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Home again, Home Again

I have returned home from a day of baking in the hot sun to watch my best friend's kids play baseball and softball. It was blisteringly hot and I just scrubbed off the shell of sunscreen and sweat that had accumulated on my during the course of the day. But a good time was had by all. I also got to stop in at one of my favorite old haunts and was happy to see it was still there. I've spent many an hour in the Avalon Bookshop, a tiny little used book store in the town I grew up in. The place doesn't even have a real sign outside, just a paper one taped to the window. It's run by this old guy…

Luttig Leaves the Bench

This is interesting. J. Michael Luttig, a leading conservative judge and scholar who has often been mentioned as a potential Supreme Court nominee and would certainly be on the short list for the next vacancy should it happen before 2008, has resigned from the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. He will be moving to the private sector, where he will become the vice president and general counsel for Boeing. At 51 years old, Luttig has been an appellate judge for 15 years and his chances of being named to the Supreme Court were probably the best of any sitting judge, along with perhaps Michael…

Calvin College Censorship of Student Paper

A reader alerted me to a situation down at Calvin College, right here in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I have many friends associated with Calvin, including the theistic evolutionist mentioned many times in the comments on a thread below, Howard Van Till (he's a retired physics professor from Calvin). Every year, the Calvin College student newspaper puts out a spoof issue and, apparently, this year the school censored it heavily. Since Calvin is a private school, such censorship is entirely legal. But the folks who put together the spoof issue decided to put their work up on a webpage and get…

Banner Graphic Request

Okay, we now have the ability to replace the banner on top of this page (the part that has the title and subtitle of the blog) with something specific to our blog. The problem is that I'm completely clueless when it comes to the use of photoshop or similar programs, so I'm soliciting help from my readers. In fact, let's make it a contest to see who can come up with the coolest banner for the blog. The winner will get my undying gratitude and the applause of Edheads everywhere. The correct size, I'm told, is 756 x 70 pixels. And the color scheme needs to fit in with the rest of the page's drab…

Great Moments in Student Course Evaluations

One of my least favorite end-of-term rituals for faculty is the dreaded student course evaluations. These have two components: the numerical bubble-sheet evaluations, which provide the pseudo-quantitatvie evaluation used to compare courses, and written responses to a half-dozen very general questions. The latter are at least potentially more useful, particularly when the standard questions are supplemented with some class-specific questions, and end up providing some of the most useful feedback on my teaching (though this sometimes includes things I can't do much about, such as the student…

Ah, old memories

Back when I had an ungodly commute to work and had to get up at 5am to knock back a quart of coffee before staggering out to the bus and train, I'd sometimes flip through the channels on the TV to see what was happening. And at that hour of the morning, what you'd find is quack ads, infomercials, and the televangelists. I confess, some of my favorites were Ken Copeland (an awe-shucks country boy who looked like a few generations of inbreeding and moonshine abuse had shriveled his brain) and Benny Hinn (head-thwacking con man in a shiny white suit) — I'd watch them, awed that anyone was…

Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right

Another reminder that Republicans don't have a monopoly on offensive anti-science stupidity, from Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, who declares algebra useless in a column directed at a high-school drop-out. If, say, the school asked you for another year of English or, God forbid, history, so that you actually had to know something about your world, I would be on its side. But algebra? Please. (And again, I consider dusting off the Poetry for Physicists entry, and re-working it for the Chronicle of Higher Education or some such...) I could spend a bunch of time ripping into Cohen…

Unmoderated Post on Moderation

I will allow comments through by default for repeat commenters again, first time commenters will still need an initial approval. I will however now be a more active moderator and delete things that are useless or unnecessarily personal from now on, except on this thread. This is unavoidably subjective but I will try to err on the side of permissiveness. The goal will be controlling the tone more so than the content. Readers should keep in mind the fact I am in an Australian time zone, so doomed comments may be visible for many hours. I expect this blog will remain pretty quiet for the time…

Death of a salesman, part 2

Continuing an occasional series on non-notable folk. Marcel Leroux stirred up the septics quite a bit. By contrast, who cares about Tim Ball? He was declared [[WP:NN]] some time ago but then someone recreated his page. And so we have [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tim Ball]] (Tim, Timmy, Timothy, who cares about trivia?). Apart from the giggle-factor, there's nothing very interesting in this; contrasting the first and second AFD's is kinda fun; the level of give-a-toss is so much lower now. Incidentally, its been pointed out to me, not for the first time, that all this stuff is just…

A Reconstruction of Regional and Global Temperature for the Past 11,300 Years?

