The Antikythera Mechanism

A paper on the Mechanism appears in tomorrow’s Nature. In brief what it is these days is a rather unimpressive looking lump of heavily corroded metal. I have a photo of it somewhere, but it’s a very bad blurry photo which doesn’t do justice to its lumpy unimpressiveness. Fortunately Wikipedia has this much better photo.

The [...]

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Mystery of ancient astronomical calculator unveiled

A press release on the Antikythera Mechanism, see next entry for comment.

The Antikythera Mechanism. Photo from Wikipedia.
An international team has unravelled the secrets of a 2,000-year-old computer which could transform the way we think about the ancient world.
Professor Mike Edmunds and Dr Tony Freeth, of Cardiff University led the team who believe they have finally [...]

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Not Big, Not Clever

…but five minutes of fun. Knife Throw 2. The aim is to hit the numbered targets and miss the celebrities including Dubya, Blair and Britney. Be careful not to accidentally throw a chest or headshot as you’ll kill them in one blow.

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Style Obscuring Content

This was written well over a year ago and offered to a site. I assume it’s not coming out there, so I thought I’d put it up here before I lose it.
“Imagine a widely used and expensive prescription drug that promised to make us beautiful but didn’t. Instead the drug had frequent, serious side effects: [...]

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Social Evolution by Mark Pluciennik

[Cross-posted to Revise & Dissent]
I think one of the most depressing seminars I ever had on my Master’s course was one on Evolutionary Archaeology. My introduction to evolution was generally through books like those of Richard Dawkins. So what I was expecting was a discussion of how simple rules could produce the emergence of complex [...]

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De oráculos y estrellas

Traducción de Anacronista.

¿Cómo le hacían los griegos de la Antigüedad, para saber cuándo emprender su peregrinación a Delfos a consultar al oráculo del templo de Apolo, “la voz más autorizada del mundo civilizado? Para Alun Salt y Efrosyni Boutsikas, de la Universidad de Leicester, la falta de uniformidad en los calendarios de las polis representaba [...]

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Is there a case for protecting Christian values or Christian heritage?

This is follow-up to the previous post, which allows me an easy way to link back to Butterflies and Wheels, and to the recent Carnival of the Godless. If you can’t stand the suspense my answers are no and maybe.
“Christian values” is a term that is causing me trouble, because I genuinely don’t understand what [...]

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A letter sent to the Office of the Archbishop of York

Dear Office of the Archbishop,
I read with interest the story of the Archbishop standing up against the erosion of Christian values, and the Address to the Diocese of Newcastle. I am slightly confused. Which specifically Christian values are being eroded from society?
I appreciate the Archbishop gives some examples. The loss of free parking for Christians [...]

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Mercury Transit

You can follow the Mercury transit until 0100 GMT (UT) via the Big Bear Solar Observatory’s webcam. Here’s the start. You’re looking for the black dot that shifts.

Below is a version I’ve re-coloured, but hopefully you can see where the dot has moved.

The reason the live image appears black and white is that the Big [...]

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The Clios are open for nominations

The 2006 Cliopatria Awards are now seeking nominations for awards.

Looking back I could almost recycle the Best Group Blog post word for word. It only needs a little tweaking to the argument. Stanford has launched Archaeolog and Philolog and the former is strong, but the Megalithic Portal is still consistently the best group blog from [...]

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