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New and Exciting in PLoS Genetics

Two of the papers published today in PLoS Genetics (now on the TOPAZ platform) got my attention: Redundant Function of REV-ERBα and β and Non-Essential Role for Bmal1 Cycling in Transcriptional Regulation of Intracellular Circadian Rhythms: Circadian clocks in plants, fungi, insects, and mammals all share a common transcriptional network architecture. At the cellular level, the mammalian clockwork consists of a core Per/Cry negative feedback loop and additional interlocking loops. We wished to address experimentally the contribution of the interlocking Bmal1 loop to clock function in…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Bats Use Magnetic Substance As Internal Compass To Help Them Navigate: They may not be on most people's list of most attractive species, but bats definitely have animal magnetism. Researchers from the Universities of Leeds and Princeton have discovered that bats use a magnetic substance in their body called magnetite as an 'internal compass' to help them navigate. Or, if you prefer a much livelier take, with context, check out Pondering Pikaia Why Do We Love Babies? Parental Instinct Region Found In The Brain: Why do we almost instinctively treat babies as special, protecting them and…

Mesozoic Plant and Animal Museum Under Construction in Utah

Architect's rendition of the completed College of Eastern Utah Prehistoric Museum and Mesozoic Gardens. At a time when creationists are dumping money into so-called prehistoric "museums" that tell lies to the public about evolution, it is refreshing to see a real museum gain more monetary support and prominence, especially in a "red state". An official home has been found for the world's most extensive evolutionary botanic gardens, which also includes an expansion of the College of Eastern Utah (CEU) Prehistoric Museum, in Price, Utah. At a recent groundbreaking ceremony, entrepreneur…

Court Date Update

I have been thinking about court a lot obviously, and finally decided that I would rescind my 72 hour letter so instead of fighting things out in court this Thursday, I will take my chances that I will be getting out of here on friendly terms in a reasonable length of time, as in 10-14 days. Since discharge will happen sooner or later anyway, at this point, I have mixed feelings about leaving this place because I like having someone here to talk to when I awaken from a nightmare (often), and someone who checks on me to make sure I am alright, and the food is much better than what I eat on…

A Random Act of Kindness

tags: white-throated sparrow, Zonotrichia albicollis, birds, Image of the Day White-throated Sparrow, Zonotrichia albicollis, 1st winter plumage. Image: Kevin T. Karlson [larger view]. This morning, I ran into a little bird at the entrance to the library where I go every day. I was actually distracted, but out of the corner of my eye I noticed this was a white-throated sparrow, Zonotrichia albicollis, instead of the ubiquitous house (english) sparrows. Not only are white-throated sparrows the sister species to my dissertation bird, the white-crowned sparrow, Zonotrichia leucophrys, but…

Wow, Like, Smuggling Hundreds of Crocodiles onto an Airplane is Illegal or Something??

tags: illegal animal trade, smuggling, reptiles, airplane Like, who would have thought?? I ran across a story today that is absolutely .. er .. astonishing. A 22-year-old um, er, primate from Saudi Arabia was caught at an airport smuggling reptiles out of Egypt in his carry-on luggage .. and when caught, he claimed the luckless animals were intended for "scientific research". This neanderthal was discovered carrying hundreds of snakes, chameleons and baby crocodiles in his carry-on luggage when he attempted to board a Saudi-bound flight at an Egyptian airport. The smuggler was caught after…

London Update: Where I Stayed

Front door to London's Piccadilly Backpackers. Image: GrrlScientist 6 September 2008 [larger view]. For those of you coming to London who might be searching for a cheap and livable place to crash, there is a hostel in Piccadilly Circus called Piccadilly Backpackers. That's where I am staying (in a coed dorm -- even though they advertize female-only dorms, they don't follow that in my experience). I think this is a great hostel: affordable, quiet, no/little theft, safe and impressively clean. A typical dorm room in the Piccadilly Backpackers hostel (this was my room, which was an eight-…

WWW2010 conference this week in Raleigh, NC

WWW2010 is starting tonight. Interested to know more about it? Sure, here's the brief history: The World Wide Web was first conceived in 1989 by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. The first conference of the series, WWW1, was held at CERN in 1994 and organized by Robert Cailliau. The IW3C2 was founded by Joseph Hardin and Robert Cailliau later in 1994 and has been responsible for the conference series ever since. Except for 1994 and 1995 when two conferences were held each year, WWWn became an annual event held in late April or early May. The location of the conference rotates…

What's New in My Zoo

I am sorry for my relative silence, but I have been experiencing several troubles recently. First, and worst, a stranger on the sidewalk bumped into me and knocked my laptop out of my hands such that it fell to the pavement, where it dented one corner and compromised the structural integrity of the metal case. It still functions, but I have to get it repaired. Besides the fact that my laptop is only six months old, it is the most expensive object I've ever owned, so I am just sick about this. I am heavily dependent upon my laptop for nearly everything from writing, communication and job…

Speaking as One of The Pre-Pregnant ...

