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Trump Hates You, His Supporters, And Our Planet

A few items that I think you should see: Trump’s executive order puts the world on the road to climate catastrophe On Tuesday, President Donald Trump issued a sweeping executive order that effectively guts national efforts to address climate change. If he isn’t stopped, the endpoint of this approach is the ruination of our livable climate and the needless suffering of billions of people for decades to come. The order starts the process of undoing President Obama’s Clean Power Plan standards for power plants. It also spurs fossil fuel consumption and blocks federal efforts to even prepare for…

Warming Oceans, Trump, Cat Litter

A potpourri of miscellany: Human Caused Climate Change and the Oceans It is great to see our local political non-print non-TV news agency, MNPost, covering an important climate change story with local connections. I'll be writing John Abraham's research up myself shortly. An intriguing and important-sounding new research paper caught my eye on Sunday, with its finding that the world’s oceans have been warming at a much faster pace than is generally recognized. Because seawater holds more than 90 percent of the excess heat that arrives from the sun but, thanks to greenhouse gases, isn’t…

People are missing the importance of Trump's voter fraud claims

You know that Donald Trump has been claiming very clearly and precisely that he won both the electoral and popular vote, and that it only looks like he did not win the popular vote because of voter fraud, meaning, that a certain number of American citizens voted twice, or otherwise rigged the elections. In fact, he explicitly says that millions of Americans voted illegally, accounting for the >2 million popular vote margin that Secretary Clinton currently holds. Messing with voting in this manner is a serious crime, perhaps often a felony. What we have here is Donald Trump accusing a…

Happy 80th Birthday, Pluto!

We used to think Pluto was a misfit. -Alan Stern Eighty years ago, we solidly had eight planets in the Solar System: the same eight we have now. But in the late 1920s, a young astronomer was looking up at the sky, night after night, searching for tiny moving objects that could possibly be planets out beyond Neptune. Using this technique of looking at a patch of sky repeatedly over the course of a week, Clyde Tombaugh searched for moving objects, finding many comets and asteroids, but -- like everyone else -- found no signs of a new planet. Until January of 1930. I've managed to dig up Clyde…

When Liquids aren't so Liquid...

You don't understand. You can't just come to the Sea of Galilee and start walking on water. If you could, everybody would be doing it. You need to prepare yourself. -Walk on Water As some of you may have noticed from looking at the site over the past few days, Scienceblogs has partnered with National Geographic. To celebrate this, I want to show you one of my favorite National Geographic clips of all time, showcasing the Central American Basilisk. (Its nickname? "The Jesus Lizard.") Why? You'll see... This lizard weighs little enough, has feet with a big enough surface area, and can move…

Weekend Diversion: Mmmmmm… MEAT!

As someone who's spent a lot of time in a University setting, one of the thing that often shocks me is the number of vegans that are out there. Why is it shocking? Because you need meat for proper nutrition. Now, I thought this was common knowledge, that humans are omnivores and that eating other animal products was the best way to get many of the essential nutrients your body needs. Plus, meat is delicious, and when I've gone a long time without eating it, my body physically feels better when I finally have some again. But apparently, it isn't common knowledge, because a vegan couple…

The New and Improved Hubble in Brief

Yesterday, I linked to the Hubble Site, where they've got a collection of stunning new images taken using Hubble's new camera, the Wide-Field Camera 3: But why would you bother to go there? After all, you know that I'll just show you all the gorgeousness here! Hubble is an astounding telescope, because it's so good for viewing things that are both incredibly close and incredibly far. So here are the highlights! First off, Hubble can take incredible pictures of our Solar System. Remember that Jupiter recently got hit by an asteroid? Take a look at the big black debris spot by the South Pole,…

Why do stars twinkle?

Sure, sure, everyone knows that stars twinkle. You look up at the night sky, and pretty much any star you look at appears to fluctuate in its brightness and intensity very rapidly, giving it a "twinkling" appearance. Why does this happen? It definitely doesn't have anything to do with the star itself, because "our" star, which you call the Sun, definitely doesn't twinkle the same way: Not only that, but there are a few objects in the night sky that don't twinkle: the Moon, planets, and satellites. Why is that? Why do stars twinkle, and nothing else? Well, there were two theories. One was…

Weekend Diversion: Oh Captain, My Captain!

