Amalgamated Friday #24

Peruvian Earthquake

The earthquake in Peru yesterday, marked as 7.9 on the Richter scale, occurred off the coast of central Peru, in the near-vicinity of the Nasca Lines. If you're going to worry, worry far more about the hundreds reported killed in the town of Ica than the pretty-much-untouchable-by-earthquake Nasca lines (it takes human vandalism to damage Nasca).

• Peru's Earthquake Update, Bonnie Hamre, About.com's guide to South America, has the latest information
• News Roundup: Peru Earthquake, Google Earth blog has a link to the Earthquake monitoring tool for Google Earth developed by the USGS, which you can load and look to see how many aftershocks have hit in the last day or two, and history of the region for earthquakes. Must have Google Earth on your computer to see it.
• 7.9 quake in Peru, continuing coverage from Andrew Alden at Geology
• Earthquake in Peru Kills Hundreds, NYT story on the quake

Viking Ships On the Water

• Viking Ship completes 1,000 mile journey, on the Stallion of the Sea from Melissa Snell, About Medieval History
• Danes apologize for Viking raids, in the Guardian (why not?) via David Beard

Wikipedia Whitewash

• See who's editing Wiki, Wired lays out the problem with anybody-can-edit software
• Could Fox News Sink Any Lower?, on news that Fox has been editing Wikipedia entries for their own spin, from Afarensis
• Wikipedia … everybody’s encyclopedia…, Greg Laden
• Vote On the Most Shameful Wikipedia Spin Jobs, on Wired via Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing
• Wikipedia 'shows CIA page edits', BBC News
• You can edit, but you can’t hide, Wikinomics points out that at least you can identify the miscreants, if you know where to look
• The source of all this, and where you can check up on your favorite domain is here at the Wikipedia Scanner, and here is where you can find out everything you want to know about that guy Virgil Griffith

I think I'm enjoying this too much, so here's some encouraging news about Wikipedia:

• Scientific citations in Wikipedia, from First Monday, via Peter Suber

Around About

• Chloropleth Maps and Color, just what do the colors mean on maps, from Matt Rosenberg in About Geography
• Amber, a tale of the mythological origins of the stuff, from N.S. Gill in Ancient History at About
• The Nice Heist, Shelley Esaak on the August 5 theft at the Musée des Beaux-Arts, in Nice, France, in About Art History
• Paris in August: Some like it hot, a tour of a toasty city from James Martin on Europe for Visitors

Anthropology

• HIV denial update #1: shake-up in South Africa, from Tara Smith on Aetiology
• Mammoth mitochondria, Greg Laden
• Bonobo blowback, on a New Yorker piece on how bonobos aren't as sweet as we thought, from John Hawks
• Handsome by chance: Why humans look different than neanderthals, Tim Jones on Remote Central
• Interview with an anthropologist, Fuji on Savage Minds interviews sports anthropologist Elise Edwards
• What's in your fieldwork bag?, Fuji on Savage Minds wants to know
• Homo sapiens: The Evolution of What We Think About Who We Are, Brian on Laelaps
• Caracol de la Resistencia Zapatista, on a snail and why it is the chosen symbol of the Zapatista movement, from Thomas M. Urban on Archaeolog

Open Access

• Science journalists can link to full-text OA articles, via Peter Suber, at least some journals are allowing science writer hacks like me to link directly to source materials. I've done that in the past, but it's very rarely a free download and I catch flak from readers about it. Plus the links are cranky and don't always work right. But, after reading Peter's comments, I think I'll do it more consistently from now on.

El-Vees

• The King is Still Dead, Greg Laden
• Laughing Elvis, from Pharyngula, Elvis sings Are You Lonesome Tonight, kinda

Archaeology Vacationers

• Venice, Vítor Oliveira Jorge and his wife went to Venice this summer, in Portuguese but gobs of nice photos
• Expecting the Unexpected, Dearest Cupcake visits Ayacucho, Peru

Archaeology

• Alsengem Found in Sweden, a report on "little multilayered button-like discs of coloured glass with incised human stick-figures on one side", dated to the 11th-13th centuries AD from Martin on Aardvarchaeology
• Analysing Medieval Urban Space; a methodology, new paper on Internet Archaeology
• Aniakchak at AD 1650 - A Koniag Settlement, Old Dirt New Thoughts
• Lab work can be fun (and archaeology complicated), JBLowe on Where in the hell am I?
• Pan Community Archaeology Project 2007 - Day 5, Wessex Archaeology
• the Great Beer experiment, about what the Bronze Age site of Fulacht Fiadh was really all about, via Archaeonews on Stone Pages
• 2007 Flint Ridge Knap-In, Ohio Archaeology Blog
• Angkor’s past foretell’s Angkor’s future, from NoelbyNature on Southeast Asian Archaeology

Blog Carnivals

• Tangled Bank #86, at Fish Feet
• Four Stone Hearth #21, at Archaeolog

Media

• Remote Central's Image Bank
• The Naming Project, from Kerim on Savage Minds, about an Inuit project using the Internet to identify photo histories
• Podcast on Archaeological Science, from Intute
• Shady Characters from Brodgar, nice image of fog at the Ring of Brodgar, from Krystian Kozerawski
• Ivory and the Elephant, in Art, in Archaeology and in Science, newly scanned images of George Kunz's 1916 book
• Orkney Kite Aerial Pictures, a collection of photos of Orkney (including the recent excavations near the Ring of Brodgar) taken from a kite, by Flickrite Craig in Orkney
• Drawing Underwater, 35 second video from the children's exhibit at the Museum of Underwater Archaeology

Book Reviews

• Measuring Time with Artifacts, review by Don Wyckoff on the Museum Anthropology blogsite
• Atlas of Cultural and Environmental Change in Arid Africa, review by Andie on Egyptology news

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