December 10, 2005 by Cas
Welcome to the Mini Meadow section of the site.
Mini Meadows are small things I want to bring to your attention, but might not want to blog about properly. The latest three are displayed at all times in the sidebar. You can subscribe to Mini Meadows separately from the main site feed (which contains the Mini Meadows like any other post).
You can comment on Mini Meadows like any other blog post, and they appear in the archives like everything else.
Category Housekeeping, Mini Meadow | Tags: | No Comments
December 9, 2005 by Cas
Cas is currently…
at life
I’ve been playing least-in-sight for the past day or so, and I imagine that I will do continuing to do so for a few days more. Worry not, I am still alive and kicking, if a little bruised and bleeding.
If you will care to look down at the “assorted linkage” section of the Sidebar, you will see a new button proudly adding a splash of colour:
Do follow the link and have a gander at the blog – Liz always makes people feel welcome, and has useful content to boot.
Now, if you will excuse me, I hear the bell calling the start of Round 90 in the great fight between Cas and the reigning champion, Life.
Category Daily Waffle | Tags: | No Comments
December 4, 2005 by Cas
Cas is currently…
at life
Mesdames et messieurs, pour le déjeuner aujourd’hui, je vous apporte le “Sunday Roast”. *1*
Science ‘must teach experiments’. I was very fortunate in my schooling and had the opportunity to do lots and lots of experiments. Three lessons a week in each science, one of those three being a ‘practical’ lesson where we got to mess around with things that might (and frequently DID) go bang. The experiments were easily the best part of the week (apart from when we had to use elodea in Biology. Elodea hates me) and have given me a love of science I hold to this day. You have to like something to do three A levels in it!
The Artful Writer: Set Lingo For Writers. A handy list of slang you are likely to encounter on-set when you’re next working with Spielberg.
Ishbadiddle: RSS Hack – for when sites annoyingly don’t have RSS.
2005 Holiday Gift Guide – New York Times. Might require registration seeing as how it is the NYT, but some groovy gift ideas, seeing as how it is coming up to Christmas an all.
Ishbadiddle: The Anxiety of Getting Things Done. In my ever continuing quest for ways to get me working again (this thesis will just not die!), I stumbled across this. Some good ideas in there. Some things I already implement, other things that I really should, office supplies I can get all excited about buying (yes, I am one of the people who will happily browse around Staples if they have an hour to kill). I know a quick fix won’t really help, but just occasionally, a quick fix makes you feel better.
BBC NEWS | Government sites ‘fail disabled’. This, whilst it saddens me, does not surprise me. Just take a look at Southampton City Council’s website for a site that is not only hideous and complex to use, but is broken on *ALL* Mac supported browsers (even Mac IE) and is slightly bent on any Windows browser bar IE. Grrr! What gets me is that they spent money on this new design, lots of money, and the old design was really rather good. I repeat, grrr.
(In a related note, I do find it mildly amusing that the government’s own report on this subject is ever so slightly broken in Safari – just a few floating table/div alignment issues that can happen to the best of us, but still…).
Jabberwocky. I used to love this poem – we had to write it so many times when we were being taught pretty handwriting in primary school that you couldn’t but absorb chunks of it. The Crazy Canalman’s rendition of it has to be heard to be believed (very very good). I think my favourite bit has to be “the vorpal blade went snicker-snack!”. GREAT line.
And, though I’m not totally sure how accurate they could be seeing as half the words Carroll used don’t even exist in English,
Jabberwocky in French
Jabberwocky in German.
Sketches… Set on Flickr. Mindbendingly pretty digital art. All… swirly. As I said, pretty.
Nose cells that may help the paralysed.
Time travel on the tube. Funky.
Snared in the Web of a Wikipedia Liar – NYT.
A Consuming Experience: Feeds: partial or full? How to have both. More how-to goodness from Improbulus.
Antartida – a photoset on Flickr. It was midweek, I felt drastically in need of some penguins to cheer me up and, as always, flickr came through 
Now, don’t forget the Leftovers!
Category Sunday Roast | Tags: | No Comments
December 2, 2005 by Cas
Cas is currently…
at life
It’s officially Christmas (I saw the first Coca Cola advert on TV last night – holidays are coming, holidays are coming, always coca-cola!).
I don’t feel very christmassy – but what with the Monster to finish, the CC heading back to Canada, lack of employment, and my brain currently being fucked up, this is understandable. I haven’t done any gift-shopping yet, but I am in the stage of planning the cards I will be sending people.
