On the Record

“The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses.”

Albert Einstein, in a 1954 letter that sold last week at auction in London for £170,000. Richard Dawkins was one of the losing bidders.

Credit: THE HENRY MOORE FOUNDATION

Scorecard

Engineering for artists

Engineers say they have worked out how to safely reconstruct Henry Moore's giant 1980 sculpture Arch, which was dismantled in 1996 after cracks started to appear. It needs better bolting and firmer foundations, they say — although they haven't worked out the details yet.

Art for engineers

Credit: M. VAN DEN BERGH/HOLLANDSE HOOGTE

The Habog nuclear-waste storage facility has been prettied up by artist William Verstraeten, who painted it orange, with E=mc2 and E=hν written along the side. The artist says he chose orange because it's halfway between red-for-danger and green-for-safety.

Zoo News

Returned from the choir invisible

The fossil of a 55-million-year-old parrot has been found in Denmark. Officially named Mopsitta tanta, it will forever be known as a 'Norwegian Blue' (despite there being no evidence of its colour) after Monty Python's parrot sketch. This one, too, is clearly dead, but not “pining for the fjords” — Norway didn't get its fjords until more than 50 million years later.

Sources: UPI, Imperial College London, World Nuclear News, AlphaGalileo