Snap snap
July 19, 2010
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In which there is a god of small things, and of glorious miscellany.
Penny for your thoughts
June 10, 2010
“Coins and Monumentality in the Roman Empire, A.D. 70-250″. THRILLING UPDATE in TEN OR TWELVE ASSORTED PAGES.
Well. You know. THRILLING is relative to CORN DRYERS whose honour I will, in fact, protect. What I have done is spend handfuls of minutes staring intently at the back of a penny, seeking out Lincoln in all of his tiny glory. Yes. One tinfoil hat away from finding secret code in the shrubbery and playing connect-the-latin on the front of a dollar bill. (It’s educational, in that they “honored” or “plagiarized” Roman prototypes to make said coinage, which is cool, although there’s definitely a coin out there with a Serapis-headed serpent riding the back of a stallion and really, that’s worthily bad-ass. Maybe a quick series with Obama and the lightsaber? Just this once?)
Education! Ain’t it grand.
(Last essay. Last. Essay. Well, two thousand words in five hours to go, but still. Last essay!!!)
LASERS. Archaeologists with LASERS.
May 13, 2010
Well, okay, additional lasers.
From the NYTimes:
For the Caracol survey, the aircraft flew less than a half-mile above the terrain at the end of the dry season, when foliage is less dense. The Airborne Laser Terrain Mapper, as the specific advanced system is named, issued steady light pulses along 62 north-south flight lines and 60 east-west lines….Not all the laser pulses transmitted from the aircraft made it to the surface. Some were reflected by the tops of trees. But enough reached the ground and were reflected back to the airborne instruments. These signals, measured and triangulated by GPS receivers and processed by computers, produced images of the surface contours. This revealed distinct patterns of building ruins, causeways and other human modifications of the landscape.
Amazing! Magnetometry has been rocking my socks off this whole year:
But, you know, rainforest + plane + AIRBOURNE LASER (terrain mapper).
O Atalanta
May 10, 2010
Fairies. A gaggle of Playboy bunnies. BUZZ LIGHTYEAR. Army men in full kit, with packs. Halloween? Or a British charity run 10k? Sadly, as I was concentrating on “staying alive” and “breathing” there are no photos but I’ll say this, it’s a hell of a lot more entertaining to chase down the Mario brothers than another Tall Dude in Baggy Basketball Shorts or everyone’s favorite, Smelly Guy…
Result: survival in 49:58. Oh, 42:36. I hardly knew ye. One day, I will train again on a more proactive basis than sprinting across red lights. Really!
Yes. The 10k came with a medal AND a sweet disaster relief blanket. Toasty and useful for warding off guvmint mind waves— apologies to the city of Bristol for wandering around like that for hours; you can see how the camouflage effect of glitter/bunny ears/Cowardly Lion is actually a wiser sartorial choice than spandex alone.
Sartorial index aside, the thousands of runners had the length of Bristol all to our greedy legs- 4km out along the river, tracing the mudflats of the low waters, next to stark and sheer cliffs- an old quarry? Low rows of brick houses, with rough brick pavements. Dogs. If you stop running, as I always do, when the air tastes like blood, they cheered on. Kids with a lemonade pitcher next to the course. Back in castle park there were the ruins of a church with tree branches instead of stained glass. Afterwards, plates of sausages and mash in giant yorkshire puddings, the size of picture frames, in a tavern four hundred-odd years old. Most of it survived the bombing.
And now I’m going to down more than the recommended dosage of Tylenol. Repeatedly.
Dear Santa: Please Gads No.
November 7, 2009
Plaid is a common dessert defense mechanism.
Once upon a time, fashion designers made frocks of toile and tutus of frills; they called it “couture” and it was magical. Few could buy such baubles of silk but then again, few people ever owned a Masaccio, either. Now, it has come to this.
Regarding that cheesecake, dressed in tartan no less, it hails from Junior’s and will feature a Mizrahi-mandated chocolate cookie crust…And pardon the designer if, when asked about the credibility of his gastronomic selections, he turns a bit defensive. “To me, they’re very important, wonderful things”
.
