Archive for March, 2008
Ross Scaife
Mar 20th
I’m still working through my RSS backlog and wouldn’t have known about this if I hadn’t noticed a post from Rogue Classicism. I’m not really qualified to talk about him personally. We only exchanged a few of emails, but he was always helpful. I can’t really comment academically either, his professional influence was extraordinarily wide ranging as a read through his entries on the Stoa will show.
It’s a cliché to say that someone’s death is a great loss, but sometimes clichés are true.
There’s an obituary at the Stoa and a post on his influence by Tom Elliot.
2010
Mar 20th
A lot of people will be talking about the obvious film/book. The film and book versions of 2001 are different, in the book the monolith is on Iapetus, the moon of Saturn where liquid water may exist. Arthur C. Clarke changed his mind for the sequel, and decided that Jupiter was the better place for the sequel 2010, which is far better than any sequel to 2001 has the right to be. I haven’t bought the DVD yet, but I will eventually. A direct comparison between the two is perhaps not fair as they’re two different films and stories. As great as 2001 is, it is umm… cinematic in scope. It’s a story of billions of years. 2010 is much more personal.
The plot is the quest to find out what happened after Dave Bowman left the Discovery for the last time. All the people on Earth have to go on is the message: “My God! It’s full of stars!” The Americans are building Discovery II travel there. In the meantime Russians have built their own ship, the Leonov, to examine Jupiter and board Discovery as a derelict. This happens against a background of Cold War tension (one magazine said that this dated the film). An analysis of More >
Illicit Antiquities linked to Islamic terrorists – Who’da thunk it?
Mar 19th
It shouldn’t be news. I mentioned the possibility in 2005, and again late last year. When you buy unprovenanced antiquities you don’t know who you’re buying them from.
Now the Ashland Daily Tidings reports on the work by Matthew Bogdanos, which he says shows that the connection between the trade in illicit antiquities and Islamic insurgents is undeniable. Yes, you read that right. It turns out some members of Al-Qaeda are prone to criminal activity.
Despite that fair-play to Antonia Kimbell at the Art Loss Register who said that she’s seen no evidence of a direct link. The way the Art Loss Register works is they check a database of illicit artefacts. Obviously that means that someone needs to have registered an artefact as illicit, but that’s not a problem so long as Al-Qaeda remember to fill out the paperwork.
I went to look at David Gill’s blog to fact check the workings of the Art Loss Register because Kimbell’s comments seemed unfeasibily moronic. I can’t believe someone that credulous would be able to hold down a job at the Art Loss Register if it worked the way I described it. But it does, and David Gill is also blogging this story.
There’s a lot of More >
…but is it the opiate of the masses?
Mar 18th
The Choice of Heracles, Paolo di Matteis, 1712
What is it that makes a happy life? People have been asking that for millennia and I have a few minutes while I wait to collect someone, so I might not have a comprehensive answer. The reason I’m asking is that Religion ‘linked to happy life’ is one of the most emailed stories on the BBC News site today. I have to admit I’m surprised that there are so few responses to the story on Technorati, but maybe everyone like me is wondering what a happy life is.
Or maybe I’m a bit early with the story and when this goes live that Technorati link will prove me wrong. (more…)
UoL Network: Proving that no matter how busy I am there’s always time for coffee
Mar 11th
Alan Cann has floated the idea of creating a UoL blogging network on JayJay’s weblog. Now he’s suggesting along with Chris (whose URL I’d lost) we set up a UoL blogging network. I think it’s a good idea, or at least I heard coffee mentioned which is similar.
To some extent a unified blog feed could augment the expert’s list on the UoL website. For instance if I put up a post saying that 10,000 BC might be inaccurate (metal? – there’s a reason why we call it the Stone Age). Then it could go into a feed along with Alan on the the latest superbug etc. and then you have series of rentaquotes. The downside with this is that we wouldn’t be clearing blog posts with university authorities so I suspect you’d want to limit the feed to staff only.