Well, no-one has said what I wanted to say about this, so I thought I should. Click on the image for P3's take. This is about Shaun A. Marcott, Jeremy D. Shakun, Peter U. Clark, Alan C. Mix's latest in Science. If you want to read some stupid things said about it, try Curry (surprise) or if you prefer your stupidity super-sized, then WUWT. And indeed, if you want to read drivel, why bother with watered down gruel? The abstract has something for everyone: Surface temperature reconstructions of the past 1500 years suggest that recent warming is unprecedented in that time. Here we provide a…

Registration

I've just tried to turn on registration, to deal with spam. It is probably doomed. Please try to leave a comment on this post letting me know how it worked. If it just totally f*cks up, then email me (wmconnolley (at) gmail.com). If just-post fails, try previewing first. OK, it is totally f*ck*d. Thanks for your emails. I'll turn it all off now. My apologies. I seem to have left approve-all-comments turned on. I'm going to leave that, for at least a bit. Note that according to the settings, any "authenticated" commenter doesn't need approving. [Most amusing failure email: "For some reason it…

We did it (part 2)

We did it refers. Killed Linda Norgrove, that is. You can listen to Hague make excuses, if you can bear it. The foreign secretary said that with the agreement of the prime minister he had agreed to a rescue bid because of fears that Ms Norgrove's life was in "grave danger". Well yes, indeed her life was in great danger, from the Americans. Who said that yes, they did it, but since they were the Good Guys and the other side were the Bad Guys, clearly it wasn't actually their fault, it was the other guys fault. Oddly, although Hague says "a number of soldiers had been disciplined" (not for…

More hateful religion

I mentioned the other day that this low-class, low-rent, low-IQ fanatical fundie church was going to broadcast their version of Richard Dawkins' funeral service. Well, it's up. Rarely will you find such a sterling example of the cretinous minds that fester like rotting mushrooms in the sickly, benevolent glow of Christianity. The preacher is awful: he is visibly reading from his script, and he can't even do that competently. This is no St John Chrysostom; it's a stumbling oaf who reads and writes like a pissed-off sixth-grader. The content is predictable, beginning with a few utterly…

Yes, they are mad

One of the more regrettable aspects of having children - other than the entire lack of a life - is interaction with the school inspectors. And the insanity reaches its peak in the inspection of after-school clubs. Its all such an utter waste of time that I'd rather ignore it than bother mock it, but since my wife was reading "Practice Guidance for the Early Years Foundation Stage" and found this, I had to share it: From the "Numbers as Labels and for Counting" section, under 40-60+ months: * Use rhymes, songs and stories involving counting on and counting back in ones, twos, fives and tens…

Rubbish weather

England is famous for its rubbish weather, but this summer has been unusually poor. As it happened that didn't affect us much and we had a great summer: we got a few days sun on the beach to start us off; managed to climb Snowdon and not get rained on by the summit cloud much; spend a week off in the sun in the Med; and it was grey in the Lakes but then it always is. But I draw the line at having to walk back from the local in the pouring rain; thats just not on. Now that school has restarted and we're not on hols the weather should be tantalisingly fine, but its worse than ever. I blame that…

175/366: Microdrifts

Random artsy shot of the moment: Tiny lines of snow between the "slates" on our roof. The wild see-sawing of the temperature has continued this week, so we got a little bit of snow, then it all melted, then more snow, then more melting, etc. This is from a couple of days ago, when it was cold, and I liked the way the light dusting of snow we'd gotten had blown into just the gaps between "slates" on the roof over the front window. "Slates" gets scare quotes because those aren't really rock, but rubber facsimiles. They're made out of old tires, I think, and we have them on the lower roof…

The Science of Soccer / La física de fútbol (Synopsis)

“Soccer matches should be something special, something people eagerly look forward to, something that brightens life.” -P. J. O’Rourke Well, my World Cup fanatics, the time is upon us. The 2014 World Cup is here and off to a spectacular start! No doubt, some of you have incredibly fond memories of previous soccer/fútbol matches; for me, it's the most incredible set shots that stand out the most. No doubt, many among you (especially the Brits) will remember this gem from 2006. But how do you bend the ball like David Beckham? The secret lies in the physical phenomenon of the Magnus Force,…