I just learned that new federal guidelines recommend that all human female Americans between their first menstrual period and menopause should be treated as pre-pregnant, regardless of their future reproductive plans. Does this sound rather like .. er, The Handmaid's Tale to you? It certainly does to me! According to this Washington Post article, what does it mean to be a member of the pre-pregnant? This means that, among other things, all "pre-pregnant" women should take folic acid supplements, refrain from smoking and using alcohol, avoid contact with cat feces and lead-based paint,…

The Scoop on the Red Knot and Horseshoe Crab

Red knot, Calidris canutus rufus. This image appears here with the kind permission of the photographer, Arthur Morris, Birds as Art. Click image for larger view in its own window. Ornithologists fear the red knot could go extinct in as few as five years due to overfishing of horseshoe crabs in Delaware Bay, which is the birds' final refueling stop on their 17,000 mile journey to their breeding grounds in the Arctic. Red knots, ruddy turnstones, sanderlings and semipalmated sandpipers all feed on horseshoe crab eggs in the Delaware Bay, and their populations are all experiencing sharp…

The Sun Kings

In the autumn of 1859, the Earth was hit by a massive coronal ejection from the Sun. Aurora flared worldwide, compasses went wild and the telegraph system crashed. This is the pivoting event in Stuart Clark's book "The Sun Kings" - Princeton University Press, ISBN-13:978-0-691-12660-9 The book is centered around the life and work of Richard Carrington, amateur astronomer and member of the Royal Society and Royal Astronomical Society. There are flashbacks and side trips, covering mainly English astronomy, Hershcel through to Maunder, with some discussion of events in Germany and the US. The…

More bad pet food news

Apparently an FDA press conference this morning gave some bad news on pet food. See PetConnection.com The contamination may include dry food and other types of pet food than that originally reported. Initial reports were that only "savoury cuts" style wet food was at risk. Almost 10,000 deaths have been anecdotally reported. Unless someone does an "excess mortality" survey for Dec-Apr for pets, the true number will never be known. eg our cat died in early feb, she was old, and she had been chronically ill for several months, but we had switched her to high protein food just before christmas,…

hot gossip

Interesting American Astronomical Society meeting here in Seattle. The "big" result is undoubtedly the COSMOS collabortion release, although there were several other significant "big" results announced. Nothing earth shattering, so to speak, but that happens only every 2-3 years, can't have it every single meeting. This year was interesting for me, because I got the press releases in advance, still have 25 to go, from todays late releases and wednesday's releases. It is always interesting to see what the press picks up on: the really big results are obvious, but only a few percent of the…

And I depart in a cloud of poetry

Once again, we open the floor to the lyrical expression of a few readers who have been inspired by the recent effusion of musical and poetical outbursts here. Fortunately for all, there is no gong hanging on the wall behind you, the judges…although some of these have been pretty good. First up is a little poem written during the Dover trial by a very famous evolutionary biologist who has asked me to keep it anonymous. No confidence in the meter, huh? Or perhaps fear that declaring such talent will lead to the literary set distracting from the real work of biology? I think that I shall never…

Hi there everyone!

MAJeff here, and I'll be one of your guestbloggers for the next several days. I'd first like to thank PZ for asking me to do this. I was more than a little surprised to get an email the other day inviting me, and I hope I can keep up the quality people have come to expect from the place. I'm not sure of everything I'll be posting about yet. But, I'll probably be doing some of what I do when I teach, and that is asking questions. Y'all are a chatty bunch, so I probably won't need to do much asking. Sometimes, though, I just like to get to know folks better, to move beyond argument and talk…

contempt in congress

Congress has been holding possible contempt citations over some current and ex-White House officials, and a of people have been wondering if the House is going to let executive staff refuse to respond to subpoena issued by oversight committees Such contempt is usually referred to the local US Attorney, who then refers it to a court and the process goes from there. But through some extraordinarily creative lawyering, the Department of Justice has indicated they will refuse to enforce contempt citations, on the grounds that a DoJ official wrote an opinion for the White House that executive…

