“… rarity by itself shouldn’t necessarily be evidence of anything. When one is dealt a bridge hand of thirteen cards, the probability of being dealt that particular hand is less than one in 600 billion. Still, it would be absurd for someone to be dealt a hand, examine it carefully, calculate that the probability of getting it is less than one in 600 billion, and then conclude that he must not have been dealt that very hand because it is so very improbable.” —
John Allen Paulos, Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences
Bad news for art lovers: According to the major Norwegian daily Dagbladet, a ‘central source’ in the country’s criminal underworld says that one of the world’s most iconic paintings, Edvard Munch’s The Scream, has been incinerated. The motive for destroying the expressionist artwork was supposedly to eliminate evidence after armed robbers stole it from the a museum in Oslo last August.
Also allegedly gone up in smoke is the other Munch masterpiece seized by the robbers: The Madonna.
A classified police report reveals that the police has the same information, according to the paper.
Though three persons are in custody suspected of complicity, the two robbers remain at large. There is much to indicate that the art theft was designed to divert police attention from a preceding major robbery in the city of Stavanger, during which several million dollars were stolen and a policeman killed.
I think I’m LITERALLY going to be sick.
Oh no! What a loss.
I’m speechless.
I don’t beleive it. Someone wants to get the police to stop looking for it, is my guess.
If it’s too “hot”, why burn it, instead of stashing it away?
Well, presumably the thiefs would have figured out by now that the artworks cannot be converted into cash either by sale or by extortion. Or alternatively, the robbery was a contract job procured by the aforementioned bank robbers to divert Kripos – the Norwegian ‘Scotland Yard’ – from that investigation. (The brain behind this bank robbery, a certain David ‘the Mastermind’ Toska, is just the guy to pull a stunt like that.) Either way, it’s now probably a matter of time before some of the captured folks rat on them, so none would want to have it at home, and it’s not like you could store it in a safe-deposit box. So burning it makes perfect sense to me.
This is so sick. Is there the off chance that it did indeed end up in someone’s private collection? This might be a ruse to stop the police from looking.
I don’t think the private collector theory is too likely. You’d need a rich James Bond villain oddball who probably only exists in fiction. Then again, who knows?
I saw this sad news a few hours ago in Aftenposten.
Literally made me nauseous.
Same feeling as when the Taliban blew up the Bhuddas in Bamyan.
Contrary to “Dagbladet”, Aftenposten cite police sources as follows:
Pray it’s a speculation!
Yeah. Dagbladet isn’t a model of accuracy to be sure. Unlike Aftenposten, it’s probably inferior even to The New York Times! 😉
And should disaster have stricken, other versions exist of both the paintings.
in case anyone is interested, Osha answered some questions that were posed to him in the diary about the Sunset Commission.
Kos is down again for maintenance.
We’re all familiar with the Republican tactic of cherry-picking audiences for Bush’s “town hall” meetings on Social Security.
Now, comes evidence that George Mason University allowed a defender of Bush’s No Child Left Behind policy to do the same thing, in a talk there.
See: George Mason Univ. – Endangered Species Preserve – II
(walks around, hands behind back, tries to look casual and fit in with all these new, sophisticated democrats) My first booman comment! Self-query- hey, this place could really help when kos dumps his beer in the servers and the online dt’s start setting in!
In an NYT editorial from today, is the perfect frame to describe the judicial nominations that Bushcorp is trying to ram through. Describing the qualification of Priscilla Owen, one of the nominees, the editorial staff of the Times writes Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, then a justice on the Texas Supreme Court, suggested that Justice Owen’s narrow reading of the law was “an unconscionable act of judicial activism.”
Activist judges. Hmmm. Nice. And from the neocon frameshop no less. Thanks.