Don’t believe in cosmic inflation? You’re not alone, but you’re probably wrong. (Synopsis)

“For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.” -Vincent Van Gogh Ever since the BICEP2 team reported their findings -- and evidence for B-mode polarization of the cosmic microwave background indicating gravitational waves from inflation -- the physics world has never been the same. Images credit: Seljak & Zaldarriaga (L), Wayne Hu (R), viahttp://cosmology.berkeley.edu/~yuki/CMBpol/CMBpol.htm. Recently, there have been rumors that perhaps this B-mode signal is due to the Milky Way, and not due to inflation after all. If this does turn out to…

Weekend Diversion: Best Worst Math Joke Ever?

"If a 'religion' is defined to be a system of ideas that contains unprovable statements, then Gödel taught us that mathematics is not only a religion, it is the only religion that can prove itself to be one." -John Barrow Image credit: Codex Vindobonensis 2554 (French, ca. 1250), in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek. Image is from the front cover of the most important medieval picture bible to survive. But the caption is all my fault. Anyone can fool some of the people some of the time, but to enrage all of the people all of the time, that takes talent. Don't worry, I've got no future…

That Orion Thing Is Great!

Watch the Orion test flight: Splashdown: Why is it great? Well, speaking as a Gemini (not my horoscope sign, but the space program going when I first gained sentience) ... First, it is big, fast, cool looking. It actually looks like a rocket that might have been designed a decade before they ever actually made any rockets. It is almost Deco. Second, they got a guy from the 1960s -- with that slightly, nasal, black and white voice people spoke in back then -- to call the race launch. Third, Orion is really good at taking selfies. Fourth, it didn't take long. The whole thing was like…

DN Lee Is Now A Book! #STEM

DN Lee used to be a mere human, a biologist and a great person, but still, just a human. But now she is a book! Urban Biologist Danielle Lee (Stem Trailblazer Bios) is part of a series exploring, well, STEM trailblazers. You Probably know of DN Lee from her famous blog now at Scientific American but formerly at Scienceblogs, The Urban Scientist. After earning degrees studying animal behavior, Danielle Lee wanted to share her love of science with young people. Through urban outreach she has brought budding scientists into professional labs. She's walked them through the steps of the…

Straight talking

Ralph Reed is a sleazy con artist who hides his predatory nature behind a mask of piety; Hannity is a slow-witted thug with a simple-minded view of the world that he takes straight from the religious. It was therefore rather delightful to see Christopher Hitchens plainly reject their ridiculous demand for a hypocritical expression of sorrow at the death of a rich old shaman. I was particularly appalled at Hannity's list of Falwell's virtues that included founding Liberty University. If founding a compound where ignorance is encouraged to fester is one of his accomplishments, I will admit…

Trump calls for a year in jail for flag burners

... and loss of citizenship, which may amount to be thrown out of the country. Flag burning may be obnoxious to many, but it is a constitutionally protected act, as long as it is your flag and you do it outside. Presumptive President Elect Donald Trump has called for severe penalties for flag burners: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/803567993036754944 By the way, if you strip someone of their citizenship, and you do throw them out of the country, it is possible that they will have no way to go or no way to get there. Once they are no longer US citizen, they can be tossed into a…

The Day After: Trump's Blackmail Threat Is Bogus

I've been thinking about Trump's attempt to blackmail the voters. He intimates that he might not accept the election results unless he wins. The word goes around that his followers will go to the streets and carry out acts of violence if Trump does not win. It is a bully tactic by a bully's bully. But I have been having thought about this, about how it is actually likely to go down. I mentioned this already. Some of his supporters will go and take over a wildlife reserve somewhere, for a few weeks. A few others will carry out acts of violence here and there, but by count, not much. Mostly…

We're outnumbered!

Well, "we" meaning my fellow residents of rural communities. I suspect most of the people reading this are members of the urban elite, so you won't really care that today is the day when urban populations were predicted to exceed rural populations. That is, for the first time in the history of the world, a majority of human beings live in cities rather than in the countryside. Now I don't want to hear any sneering from you glossy depilated metrosexuals about us barefoot hayseeds reeking of eau de porc. We're the ones with the low-traffic, low-stress, low-cost lifestyle and the fresh local…

Weekend Diversion: Conservation of Energy (drinks)

Most of the time, I like to showcase some new music to you, or at least music that's new to me. But this week, I heard an old favorite for the first time in a long time. You're probably familiar with the Violent Femmes, but you may not have heard anything other than Blister in the Sun from them. That's not a bad song, but it isn't their best. Take a listen to Add It Up below and see if you agree: Those of you who know me personally might know I have a taste for Mike Judge, including his very funny movie Idiocracy. One of the funniest parts of Idiocracy was their all-pervasive energy…

Squids and light pollution?!