There is so much good music out there that never, ever hits the mainstream. But if you dig a little bit, you can not only find some good ones, occasionally you hit the gold mine. Such is the case with The Bridge, a Baltimore-based band that I'll almost definitely come see September 5th when they come through Portland. Take a listen to one of my favorite jams of theirs, Jeremiah Jones: And you know what's something I've never posted as a Weekend Diversion before, somehow? A poem. So, I present to you O Captain! My Captain! by Walt Whitman, a beautifully sad one written just after the…

Weekend Diversion: The Power of Periphery

It's time for an easy weekend for everyone. To kick it off, here's a song that almost everyone knows of, by the Eagles. Only, the Eagles didn't write it. Jackson Browne was screwing around in his flat with this song that "wasn't quite done" according to him. He played it for Glen Frey, and was stumped after the line "standin' on a corner in Winslow, Arizona, such a fine sight to see." The Eagles' contribution to the song was: It's a girl, my lord, in a flatbed Ford slowin' down to have a look at me. That's right; Take it Easy is a Jackson Browne song. (And, incidentally, Winslow, Arizona was…

The Solar Cycle and Global Warming

The Sun is doing something interesting, and has been for the last few years. As a solar physicist noted last year, there really haven't been many sunspots lately. Look at 2001 (left) and 2009 (right) for the difference in sunspot activity. But there's more. In addition to virtually no sunspots, the Sun is having fewer solar flares, hit a 50-year low in solar wind pressure, and is at a 55-year low in radio emissions. This is in addition to sunspot activity, which is at a 100-year low! Well, Professor Mike Lockwood, an expert in long-term solar variations, has been keeping tabs on our Sun. As…

Astronomers make use of… molecules?

When I think of molecules, I think of Conan O'Brien doing his skit where he plays Moleculo... the molecular man! I don't think of astronomy, and I certainly don't think of the leftover radiation from the big bang (known as the cosmic microwave background)! But somebody over at the European Southern Observatory put these two together and made an incredibly tasty science sandwich. See, we can measure the cosmic microwave background today, because we have photons (particles of light) coming at us in all directions at all locations, with a temperature of 2.725 Kelvin. Theoretical cosmology…

Buttars and Schlafly Cozy Up

Our old friend and favorite state senator, Chris Buttars, is back in the news again. This time he's appearing before the Eagle Forum to be praised by a group that is right about at the same intellectual level (which is to say, vacuous and ignorant): Singing to the choir, Sen. Chris Buttars sought support at the Eagle Forum annual convention for his proposed legislation on teaching intelligent design and banning high school gay/straight support clubs. And support he received, with Utah Eagle Forum president Gayle Ruzicka saying, "I love Chris Buttars," and national Eagle Forum found Phyllis…

Iran, the Holocaust and Larry Darby

Jason Kuznicki has a post up about Iran hosting a conference on the holocaust and urging people to be "open-minded" about recent comments by their clearly insane President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that the holocaust was a myth. And he has it precisely right that the notion of Iran, a nation that has been killing dissidents and crushing freedom for the last 50 years (since at least our collosal foreign policy mistake of 1953), calling for open-mindedness is utter hypocrisy and a fraud. But it makes me wonder if perhaps Larry Darby would like to attend this conference. I know he's an atheist and…

Dover Judge Strikes Discovery Institute Brief

A major development in the Dover trial yesterday. The Discovery Institute had submitted a brief in the case last week and Judge Jones issued an order denying that brief's use in the case. Our attorneys had filed a motion to strike that brief from the proceedings on the grounds that it was an attempt to get the expert testimony of Stephen Meyer and William Dembski on the record in the case after they had pulled out as expert witnesses, thus avoiding being cross examined on their claims. The judge agreed, ruling: As all parties and amici filers are well aware, both Mr. Dembski and Mr. Meyer are…

An Evening with Michael Ruse

Or more accurately, an evening with delightful company interrupted for a couple hours by Michael Ruse. I went last night to an address by Ruse, the inaugural event of a series of lectures on the subject of religion and science. Those of you who have seen Ruse speak will not be surprised by my review of his performance. He is an immensely charming Brit with a mischievous sense of humor, and like most philosophers he manages to say in an hour and a half what a normal human being could say in 25 minutes. His talk was on the history of the evolution/creationism struggle in America, and…