Tales from the lab: the finale

What strange things happen in the lab on Halloween? Read part I and part II to find out what's going on. (Reposted in honor of Halloween) "All those beauties in solid motion All those beauties, gonna swallow you up Hi hi hi hi hi hi One time too many Too far to go I - we come to take you home" - Swamp by the Talking Heads The lyrics of Swamp were pounding in my brains as I cleaned up what I could and threw the rest of the mess into the autoclave bag. At least I hadn't knocked over all the flasks. Maybe there was some hope for this experiment. "Poor cells," I crooned, "you don't know I'm…

HealthMap: hunting for global outbreaks and learning about microbiology

HealthMap is a great site that could be an excellent resource when teaching a biology, microbiology, or health class. Not to mention, I can picture people using it before they travel somewhere or even just for fun. I learned about HealthMap awhile ago from Mike the Mad Biologist, but I didn't get time to play with the site until today. Here's an example to see how it works. How do I use HealthMap? I begin using HealthMap by changing the number of diseases selected to "none." Then I scrolled through the list until I found something interesting. I chose "Poisoning." The number of…

Genetic Variation II: What is a RFLP?

RFLP is an acronym that stands for "Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism." That's quite a mouthful and once you've said this phrase a few times, you realize why we use the initials instead. I know a Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism sounds like something that must be impossibly complicated to understand, but if we take the name apart, it's really not so bad. Let's start with most familiar one of the four words and work from there. My guess is that for many of you, that word is "length." When we talk about length in this context, we are talking about the length of a piece of…

lyopholizer

Freeze drying anthrax and the weird case of the US domestic anthrax attacks in 2001 There has been a set of good Sb posts on the recent developments in the anthrax mailing terrorist attacks in 2001, after the FBI revealed they had a new suspect, Dr Ivins, who was a researcher at Ft Detrick USAMRIID Greg has a timeline and link to Greenwald Tara lays out the basic story and Revere comments Mike lays out the open questions There are two additional bizarro evidentiary leaks that came out today, that make the whole story even stranger: the letter were mailed from Princeton NJ, and Ivins has no…

Say "Hi" to @SteacieLibrary

Or not. You can also feel free to subscribe. Or not. Yes, my library has entered the Twitter age. I'll probably be the main tweeter but hopefully a couple of the other reference staff here will chip (chirp?) in from time to time. It took me a while to decide whether or not it's worth it to join Twitter. When I do IL classes, I often poll the class informally to see who uses which of the various social networking software sites. Facebook is around 90%. Twitter is around 5-10%, although somewhat more than 50% seem to have at least heard of it. So, it's a fairly small percentage of…

KITP: Smoke Over Water

yesterday, as we were headed into an informal research group discussion, one of the locals grabbed me and pointed out the window at a small plume of smoke on the mountain above Santa Barbara it was a small brush fire in San Roque canyon, the Jesusita Fire, high on the mountain, it was warm and windy, but the fire was moving diagonally uphill and looked like it would be contained; firecrews and helicopters were on it immediately by night the fire looked to have died down, but with the heavy brush in the canyons, the firecrews couldn't form a line around the fire, and in the morning it flared…

Storm World

A couple of years ago I received a copy of Chris Mooney's "Storm World" and packed it in my carry-on to read on travel. This month I finally read it, and about time too. Storm World Hurricanes, Politics and the Battle Over Global Warming by Chris Mooney Harcourt Inc ISBN 978-0-15-101287-9 Storm World follows Chris's debut work, The Republican War on Science, and was written in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the 2005 Atlantic Hurricane season. It is a timely, well written and very interesting book. The approach is largely historical and from the perspective of following the…

terroristic acts and CDS payments

here is an idle thought: there was much conjecture back in sep '01 that people with "inside knowledge" had shorted certain stocks likely to be affected by the events of that month and made significant short term gains by subsequent events the market, of course, paid up, and there have been claims those contracts were looked into there have also been claims that certain people associated with this disappeared suddenly and unexpectedly from the plane of existence not long afterwards there were some sudden deaths among not very old mid-east financiers not long after, that does seem clear so…

Friday Fun: Epic failures: 11 infamous software bugs

Having started my working life as a software developer, I know a bit about epic bugs. Let's just say I've had my share and leave it at that. At very least, I can say I never caused any vehicles to crash or any companies to fail. So, from ComputerWorld, Epic failures: 11 infamous software bugs. Instead, this story is about outright programming errors that caused key failures in their own right. Have I missed anything important? Consider this a call for nominations for the biggest bugs of all time. These are my suggestions; if you have any honorable mentions, bring 'em on. The worst anyone…

Does Computer Science Have a Culture?

