Archive for June, 2006
ArtiFacts: Recent News in the Field of Archaeology
Yet Another Ancient Observatory
In Brazil, archaeologists have discovered a circle of granite blocks, 127 in all, that reach as much as 9 feet in height. The winter solstice marks the shortest day of the year and it’s reported that on this day the shadow is absent from one of the rocks since it aligns perfectly [...]
Battle of the Starbucks
I’m hooked. As a pre-adolescent, I was very much a fan of Battlestar Galactica, the television series that fell on the heals of George Lucas’ Star Wars and took advantage of the tremendous potential for the space opera genre of science fiction.
Humans battled robots called Cylons as they escaped the destruction of their world and [...]
Pseudoarchaeology: Raiders of the ‘lost ark’
Ed Brayton turned me on to this pseudoarchaeological report in Christian Worldview Network. It would seem that the “expedition” was “[l]ed by explorer, adventurer, and featured Worldview Weekend speaker Dr. Bob Cornuke,” an apparently fake doctor of Lousiana Baptist University –a diploma mill as noted by Brayton’s follow-up article, Another Faked Creationist Credential?
This so-called expedition [...]
Dr. Bill Lucas: A “Cracked Up” Pseudoscientist
Silkworm at Defending Science is in the trenches with CORR (Christians for Origins and Religious Research), and he hammers their lead speaker, Dr. Bill Lucas. According to Dr. Lucas’ resume, he holds a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from William and Mary and is a “professor” of physics at Catholic University in Washington D.C.
This is one [...]
ScienceBlogs School Supply Fundraiser
The bloggers over at ScienceBlogs, the Seed Magazine blog portal, are participating in a fundraiser to generate money for science education. The reason is simple and Janet at Adventures in Ethics and Science puts it best:
A lot of us fell in love with science because of early experiences in school teachers who made science intriguing, [...]
A Bronze Age Harbor at Sidon
The Journal of Archaeological Science has an article in press, "Geoarchaeology of Sidon’s ancient harbours, Phoenicia (Marriner, Morhange, & Doumet-Serhal 2006, in press)" in which the authors use geoarchaeological data to clarify the developmental stages of Sidon’s bronze age harbor. The complete the study by comparing and contrasting the data with that of the nearby [...]
Another Reason to Drink Coffee!
Science NOW Daily News ran an article titled, Another Cup of Joe, Bartender, which caught my eye. Researchers from the Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program in Oakland, California may have discovered that coffee can protect the liver against cirrhosis. They surveyed 125,000 patients for their coffee, tea, and alcohol habits and discovered:
By 2001, 199 [...]
Got Trowel? The New Egyptian Tomb on Video
In February, I blogged about An 18th Dynasty Tomb in Luxor, and the cache of mummies that were found in it. YouTube has a video clip that shows some of the details, gives life to some of the archaeologists who were previously just names in print, and might even excite you enough to pick up [...]
Stone Tools of a new Hominid Species?
On 5/23/06, I blogged about Homo floresiensis: New Species or Modern Human? and I mentioned the debate over whether H. floresiensis represents a new species of hominid or just a pathologically affected modern human. These are the two primary dogs in the hunt, but there are others.
Susan Larson of Stoney Brook University gave a presentation [...]
Pseudoarchaeology: The “Bosnian Pyramid” is a Natural Formation
Afarensis commented a couple of days ago about a report that UNESCO is sending a team to Bosnia to inspect the alleged pyramid, a.k.a. Visocica hill, which has been heralded by Semir Osmanagic, a self-described amateur archaeologist. “Self-described” is the term best used because his qualifications are dubious.
The story originates it would seem from [...]