Oh, really? I mean, I think chocolate is an important, wonderful thing. Cheesecake is a genre of cakes, the greater sphere of which I am a notable fan. My vaguely Scottish blood thrills at the tartan, except that this kind of looks like a pun on schoolgirls in jumpers. Nothing, I repeat nothing, should remind me of Holton’s hallways en route to mastication. Oh boy! It tastes of rejected play auditions and generic pudding!
The point is, I own much of Mizrahi’s work for Target, aimed at those of us without actual clan crests and castles. It is structured, it is sensible, it didn’t appear to be leaking chocolate goo from the seams.
Unlike this:
Now, I’m not opposed to gowns for charity. It’s just that the model herself looks so shamefaced over this that her neck cannot support the weight of it all. Also, NPR reports this chilling morsel:
But perhaps the most exciting news of all this season is that the NFL’s latest merchandising partner is none other than Victoria’s Secret. Now, female fans will have more support than ever on Game Day.
Personally, the family Tin Can Man, with his earnest grin and cheer for the Steelers is a beloved reminder of the wackiness of home. That’s grit! That’s determination! I could live in a world with pre-chilled beer mugs, Pittsburgh Steelers Propane Tank Covers and Pittsburgh Steelers Bobble Football Air Fresheners. (Mainly because, hilarious! Now your whole car can smell fresh, like the locker room, and the wind rolling off the field during game day!) But Steelers lingerie is something the world should never, ever see.
The art of whoa
February 23, 2009
Say flagellum!
” Nikon Vision Co Ltd will release the “Fabre Photo EX,” a portable stereoscopic microscope that can be fitted with Nikon’s digital single-lens reflex camera for observation and photo shoot….
The observation optical system features 20-times magnification, and the actual field of view is 11mm in diameter. The shooting magnification varies depending on the connected camera, but it will be about 45-times without the intermediate tube, 56-times with one tube and 66-times with two tubes when a Nikon DX format camera (A4-size print) is used. “
And if I had taken and lost photos with this baby, I’d be inconsolable. Suddenly the world is your laboratory! Muwhahaha!
…Ahem. Anyway. Looks like it could be a useful, albeit dear, gadget for field work.
Must…buy…plane…ticket
February 18, 2009
(courtesy of ballerride.com)
Oh, Istanbul.
This is not Pennsylvania
February 9, 2009
In search of Constantinople
When we are left like Babylon, what will they keep?
Legos of the deep
Respect
If only the Weekly World News were still around
July 5, 2008
The trenches are closed. Well, there’s still a fire engine and an airplane to come for photographic purposes, sheet metal and plastic wrap to lay and yet again, more spiffy cleaning manouevers, but for now- no more four am wakeup calls before the iman gets up, no more eating breakfast in the total dark of night. No more being unbelievably unquestionably horrifically dirty!!
Seriously my Chicks Dig It tshirt is in danger of being added to an object pail. Or being seized at Customs.
On the other hand, that meant the end of Crazy Theory Time! Namely because the workers really didn’t believe that a) this is a job or that b) we would be measuring rocks if there weren’t gold somewhere underneath them. Or, maybe, some of these fine alternatives to rocks, rocks, and more foundation trenches…
“You do know this is where Cleopatra slept with Alexander the Great, right? Have you found the cave?”
Fearless Leader: “Uh…centuries?…We’re on top of a mound…What would that even look like?!”
“There are seven jewelery stores under this trench. Seven.”
Regarding an unfortunate cow knee: “It’s a dinosaur bone!”
Regarding a pile of treasured, cradled Iron Age pottery fragments: “Cok guzel….” (aka Oh, very beautiful, uh hunh, you’re all nuts!)
Well: Gold!
Medieval plumbing: Gold!
Rock: Pottery!
Shiny rock: Gold!
good times. gooood times.
