(no subject)
Things that make me happy right now:
» Uncomfortable Questions: Was the Death Star Attack an Inside Job? Remix satire at its finest.
» On a nerdier note ... actually, no, that first link was plenty nerdy. This, however, is a more old-fashioned kind of nerdy, and honestly a whole heckuva lot more cool: the official news broke last night that the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold discovered in history was unearthed in July in Staffordshire. Those of you interested in this kind of thing know about Sutton Hoo -- there are 11 lbs of gold in this hoard to Sutton Hoo's 3.5 (5 to 1.66 in kg). It's not the monetary value, of course (although that definitely makes it more fun), it's that all this gold comes in the form of 1,345 1 objects that are going to tell us so much more.
The kicker to all this? The treasure 2 was discovered by Terry Herbert, a guy who does this for a hobby with a metal detector that cost him two quid fifty. He and the owner of the land will jointly be paid half the value of the gold, which hasn't been assessed yet but will apparently be at least seven figures. Heckuva return on your investment.
I've got to give him and everyone else involved in the discovery credit -- they've moved very fast and very professionally to centralize and disseminate information about the find to the public. The website is informative and clearly designed by someone up on net trends and web 2.0 philosophy -- it's under a Creative Commons license and links to the Hoard's wiki page in the press statement. There are dozens of professional photos up on Flickr which I'm going to have to take time to properly drool over later. I mean, it makes sense; as soon as the discovery was made no less than two city councils, a county council, two archaeology/history non-profit groups, one university and a museum all got involved and started throwing manpower and money at the project. They've been secretly working on getting this stuff out of the ground for months, because they wanted to make sure there was nothing valuable left in the ground for looters to get once the location of the site got leaked. Still, it's just so nice to see a public service website look so ... well, professional, and under such time pressure, too.
Okay, I'm got to e-mail my medieval lit professor about this. Any advice on how to touch base with a former sorta-mentor for this sort of thing? I mean, he did write one of my letters of recommendation (oh, god, I so don't want to tell him I'm on leave), so I have spoken with him since college, but still. (Also, I wish I could be sure I sent him a card thanking him for the letter, but I'm not 100% sure I did. Maybe I should ask Mum.) I'm socially awkward and he's - ahem - always been kind of hard to read, even as one of my favorite professors, so. Hmm.
ETA: Ooooor I could accidentally hit "send" instead of "save" while writing my draft, thus making the question rather moot because a slightly stilted e-mail is way the hell better than a half-finished e-mail from someone he hasn't spoken to in years with nothing following it. Augh.
On the plus side of oh, one of my RECURRING SOCIAL NIGHTMARES, it turns out that "hahaha, sorry about that other e-mail, so not how I wanted to say hello" 3 breaks the ice fairly well. So it's done now.
1. So far, but they still have some clods of dirt to scan through, so the total number might go past 1,500.
2. I love that there's an actual legal definition of treasure in the UK.
3. No, I didn't say it like that.
» Uncomfortable Questions: Was the Death Star Attack an Inside Job? Remix satire at its finest.
» On a nerdier note ... actually, no, that first link was plenty nerdy. This, however, is a more old-fashioned kind of nerdy, and honestly a whole heckuva lot more cool: the official news broke last night that the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold discovered in history was unearthed in July in Staffordshire. Those of you interested in this kind of thing know about Sutton Hoo -- there are 11 lbs of gold in this hoard to Sutton Hoo's 3.5 (5 to 1.66 in kg). It's not the monetary value, of course (although that definitely makes it more fun), it's that all this gold comes in the form of 1,345 1 objects that are going to tell us so much more.
The kicker to all this? The treasure 2 was discovered by Terry Herbert, a guy who does this for a hobby with a metal detector that cost him two quid fifty. He and the owner of the land will jointly be paid half the value of the gold, which hasn't been assessed yet but will apparently be at least seven figures. Heckuva return on your investment.
I've got to give him and everyone else involved in the discovery credit -- they've moved very fast and very professionally to centralize and disseminate information about the find to the public. The website is informative and clearly designed by someone up on net trends and web 2.0 philosophy -- it's under a Creative Commons license and links to the Hoard's wiki page in the press statement. There are dozens of professional photos up on Flickr which I'm going to have to take time to properly drool over later. I mean, it makes sense; as soon as the discovery was made no less than two city councils, a county council, two archaeology/history non-profit groups, one university and a museum all got involved and started throwing manpower and money at the project. They've been secretly working on getting this stuff out of the ground for months, because they wanted to make sure there was nothing valuable left in the ground for looters to get once the location of the site got leaked. Still, it's just so nice to see a public service website look so ... well, professional, and under such time pressure, too.
Okay, I'm got to e-mail my medieval lit professor about this. Any advice on how to touch base with a former sorta-mentor for this sort of thing? I mean, he did write one of my letters of recommendation (oh, god, I so don't want to tell him I'm on leave), so I have spoken with him since college, but still. (Also, I wish I could be sure I sent him a card thanking him for the letter, but I'm not 100% sure I did. Maybe I should ask Mum.) I'm socially awkward and he's - ahem - always been kind of hard to read, even as one of my favorite professors, so. Hmm.
ETA: Ooooor I could accidentally hit "send" instead of "save" while writing my draft, thus making the question rather moot because a slightly stilted e-mail is way the hell better than a half-finished e-mail from someone he hasn't spoken to in years with nothing following it. Augh.
On the plus side of oh, one of my RECURRING SOCIAL NIGHTMARES, it turns out that "hahaha, sorry about that other e-mail, so not how I wanted to say hello" 3 breaks the ice fairly well. So it's done now.
1. So far, but they still have some clods of dirt to scan through, so the total number might go past 1,500.
2. I love that there's an actual legal definition of treasure in the UK.
3. No, I didn't say it like that.