A detailed and well-preserved Roman parade helmet -- complete with fine facial features on its face mask, tight curly hair, and a griffin-topped cap -- will go up for auction October 7, five months after it was found in northern England. The helmet is estimated at £200,000 to £300,000 (about $316,000 to $475,000) but could go for much more when it goes on sale at Christie's auction house in London. The Tullie House Museum in Carlisle, near where the helmet was found in May by a person with a metal detector, has launched a public fundraising appeal to try to procure the helmet as the centerpiece for a new Roman gallery. Christie's called the Crosby Garrett helmet -- so named for the village where it was found, about 45 miles south of the Scottish border -- an "extraordinary example of Roman metalwork at its zenith" and said it dates to the late 1st to 2nd century A.D. See beautiful pictures of front and side view of helmet at: http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/10/06/england.roman.helmet/?hpt=T2

Since 2006, 20 to 40 percent of the bee colonies in the United States alone have suffered “colony collapse.” Suspected culprits ranged from pesticides to genetically modified food. Now, a unique partnership — of military scientists and entomologists — appears to have achieved a major breakthrough: identifying a new suspect, or two. A fungus tag-teaming with a virus have apparently interacted to cause the problem, according to a paper by Army scientists in Maryland and bee experts in Montana in the online science journal PLoS One. Exactly how that combination kills bees remains uncertain, the scientists said — a subject for the next round of research. But there are solid clues: both the virus and the fungus proliferate in cool, damp weather, and both do their dirty work in the bee gut, suggesting that insect nutrition is somehow compromised. Liaisons between the military and academia are nothing new, of course. World War II, perhaps the most profound example, ended in an atomic strike on Japan in 1945 largely on the shoulders of scientist-soldiers in the Manhattan Project. And a group of scientists led by Jerry Bromenshenk of the University of Montana in Missoula has researched bee-related applications for the military in the past — developing, for example, a way to use honeybees in detecting land mines. But researchers on both sides say that colony collapse may be the first time that the defense machinery of the post-Sept. 11 Homeland Security Department and academia have teamed up to address a problem that both sides say they might never have solved on their own. One perverse twist of colony collapse that has compounded the difficulty of solving it is that the bees do not just die — they fly off in every direction from the hive, then die alone and dispersed. That makes large numbers of bee autopsies — and yes, entomologists actually do those — problematic. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/science/07bees.html

The most important thing to take into account when thinking about salt is that the flavor of the salt itself is not what matters. Nobody eats salt by itself. What matters is the interaction of the salt and the food. Three main things that determine how salt will play up the flavors of food are its crystal shape, its mineral content, and the residual moisture caught up in the crystals. Delicate moist clean flavored fleur de sel is the go-to salt for all the subtle to medium bodied and flavored foods, from buttered toast to steamed veggies to fish to caramels. Snappy bright flake salts are great for fresh vegetables and green salads, or anywhere that you want a spark of salt to contrast vibrantly with the food. Sel gris is the best salt for finishing red meats, root vegetables, and other heartier foods, and this is also your go-to salt for most cooking uses, from boiling pasta water to rubbing the cavity of a chicken before roasting. Mark Bitterman, author of Salted (Ten Speed Press). http://www.herbivoracious.com/2010/06/interview-with-mark-bitterman-leading-expert-on-culinary-salts.html According to Bitterman, there are 145 kinds of sea salt.

The Black Canyon of Gunnison National Park stretches far beyond the 14 miles within the national park. Including the canyon within Curecanti National Recreation Area and Gunnison Gorge National Conservation Area, the total length is 53 miles. http://www.nps.gov/blca/planyourvisit/things2do.htm The Gunnison River drops an average of 43 feet per mile through the entire canyon, making it one of the steepest mountain descents in North America. In comparison, the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon drops an average of 7.5 feet per mile. The greatest descent of the Gunnison River occurs in the park at Chasm View dropping 240 feet per mile. The Black Canyon is so named on account of its steepness which makes it difficult for sunlight to penetrate very far down. As a result, the canyon walls are most often in shadow, causing the rocky walls to appear black. At its narrowest point, the canyon is only 40 feet wide across the river. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Canyon_of_the_Gunnison_National_Park

The luxury home that Thomas Chapman built on the lip of the magnificent Black Canyon here isn't just an investment. It's a provocation. Mr. Chapman, a small-town real-estate broker, has made a controversial career trading scattered parcels of private land that sit inside national forests and national parks. On behalf of his clients or his business partners, he talks up plans to develop the parcels: a subdivision at a scenic overlook, an RV park on a canyon rim, a rustic estate inside a remote wilderness area. Sometimes he even brings out the bulldozers. Environmentalists sound the alarm. And often, the government or conservationists come with money or a land swap to buy him out, saving the cherished parcel from development—and making Mr. Chapman money. He and his business partners bought a 112-acre parcel within the boundaries of Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park in rugged western Colorado. They spent $240,000 for land the federal government had recently appraised at $175,000. When no conservationists stepped forward to buy the land, Mr. Chapman raised the ante: He built a 4,800-square-foot home on the canyon rim, which he has put on the market for $13 million, helicopter included. And he sold off a second home site—on higher ground, with even more spectacular views—for $2.1 million. Read much more at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703743504575493500432327106.html

It’s hard to keep up with the patent suits flying among mobile phone companies. On October 1, Microsoft joined the ring, with a suit leveled at Motorola’s Android-based smart phones, filed in the International Trade Commission and the federal court in the Western District of Washington. The suit charges Motorola with infringing on its patents related to “synchronizing email, calendars and contacts, scheduling meetings, and notifying applications of changes in signal strength and battery power.”
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/10/microsoft-sues-motorola-over-android/

In a key test of free speech protections in the US, the supreme court has heard arguments about whether a fundamentalist church had the right to picket a marine's funeral with signs like "Thank God for Dead Soldiers". Members of the Westboro Baptist church in Topeka, Kansas, protested at the 2006 funeral of Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder to express their view that US deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq were God's punishment for US immorality and tolerance of homosexuality and abortion. While distancing themselves from the church's message, media organisations, including the Associated Press, have called on the court to side with the Westboro church because of concerns that a victory for Albert Snyder could erode the right to free speech. http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2010/oct/07/us-military-funeral-protest-supreme-court