travel
drorzel | January 5, 2014Kate and I will be going to the Worldcon in London this August. This will be my first trip to the UK for anything other than changing planes, so we're going to take a few days on either end to do touristy stuff. The pre-con plan is to stay based in London, maybe taking a day trip or two from there.
Post-con, we were thinking of going a little farther afield, maybe Dublin. For a variety of reasons, I've spent a whole bunch of time thinking and writing about Newgrange, and thus it might be nice to, you know, see it in person. and Ireland is another place I've never been but would like to see (I…
dr. dolittle | November 7, 2013
I am already starting to get excited about the 2014 Experimental Biology conference in San Diego next April. The program for comparative physiology is expected to be very good!
If you are a graduate student or postdoc submitting an abstract on comparative physiology for the meeting, don't forget to apply for the new Dr. Dolittle travel award. For more information, visit the Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology Section's webpage. All materials for the travel award including your abstract and blog are due by December 6th!
aardvarchaeology | September 11, 2013Though I really enjoyed my late 70s childhood visits to Disneyland and Disneyworld, I am no friend of disnification, and I've always seen the Paris Disneyland as a bit of a joke. But my mom wanted to treat my kids to a visit last week, and so I came along too.
The Paris Disneyland has five sections. The US small-town nostalgia section full of Disney memorabilia shops, the faux-16th century fairytale section, the adventure movie section and the wild west section didn't do very much for me – though the Pirates of the Caribbean ride is admittedly hugely atmospheric, and the Small World ride…
aardvarchaeology | May 20, 2013Last winter I was amazed by the poor upkeep afforded to buildings in central Marrakech. I spent part of last week in fascinating Istanbul, and there it was again: plentiful ruins of recent buildings in the middle of busy shopping and hotel districts. Istanbul is in even worse shape than Marrakech. Many older houses are only maintained on the ground floor. There may be eight ruinous floors on top, eroding steadily and falling piecemeal into the street.
Many property owners in Istanbul fit their buildings with horizontal metal-grille shelves sticking out from the facade above the first floor.…
aardvarchaeology | February 14, 2013The Midgardsenteret visitors' centre at Borre invited me to give a talk about my Östergötland elite settlement project. This went well, with a sizeable and appreciative audience last night. One gentleman explained that they had all learned Swedish from watching kids' TV when they were little. Today I went on a royal Late Iron Age binge.
This is Vestfold, home of the Norwegian branch of the Ynglingar dynasty, with sites like Oseberg, Gokstad, Kaupang, Huseby, Gulli – and Borre. The ancient cemetery starts right outside the main entrance to Midgardsenteret with some low mounds of respectable…
aardvarchaeology | December 31, 2012I saw something odd in Marrakech recently. Along the main avenues there was a considerable amount of construction going on. But also properties right next door that had clearly been vacated years ago without receiving new buildings. And newish buildings and shop space that were boarded up. Freshly painted fronts of closed restaurants that looked like they'd opened and failed within the past year, right on downtown main street.
Moving out a few blocks from the main drags, there were entire abandoned buildings. And in the Medina / Old Town, buildings that had been abandoned so long ago that…
aardvarchaeology | October 6, 2012My dynamic friend and colleague Frans-Arne Stylegar has managed to liberate a respectable sum of Norwegian oil money to fund a collaboration with Ukrainian archaeologists under the direction of professor Igor Khrapunov. The first results of this collaboration have been two international conferences on the theme “Between Two Seas. Northern Barbarians From Scandinavia To The Black Sea”. I was kindly invited to take part in the second one, at the beach resort of Gaspra near Yalta on Crimea's Black Sea coast, from which I now report to you, Dear Reader.
The reason that scholars in Ukraine and…
aardvarchaeology | October 1, 2012Spent Friday though Sunday in London with Junior and his buddy, both 14. My original plan had been to find a gaming convention with both a video game track and a boardgame track. But failing that, I got tickets for the Eurogamer Expo at the Earls Court Convention Centre in London, which is all video games. My once substantial interest in such has long evaporated, but I kept the Saturday free for other activities.
In order to be sure to get the boys into the fair I had to buy a ticket for myself as well, and I checked out the place without finding anything that caught my interest. It was all…
aardvarchaeology | May 19, 2012I'm at the Sixth World Skeptics Conference in Berlin, co-organised by the German GWUP and the US CSI. These conferences have been going on biannually since the mid-90s with a recent hiatus. It's the first time I'm at a skeptical event in Continental Europe. With only 300 seats it's not quite as planet-spanning as its name suggests, but it's a good crowd anyway. Some impressions:
I prefer to be a speaker at conferences.
I'm doing some intensive networking for the Swedish Skeptics who sent me here.
Also talent scouting for the European meeting we're organising next year.
It's good to hear…
aardvarchaeology | May 8, 2012
Rode a pretty rare/air plane Bromma - Kallinge on Friday morning. It was a Saab 2000, a 1992 Swedish turboprop model of which only 63 where ever built. (Apparently they saw daylight in the mistaken hope that customers would want a turboprop this size, rather than the ubiquitous jets, and lost Saab a lot of money.) This one belongs to Golden Air. On the way back I rode one of those paunchy ATR 72-500s. Both models have their cargo bays right behind the cockpit.
aardvarchaeology | March 19, 2012
Jules Verne, Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie.