That's the question Eugene Wallingford asks in a recent post at his blog, Knowing and Doing. If you studied computer science, did your undergrad alma mater or your graduate school have a CS culture? Did any of your professors offer a coherent picture of CS as a serious intellectual discipline, worthy of study independent of specific technologies and languages? In graduate school, my advisor and I talked philosophically about CS, artificial intelligence, and knowledge in a way that stoked my interest in computing as a coherent discipline. A few of my colleagues shared our interests, but many…

Welcome to the new blogging community aggregator: Scienceblogging.org

Check it out: Scienceblogging.org. On twitter too! Thanks to Dave Munger, Bora Zivkovic and Anton Zuiker for coming up with what we've all been waiting for -- a way to keep track of all the new science blogging networks that have been sprouting up everywhere lately. From Bora's Drumroll, please! Introducing: Scienceblogging.org: But over the last month or two, the world of science blogging changed. Scienceblogs.com is there, big and good, but not as dominant as it once was. Other existing networks suddenly became more interesting and more visible. They started growing. New networks got…

Update: Court Date and ScienceBlogs

Well, ScienceBlogs is recovering from a system-wide crash, so some of your comments were lost and some of my colleagues' entries were lost, too. (I lucked out, because one of my entries published itself six times, instead of being lost). Sorry about that, but you'll be pleased to know that we all complained loudly about the situation behind the scenes. So on to the court date story. I went to court yesterday evening as scheduled and sat on the bench, sweating, despite the fact that the courtroom was air conditioned to the point where it was as cold as a refrigerator. Anyway, after the first…

Seattle Visit: Ballard Farmer's Market Dinner

tags: Seattle Washington, Ballard Farmer's Market, fresh produce, fresh fish, wine, flowers Dinner at Shannon's, using fish, produce and wine from the Ballard farmer's market. Image: GrrlScientist 28 September 2008 [larger view]. "Do you photograph every meal you eat?" Shannon sounded amused as I pointed my camera at the mushrooms in the frying pan. "Well .. not exactly," I replied, thinking of all the meals that I had photographed, realizing that nearly all of them were meals I had eaten while traveling. "After photographing parts of the Farmer's Market, it just seems to be the right…

Mystery Bird: Common Tern, Sterna hirundo

tags: Common Tern, Sterna hirundo, birds, nature, Image of the Day [Mystery bird] Common Tern, Sterna hirundo, photographed at the Texas City Dike, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow] Image: Joseph Kennedy, 19 September 2007 [larger view]. Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/1500s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400. Rick Wright, Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes: This is the image that springs to mind when a birder hears the word "tern": a graceful rear end, the wingtips tapering into infinity above a long pointed tail; a slender, flat-…

Spring

tags: Spring, Thomas Wolfe, poetry, National Poetry Month April is National Poetry Month, and I plan to post one poem per day, every day this month (If you have a favorite poem that you'd like me to share, feel free to email it to me). My poetry suggestions are starting to run dry, which means I will start posting my own favorites (but you've seen many of those already) or you can send me your favorite poems, which I probably haven't read before! Today's poem was suggested by "The Ridger", a long-time reader who was inspired by yesterday's photoessay (the images I snapped for that were taken…

Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow

Juliet: 'Tis almost morning, I would have thee gone -- And yet no farther than a wan-ton's bird, That lets it hop a little from his hand, Like a poor prisoner in his twisted gyves, And with a silken thread plucks it back again, So loving-jealous of his liberty. Romeo: I would I were thy bird. Juliet: Sweet, so would I, Yet I should kill thee with much cherishing. Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, That I shall say good night till it be morrow. -- William Shakespeare. Romeo And Juliet Act 2, scene 2. I had a fabulous time in Manhattan Kansas. I want to say more, but I don't…

