View from a Rhino House: crowning moments

In the Czech Republic a convicted fraudster, on the run from prison, was hired as the chief economist at a museum, where he stole some 10 million Czech crowns, national media reported.

Police arrived unannounced on Thursday morning to arrest Vladimir Prokop at his office at the National Agricultural Museum. He made his escape through the museum’s exhibition halls, down an emergency exit staircase & then hailed a cab in front of the museum’s main entrance & in full view of a number of police squad cars & officers, it was reported late on Friday.

The money stolen amounts to over 30% of the museum’s annual budget. As a “strange-but-true” footnote, most of the stolen cash was found in plastic bags at Prokop’s flat when police searched it later on Thursday afternoon.

Prokop got the job under a false identity & after passing himself off as a trained economist; it appears no checks were made on his background & no references were taken-up by the museum. Calls to his phone number, still listed on the museum’s website on Saturday, went unanswered.

Last June he escaped from prison where he was serving time for embezzling 10 million Czech crowns from the Prague branch of the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren, where he managed its foreign donations.

Got to love a man who doesn’t give-up the first time he’s knocked back.

Have you seen the admission prices, it's daylight robbery.... — Have you seen the admission prices, it’s daylight robbery….

View from a Rhino House: mummy knows best.

For months, curators at a museum at Manchester in the UK have been wondering why an ancient Egyptian statue in a sealed display cabinet had been rotating on its glass shelf, without any outside assistance.

As is usual with anything old, Egyptian & vaguely related to the dead, there were claims that it was cursed by an Egyptian god, or that the spirit of its owner had entered the statue, causing it to shudder. Others put forward more expansive explanations, suggesting that an alien-generated magnetic field was behind the statue’s movements (amongst other things).

Prosaically, a British engineer has now solved the riddle, discovering that tiny vibrations from passing traffic & footsteps from passersby & museum visitors were causing the 3,800-year-old stone figure to rotate.

“The statue was spinning due to vibration of the display case,” a spokesman for the museum said yesterday. “We installed an accelerometer & found that vibrations from both road traffic & footsteps outside & within the museum, were the cause.”

It seems that the 25 cm statue was off-balance & especially susceptible to vibrations.

“With an object of such hard material on a glass shelf, the level of friction between the two materials is very low. It doesn’t take a lot to make it move,” the spokesman said.

The statue, of a man called Neb-Senu, was an offering to Osiris, ancient Egyptian god of the dead & ruler of the underworld.

I shall sleep easier now.

But is it art? #6

Art, history or a comment on extraordinary rendition? (by Banksy)

View from a Rhino House: crime & punishment (too close to home)

This week a man in the UK was sentenced to 18 months for his failed & misguided attempt to steal a stuffed-rhino head (dear God is there no shame?) worth up to £500,000 from a museum. The heist was thwarted by a gallant band of staff & visitors.

Patrick Kiely (a known & loathsome hater of all that is good, decent & horned) pleaded guilty to attempting to steal the stuffed specimen from Castle Museum in Norwich in February, claiming he had acted because of the high value of rhinoceros horns, which are used in southern Asian medicine & now trade, weight-for-weight, for more than gold.

Kiely was part of a gang who smashed a glass case containing the rhino head while an accomplice waited outside the museum in a stolen car, the court was told. (Probably parked illegally, surely that was worth a capital sentence?)

“As they attempted to leave with the head, staff & visitors blockaded the exits & would not let them out. They dropped the head, partially damaging it (bastards), & made good their escape,” prosecutor Peter Gair told Norwich Crown Court.

He said the rhino head dated from late Victorian times & was worth up to £500,000.

The use of rhinoceros horns in Chinese medicine, as well as a spreading belief in Southeast Asia that they may cure cancer & AIDS, has resulted in a surge in rhino poaching figures this year & driven-up the street value of rhino horns to $65,000 a kilo, making them more expensive than gold, platinum or cocaine. (Why can’t these people just use heroin, like the rest of us?)

The other 3 gang members have not been arrested, but it is believed that their gored remains will be discovered hanging from the Norwich Zoo gates on December 25th. At least that’s the rumor, I could not possibly comment beyond that! Now to find the descendants of the fool who thought a stuffed rhino head would be a cute museum exhibit……

In the interests of decency this is a picture of a rhino head made from felt. No actual rhinos were harmed during its production.

View from a Rhino House: a destination of convenience

Rodin’s Thinker is to be seen sitting on a toilet at the world’s first theme park dedicated to the humble restroom. (Sic. & Sorry for all the euphemisms.)

The park, located in the city of Suwon (the home of Samsung Electronics) incorporates a toilet-shaped museum building that was once the home of Sim Jae-duck, founder & first president of the World Toilet Association.

The story is that Sim, a former Suwon mayor who made his fortune from a metal-working business & was dubbed “Mr Toilet,” was born in his grandmother’s rather unpleasant outhouse.

Sim, who died in 2009 at the age of 70, achieved fame in South Korea when he provided portable toilets for soccer fans when the country hosted the 2002 World Cup.

Before Sim’s house was donated to the city, visitors could book it for an overnight stay, but there is no record of anyone actually making a reservation.

Other exhibits at the park include Korean traditional squat toilets, European bedpans, & Marcel Duchamp’s witty sculpture “Fountain,” (which is a giant oversize porcelain urinal).

Suwon has since claimed the be the “mecca of toilet culture” in it’s tourist literature, & has “pushed to get toilets recognized as a central part of everyday life”. (Like they’re NOT?) It has funded toilet building programs in developing countries around the Pacific rim.

Suwon will continue the life-work of its most famous son by constructing the Toilet Culture Centre in 2014 adjacent to the current park, which has attracted 40,000 visitors since it opened in July.

Resisting the urge to charge a “penny” for admission, The park’s management confirmed that entrance to the toilet museum will remain free.