More security theatre on trains

CNN has the story about yet another intrusion by the TSA that will do nothing to make anybody safer. This agency of thugs, thieves, and perverts has long since made it clear that when it comes to civil rights, their view is that you have none. They have also made it clear that they don’t know the first thing about security, as illustrated in the article by the ridiculous screening of passengers getting off a train. (What would they do if somebody refused to allow the search? Make them get back on?)

The idea that spot checking will cause terrorists to cancel their plans is beyond idiotic. In the unlikely event that a TSA team happens to be present at the time and place the terrorists intend to board, they would simply leave and return later, or go to another station. Or they would attack the people waiting in line. This is assuming they ever planned to board the train in the first place, rather than simply plant a bomb somewhere along the 140,000 + miles of railroad track that crosses the country.

The TSA needs to be disbanded yesterday.

 

Leave a Comment

Filed under Politics, Railroad

Things that can not be explained

Surely everybody in the developed world has had some exposure to archaeology. From museums to elementary school science classes to Indiana Jones and Stargate, it seems impossible that anybody could grow up completely unaware of archaeology. So why does it seem that whenever I tell somebody that I’m an archaeologist there’s at least a 50/50 chance they’ll ask me about digging up dinosaurs?

 

Leave a Comment

Filed under Archaeology

Social networking in the past

Popular Archaeology has an intriguing article about social networking among the Hadza, a nomadic people living in East Africa whose primary form of subsistence is hunting and gathering. A team led by Coren Apicello found that the Hadza form social networks among themselves very similar to those formed using Facebook and other modern communications tools. The finding suggests that this form of human interaction may be very old.

I have one disagreement with the article, however, and that is that it too quickly assumes that the behavior of modern hunter-gatherer peoples is necessarily the same as that of peoples living thousands of years ago. This is not a valid assumption. It is widely recognized in archaeology that ancient cultures often differ in significant ways from those visited by anthropologists. This study of social networks therefore can only suggest how people might have interacted in the past, not definitely show that they behaved that way. Regardless of this, though, it is still a very interesting finding that should prompt further research.

 

Leave a Comment

Filed under Anthropology

Again with the train porn

Over the Christmas holiday we traveled up Highway 395 into Oregon and then west to Portland. Along the way we stopped in Lakeview long enough for me to get a few shots of the Lake Railway, a short line running from Lakeview to Perez, CA where it interchanges with the Union Pacific.

This is the engine house in Lakeview. In the distance you can see the railroad’s one and only locomotive.

 

Here is a closer shot of the engine house, taken from the other direction.

 

A closer shot of the locomotive, an EMD GP49 formerly owned by Alaska Railroad.

And finally, one more picture of the locomotive. I was told by someone working at the agricultural inspection station just inside the California border (which is adjacent to the track) that the locomotive has broken down and the railroad is using a modified tractor-trailer as power instead. I would have loved to get a picture of that running down the track, but unfortunately we didn’t happen to see it.

 

Leave a Comment

Filed under Railroad

In the wonderous future of 2011

In 1911 the Ladies’ Home Journal published a number of predictions about how the world would be changed over the next 100 years. Apart from the obvious misses, there are a few surprising omissions. Airships are discussed, for example, but not heavier-than-air planes, even though the Wright Brothers had flown their Flyer eight years previously. Most of the electronics we take for granted obviously could not reasonably have been predicted, but the massive proliferation of recorded music probably could have been (the phonograph was patented in 1877).

There are, however, quite a few surprising hits. Central heating and air conditioning, long distance transmission of images in real time, and “forts on wheels” (i.e. tanks) making cavalry charges, to pick three notable examples.

Also interesting is the apparent complete lack of any concern given to preserving nature.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Technology

Legalizing looting in Alabama

I just saw this rather frightening proposal in Alabama to change the state law to allow treasure hunters to take artifacts from archaeological sites located underwater in rivers, streams, and lakes. This isn’t just a problem of taking the artifacts themselves, although they are a very finite resource, but of the loss of knowledge about the past. In many (I would even say most) cases, the vast majority of scientific and historical information that can be obtained from a site is derived not from individual artifacts, but from their context. Once removed from that context, any information not recorded at the time of collection is gone forever.

If any of my readers live in Alabama, please contact your State Senator and tell them not to allow treasure hunters to loot the past.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Archaeology, Politics

Good news, kind of

The latest Russian Mars probe might have missed the red planet, but it did manage to hit the planet that is closest to Mars.

 

Leave a Comment

Filed under Space, Technology

WTF Denver?

According to a story in the Denver Post, the police there don’t seem to have a very good track record in making sure that a person arrested due to an outstanding warrant actually is the one they’re supposed to be looking for. It doesn’t appear that anybody even looks at the description on the warrant, or even whether the person is a man or a woman!

Once arrested, many of these people sit in jail, sometimes for weeks before the mistake is fixed. To make matters worse, the Sixth Amendment is clearly not in effect in Denver, since suspects are often held for over a week before even seeing a judge for the first time.

We do visit Colorado from time to time, since Catherine has family there. But I think it might be wise to avoid Denver on our next trip. (Fortunately Caboose Hobbies has a web store.)

 

Leave a Comment

Filed under Uncategorized

CSS Hunley finally revealed

Conservators removed a steel truss from around the recovered Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley yestoday, granting the first unobstructed view anybody has had of the boat in almost 150 years. Story with photos here. The Hunley, you may recall, was the first submarine ever to make a successful attack on another vessel. It sank the USS Housatonic in 1864, but then itself sank almost immediately afterward. Underwater archaeologists managed to raise the wrecking of the Hunley in 2000 and it has been sitting in a tank of water in Charleston until today.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Archaeology

I’ll never be that rich

Even if I were to win the lottery every day for the rest of my life, I’m pretty sure I’d never be willing to spend $42,000.00 for a pen. Seriously, in what way is this pen 280,000 times better than the pens I can get at Staples for 15 cents apiece? Especially considering how often my pens get beaten up or lost out in the field.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Weirdness