AlunSalt

British Archaeology issue 80 is online now at the website of the Council for British Archaeology’s website. Features this month are Silbury Hill, Sutton Hoo ship and the Brougham Amazons. Thanks to the ADS you can check the archive data and see if the interpretation in British Archaeology matches yours.

I’m off to Newcastle-upon-Tyne today for their Postgraduate Forum conference. I went last year and was slightly shocked to discover that I was the only person giving a talk who didn’t have some sort of Newcastle connection. I’m hoping this year that there’s a bit more enthusiasm from outside. The reason I’m returning is that [...]

Like any society, when you join the Classical Association you get a lot of other material than the receipt. Amongst the book offers etc were two thin black booklets I overlooked. I’ve only recently returned to them after hearing Brian Sparkes’s presidential address at the CA conference. The booklets weren’t opportunities to send more money [...]

I think in many ways the evolution / creationist debate (if you can call one side’s habit of sticking their fingers in their collective ears and yelling “I can’t hear you!” a debate) is symbolic of life. Sometimes you don’t want to choose the least worst option. You want a reason to be excited about [...]

I’ve seen that displaying ancient Greek in PowerPoint is proving to be a problem for some people at recent conferences. Text that worked find on their computer becomes a mangles mess of boxes. Most of this time this is discovered about a minutes before the talk is due to start. It doesn’t have to be [...]

Having praised the Physicists for the use of arXiv. I’m now going to out myself as a hypocrite. I recently heard confirmation that my first paper, ‘Knowing when to consult the oracle of Delphi’ (co-authored with Efrosyni Boutsikas) will be published. It’s not in an open access journal, nor will the offprint appear in an [...]

I’ve been pointed to Jan Zalasiewicz’s column in the Palaeontology Newsletter. The most recent entry is PalaeoBioSuperstar
All the world’s a stage, especially when gazed at widescreen. And the silver screen, complete with all-round surround sound and images that can scramble a passing retina at 500 paces, might just be the ideal medium to portray the [...]

Blogging
Blogging is the act of regularly updating your website with some humdrum information about your life or a link to something you’ve just read on the internet in the mistaken belief that anyone actually cares. It is the 21st century equivalent of hanging around railway stations writing down pithy but erudite descriptions of the passing [...]

Google have the magic touch. What other company could say in their Terms and Conditions that they reserve the right not to delete your personal emails so they can build a better customer profile, and still have people queuing up for invites to the service? Like Microsoft and Yahoo! they’re collecting smaller technology companies but [...]

ARLT and NTGateway note the new Guardian league tables are out (see Archaeology and Classics). I saw the old ones and thought they were utter pants, but didn’t bother writing on them because they old. I have applause for this new batch though. In Archaeology they’ve moved from inaccuracy to surrealism. Kent comes in at [...]