Green Sahara Findings

Many news outlets have run the story of Paul Sereno's discovery of a cemetery in the Sahara of Niger that dates back to the time that of the Green Sahara--some 10,000 to 6,000 years ago. The best source of info is the Project Exploration site.

The cemetery, literally in the middle of nowhere [albeit a lawless nowhere that requires armed forces to protect it], was found by Sereno in 2000, when he was tracking dinosaur bones. It includes the graves of two groups, separated by thousands of years, who lived near a lake:

• The Kiffians, extremely tall folks who lived from 9700 to 8200 years ago. They sustained themselves by hunting and fishing, and left the area or died out when the lake dried out about 8,000 years ago. But over millennia the climate changed, the lake came back, and...


• the Tenerians lived at the location from 6600 to 4800 years ago. They buried their dead on their sides, almost in a fetal position, on beds of flowers. The Tenerians raised livestock, and were shorter and lighter in build than the Kiffians.


• The Tholians, a crystalline species...kidding. The other two are real, but don't the names Kiffian and Tenerian sound like aliens from a Star Trek episode?

By 4,500 BP, "the climate began its slow deterioration to present day arid conditions," according to the Project site. It has marvelous photos of the mother-and-children embrace in a Tenerian grave (I'm assuming; that relationship hasn't been proven by dna yet). These photos came from there, but go to the site to see them in their full glory.

The National Geographic site also has a photo essay online of the Gobero cemetery, as well as its feature article on the discovery.

Blog-Surfing: a Rationale

I used to feel guilty, spending an hour that would be more productively used WRITING. No more.

It seems that everyone else considers an hour spent surfing is an an investment, not a waste. Check out blogs, and you'll see immediately that blogger blog about other blogs. Clearly, if everyone else is doing it, it's ok. Right?

So, I scrolled through Infomaniac (which periodically lists Useful Sights for Journalists) and found a link to 10,000 Words, and followed that a collection of sites that will help me learn a language! Wow!

There's Babbel, which is free-while-in-beta-testing (and has a few glitches), BBC Languages (slow to load but fun), Learnit list --with widgets to shoot you 20 new words a day (sounds a lot like school) . . . and more. More ways for me to rationalize frittering away my time, because, let's face it, playing on-line Boggle till my eyes bleed isn't really improving my vocabulary like I thought it would.

And it's all good, cuz I got a blog posting out of it.

Let's start a Feature-A-Month Club!

I scribbled down a quote from Mikki Halpin, book author and former editor for Seventeen , contributing editor for Glamour. She was speaking about the freelance writer's dilemma:

I realized that even if I had a feature every month, I couldn't make a living.

The quote was from a New York Observer article in March or April.

How do we survive? Because, let's face it, most of us can't complain that we sell a feature a month, and it's not enough.

I'm pinning my hopes on the novel. No one will pay for it till it's written, agented, and sold...one out of three for me. These steps can take years. Meanwhile, we either work at other jobs or scramble for writing gigs and send our best article ideas to $1-a-word or $2-a-word markets (for the record, I've never sold to the latter but I know they're there) and hope that the savings can be stretched out a l-i-t-t-l-e bit longer.

On the plus side, there are no more debtors' prisons, and stretching is good for the muscles, right?

Amiens Cathedral

I haven't written about Gaul lately, have I?

this is a picture of Notre Dame Cathedral of Amiens in the summer, when it is cleverly lit to look as it did when it was first built, and all those sculptures were actually painted.

Through August, the lighting starts at 10 P.M.; through September 21, at 9:45 P.M.--that's if I'm reading the website correctly. The spectacle ends then, until the Christmas holidays.

Amiens is a sweet, quiet town at the lowest part of the Somme, with just enough old world charm, canals, art and trendy shops to be well worth a visit. It's named for the Ambiani, the Celtic tribe that controled the territory way back when.

I'm International!

Huzzah!

My article "Resting on a Knife-Edge" is in the new issue of Ancient Warfare. Great illustrations, too.

The article is about Caesar's war with the Belgic tribes of Gaul in his second campaign year, and his near-disastrous run-in with the Nervians. Other articles in the magazine discuss aspects of Julius Caesar's strategy, his legions, the last stand of Vercingetorix in Gaul, and--leaving Caesar aside--Hoplite shields.

Hmmm...what's the dollar-euro exchange rate right now?

