Awesome quote of the day March 31, 2008
Posted by argotnavis in Humor, TV/Movies.Tags: Amy Roloff, quotes
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Words of wisdom from Amy Roloff on tonight's Little People, Big World:
“If it is not something, it's something else.”
I supposed that is true.
Saving the planet without doing any work March 29, 2008
Posted by argotnavis in Humor, News.Tags: Dan, Google, green, John Hawks, slacktivism
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I just read this story from the BBC on this year's Earth Hour. For those who are unfamiliar with the event, it basically involves turning the lights off for one hour at night. Once a year. I, personally, think it's great that they're trying to build awareness for this, although I think doing things like turning off the lights one hour a year really reinforces the idea that we can continue living exactly the way we are and still save the planet by doing virtually nothing.
What got me about the article was this quote: “In its own contribution, the Google web search engine is putting a dark background on its homepage.” This made me laugh, of course, because of Blackle, the “energy saving” search engine that achieved mild internet fame last year. Dan blogged about it last year, and pointed out, rightly, that for LCD screens, it saves roughly no power at all. I decided to actually check out Google's page on Earth Hour, and found that they have this to say about it: “As to why we don't do this permanently – it saves no energy; modern displays use the same amount of power regardless of what they display.” Apparently the Official Google Blog had something to say about this last year, too. Good to know.
Also amusing was the fact that the second most read story on the BBC at the time I read the Earth Day story was this two-and-a-half year old story about that python that died after eating a gator. Why yes, someone did write a blog entry about that. Two men enter. No man leaves. Rated R.
This just in: human nose not totally worthless! March 28, 2008
Posted by argotnavis in Humor, News.Tags: noses, physical anthropology
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This story is pretty interesting. It doesn't seem that surprising to me, but it's still a cool read. What did surprise me, though, was this line:
“She said that the sensitivity of the human nose was not vastly inferior to many other creatures.”
Was that the assumption most people had going in? I mean, we aren't bloodhounds, but I don't think I would have said our noses were vastly inferior to those of many other animals before I read this.
Can you look up the Ugaritic word for "lion" for me? March 22, 2008
Posted by argotnavis in Language.Tags: Egypt, language resources, Near East
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I was surprised to find that Wiktionary apparently has categories for Sumerian, Akkadian and Ugaritic. The most interesting links from those pages are the lists of words. There aren't many, and most of them are in character sets I apparently don't have installed, but I thought it was cool that they had them at all. I'm sure there are more I didn't think of looking for. (Ancient Egyptian just popped into my head as I was writing this, and sure enough, they have that, too. Also, the category pages for extinct languages and Canaanite languages both turn up some interesting results.) These obviously aren't much use for trying to learn these languages — the lone Edomite noun probably won't leave you with much to talk about, for example — but it's neat that people are interested in them.
On that subject, the Akkadian language talk page has this link to a University of Pennsylvania site with scans of A.H. Sayce's pithily titled An Elementary Grammar With Full Syllabary and Progressive Reading Book of the Assyrian Language. It was written in 1875, and so does not benefit from the last 133 years of scholarship, but it's still nice that it's available for free online.
There was an optics festival and I wasn't informed? March 19, 2008
Posted by argotnavis in Food, Life.Tags: Alaska, California, Chocodiles, Google, Hostess, mail order, Tiger Tails, X-Entertainment
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During the course of my random googling this evening, I stumbled upon this. According to their “About Us” page, they've been around since 2003, but this is certainly the first I've heard of them. Those who know me are probably aware of my enthusiasm for Hostess snack cakes, and Chocodiles are basically the best of the bunch. They, unfortunately, only exist on the West Coast these days, which makes them sort of difficult for me to obtain around these parts. I'll probably never end up ordering any of them, but it's exciting to know that I could get them if I wanted to. The next step for mail-order should, of course, be . . . well, you know.
I am somewhat disappointed in their selection of other Hostess cakes. Besides Chocodiles, they're mostly pretty common ones. It's sort of silly, but I'm always secretly hoping that I'll discover a supplier of Tiger Tails. During my year at UAF, I was exposed to the Tiger Tail for the first time, and I have not seen them since. I think Alaska is a strange choice for the last refuge of the Tiger Tail, but it certainly wouldn't be the only strange thing about Alaska. For those who don't know, a Tiger Tail is a Twinkie covered in raspberry jam swirls and coconut. I have some pictures of them around somewhere, but I don't know where. I really wish I did, because they're rare enough these days that I think a lot of people might have never even seen them.
All of this has me thinking, this could be a good opportunity for me. Buy In-n-Out and Tiger Tails. Dot Com.
Seriously, they're awesome March 19, 2008
Posted by argotnavis in Archaeology, Humor.Tags: awesome, GIS
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This (via this relatively old post on another blog I discovered recently) is pretty cool. There are a lot of exciting applications for GIS in archaeology (certainly some more exciting than this), but, although I am certainly interested in both GIS and archaeology — as you may know — that isn't why I bring this up. No, this photo of the program's director is. What else is there to say?
In other news, it may seem odd, but now that I have a job, I actually find myself doing a lot more reading. This has left me with a lot more I want to write about, so . . . possibly expect that. I only say this here in the hope that once this is written down for people to see, I'll actually do it.
Anthropologists are basically awesome March 12, 2008
Posted by argotnavis in Archaeology, TV/Movies.Tags: archaeoblog, awesome, blogs, Flores, internet, John Hawks, physical anthropology
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I'm ashamed to admit it, but I had actually never read, or heard of, John Hawks' very entertaining (and educational!) blog before today. I discovered it this afternoon (via) and spent most of my free time at work reading through it. If you're at all interested in biological anthropology or human evolution, it's a pretty good read. His latest post on LB 1, for example, is pretty cool if you've been following the Hobbit news lately (edit: I guess I should point out that he has written, uh, a bit more about the Hobbits, too).
I, of course, was mostly drawn to his TV reviews. Here are some highlights:
The post that drew me in was his review of 10,000 BC drawn from the IMDb message board (apparently IMDb is the new YouTube). The “hey guys, the correct term is BP” comment really made this one for me.
His comparison of Apocalypto and Collapse sums up much more elegantly than I've ever been able to my basic opinion of Jared Diamond's writings on anthropology (see also).
This older entry is pretty good.
I enjoyed this even older entry simply because the discussion about “race” reminded me of something my skeletal analysis professor said: “Remember, the police generally are not interested in lectures on the socially constructed nature of race. They really just want you to help them figure out who those bones belonged to.”
This entry is easily one of my favorites.
Also, it's not in the TV reviews section, but I always think it's cool when I see reviews of papers by people I used to say hello to in the hall, such as this one. Even if that paper was over 20 years old at the time.
Anyway, the point is, he has a pretty cool blog. Someday I hope to be at least that cool. Perhaps I'll send him an e-mail and let him know . . . probably not, but hey.