Today's Whacky Religion Report

First up, the airline pilot who doesn't seem to understand where the boundaries of appropriate behavior lie in his job. Seems an American Airlines pilot asked the passengers aboard his flight from LA to New York to raise their hands if they're Christian, announced that those who didn't raise their hand were crazy, and suggested that they use the opportunity of having a heathen trapped in a seat next to them to do a little proselytizing. The behavior was so bizarre that the flight attendants on board notified ground control. Second up, over a million people are expected to attend a Benny Hinn…

The Suspect Science Of Star Trek: Discovery, 'Context Is For Kings,' Season 1, Episode 3

"If I die trying but I’m inadequate to the task to make a course change in the evolution of this planet…okay I tried. The fact is I tried. How many people are not trying. If you knew that every breath you took could save hundreds of lives into the future had you walked down this path of knowledge, would you run down this path of knowledge as fast as you could." -Paul Stamets When you look at the dark matter network of the Universe, what do you see? Do you see patterns similar to other networks, like neurons in your brain or the mycological mats found beneath the soil on Earth? Of course you…

The System Is... Having Problems

I know you normally look forward to the weekend as a chance for our comments of the week, but I see that a great many of you have been commenting/posting and have been encountering problems. Specifically, the problem that the system appears to eat your comments. The time I would normally spend writing our Comments of the Week has gone into trying to find-and-recover them, which is no fun for anyone. After looking into it (because, sorry, it looks like the people who are responsible for maintaining Scienceblogs don't really care unless the system itself goes completely down), it appears that…

This One Imperfection In Nuclear Physics Allowed Earth To Exist (Synopsis)

"The discovery of deuterium and the marked differences in the physical and chemical properties of hydrogen and deuterium, together with an efficient method for the separation of these isotopes, have opened an interesting field of research in several of the major branches of science." -Harold Urey By time the first few minutes of the Big Bang are over, the Universe has formed all the elements it’s ever going to form until the first stars are born. At that point, the Universe is made out of 75% hydrogen and 25% helium, with only tiny, trace amounts of other isotopes and elements like deuterium…

So...there really is a god!

For the second time in a row, storms have interfered with the Republican National Convention. The political party that denies science, and in particular, denies climate change, that thinks NOAA built an Ark and that has no interest in the kind of regulation that saves Libertarians from themselves when Hurricanes hit settled communities, is being messed with by Big Weather. Which brings us to our discussion of Isaac. Isaac is still a tropical storm, and he is getting better organized, though slowly. The beginnings of an eye are becoming visible. It is expected that Isaac will become a…

Hillary Clinton, please consider global warming with KXLP

The following letter to Secretary Clinton was released a short while ago. It will be delivered later on this week. Also later on in the week, there will be a place where you can add your comments. Also, there will be a related piece in Rolling Stone's next issue (this week). I imagine there may even be a petition or two! Also, you will find more discussion and other relevant links HERE. The 350.org web site will have more, and I'll pass on anything I get. Dear Secretary Clinton, We are writing to ask that the State Department conduct, as part of its evaluation of the Keystone XL pipeline…

NPR: Your Headline Offends

I am not happy with this NPR title: Will Medicaid Bring The Uninsured Out Of The Woodwork?. Dear New York Times: The uninsured are not in the woodwork. They are in pain. They are in trouble. They are in debt. They are not in the woodwork. Cockroaches are in the woodwork. The uninsured are not. I have a friend who was badly injured last winter. She's always been either a full time student or had a job. Her jobs as far as I know are always helping people in some way, usually working with youth, either education-related or working with kids at risk. That is what her schooling is about at…

I Am A Secular Woman

Secular Woman is a organization that just formed, and is currently filing for 501(c)(3) status. I just joined it and you should to. Here's the mission statement: Mission The mission of Secular Woman is to amplify the voice, presence, and influence of non-religious women. Vision Secular Woman envisions a future in which women without supernatural beliefs have the opportunities and resources they need to participate openly and confidently as respected voices of leadership in the secular community and every aspect of American society. Values Humanism We embrace human-centered ethics informed by…

What is the best digital PHS camera?