Go subscribe! Really, the synchronized diving finals can wait.

Common Ancestor? Try 660,000 years ago

Scientists working on the mitochondrial DNA of Neanderthals have determined that we have to go back 660,000 years to find a common ancestor between them and us. And it looks like there was no interbreeding during the ten or twenty thousand years that both Neanderthals and homo sapiens shared the continents.

Given our taste in men, I can only assume that the Neanderthals were a bit more discriminating. Or maybe it was an in-law thing. In any event, here's the Los Angeles Times story. The Neanderthal DNA was taken from a 38,000-year-old bone found in a Croatian cave.

Underwater Archaeology

"Archaeologists in the UK are exploring a vast expanse of sea floor between southeastern England and the Netherlands that, between 8,000 and 10,000 years ago, was a rich landscape inhabited by Mesolithic hunters and gatherers."

Oh! Oh! Oh! The first thing this makes me think of is that Iron Age Europe, 2000 years ago, had a lower, and in some places marshier, coastline than today. I recall reading that Julius Caesar's description of northern Belgae (the Low Countries) validated the beliefs of climatologists who suspected that seas began to rise millennia ago, and were still rising in Caesar's day.

The opening quote, btw, is from an August 5 article by Bradley T. Lepper titled "Underwater Archaeology a new field of exploration." The July 10 issue of Nature (Vol 454) has an article but sadly, you have to pay to see it online. However, if you google Laura Spinney (the author) and Archaeology, you may find a non-commercial copy somewhere. Like here.

The article is about Doggerland, a silly name for the marshy plain that once connected Britain with mainland Europe. Since about 8,0000 years ago, that blasted plain is now under the North Sea--hence the archaeology tie-in. Scientists have not only found artefacts there, but they are able to map the area and spot ancient rivers.

Skipping around, here's a site on the mapping from the University of Birmingham. That's where this picture with the river channel is from.

Antikythera Mechanism Decoded . . . partly

You may have read about the Antikythera Mechanism before. A corroded bunch of bronze and iron gears found in a shipwreck in 1901 by Greek sponge divers near the idyllic island town of Antikythera (presumably, humans diving for sponges, not sponges diving for fun. . . because, if it were sponges diving for fun they would have kept the Antikythera for themselves, right?) Anyway, where was I?

Oh, yeah. This thingy was found in a shipwreck over a hundred years ago. What is it? Good question. It' was built in the first century B.C. and looks kinda like a clockwork, only it predates clocks by many centuries. It has 29 surviving gears, according to this BBC story, and one of them contains the dates for the Olympics.

Amazing. Apparently, scientists subjected the thingy (they call it the Antikythera Mechanism, since Mechanism sounds more impressive than Thingy) to tomography. A 3-d image was produced, and:

"The four sectors of the dial are inscribed with a year number and two
Panhellenic Games: the "crown" games of Isthmia, Olympia, Nemea and Pythia; and
two lesser games: Naa (held at Dodona) and a second game which has not yet been
deciphered."

The ancient Olympics were not just every 4 years like now; they were actually four sets of games held over four years.

What I remember reading about the Antikythera is that--although this particular thingy was made long after the death of Archimedes in 212 (in Corinth), historians speculate that it was based on a prototype or design of the great scientist/tinkerer.

Wikipedia's Antikythera Mechanism page is quite up to date on this new research, as well as previous discoveries about the thingy, and has tons of references and links to articles in scientific journals like Nature. The "Antikythera Mechanism Project" maintains an accessible website, though it is being redesigned. It has links to a lot of the scans and digital radiographs of the 82 fragments of said thingy, as well as to much of the scientific data compiled. The pictures here are from their Image Gallery.

Journalism Gig! No Pay! Sign Up Now!

Writers in Los Angeles were [unnecessarily] excited about the Craigslist ad for a NEW MAJOR NEWSPAPER in Los Angeles. Wow! First clue that it was not the answer to your employment woes was that all the attempts to contact the Craigslist address bounced. Oops.

But now they have a website! Nice, professional. . . anticipating a circulation of between 200,000 and 500,000. Wow. And they need writers, web developers, editors. . . and they're not going to pay them.

"You will not be paid for this time now but, you may be considered for what will likely be the most coveted media jobs in the country. "

I'm sure that will entice the many professionals looking to support their families. After all, what do little things like food and shelter mean when weighed against the opportunity to help some starry-eyed cheapskate put out a real newspaper?