So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut Dead at 84

Kurt Vonnegut, 1922-2007. I was saddened this morning to learn that another one of my favorite writers, Kurt Vonnegut, died. He died last night in Manhattan after suffering a head injury several weeks ago. Like another one of my favorite authors who recently died, William Styron, Vonnegut struggled with depression, and survived a suicide attempt in 1984. But despite this challenge, he still managed to publish 14 novels, three collections of short stories, five plays and five works of non-fiction. His last book, Man Without a Country, was a collection of essays published in 2005, and was a…

Romania struggling against the forces of ignorance

Everyone was so impressed with this clear-thinking Romanian woman whose video I posted last week — from that alone you might get the impression that Romania is a very rational place, full of level-headed smart people who have little truck with religious silliness. To correct that, you should read the web page of the Romanian Humanist Association, which is fighting a tide of state-sanctioned nonsense rising in their educational system. They have posted a brief education of some of the educational standards endorsed by the ministry of education. They are teaching creationism in the classroom…

Birdbooker Report 71

tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books "How does one distinguish a truly civilized nation from an aggregation of barbarians? That is easy. A civilized country produces much good bird literature." --Edgar Kincaid The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of a wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that currently are, or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle birding pals and book collector, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is edited by me and published here for your information and…

Roger Ebert doesn't review Creation

There's a new movie coming out about Darwin that does something different: instead of talking about the science of evolution, it's about Darwin's personal life. Roger Ebert has seen it and offers a few thoughts on the subject matter (it isn't a review, though!), and it sounds interesting — I'll be seeing it if it appears in Morris, which isn't likely, or when it's available on DVD, which is much more likely. I'm not worried that it will provide comfort to creationists, but I am a little concerned that it may Hollywoodize history a little bit. Ebert points out that it focuses on the…

Occupational Health News Roundup

In the Washington Post, Sari Horwitz and Lena H. Sun report that President Obama will likely nominate Thomas E. Perez to be the next Secretary of Labor, following the departure of Secretary Hilda Solis. Perez is currently assistant US attorney general for civil rights. The article mentions work by Perez on issues important to workers' health and safety. In 2005, Perez served as president of the Montgomery County (Maryland) Council, and one of the laws he pushed for was a domestic workers' "bill of rights." In 2007, Governor Martin O'Malley appointed him the state's secretary of labor, and in…

World Water Day 2013: International Water Cooperation

Today is World Water Day, and this year the celebration focuses on The Year of International Water Cooperation. UN Water reminds us that rivers often flow through multiple countries, and actions by one country or community can affect their neighbors’ ability to meet their water needs. Consuming too much water, or polluting a shared body of water, can make it hard for others to have enough for drinking, hygiene, agriculture, ecosystem health, and other needs. The World Water Day website sounds this call for cooperation: In designating 2013 as the UN International Year of Water Cooperation, the…

OSHA proposes $21,500 penalty to firm where two 17 year olds lost legs

The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued citations last week to Zaloudek Grain Co. in Kremlin, Oklahoma for safety violations identified in its investigation of the August 4, 2011 incident in which two young workers each lost a leg. The citations listed six serious violations and a proposed penalty of $21,500. Two of the violations were assessed the OSHA maximum $7,000 penalty amount, one for inadequate guarding around the auger (1910.212(a)(2)) and the other for failing to train the young men (1910.272(e)(2)). The other safety regulations violated by the…

Occupational Health News Roundup

I somehow missed this when it first happened, but the state of Connecticut made history last month when Governor Dan Malloy signed legislation requiring up to five paid sick days per year for service workers at businesses with 50 or more employees. Christopher Keating gave these details in the Hartford Courant after the state's House of Representative passed the measure: Manufacturing firms and nationally chartered nonprofit organizations like the YMCA would be exempt, and the bill also would not cover day laborers, independent contractors, salaried workers, and temporary workers. Unlike in…

Occupational Health News Roundup

In much of the reporting I've seen on the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the plant workers are an anonymous, if much-praised, group. The New York Times' Hiroko Tabuchi digs deeper to tell us more about who some of these workers are, and what their experiences can tell us about occupational health and safety in Japan. He begins with the story of 55-year-old Masayuki Ishizawa, who was at the plant when the earthquake struck and had to plead with the security guard to be let out the of the complex to flee the tsunami: Mr. Ishizawa, who was finally allowed to leave, is not a nuclear specialist; he…