After a couple of months of testing, the results are in. I've attempted to wrestle with this issue on this blog before, but with unsatisfying results. PHS (Push Here Stupid) cameras can be tricky, for a number of reasons. A few years ago, my sister gave Julia a Sony, that new fancy digital camera with all sorts of bells and whistled. It took amazingly good photographs. But cameras in the same line that I've looked at later don't take photographs that are nearly as good. Why? In my opinion, because they are made by Sony. It seems to me that Sony is great at coming out with wonderful…

Climate change book for young readers

What are Global Warming and Climate Change?: Answers for Young Readers is a fairly unique book, as far as I know. It explains climate change, contextualized global warming, discusses causes and consequences and directly addresses the politics of climate change and global warming. The official book description: "Global warming is one of the most talked about science subjects today. Maybe you have seen pictures of polar bears or other animals stranded atop floating chunks of melting ice. Perhaps you have heard about or lived through extreme weather - hurricanes, floods, water shortages, heat…

Cotingas and Manakins: Amazing birds, amazing bird book

Five families of birds make up the group that could be referred to as the Cotingas and Manakins, which in turn include species with such colorful names as "Pale-bellied Tyrant-Manakin," "Bare-necked Fruitcrow," "Peruvian Plantcutter," and "White-browed Purpletuft." And certainly, you've heard of the Andean Cock-of-theRock. These birds and their relatives are THE famous colorful amazing birds of the Neotropics, the birds people who go to the Jungles of Central and South America go to see. "... the song of the Xcreaming Piha,... the loudest bird on Earth, is used by moviemakers to epitomize…

Unhappy Anniversary World War I

But they did not call it that then. This isn't actually the anniversary of the war, but it is the wedding anniversary plus one month of Archduke Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, and the day the two of them were assassinated by Mlada Bosna. Today, one month later one hundred years ago, the first of several declarations of war was made, by Austria-Hungary against Serbia. After that, it gets very complicated. By the end, the Ottoman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Russian Empire, and the German Empire did not exist any more. The German colonies around the world were lost to Germany…

Comment on El Nino Post on 538

The 538 comment system appears to not be working, probably because of my current highly suspicious location, so I figured I'd put my comment here (since I spent a whole minute writing it): "Long-range forecast models have come to a consensus recently that a minor to moderate El Niño pattern may develop six to nine months from now. That just isn't true. Forecasts suggest a 50-50 chance of El Nino, but this is hard to predict. There is no consensus that an El Nino will develop among forecasters who are always super cautious about this prediction and there is only a 50-50 chance. Also, I see…

The pitiful output of the Discovery Institute

The DI has long had this goal of getting their work published in mainstream science journals; unfortunately, they don't want to bother with that unpleasant business of trying to do real research. Give Up Blog has examples of their prodigious output: 5 abstracts that have been published in science journals. That's it. They've managed this feat by exploiting a loophole. Here's how to get published in a major journal: 1) Write an abstract about just about anything. 2) Send the abstract and your registration fee to a conference organized by the scientific society behind the journal. 3) Watch your…

Wildlife of Southern Africa

Wildlife of Southern Africa , by Martin Withers and David Hosking, is new (August 2011) and good. If you are planning a trip to South Africa, Namibia, Botswana or anywhere nearby, or if you live there and like to go to the bush sometimes, consider it. This is a pocket guide, it is small, has good photographs, is inexpensive, and accurate. In my opinion, if you are travelling around Africa looking at wildlife, you will need a set of more specialized guides (which I've discussed at length elsewhere on this blog, see below), but this is a good extra to carry along or to have handy, depending…

If Donald Trump were a rabbi…

Steve Stanton, the city manager of Largo, Florida, is getting a sex change operation. That news is grounds for firing him. Injust as that is (but so damned typical), I was amused by this remark: "If Jesus was here tonight, I can guarantee you he'd want him terminated," said Pastor Ron Saunders of Largo's Lighthouse Baptist Church. "Make no mistake about it." It's a fascinating comment. We have an idealistic image of Jesus representing the weak and downtrodden, the oppressed minorities, of preaching tolerance and inclusion, and Pastor Ron Saunders is exactly the opposite … and at the same…

AIDS in the news

Two new big stories regarding AIDS: some good, some bad. First, the good. It's been reported that a single-pill, once-a-day AIDS treatment may be available by the end of the year. Though the drug regimen to treat AIDS is less oppressive than it was a decade ago, it's still a difficult and confusing process. Combining drugs has been diffcult--mainly because no single company oned rights to all the drugs needed for an optimal combination. Now, Gilead Sciences (developers of Tamiflu) and Bristol-Myers Squibb have agreed to collaborate and combine 3 drugs into one pill (a New England…