Salade paysanne. Lardons, enfants de la patrie! Restaurant Les Pierres qui Roulent, "The Rolling Stones".
Electrical filling stations are quite common in Paris.
Carnyx trumpet, c. 3rd century BC, found in 2004 in a richly filled votive pit at a sanctuary at Tintignac in Limousin.
Brass aquamanile. Meuse Valley, 1150-1200. Musée des arts décoratifs.
King Solomon arbitrates between the two would-be mothers. Ebony cabinet, Paris, 1620s. Musée des arts décoratifs.
One of the crucified brigands. Painted limestone retable. Champagne, c.…
aardvarchaeology | March 8, 2012
Yesterday I went to Jutish Viborg by train, plane and bus. This took a bit less than eight hours. Exiting Aalborg airport into the icy sleet I managed to walk straight into the glass wind breaker outside the turnstile, banging my forehead and knee. Everybody around studiously avoided noticing my antics. On arriving in Viborg I found the museum, met some colleagues and received a key for the visiting scholars' building at Asmild that I'm staying in. Then to the city library where there is warmth and (flaky) wifi, and where I am now sitting again. Wednesday ended in good company with…
gregladen | February 26, 2012Budget Travel is running one of those ill-fated Internet Polls to help make a list of the top 15 places to go for kids before they are 15. Sort of like bucket list but instead of dying you turn 15. One small problem is that the Creation Museum of Kentucky has been intruding in the top ten, even top five, of this list. You need to go there and vote for something else! Like, all the attractions that you happen to like that are lower than the Creation Museum at the moment.
Click here to help save the Youth of North America from certain doom!
aardvarchaeology | January 19, 2012
25-26 February. Blankaholm, Swedish East Coast archaeology conference, speaking about picture stones
7-9 March. Danish Viborg, Bronze Age burial conference
15-17 March. Paris, European Archaeological Council, Annual Meeting
21 March. Stockholm, Senioruniversitetet / ABF, speaking about pseudoarchaeology
24 March. Eskilstuna skeptics group, speaking about pseudoarchaeology
16 April. Västerås / Westeros, Senioruniversitetet, speaking about regional archaeology
28 April. Gothenburg, Swedish Skeptics' annual meeting, emcee
5 May. Olofström, speaking about Harry Martinson
18-20 May. Berlin,…
aardvarchaeology | January 14, 2012When I was 16 in 1988 I spent a couple of days in Paris with a language school. I brought the address for a game store, one that advertised in White Dwarf magazine. It was on Rue Poirier de Narcay, which turned out not to be a central location, and so I never went there. But I've wondered off and on through the years about this funny street name, "The street of the pear tree of Narcay".
And now, of course, the net can cure any idle wonderings in an instant. Turns out, the street is named for a medical doctor, Robert Poirier de Narcay, whose dissertation De l'ascite congénitale was published…
gregladen | December 12, 2011Wildlife 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…
aardvarchaeology | November 21, 2011
I've written before about the archaeological landscape surrounding Arlanda International Airport north of Stockholm. Following on yesterday's post about the fake archaeology in Oslo airport, here's a piece of landscape that has been moved inside Arlanda's terminal 2. It's an 11th century runestone commemorating one of the men who died on Ingvar the Far-travelled's disastrous expedition to the east. The stone was found in 2000 when the road to the airport was widened, suggesting an impressive age for the road. Placing the runestone in the airport terminal ensures its protection from the rain…
aardvarchaeology | November 20, 2011
I've written a bit before about Thor Heyerdahl's hyperdiffusionism and the status as a Norwegian national hero he still enjoys despite being completely discounted as a scientist. Last time I passed through Oslo airport I discovered this Kon Tiki-themed restaurant with a faux Ecuadorian Bolivian stele. I think what Heyerdahl interpreted as a full beard is more likely to depict a decorative face plate hanging from the man's nose. And anyway, a beard is of course not evidence that a man is a civilisation-bearing Ãbermensch from Europe.
aardvarchaeology | September 12, 2011
Rode a funny plane to Visby: an ATR 72-500. It's a 1997 version of a French 1988 design with two propellers whose six blades curve rearwards. The rear undercarriage sits in bulky pods on the fuselage, right below the wings. Makes the plane look like it's got a beer gut. And its cargo bay is right behind the cockpit! Pleasant ride though.
drorzel | August 12, 2011I am an inveterate driver of "back ways" to places. My preferred route to campus involves driving through a whole bunch of residential streets, rather than taking the "main" road leading from our neighborhood to campus. I do this because there are four traffic lights on the main-road route, and they're not well timed, so it's a rare day when I don't get stuck at one or more of them. My preferred route has a lot of stop signs, but very little traffic, so they're quick stops, and I spend more time in motion, which makes me feel like I'm getting there faster.
That's the psychological reason, but…