If you want a Christmas/insert-culture-specific-holiday-reference-here card, just email me your address and I will do my utmost to make sure you get one. If you are international, make sure you give me time to cope with posting deadlines. If you don’t want to trust a random blogger (ie me) with your physical address, let me have a valid email address for you, and I will create some shiny e-card instead.
Me email, for those of you reading in RSS and who might have forgotten it (and are too lazy to check the sidebar of the site), is
cas[dot]brightmeadow[at]gmail[dot]com
(remove the [words in square brackets] and replace with appropriate symbols)
Category Daily Waffle | Tags: | No Comments
December 1, 2005 by Cas
Cas is currently…
at life
I have long held slightly contradictory views about the program “Time Team“, and I don’t think I am alone in this – the majority of professional archaeologists feel pretty much the same.
We like the program because it increases awareness of our discipline and promotes the public’s interest in their heritage. Without public interest, we really would have no jobs, because no matter how much we try and convince ourselves it is essential, archaeology really is a luxury, to be indulged when there is food on the national table, not when the masses are starving. Take a straw poll of any first year undergraduate archaeology course in this country, asking why they got into archaeology, and a goodly proportion will say “because Time Team made it look fun”. (A sizable portion will also say “Indiana Jones”, but that’s a rant for another day 
). Time Team has, undeniably, contributed to making Archaeology (if not sexy), then at least interesting to the average joe.
At the same time, the program is the root of much evil. The majority of the public are now under the impression that you can dig an entire site in three days, that you find skeletons wherever you turn, and that you will get a wonderful tan whilst digging. The truth is far from this. In reality, you can spend three weeks or more clearing topsoil just getting down to the archaeology; skeletons are rather rare outside of cemeteries and you don’t frequently get permission to dig them up’ and that brown colour you turn? It’s an inch thick layer of mud you need three showers to get rid of.
Much of archaeology is cold, dull, hard work, for little reward. You don’t get paid a living wage, we have one of the highest incidents of alcoholism and suicide as a profession after veterinary surgery, and your joints will be arthritic by the age of 40. I’ve spent entire seasons on a dig and found nothing more exciting polystyrene, the skeleton of the farmers dead cat, and variations in the colour of clay. Trust me when I say you can get hundreds of different colours of clay – all subtle plays on a shade of grey, if you are curious.
But it isn’t just this glamorization of the discipline that sets the collective hackles up – they tend to practice bad archaeology. It is frequently rushed and what is dug is slanted toward what will make good television. Worse than this, the way it is presented provides the false impression that the past was this one set way.
There are no certainties in archaeology, which is something each archaeologist has to personally wrestle with for themselves, and most of us have come to terms with that. You say “it is likely that”, instead of “this happened”, and you are prepared to say a few years down the line “I was wrong, new evidence has come to light, it is actually more likely that this happened”. Archaeological debates can be, and frequently are, remarkably heated due to this fact. If you can’t prove anything, everything is up for discussion, and anybody could be right. We can be pretty certain that aliens didn’t build the pyramids, but I have a few colleagues who are quietly holding out hope that something will turn up to give their case some validity. A few years back, you wouldn’t have found a single text-book that said the Romans made it to Ireland, now, we’re pretty sure they were frequent visitors. We’ve now got evidence that the Romans even made it to South America, something you would have been laughed out of the conference hall if you’d tried to say it five years ago.
My point – “proof” is an elusive term in archaeology, and is a word that’s likely to run you into some trouble down the way.
Which brings me to my latest beef with Time Team. I caught the last five minutes of this week’s program was on Durrington Walls. Unlike normal Time Team’s they had followed an established dig over an entire season, but that’s by-the-by. In Tony Robinson’s summation (yes, Tony Robinson of Baldrick fame is the presenter), he asked the lead archaeologist if they could date Durrington Walls and tie it into the construction of Stonehenge. The archaeologist said that, yes, they had dated an antler pick to 2500 BC, which meant the pit it came from was either dug, or had activity in it, at that time. Which consequently meant that Durrington Walls was at least in use around the time that Stonehenge was being first built. Due to the proximity of the two sites and other factors, it is also highly likely (the nice bearded professor said) that the two complexes were related in some way.
Tony Robinson then finishes the program by saying:
“Despite typical archaeologist fence sitting… This is final proof that [Durrington Walls] was constructed at exactly the same time [as Stonehenge]“.
*Throws something heavy at the television set*
It’s final proof of NOTHING you dimwit! And “typical archaeologist fence sitting”? Ouch.
Category Daily Waffle, Grump | Tags: | 3 Comments
