AlunSalt

• The most important archaeological site in London?
  

  Heritage Key have unleashed their second Bloggers’ Challenge. This time they’d like to know what the most important site in London is. Once again I’m not entering because of Rule 19, but it’s still an interesting question. This time around it won’t go live till after the event. I think I’ve gone for an obvious [...]

• Mysteries and Discoveries of Archaeoastronomy by Giulio Magli
  

  Note: Giulio Magli was one of the examiners of my thesis, so his book is hardly likely to get a bad review.
  This review rounds off a trilogy to go with Skywatchers, Shamans and Kings and People and the Sky. Like the other two books this could be said to be part of a World Archaeoastronomy [...]

• Are Extraterrestrials a Greek thing?
  

  I had a slight worry earlier today. I have an idea that I think has cross-over relevance between SETI and Ancient History about ancient speculations on extraterrestrial life. I was slightly alarmed when I read Jean Schneider’s new pre-print on arXiv, The Extraterrestrial Life debate in different cultures. In it Schneider argues that arguments about [...]

• The limits of fiction
  

  Just over a week ago Sidney Perkowitz suggested that film-makers should limit themselves to one big scientific flaw in a film. All sorts of critics have had fun with this. writerJames has posted an interesting response arguing scientific accuracy can enhance a story. I’m going to go a bit further and argue that the one [...]

• Temple Grandin, Kinds of Minds and SETI
  

  You’ll see me put up more TED videos over the next few months. I’ve had one in the drafts folder since Christmas, but I need some photos to go with it, and haven’t had the chance to get them. The prod is that I’ve applied for a TED fellowship. I don’t have a realistic chance [...]

• Talking Bollocks with Andreas Moritz
  

  To be honest I wouldn’t have heard of Andreas Moritz if he hadn’t been a bit silly. Andreas Moritz is someone who thinks cancer is a healing mechanism. Student Michael Hawkins criticised Moritz, so Moritz is naturally responding by providing evidence to support his argument threatening lawsuits and getting Wordpress.com to pull his weblog. [...]

• Impactful Invaders
  

  Heritage Key are holding a competition, asking for blog posts about “Which invaders have had the biggest impact on London?” I can’t enter for various reasons, but it’s an interesting question. In the spirit of creatively coming up with the wrong answer, I’m going to go for:
  Yersinia pestis
  Y. pestis is without doubt the invader who [...]

• Re-thinking the archaeology of Mars
  

  I’ve been rummaging through the depths of my hard-drive and found a few things I’d forgotten about. Here’s one of them, from 2006 I see, a presentation on the contemporary archaeology of Mars.
  The reason I’ve pulled it up is I might want to go back and think this over again. I’m not happy with [...]

• Friendfeed: I’m doing it wrong
  

  I’ve been putting together a workshop on social media for the Physics department here at Leicester. It’s two hours to cover Web 2.0, so to cover it all I’d have to work at the rate of 1.0 per hour. Instead I’ve opted to cover a small range of the most useful tools. delicious, Google Reader [...]

• I ATEN’T DEAD
  

  I’ve been busy recently with OER work. The iScience department will be putting course materials into various archives with Creative Commons licences. Most of the courses are Physics-based, but one will be Prophets and Powers, the opening Archaeoastronomy/Physics/Geology module of the Interdiscipinary Science BSc. This is a problem based on studying the Egyptian pyramids. If [...]

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