Archive for September, 2006
The five best Police Academy Films
Sep 30th
I had a surprisingly busy day today so here’s the meme I’ve been working on: The Five Best Police Academy films.
1) Police Academy 2 – Their First Assignment Jerry Paris, the genius behind other social commentaries like Happy Days took the director’s seat for this one. There were mutterings from the studio that the title shouldn’t have been Police Academy 2 at all, given the radical departure from the previous film. Using 1980s America as a metaphor for 1960s optimism Harris created an uncomprising and biting satire of the American action in Vietnam – the climax being the “police action” against an enemy who can barely be understood but one who stands against America as embodied by the Police Academy. Steve Guttenberg’s tortured performance as Cary Mahoney reaches new heights when, out of the force, he is required to become what he has fought against and engage in subterfuge. This climaxes in an emotionally traumatic scene where he takes on the persona ‘Jughead’ to locate the enemy. It also includes a hilarious scene where two officers accidentally enter the Blue Oyster Club and are engaged in a dance. (more…)
Archaeological Fantasies edited by Garrett G Fagan
Sep 29th
This is one of those things that has been sat in the drafts box for a while and if quality was proportional to time then this review should be much much better than it is. Really I’m tempted to simply link to Martin Rundkvist’s review and say ‘me too’. I first saw Archaeological Fantasies, edited by Garrett Fagan, at the Classical Association conference this year. It was on one of the book stalls with a minimal discount so I didn’t buy it, thinking Amazon would be cheaper. That was a mistake twice over. It wasn’t cheaper at Amazon and it led to a long delay in me getting my hands on a copy. It’s a good book and it’s a much needed debate. You get the impression that people have been queuing up to talk about this from the way the book has a foreword, preface and introduction from various people. The book itself is divided into three sections.
The first is The Phenomenon. Rather than just say here’s pseudoarchaeology – it’s Bad. There is an exploration of what fringe archaeology is and what the attraction is. Probably the best chapter in this section is Katherine Reece’s Memoirs of a True Believer. More >
America really really REALLY isn’t the new Rome
Sep 19th
[Cross-posted to Revise & Dissent]
Las Vegas Trevi Fountain. Photo by *nathan
I’m running out of emphasis. On Sunday the Independent ran a story US ‘mirrors Roman Empire’ in Iraq war. It’ll be disappearing behind a pay wall soon. Potentially this could be a really interesting story. The Romans made repeated attempts to conquer the east and failed. For instance is the Coalition of the Willing running into similar difficulties in the terrain? But the parallel isn’t with the invasion of Mesopotamia. (more…)
America really really isn’t the new Rome
Sep 18th
[A version is cross-posted to Revise & Dissent]
The Jefferson Memorial based, ultimately, on the Pantheon in Rome. Photo by dbking.
Now this could be a carnival in the making. A round-up of all the America is the New Rome stories on the web. I’ve already posted on how you can inanely cherry-pick elements of the past to bolster a political assertion. It’s an unquenchable well.
It’s awful politics though. Important politics issues are hidden behind what is often poor history. In many of the America is the new Rome articles there’s an idea that situations lead to inevitable consequences, like the idea that if America is the new Rome then moral decline and the fall of Empire are inevitable. You end up with the situation where people argue that society is monocasual, or close to it, rather than the complex interplay of creative individuals. An example is an analysis by William Federer which I found via The Lighthouse Patriot Journal, but a search on Google shows it’s been quoted with approval by many different people. It’s a shame because you could probably write a whole book about the errors in it:
Rome fell September 4, 476AD. It was overrun with illegal immigrants: Visigoths, Franks, Anglos, Saxons, Ostrogoths, Burgundians, Lombards, Jutes and Vandals, who More >
When to debunk?
Sep 17th
It’s another post I’ve been mulling for a while because I’ve been reading some dire stuff recently. Not merely bad but atrocious. There’s a feature on WordPress called Tag Surfer which means I can read an aggregated page of recent posts on specific tags. If you’re on WordPress and you put a post in the ‘History’ or ‘Science’ category there’s a fair chance I’ll read it. This is great when the posts are about History or Science. It’s less so when someone decides that they only need to read one book and they let someone else translate it from the Hebrew.
Bafflingly the worst stuff recently hasn’t been evolution, it’s been about Global Warming. There have been posts that have gleefully cited things like the expansion of a glacier in Pakistan, and then said the scientists are unreliable when they correlate this with climate change to global warming in the same paper. It is possible that you can agree with parts of a scientific paper, but it’s traditional to give reasons why you accept one part and not others. Simply saying the author is unreliable rules out the whole text.
Others have sagely pointed out that, like Evolution or Fox News, Global Warming More >
Sincere Apologies?
Sep 17th
Having apologised for his comments, the Pope is now facing calls from the Muslim Council of Britain to apologise further. Basically they’d like him to say that there’s no reason why Islam is a Bad Thing. Presumably after this Dr Abdul Bari will be release his new book Christianity: It’s not bad once you get used to it.
It’s ok, it’s Art – there’s a fat kid on a nearby wall
Sep 15th
“What? Tawnee says what she does is Art, sarge. And she wears more clothes than a lot of the women on the walls around here, so why be sniffy about it?”
“Yeah, but…” Fred Colon hesitated here. He knew in his heart that spinning upside down around a pole wearing a costume you could floss with definitely was not Art, and being painted lying on a bed wearing nothing but a smile and a small bunch of grapes was good solid Art, but putting your finger on why this was the case was a bit tricky.
“No urns,” he said at last.
“What urns?” asked Nobby.
“Nude women are only Art if there’s an urn in it,” said Fred Colon. This sounded weak even to him, so he added, “or a plinth. Both is best, o’ course. It’s a secret sign, see, that they put in to say that it’s Art and okay to look at.”
“What about a potted plant?”
“That’s okay if it’s in an urn.”
“What about if it’s not got an urn or a plinth or a potted plant?” said Nobby.
“Have you got one in mind, Nobby?” said Colon suspiciously.
“Yes, The Goddess Anoia* Arising from the Cutlery,” said Nobby. “They’ve got More >
Removing Colour casts
Sep 14th
It takes a while for me to sit down and fix the photos I take. The most common reason I do this is because I’ve got the exposure wrong. Another reason can be when the light messes up the photo. The lighting at the British Museum is not always helpful. As an example here’s a head of a generic Roman bloke before and after Photoshopping.
Before AfterSelf Portrait
Sep 12th
Me and the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum. If I’d realised how long it would take to get this shot I wouldn’t have bothered trying, but there have been requests for photos where I’m not obscuring my face. I was in London for a meeting yesterday and decided to use the spare time getting some photos of sights which will be going up over the next few days.
Yhposolihp?
Sep 12th
Forest Clearing. Photo by J-Hob.
Archaeolog and Traumwerk in general are Good Things in my opinion. It’s a convenient way of keeping up with what’s going on in the archaeological mainstream with having to travel several hours to attend a brief seminar at a distant university. Occasionally something will come up that makes me seriously question whether what I’m doing is remotely archaeological or whether I am solely an ancient historian who uses archaeology. Matt Edgeworth’s piece The Clearing: Heidegger and Excavation is an example of something where it’s not so much that I disagree with it, it’s that I can’t work out where there might be a common frame of reference. (more…)
