AlunSalt

• 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 [...]

• Sander van der Leeuw: The Archaeology of Innovation
  

  A couple of years ago I came across the Long Now Foundation on the web. I was planning to blog on it, particularly some of the bets, but haven’t so far. If there’s one subject which shouldn’t be affected by a delay of a few years it’s the Long Now Foundation. I remembered, because I [...]

• Happy Birthday Ariane
  

  I missed this, the ESA put out the video on their YouTube channel before Christmas, but if I keep quiet about that maybe no one will notice. Ariane is now 30 years old.

  ESA celebrates 30 years of Ariane.

  The first Ariane launched from Kourou in French Guiana on Christmas Eve 1979. The Kourou site sounds like [...]

• Use cutting edge homeopathic hangover cures this New Year and party like it’s 1810
  

  “When one considers that Wagner’s father died of typhoid just six months after the future composer’s birth, it is no exaggeration to say that it is likely that Richard Wagner’s contribution to music would not have occurred without the homeopathic treatment he received.”
  Dana Ullman – 19th century geniuses who loved homeopathy

  This is an exercise in [...]

• STFC and the fall of the Roman Empire
  

  One puzzle about the Roman Empire is that while they had technology they often didn’t use it to its full potential. For instance, take the steam engine. Hero of Alexandria had demonstrated a basic steam engine, the aeoliopile, around two thousand years ago. A little work would have given them the railway and in later [...]

• Teaching, Web2.0 and Teaching Web2.0
  

  Yesterday I was at an event organised with the HEA centre for Biosciences, Enhancing learning through Web2.0. I thought it was a very good day. I didn’t get exactly what I wanted out of the day. What I was hoping for something to help me build a workshop for teaching Web2.0 tools to students. The [...]

• Astrology in the Infinite Monkey Cage
  

  The Infinite Monkey Cage tackled astrology this week, amongst other things. Ben Miller visited to Jonathan Cainer, astrologer extraordinaire, to see how astrology works. This seems to have come as a shock to Prof. Brian Cox who doesn’t think that it works. Ben Miller, who was ABD in Physics, argued it did work. For Ben [...]

• There seems to be some confusion about what science journalism is
  

  This will be the last climate change post of the year. The reason it’s going up is because while I was writing tomorrow’s entry. my RSS box pinged with this blog post from Ed Darrell, which is well worth reading. It’s a simple illustration of the use of double standards.
  Recently I commented on the reporting [...]

• Confidence Intervals 2009/11/28
  
• The Academic Journal Racket « In the Dark 2009/11/18
  Telescoper explains how academic publishing works. The only thing that would improbe the post would be the theme from 'The Naked Gun' in the background.
  
• A Case in Antiquities for ‘Finders Keepers’ - NYTimes.com 2009/11/17
  You can make arguments in favour of repatriation of antiquities. You can make arguements against. Being on either side doesn't make you inherently foolish. But when you write that the British Army took the Rosetta Stone from the French and "returned it to the British Museum" then something has gone wrong. It's probably a case of momentary brainfade rather than idiocy, but it matters because the whole question of ownership of the Rosetta Stone is about where it rightfully belongs. Using the word 'returned' builds in the assumption that all antiquities are inherently British.
  
• Notes & Queries; Sledges - Theoretical Structural Archaeology 2009/11/17
  Geoff Carter concluded he didn't have evidence for a staggeringly early cart shed in Poland. Could it have been a used to house a sledge? I've just realised I know absolutely nothing at all about the history of sleds and sledges. Not only that, but I can't recall much attention being called to them in early prehistoric archaeology other than when people want to talk about moving megaliths to Stonehenge. Yet Martha Murphy (guest blogging) shows there's plenty of questions to ask about neolithic transport.
  
• British bank turns to treasure hunting via @johnabartram 2009/11/17
  Avast me hearties! Robert Fraser & Partners be scourin' the high seas in search of booty. They be fundin' Odyssey Marine Exploration, Inc. ter search the Caribbean fer Spanish gold. Arrr!
  

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