As many of you know, light pollution at night has become a big problem. It's a problem for flora and fauna, which rely on the "day/night" cycle that they've adapted to over billions of years, and it's a problem for astronomers, as the light pollution disrupts observations of the night sky. All over the world, light pollution is visible to anyone looking at the Earth, even from space. But I've been watching a little bit of Isabella Rossellini's Green Porno, which is a series of entertaining, educational shorts about threatened species and the environmental consequences of eating them. But…

Just like a Republican

News from the Wingnut Heartland! Brave Oklahoma is issuing a new license plate design: Wouldn't that look perfect on the SUV decorated with yellow magnetic ribbons that you use to drive (alone) into work every day? And how about Kansas? You know they're always going to be at the forefront of America's mad plunge backward. Now the Republican party in that fine state has decided they need loyalty oaths: Over the weekend, Kansas Republican leaders formed what they're calling a "loyalty committee," a move that's ticking off moderates and conservatives alike. It is never a sign of strength when…

Quoting in Comments

The Scienceblogs techies have fixed something I asked them to fix regarding how to quote what someone else wrote when answering it in a comment. You can now use the blockquote tag in your responses and I think this is the best way to organize a comment to make clear what is being responded to. To do this, you simply put tags around the quoted text. It's standard HTML code, for those familiar with it. You would write this: {blockquote}quoted text you are replying to{/blockquote} but replace the { with angle brackets < and >. That will slightly indent the text and add a vertical line in…

Remember the Blizzard of '78

I wasn't living in Boston yet; Albany, instead. But at the time I was actually travelling by car out to California, and was in Texas when this particular storm caught up with me. Texas got iced over, the Rio Grande froze, the citrus crop was destroyed and I spent two nights in Big Spring. Two months later there were still semi's littering the roadside on Route 40 and elsewhere. This storm was the end of coastal residential development in New England. Between this storm and a few bad coastal storms that came over the next few years, thousands of homes were destroyed without being rebuilt,…

Confronting Hovind and Martin

Here are a couple of accounts of encounters with creationists that are amusing to read. Jobe Martin. Jobe Martin is, well, a radically insane classic young earth creationist, whose favorite arguments are all ancient chestnuts, like the receding moon and the woodpecker's tongue and other such tripe. And he was invited to speak by an IDEA club? That kills the notion that IDEA has anything to do with science, I think. I've got one of Martin's books (my son Alaric gave it to me: I think he was trying to kill me to get his inheritance early, but it didn't work), and it's positively ludicrous.…

Atheist Voices of Minnesota, Unplugged

Have you read, or at least acquired your copy of, Atheist Voices of Minnesota: an Anthology of Personal Stories? Just so you know, it is an anthology of (just like the title says) personal stories of individuals' journey to atheism. And, those people are writing from a Minnesota perspective. There are a lot of really great stories in the anthology, and a forward by Greta Christina. Anyway, this Sunday, at the Southdale Library in the Greater Minneapolis area (just south of the city), at the monthly Minnesota Atheist meeting, there will be a special event involving the reading out loud of…

What happens on the ice, stays on the ice.

Especailly if it is actually frozen to the ice, I would imagine. Check out this new book: Winter-Over is a seriocomic, slightly obscene novel that tells the story of a year at Amundsen-Scott Station at the South Pole, including Cooper Gosling’s eponymous “winter-over” (very few people stay at the station over the polar winter due to harsh physical and psychological conditions). She is one of only a handful of women at the Pole, and must navigate the claustrophobic interior landscape of a remote station populated by a collection of people who don’t believe they belong anywhere else on earth—…

Vultures, Human Evolution, Climate Change, and Windmills

Last weekend, Desiree Schell and I taped a segment of "Everything You Know Is (Sort of) Wrong" (apologies)for Skeptically Speaking, a radio talk show and podcast that Desiree hosts. The topic was the concept of humans as predators, or hunters, or really, eaters of meat, and I was discussing the many ways in which people misconceived this notion. One of the misconceptions that came up is the idea that human ancestors went through an evolutionary stage called "scavenging" during which time we were not capable hunters, but we were good enough to scavenge, so we did that for a while until we…

