AlunSalt

Welcome to my home page. This is where I aggregrate the various things I leave around the web.

The extraordinary research of the BCA

The British Chiropratic Association have quietly announced the historical discovery of the decade. It's major news and we know it's true because the alternative would be that they're making a demonstrably bogus claim about chiropractic treatment on their website.

The Antikythera Mechanism: Art or Science?

Some posts take quite a while to write. This is a response to Candy Minx and Martin Rundkvist who were discussing the Antikythera Mechanism in 2006. Candy Minx thought the Antikythera Mechanism was an expression of what was already known and embedded in a society through things like myth and ritual. Martin thought that the mechanism was far more complex. Originally I planned to write a fence-sitting compromise. Here it is. This is science turned up to 11.

Bateman’s Scars

Bateman's tragedy is that he had the technology, but he worked before there was a better understanding of how to use it. His excavations could be called vandalism, but he didn't have the benefit of hindsight. Archaeology often investigates a site by destroying it. Today we have a permanent reminder in the Bronze Age barrow at Arbor Low, which still bears Bateman's scars.

Crowdsourcing Fieldwork: A Neuroarchaeology Project?

Most museums I go to seem to have much darker galleries for prehistoric material that classical material. That has to have a psychological effect, but does it also have a physiological effect? Is the difference in light enough that there's a difference feeling to observing prehistoric material to classical material because of the room and not the content? Do I have a method for finding that out?

Local Archaeology at the river Trent

Archaeology isn't just about far away and exotic places. Swarkestone Bridge is a local site with plenty of history. And, if you live outside the UK, it's far away and exotic.

Recent Posts

• Libel, Censorship and Blog Comments
  

  I hate the idea of a comment policy. The regular readers are all intelligent enough to make any policy redundant. The tiny minority who are delusional enough to cause a problem wouldn’t seriously stop to read any comment policy anyway. But occasionally a perfectly good comment will either disappear or fail to appear. Here’s why.
  - [...]

• It’s not just Jack who names the planets
  

  Wladimir Lyra’s following in the footsteps of Jack in his arXiv paper Naming the extrasolar planets. Currently planets are tagged after their parent star, so if we found a planet around α Ceti, it would be called α Ceti b. The b in lower case is used for the first planet to be found, c [...]

• Meanwhile in the Lifestream today
  

  Science of the Invisible: How I learned to stop worrying and love FriendFeed
  After reading this post I’m thinking about how I use FriendFeed. I think there are differences in how AJCann and I would use FriendFeed. There’s a large and active Life Sciences posse on FriendFeed, no so much for the Humanities. Still there’s [...]

• Will the Okhta Center make or destroy a skyline?
  

  Work continues into winter on the Okhta Center in St. Petersburg. This is a new commercial centre being built by Gazprom, the Russian natural gas company. When it’s finished the Okhta Center will have all the mod-cons necessary for a major commercial centre like monuments, desks and a large glass tower which will stand around [...]

• Damage at Fajada Butte?
  

  I’ve had a go at setting up an archaeoastronomy channel on Youtube. Jsefick’s account is a bit of a goldmine for that as he has plenty of videos with interesting archaeoastronomical content. Searching for videos to favourite today, I found video above that there was an unauthorised landing at Fajada Butte. I found it extremely [...]

Versus the Electric Cyclops

Shared on Google Reader

• One of the best things to happen in human history
  Steve Muhlberger records the anniversary of one of the most optimistic periods of history.
• Tutorials this term
  Erin considers the importance of formative assessment, and struggles with being too darn popular.
• Witchcraft in Ancient Greece
  Gary Corby's intrduction to the presence of withcraft in the ancient world
• Ancient Torc Necklace Has Been Unearthed
  Pic App has a series of photos of the ancient necklace. Is it really a stunning find or just all torc? Sadly I won't have time to blog on this.
• Building a Religion: The Rock Art Evidence
  More on rock art in the SW. I really need to read some better stuff on Greek art and see if there's some useful cross-over in approaches.
• Plugin by C. Murray Consulting

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Marked on del.icio.us

• Ancient grain-based pregnancy test found to be 70 percent accurate - uses barley and wheat 2009/10/23
  I may use this if I start an ancient technology / science course
  
• FRC Blog » How Long Has Marriage Been the Union of a Man and a Woman? Scientists Say—4.4 Million Years 2009/10/10
  Useful for the archaeoappeal paper if I get round to writing it.
  
• Cannot add data as labels for the horizontal (category) axis 2009/10/06
  The fact I have to bookmakr this shows what a lousy piece of software Mac Office is.
  
• [0908.2696] The mystery of the telescopes in Jan Brueghel the Elder's paintings 2009/10/02
  
• http://www.nasw.org/users/mslong/2009/2009_09/DataSharing.htm 2009/09/30
  A useful comment on the importance of data in papers.