March Pieces Of My Mind #2

In the foreground, a characteristic Swedish archaeological site of the 20th century: the abandoned municipal ski slope. Its construction, use and abandonment all post-date the still-in-use 1913 building in the background. "Qualitative research" seems largely to mean "anecdotal material with no statistical representativity". I'm starting a support group for people who think the novel American Gods is not great, not bad, not particularly memorable. Woah-ho, dude. Lucid dreaming is when you train yourself to a) know that you're dreaming, b) direct events in the dream. This researcher has…

September Pieces Of My Mind #1

Learned a neat German expression: Eier kraulen, lit. "to fondle the eggs", means "to fondle someone's testicles", that is, "to stroke a man's ego". Lithuanian plumbers put the hot water to the right even though the colour coding on the taps is the reverse. This Romanian researcher thinks that the Yamnaya Culture is an ancient "people" that can be identified in graves by a combination of archaeological data, genetic markers and radiocarbon dates. This is backwards. The Yamnaya Culture is a modern analytical entity resting entirely on archaeological data. No genetic data can prove or disprove…

EGU: Thursday

A view of the cathedral, which looms up over the streets on my way to the U-bahn. Start off with a pile of global radiation / global dimming / global brightening, and indeed moisture trends (the best dataset for soil moisture comes from the FSU cos they cared about their wheat fields). A model works better to simulate soil moisture trends (increasing) if dimming taken into account. Put up my wildly exciting sea-ice and AR4 models poster and browse amongst the others. Bit of a misc morning. Crucifix: looking at climate sensitivity. LGM climate sens in models do not seem to be related to…

Hold off on the chemo! Herpes doesnt like it!

Hey remember how I told you all scientists are using herpes, the regular-ol much hated cold-sore virus, to treat/cure cancers? The approach has left us with miraculous effects... or no effects at all. I mean, half of the melanoma patients lived A LOT LONGER than they were supposed to, several of them ending up with no evidence of disease... But that also means that half werent helped at all. HSV-1 couldnt help a child with rhabdomyosarcoma... when it was 'supposed' to work so well. What happened? Of course that question has a collection of complex answers, and there are lots of scientists…

"Nature" awards quack hunters with John Maddox prizes

Ask anyone who has stood up to quacks/charlatans/nutbars-- Crazy people be CRAZY. Someone tries to educate the public, move their field, shine a candle in a demon haunted world, stand up for what they think is right, and they are rewarded with insane emails (check!), often including threats of physical violence (check!), badgering emails to ones employers (check, like, times eleventy!), which inevitably escalate into legal bullying (stifling free-speech by issuing false DMCAs, filing lawsuits with the intent of bankrupting the opposition, exploiting bullshit libel laws in backwards countries…

Links for 2012-03-31

Physics - Cultivating Extra Dimensions The search for ways to unify and understand physical phenomena goes back to Kaluza and Klein, who in the 1920s tried to combine electromagnetism with gravity by adding a fourth spatial dimension to the usual three (plus time). More recent theoretical work has suggested that a theory of everything may need 11 spacetime dimensions. Boada et al. are suggesting an experimental strategy for investigating how matter behaves in extra dimensions. Their idea is to encode a fourth spatial dimension in an internal degree of freedom offered by atoms trapped in an…

How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog: Photoshop Contest

It's now officially February, and the release date for How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog is only a few weeks off-- the official release date is Feb. 28. Of course, I've got a copy already: If you would like a copy of your very own, you can either wait until the release, or take part in this shameless publicity stunt: The second-ever Dog Physics Photo Contest! Last time around, we did a LOLEmmy contest for a bound galley proof of the first book. This time, I'm giving away a signed copy of the finished book, so we'll go for something a little trickier: I've picked three pictures from my…

Links for 2011-12-09

Print - What Really Happened Aboard Air France 447 - Popular Mechanics Human judgments, of course, are never made in a vacuum. Pilots are part of a complex system that can either increase or reduce the probability that they will make a mistake. After this accident, the million-dollar question is whether training, instrumentation, and cockpit procedures can be modified all around the world so that no one will ever make this mistake again--or whether the inclusion of the human element will always entail the possibility of a catastrophic outcome. After all, the men who crashed AF447 were three…

Links for 2011-09-01

How to read academic research (beginner's guide) Some basic tips on finding useful information, and the rudimentary statistical knowledge you need to make sense of it. Most applicable in the social and life sciences, but worth knowing for anybody. A Quick Look at How Our Kids Are Doing | Mother Jones "I'm pretty sure I've posted this before in one form or another, and I'm not sure what prompted me to do it again, but every once in a while I feel the urge to present some raw data about how our kids are doing in school. The charts below are taken directly from the most recent NAEP report card…