Same Sex Marriage in Minnesota

We've been talking about marriage, and we'll continue that conversation. But for now I just wanted to alert you to the fact that a big chunk of money, allegedly about 2 million bucks from one person, has been given to the anti-same sex marriage organization, "National Organization for Marriage," and it is expected that this money will be funneled into ads in Minnesota and the other states where this fight is being fought. See this for the reason that this is all so stupid. And then click here and send money. Just do it. I just gave Minnesotans United for All Families 90 bucks. That was…

The Manga Guide to Relativity

The The Manga Guide to Relativity might come in especially handy these days, what with faster than light neutrinos, Republican candidates and other science-defying entities zooming around. And, it is one of those Japanese anime things, which makes it cool. This is a story set in Tagai Academy summer's school session, where the "plucky" Miss Uraga teaches the kids relativity. When you have finished reading this book you will be able to calculate the effects of time dilation, explain the Twin Paradox, understand Einsteinium famous E=mc2 and get a job at CERN. Hideo Nitta, is in the…

Sb Has 16 Active Blogs

A year ago I took a look at the surrounding landscape here at Sb, investigating which of the blogs were active – defined as which ones had seen an entry during the month up to 24 Jan '15. Now I've looked at the month up to 17 Jan '16. The result isn't great. Four blogs have gone quiet and one has re-awoken, bringing the total down to 16. Not one new blog has been added to the roster in the past year. You may wonder what the Sb Overlords are thinking about this. I sure do. Here are the currently active ScienceBlogs (apart from the one you're reading). Check them out and drop them a few…

WHOOOOHOOO!!!!! GMO HSV-1 vs Cancer

April 7, 2010: Using HSV-1 to cure metastatic melanoma May 26, 2015: WHOOOO!!!!! GMO HSV-1 vs Cancer October 27, 2015: FDA approves first-of-its-kind product for the treatment of melanoma Skin cancer is the most common form of cancer in the United States. Melanoma, one type of skin cancer, is the leading cause of skin cancer related deaths, and is most often caused by exposure to ultraviolet (UV) light. According to the National Cancer Institute approximately 74,000 Americans will be diagnosed with melanoma and nearly 10,000 will die from the disease in 2015. Imlygic, a genetically modified…

HIV and Islam: Cutting heads off the Hydra

A 12-year-old girl with sickle cell anemia in Saudi Arabia just got a blood transfusion that was tainted with HIV. In response, some politicians were fired/fined. Problem solved. *blink* Except the 'problem' of HIV in Islamic countries wasnt caused by some administrative oversight. There are no gay people in Iran. None at all. No one has sex outside of heterosexual marriage. There certainly isnt any IV drug use. All of these things are forbidden according to the Muslim belief system. Forbidden, with dire consequences. *blink* I just cant imagine what is keeping people from getting tested for…

How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog in the Wild

Hey, you might not know this, but I wrote a book... The official release date for How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog isn't until Tuesday, but a friend reported buying a copy in Missouri, so when I was headed out to do some work this afternoon, I went to the cafe at the local Barnes&Noble so I could check for myself, and there it was: That's How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog spotted in the wild. I'm not going to say "in its natural habitat," because it's really a domestic animal, which belongs in a loving home, with people to care for it. Copies in the bookstore are feral editions,…

Road trip!

One of our Minneapolis Christian talk radio stations, KKMS, is organizing a trip. Join Jeff & Lee as they travel with Heartland Tours & Travel to the Creation Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio! Jeff & Lee will be doing a live broadcast from the museum, and you can be there to see it all happen! of course, there will be other great stops along the way - Chicago (and famous Chicago pizza), the Wisconsin Dells with it's huge waterpark, shopping at the Tangier Outlet Mall and more! this is a tour that will inspire your faith and make lasting family memories. Don't you think they could…

Mandatory Higgs Boson Post

I was planning to let today's Higgs press conference pass with only a few oblique mentions in posts about other things, but apparently, I would lose my license to blog about physics if I did that. You'd think that, being married to a lawyer, and all, I'd know to read the fine print in these things... Anyway, I don't really have anything useful to say about it. My very-much-an-outsider reading of this is that the evidence they see is suggestive, but somewhat less impressive than even the many attempts to lower expectations on Twitter and elsewhere suggested. It's probably there, but they're…

Is "megachurch" a synonym for "sex scandal"?