Booker Dozen and Free Pictures

For those novelists aspiring to prizes and recognition, and heavily into visualization, the "Booker Dozen" finalists were just announced. So go to the link and picture your name alphabetized between Aravind Adiga and Steve Toltz. The short list for the Man Booker prize will be announced in September.

Between the first and second sentences, if anyone's interested, a 5.8 earthquake shook Los Angeles.

Also of note, PicApp is online! Free pictures!

I haven't quite figured it out, but go here and set yourself up with an account. Then you can search for royalty-free pictures to embed in your own blog. Rather than copying the picture, you get lines of html text to copy into the blog--as I just did with the image of Tour de France winner Carlos Sastre.

Initially, certain lines of the text printed over the picture, extending the margin. Once deleted, the margin snapped back into place, so my advice is to delete with impunity--you can always recopy and paste.

Writing Quotes

I collect writing quotes. I firmly believe every lover of words should collect good quotes, but I have sub-collections dealing with writing and history.

Here's my favorite, from a History Channel interview with David MuCullough: "To write well is to think clearly."

Here's one that was posted on FreelanceWritingGigs yesterday, by Deb--who clearly loves to collect quotes too, since she posted a whole batch of them:

There’s no such thing as writer’s block. That was invented by people in California who couldn’t write. From the great Terry Pratchett

And digging into my own collection once more, here's one from Norman Mailer:

Writing is wonderful when you talk about it. . . But writing as a daily physical activity is not agreeable. You put on weight, you strain your gut, you get gout and chilblains. You’re alone, and every day you have to face a blank piece of paper.

Craigslist Ads that make you go . . . mmmmm

Yes, they do. How to take this freelance writing ad found in the Los Angeles Craiglist today?

Looking for talented writer for only 3 hrs=$300!!!! (Santa Monica)

The successful candidate must have:
- Creative mind
- Excellent verbal and article written skills
- Would prefer BA in english, , or similar degree, but not required.
- Must be Asian, Female, age around 22-28 years old
- Payment will be cash upon work completion
If you recognize yourself through this description, please contact me ASAP.

(email address deleted.)

It all sounded so normal and promising until "Must be Asian, Female, age around 22-28. . . "

Surprised the poster didn't add "HOT!" to the qualifications.

Awards for Gall!

Two things jump out of the news at me (well, more than two, but I grabbed my handy cudgel and beat the rest back into the fiery pit from whence they came). One good, one bad.

The good--and puzzling--gallish thing is my two favorite ballers, Steve Nash of the Suns and Baron Davis of (be still my heart) THE CLIPPERS, riding tandem on a bicycle built for two. If you're wondering which one is Daisy, check out Nash's shirt. Oops--those are hibiscuses, sorry.

There's a short-short-short video of this on BallHype. Don't know who to credit this picture to; most sites say a reader of Barstool Sports submitted it--presumably with no strings, since everyone--even Yahoo!--is using it.

The second, bad gallish thing has to do with archaeology.

Apparently one Tommy Bow, who owns both a construction company and a big piece of property in Illinois, subscribes to the philosophy that "It's easier to ask forgiveness than permission." After signing agreements with agencies that promised to protect a rare, thousand-year-old archaeological site on his new parcel of land, Bow went ahead and bulldozed it into oblivion.

Read about it in the local paper. Bow says the site's not destroyed and claims that everyone's exaggerating his teensy little mistake, but somehow, I just don't believe him.

The site, btw, included a hundred homes of a nomadic group that may have been the builders, or the immediate ancestors of the builders, of Cahokia. The site on Bow's property had been partially excavated; now it's gone.

Here's a photo of Cahokia from britannica.com. I'd like to know who built that and I hope Illinois and the Federal government hits Tommy Bow with everything it can. "Philistine asshole" is about the most polite phrase that comes to mind. But I'm still in a good mood over the Davis-Nash picture, so surely someone else could do better.

Greatest Birthday Party Ever

For a 9-year-old. It takes gall to do this:

Or to hold a tarantula or a scorpion:

More gall than I had, anyway. You'll note that no middle-aged females are in these shots!

Who Owns Witch World?

Andre (ne Alice) Norton is in the news, three years after her death. Seems that her will left past royalties to her nurse and caretaker, and future royalties (of posthumously published works) to a fan who became a great friend.