Occupational Health News Roundup

For its 40th anniversary, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has compiled a timeline of key milestones during its history. The big picture is a positive one: Although accurate statistics were not kept at the time, it is estimated that in 1970 around 14,000 workers were killed on the job. That number fell to approximately 4,340 in 2009. At the same time, U.S. employment has almost doubled and now includes over 130 million workers at more than 7.2 million worksites. Since the passage of the OSH Act, the rate of reported serious workplace injuries and illnesses has declined from…

Georgia congressman resurrects bad idea, poultry workers threatened with faster line speeds

Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA) says U.S. poultry companies “are being handcuffed” by a rule that set the maximum processing line speed at 140 birds per minute. Collins wrote this week to USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue and asked him to consider raising the maximum speed to at least 175 birds per minute. He says it's a step toward “removing red tape and needless regulatory obstacles holding back our economy.” Allowing poultry processing plants to increase line speeds above 140 birds per minute was a bad idea when the Obama administration's USDA proposed it, and it’s still a bad idea. Workers in poultry…

Criticism of Arizona's arbitrary reduction in workplace safety penalties

Federal OSHA is assessing whether Arizona’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health (ADOSH) is meeting its obligation as an approved State OSHA program. The federal government’s scrutiny was prompted by a formal complaint, as well as investigative reporting by Emily Bregel and Tony Rich of the Arizona Daily Star. Both noted that the Industrial Commission of Arizona (ICA) routinely discounts the findings of ADOSH’s safety inspectors. The ICA’s decisions result in the severity classification of violations being downgraded (e.g., from serious to non-serious) and reduction in proposed monetary…

Does workers’ comp fulfill its obligation to injured workers?

That’s the title of a report released this week by the Labor Department. It came in response ProPublica’s and National Public Radio’s investigative series, which began in March 2015, called “Insult to Injury.” The series had many revelations and interesting features. My favorite was an interactive graphic where you can see how much a body part is worth (if you lose it because of a workplace hazard) depending on the state you live. I've used it with my students. The stories by ProPublica and NPR compelled eight Democratic Members of Congress, including Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) and Rep.…

Album Review: Astrophobos, Remnants of Forgotten Horrors

Pär Svensson of Kurtz, himself a rock guitarist with unbelievably eclectic musical tastes, pops in with a guest entry. Hello Cleveland! Martin asked me to review the debut album of his brother's death metal outfit (as he put it), citing general unfamiliarity with the genre as a reason. Arguably he's also lacking somewhat in the objectivity department. Or, he hated the record and wanted someone else to bring the hatchet down. Maybe I'm a pawn being pushed in some family power struggle or blood feud. Give this job to Clemenza. But I digress. At hand is Remnants of Forgotten Horrors by…

The Viking Age Is Really A Period

I have a problem with the term Viking Age. And it's not likely that I will ever get satisfaction. Because I am a Scandy archaeologist, and the term is owned by UK historians and the general English-speaking public. The three-ages system was established by C.J. Thomsen in his 1821 book Ledetraad. It divides Scandinavian Prehistory into three ages, characterised by the material used in cutting tools: first stone, then bronze, then iron. In Swedish, this taxonomical level is the ålder – stenåldern, bronsåldern, järnåldern – using the close cognate of what Snorri back in the 13th century called…

June Pieces Of My Mind

Wait a minute. Did I just win my first competition for an advertised teaching job? In ten years of applying for them? I kind of feel the bedrock under my feet slipping. A chapter of my life ended on 12 June. 13½ years ago I began taking my son to daycare. Ever since, I have taken my kids to daycare or school half of my mornings or, since Jrette showed up, more. In August she starts taking the commuter train to school. The Norwegian Archaeologists' Annual Meeting has two quotations at the top of this year's web site: one from Michael Shanks and Christopher Tilley about how important…

Swedish Metal Detector Legislation: No Improvement In Sight

Despite loud (and in my opinion, well argued) opposition to the Swedish restrictions on metal detector use by honest amateurs, our authorities are sadly not coming round to anything resembling the Danish legislation that works so well. My friend and fieldwork collaborator Tobias Bondeson is a skilled amateur detectorist who regularly publishes scholarly papers on his finds. He pointed me to the latest developments in Swedish officialdom on the topic, a 26 March proposition from the Ministry for Culture to Parliament: Kulturmiljöns mångfald, ”The Diversity of the Historic Environment”. Tobias…