It sure seems that way. Yet another tawdry series of escapades by Christianists: The 80-year-old leader of a suburban Atlanta megachurch is at the center of a sex scandal of biblical dimensions: He slept with his brother's wife and fathered a child by her. The story has some cheering news, though. At its peak in the early 1990s, it claimed about 10,000 members and 24 pastors and was a media powerhouse. By soliciting tithes of 10 percent from each member's income, the church was able to build a Bible college, two schools, a worldwide TV ministry and a $12 million sanctuary the size of a…

What's So Interesting About AMO Physics?

That's the title of my talk this morning at DAMOP, where I attempt the slightly insane feat of summarizing a meeting with over 1000 presentations in a single 30-minute talk. This will necessarily involve talking a little bit like the person reading the legal notices at the end of a car commercial, and a few of the guide-to-the-meeting slides will have to flash by pretty quickly. Thus, for the benefit of those who have smartphones and care about my categorization of talks, I have put the slides on SlideShare in advance, and will embed them here: What's So Interesting About AMO Phyiscs?…

Elvis in Brighton

Our local newspaper Nacka-Värmdö-Posten for 24 July has an item by Evelina Stucki that I would be remiss to keep from you, Dear Reader (and I translate). "Last summer, three Värmdö girls went to Brighton in Great Britain. Before leaving, they had tried to contact their host family, but the phone number they had been given did not work. When they arrived, it turned out that there were thirteen people living in the house. [...] the family was prone to fighting, and the girls allegedly did not get much to eat. The host father had changed his name to Elvis Presley and the host parents were…

Links for 2012-06-14

In which physics tackles a burning question from the world of computing, a famous biologist says something idiotic, and the world's smallest violin plays for frequent fliers. ------------ Does Your Download Progress Bar Lie to You? | Wired Science | Wired.com Different browsers do this differently. Some show a little bar to indicate how much of the file you have downloaded as well as an estimate of how much longer you can expect to wait. Well, now the time has come. I am going to check these download progress bars. Why? I have no idea. "Was Einstein Right About Imagination?" - THE DAILY…

Graduation 2012

I just realized that I forgot to do the annual congratulatory post for our graduates this year. I plead jet lag-- my flight back from DAMOP didn't get in until after midnight, and graduation was first thing Sunday morning. I didn't march in the procession for only the third time-- instead, I snuck around back to stand with the faculty and congratulate the graduates as they went by. This has been a long and incredibly stressful year for reasons that I can't really go into, so I'm not that sorry to see it end. This is no reflection on this year's graduating physics majors and minor, though, to…

Links for 2012-04-27

Animals Disappointed in your College Performance This ostrich begs to differ with you. Grammar does matter. Boston Review -- Claude S. Fischer: The Loneliness Scare Social scientists have more precisely tracked Americans' isolation and reports of loneliness over the last several decades. The real news, they have discovered, is that there is no such epidemic; there isn't even a meaningful trend. If we turned to historians to measure Americans' degree of isolation over the centuries, they would probably find periods of growing and lessening social connection. The rough evidence indicates a…

Computing My Caffeine Habit

Strong black tea is my drug of choice. But I got fed up with caffeine addiction a few years back and started to limit my intake. Currently I'm at 1.5 litres every second day, which means that my system is used to going without caffeine for over 40 hours at a time -- counted from afternoon tea on a Monday to morning tea on a Wednesday for instance. This regimen works out to an average daily intake of 190 milligrams of caffeine. Coffee has about 1.7 times the caffeine in strong black tea, which in turn has 2.7 times the caffeine in Coke. But I never have coffee and very rarely any caffeinated…

What Does Contract Archaeology Cost?

Carina Andersson and Rickard Franzén at the Swedish National Heritage Board have put together a report in Swedish titled "What Does Contract Archaeology Really Cost?". Their answer to the question is, briefly, "less overall than the County Archaeologists would actually allow". County Archaeologists all over Sweden put out lots of contract work to tender and select who will do each job at what budget. And the archaeologists on average keep well within these budgets. Very likely, this is helped to a great extent by sites that look promising but turn out to be duds. Another way of answering the…