Hugo Nominations: Meh

The nominees for the 2011 Hugo Awards were released on Sunday, which is the sort of thing I usually blog about here, so you might think it's just our flaky DSL that's kept me from saying anything about it. that's only part of the story, though. I haven't said anything about them in large part because it's a really uninspiring bunch of works. I've only read two of the Best Novel nominees at this point, Cryoburn and The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, and I'm not enthusiastic about either. I have fairly low expectations for a Miles Vorkosigan novel relative to a lot of fans, but Cryoburn failed to…

Links for 2011-04-22

Top Facts - Gauss Facts "Gauss has an Erdos number of -1." (tags: math silly internet) Making Light: Yog's Law "Self-publishing is the part of the map where the author is the publisher and hires the editor, hires the cover artist, the typesetter, the proofreader, contracts the printer, buys the ISBN, arranges distribution, promotion, marketing, and carries out every other aspect of publishing. What you need to recall is that while the author is the publisher, "publisher" and "author" are separate roles. One of the classic mistakes I see with self-published authors is that they don't put "…

Hugo Humiliation

Over in LiveJournal land, nwhyte just finished reading all the Hugo-winning novels, and provides a list of them with links to reviews or at least short comments. He also gives a summary list of his take on the best and worst books of the lot. The obvious thing to do with such a list, particularly in LiveJournal land, is to take the list and mark which ones you've read, and so on. In th interest of a little variety, though, let me suggest an alternate game: the academic parlor game "Humilation," invented by David Lodge, in which literary academics admit to not reading various classic works,…

Links for 2011-04-08

How Much is a Dragon Worth? - Michael Noer - Backslash - Forbes "To silence the skepticism and to give fans of the list some idea of just how deep the rabbit hole goes, I've decided to flash a little bit of imaginary ankle and walk through a typical Fictional 15 investigation, in this case of Smaug, the fire-breathing dragon from J.R.R. Tolkein's novel The Hobbit and the forthcoming Warner Bros. movies. Certainly Smaug is depicted as being very rich in the novel.  At one point, Bilbo Baggins, the book's hero, addresses him as "O Smaug, unassessably wealthy" and his gold is described as…

Championship Basketball Thoughts

I stayed up way too late last night, watching televised basketball and reading Steven Erikson (about which more later). It wasn't a good night for my teams, with both Syracuse and Maryland losing, but this is the most hoops I've watched all season, and I have a few miscellaneous comments: -- How about that Big East? Two hard-fought games in the semifinals, both going to overtime, with a spectacular individual performance by Kemba Walker. Sadly, both Syracuse and Notre Dame lost in large part due to grievous lapses in judgement, with players who ought to know better rushing three-pointers when…

Science Stereotypes and Threats

One thing that I thought of while writing yesterday's mammoth post about scientific thinking and stereotypes was the notion of stereotype threat, the psychological phenomenon where students who are reminded of negative stereotypes right before a test tend to score worse than they do when taking the test without the negative reminder. This is a hot topic in education research at the moment, and it seems like EurekAlert throws me about one press release a week relating to the topic (or, at least, it seemed that way before I got too bust to keep up with EurekAlert). I ended up not throwing it in…

Things Going My Way

I'm trainblogging again, somewhere between Norrköping and Nyköping, and the sun is shining. I am pretty pleased with things, not least with how my project about elite sites in Ãstergötland is working out. Yesterday I received the Kaga parish landowner's permission to excavate in his field after the harvest, that is, in mid- and late September. This is where a gold-foil figure die turned up a year ago. Then I received information that the Royal Academy of Sciences has given me the largest grant so far in my career, meaning that I wouldn't have to worry about my livelihood before Christmas…

Damage Assessed at Ravlunda Iron Age Cemetery

Yet another piece of news about Bob Lind's most recent archaeoastronomical caper (previously covered here and here). The Scania County Archaeologist has had an independent contractor assess and document the damage done to an Early Iron Age cemetery by Lind and former geology professor Nils-Axel Mörner. The men's interventions will be repaired and the site's protected area will be enlarged, but no charges will be pressed. It's an unusual case as Lind made his unauthorised interference with the site known through a press release! Here are a few choice quotations from contract archaeologist…