It's all sad and sordid; read about it at CNN or any of the other outlets that printed the AP story. The Tennessee Court of Appeals will have to decide who's right; the caretaker feels that all was to be left to her and has a video with Norton stating as much. The fan/friend, though, disputes.

I'm just surprised that Andre Norton lived in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Nothing wrong with it; I've never been there. But like most people, I build up a picture of what kind of person an author is from their books. I knew Andre Norton was a woman, and I pictured her living in Europe, probably Paris. Either that, or New England.

She was born in Cleveland and died in Murfreesboro. Clearly, telepathy isn't one of my gifts.

Les Huitres

Like other areas, France is suffering an oyster blight. But that's like saying, oh, "like Temecula, France has vineyards."

In coastal beds along the north and west coasts, baby oysters have died. Boom. Just like that. Since the babies would have been harvested in 3-4 years, expect the death of romance and mass starvation in France in 2011.

The Los Angeles Times reports this as a side item, almost, to their front page story about similar oyster die-offs along the Pacific Coast: California, Oregon, and Washington. There, the culprit has been found: an insidious bacteria that swept in with warmer water, which can also live quite well in the growing "dead zones" (unoxygenated waters) near the northwest coast.

And our illustrious president stands ready with his veto pen to stop any bills that address climate change. Does he want oysters to go the way of the dodo bird, or is he simply a dodo bird himself?

They were rather slow.

Specialty Bookstores on 3rd

On a walking/eating tour of Third Street in Los Angeles (a real tour, btw, not just lollygagging) . . . (not that there's anything wrong with lollygagging) . . . (and the tour was given by Melting Pot Tours, if you're going to be in Los Angeles and want to stuff yourself, shop, and pick up local history at the same time) . . .I visited two side-by-side specialty bookstores that are now on the internet:

• The Cook's Library, which has books on everything to do with cooking. Everything! And book signings, events, and always a plate of treats out for customers to sample. Of course, on the website you can't taste any treats, but if there's a cooking book you want to locate, these are the people to call.
• Traveler's Bookcase, with every guidebook for every country, as well as sections on adventure travel, traveling with kids, etc. Again, if a tour book has eluded you, they'll hunt it down.

I don't know how they divvy up the books that combine travel AND cooking, but since the store owners and clerks are all best friends, they've come up with something.

As for the picture. . . it's the handle of a doorway across the street. One of those "only in L.A." shots.

Beware of Freeloading Employers!

Writers Weekly has a compact, neat little piece titled "Red Flags in Freelance Help Wanted Ads." Just in case you would like to be alerted to the kind of companies that DON'T pay. I would add one more pet peeve of my own: Beware of projects that will pay on publication, but can't give you a publication date. They mean well, but there's a good chance you'll never see the money.

If we all lived in a perfect world, and were all so wealthy that we didn't have to worry over the rent. . . not paying writers would still be wrong.

Tour de France

It's worth about 22 seconds on the evening news or CNN, but the Tour de France has spent the last three days in my favorite part of the country, Brittany. Brest, the Morbihan Bay, St. Malo, Nantes. Not that anyone--even ESPN--covers it.

However--here is a site that has hour-long highlight videos of each day: Justin.TV

Yay! Another site with pictures and video is Steephill.tv And of course, there is the official Tour website, en francais.

Hommes in tight pants. . . Yes, I am a sports fan. Vive la France!

Orkney Orksplorations

Never been to the Orkneys but no adolescent who fell in love with The Once and Future King can hear "Orkney" without thinking of Morgan le Fay and that poor parboiled cat (Morgan never did find the right bone to make her invisible, did she?)

The BBC reports that a month-long archaeological exploration will commence at the Ring of Brodgar in Orkney. It's the third-largest stone circle in Britain but its age and purpose--even the exact number of original stones--is unknown.

So the archaeologists will dig up trenches from the 1970s, when the last attempt took place, and also do some geophysical surveys.

According to a Historic Scotland report (where this picture comes from), the Ring of Brodgar is included in a World Heritage Site and:

"is one of the best-preserved and largest known henges in the British Isles. It is almost a perfect circle and 36 out of c. 60 original stones survive. The stone circle is surrounded by a substantial rock-cut ditch with two opposing causeways. The monument is surrounded by other standing stones and at least 13 Neolithic and Bronze Age burial mounds."