If you’re a UoL blogger you may want to leave a comment on Alan’s post at SOTI.
Biblical Hallucinogens: Lacking context
Mar 9th
A Review of Methodology in “Biblical Entheogens” at Archaeoporn saves me the effort of writing a similar post. Basically the biological/psychological aspects might be sound, but there’s no real historical or archaeological context to the idea. Without that, as a historian or archaeologist, there’s no real value to the research. Archaeologyknits has written a thorough rebuttal of the claims, so I shan’t bother writing my own piece. I’d rather effort on something more interesting.
…and while I’m ranting about science cutbacks.
Mar 8th
Schrödinger’s Pig has this post on why things like Jodrell Bank matter. Really who in their right mind would aspire to be a successful physicist when that will cost you your job?
See also DaveP’s post on the subject and JQH is more depressing.
There is a petition for UK citizens to sign, but I suspect that even if it was successful that would only be a short term success. Really a shift in opinion is needed that recognises that having a non-Scientist Minister for Science makes as much sense as appointing a brain surgeon as Attorney General.
Funding the Portable Antiquities Scheme: The debate continues
Mar 8th
Image (cc) The Portable Antiquities Scheme.
A series of written answers concerning the Portable Antiquities Scheme came out this week.
David Taylor (Labour) asked what redundancies are going to happen given that the finances were only going to ‘maintain the level of support’. The reply was that the Minister doesn’t know and it’s not the government’s problem.
Hwyel Williams (Plaid Cymru) asked how many Finds Liaison Officers cover Wales and what assessment has been made of their effectiveness. The answer is one, and as far as the Minister is concerned it seems that there’s no interest in how effective that officer is.
Lembit Öpik (Liberal Democrat) had a couple of pointed questions about the future. What would the funding be for the next three years? That hasn’t been decided yet, and it’s not a government matter. Given the current financial crisis the country’s in where cuts are being made across all research councils to bail out other problems it seems that long-term planning simply isn’t possible at the PAS. That does raise the question how on earth are the PAS going to plan for the future. Lembit Öpik also asked what discussions there had been about the scheme’s future with the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council. The More >
Portable Antiquities Data and Swivel
Mar 8th
I’m falling behind on my reading of RSS feeds, so the news that the Portable Antiquities Scheme has put some of its data on Swivel is new to me, even though the post is a week old. Swivel seems to be a graphing website. People upload data and then you can draw your own graphs from it.
At the moment some of the graphs are a bit limiting. There’s not a lot you can do with the number of coins by period for example. I think it does show potential for the longer term. For instance with the PAS database being open it should be possible to mash it with other data and produce some really useful or bizarre results. For instance is archaeology a middle class pursuit? The PAS has some findspot data, so you could plot number of finds in a county against number of trendy wine bars in a county and see if there’s a correlation. You can’t do that with Swivel yet, but it looks like it might be possible in a few years time. Perhaps a more useful study would plot PAS find numbers in with a series of socio-economic indicators like crime reports, schools performance etc which might More >
Time and Mind launches – first issue free
Mar 5th
I liked 3rd Stone, which was a magazine about all things megalithic in a middle ground between academics and the fringe. Unfortunately it had to close. The people behind it are back with the help of Berg and a new journal Time and Mind. I was going to say it’s a lot more expensive, but I’m not sure it is – £45 for six issues over two years in print, or £25 for a year. If you want the online version then you should be prepared to sacrifice an internal organ (it’s £125 for a year) but the print fees seem more reasonable than a few other journals I could think of.
I haven’t had time to read it, so I can’t tell you if the magic has been lost or not. I am looking forward to reading Jeremy Harte’s The Devil on Dartmoor, which argues that the myths of the moors are the products of the Victorian tourist industry.
I suspect the paper which will grab the attention of most people will be Benny Shanon’s on biblical drug use. A quick skim raises some pretty basic questions about how you tackle how historical record was created. If the text was written More >
