Omni and Marriott, is clear.

I’m way too frugal to buy in-room movies, adult or otherwise, when I travel. If I want to watch a movie, I’ll stream something on Netflix, but that can be frustrating if the hotel has sketchy Wi-Fi. A story in the Times a few weeks ago speculated that hotels may move toward offering free low-speed Internet (thought it obviously won’t be called that) that will allow guests to send and receive e-mail but charge them for higher bandwidth access that will allow them to stream videos. One way or another, hotels will find a way to make money off of the guest’s desire to be entertained while on their premises.

What I would like from my in-room TV is the following: TV! When I hit the power button on the remote, I’m doing so because I want to watch TV. You know, the stuff that appears on the screen for free. But at many hotel chains, the default setting is the pay-per-view system and you have to figure out how to navigate out of it without accidentally authorizing something you’ll have to pay for. Often times, you just need to hit the channel up button, but sometimes you have to use the arrow buttons to navigate to the normal channel lineup. It’s not rocket science, but it is annoying.

Some hotels don’t have a pay-per-view system on default but they bring you directly to the hotel channel, which is normally used to tell you all about their overpriced steaks and massages and what not. I’d rather watch an infomercial for the Ab Lounge, thank you very much.

When I encountered the sultry vixen who promised me some adult fun with no spyware, malware or viruses, I was actually trying to find some cartoons for my kids. Really, I swear.

Swedes Don’t Like Aggressive Beer

by Anna Brones on

The first piece of news is that if you’re an Iron Maiden fan, there’s now a beer for you. The second piece of news is that if you’re going to Sweden you won’t be able to drink it.

Trooper, the new beer for hardcore Iron Maiden fans, is now available in the U.K., and can also be bought online and distributed to a variety of E.U. countries – except Sweden. Why? The label is just too much.

The main representative for Systembolaget, the government-run store that is the only place to sell any liquor above 3.5% alcohol in Sweden, claims that the label doesn’t adhere to Swedish labeling laws, which regard the Trooper beer label too “aggressive” to be allowed into the Swedish market.

Want your Iron Maiden beer? Stick to the U.K. for now.

Forbidden America: Cold War-Era Map Shows No-Go Zones For Soviet Tourists

by Libby Zay on

If you think security is tight now, imagine what it was like for Soviet tourists who came to the United States during the Cold War. Although a select few private Soviet citizens were granted permission to visit the Land of the Free in the 1950s, the U.S. government was very specific about the places these tourists could and could not visit. A map that surfaced on Slate’s new history blog, The Vault, details those forbidden places, which are shaded in green above.

The U.S. barred the admission of all Communists in 1952. According to Slate, tourists had to produce a detailed itinerary and get it approved before obtaining a visa to visit the U.S. Most ports and coastlines were off-limits to these travelers, as well as anywhere near weapons facilities or industrial centers. It seems these restrictions mirrored Soviet constraints on American travel to the USSR after World War II, with the only exceptions being journalists and government officials. These travel restrictions stayed in place until the Kennedy administration lifted them in 1962 as a symbol of the openness of American society.

[via BoingBoing]

Feminists Protest Barbie ‘Dreamhouse’ In Berlin

by Libby Zay on

Barbie’s Eurotrip hit a roadblock at its first stop in Germany, where an activist group caused quite a production at the opening of a touring Barbie “Dreamhouse.” CNN is reporting a group of left-wing feminists, Femen, protested the opening of a 27,000-square-foot pink mansion earlier today in Berlin, arguing the attraction puts the sexism and shallow materialism they believe Barbie symbolizes on display.

Above is a picture of one of the bare-breasted protesters in front of the Dreamhouse. An inscription across her torso reads “Life in Plastic is Not Fantastic,” and – in case you can’t tell – she’s holding up a burning cross with a charred Barbie doll attached to it. Protesters were arrested, but the movement led to an “Occupy Barbie Dreamhouse” page on Facebook, which already has thousands of “likes.”

Located off the shopping district of Alexanderplatz, the life-sized mansion is full of Barbie-related fashions, furniture and accessories. It will be open to the public until August 25, at which point it’s slotted to move on to other cities throughout Europe. A Dreamhouse also opened inside a Florida shopping mall last week.