blivet 2.0

I really should mention that a good archaeologist can’t really take a site without good information and make it good. That’s the ‘luck’ in research. Which is really choosing wisely. A good archaeologist merely doesn’t screw up (almost the term I would normally use) a site with the potential to provide good data by her or his choice of research questions, methods, and analysis. Our task as scientists, and really the mission of all scientists, is to take the chaos of raw data and make it information. That arena is where we compete and how we judge one another. We just told the story (really only a couple of the stories) in the ground at Burnt Rock. We didn’t screw up, which is ultimately the source of the somewhat understated mutual praise reported yesterday. Sadly, ‘not screwing up’ is not as commonplace as it could be in the larger community.

And with that, we may see you later. I’ve spent too much time of late getting a phosphor tan, squinting into binocular microscopes, and fuming at my marginal touch-typing skills. I want to see things and feel my body in motion over the landscape of my desert while it is still tolerant of our presence. Soon it will be hotter than blazes and rather intolerant. Obviously I’m the one who becomes intolerant. The desert simply is what it is.

One of the best weblogs on the ‘net, BookNotes is one year old today. Congratulations Craig.

Whew. Last day of March already. Which means -

Daylight Saving Time - When do we change our clocks? It is that time again. I was oblivious, but wood s lot reminded me.

My inital impressions from the ‘blogs I frequent - which of course support many if not most of my biases - fall along a couple of lines of thought. One is that I’m surrounded by geniuses (but you knew that about yourselves). The other is actually two that seem linked in my brain. I am reminded of the Chinese curse, May you live in interesting times, which these certainly are. The other is an abiding affection for Carl Sagan, whose parting gift to us was a book titled Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark which seems as a candle all its own. That’s pretty close to the title anyway, I’m too rooted in this chair to walk out to the living room and look. The next time I get up I plan a one-way to that good friend of mine, bed-san. Anyway, it would seem a great darkness is issuing from the halls of governence (is that a word?) and I fear it will get darker than I hope. This is juxtaposed with the onset of Spring and the near-universal motif of rebirth and renewal which Dan reminded me of as I drifted towards the shoals of pessimism that can only come from acute fatigue. Thanks Dan. Now I must go. Be well. Apologies for the mispellings.

Al and garret - I hope both of you get to feeling better.

LInks to follow, though I’m trying to stay away from politics. We’ll see.

Slight apologies for the length of this one.
Our presentation that Greg will give on Burnt Rock Mound at the national conference got sent to the film printer late today. I’m beat. I can retrench now and finish the lithic analysis and see if its possible to parse the archaeology on a finer scale. Off the cuff summary - we shifted the onset of the Jet Stream moving back north to around 15,500 years ago (calibrated date). That pushes the beginning of the end of the glaciation back 1,500 years which implies a longer ‘wet’ period in the northern Mojave - southern Great Basin. Also, solid support from several lines of evidence for the abrupt onset of the very dry period here from about 9,000 to 7,500 years ago. Along with that we have very xeric (formed in extreme dryness) buried soil profiles truncated by an (apparently) wind-eroded unconformity in the soil profile. The aquifers recharge about 6,600 years ago with an episode of spring activity that correlates very well throughout the region with continental analogs like the vegetation changes in the Great Plains, northern Mexico, coastal California, and eastern forests. From an archaeological point of view, there is no sign of a human presence until 4,500 years ago, which is consistent with the region. What we have that is fairly unique is a suite of 23 radiocarbon dates that are completely internally consistent from in-situ materials that are either ‘black mat’ (organic spring deposits) or charcoal from the excavation units. There’s no ‘fliers’ or data that has to be explained away. The whole thing holds together without having to issue caveats. In our combined 46 years of doing this archaeology thing we’ve never been involved in a project where we were able to do that. That was what I was trying to poke holes in earlier this week. Greg gave me one of the highest compliments an archaeologist gives another when he was looking over the results I put together on Wednesday. He just grinned. “You’re pretty good. I’d let you dig one of my sites.” It wasn’t (and isn’t) an especially euphoric moment, though it was pleasurable coming from a long-stand friend who will be completely honest with you. My reaction was more of a ‘thanks, it is a pretty good piece of work’. By this point, there’s no ego left in it, it just gets wrung out over the months of analysis and writing and 14 hour days.

That probably would have sounded arrogant to me 15 years ago. But, after a while, you know what’s good and what isn’t, even if it’s something you’ve produced. Once it passes that harshest of critics (yourself), it just confirms your judgement of other people when they see it too. The situtation becoems ripe for understatement. Or maybe it’s just my Midwestern upbringing. You’ve done things very well too, I bet you know the feeling.

In other work news, today was the last day on the project for our biologist, a woman I’ve known for six years. One of the most upbeat people I’ve ever known, she gives light to all in her vicinity. She is returning to school to pursue a second career in nursing, likely in Neo-Natal Intensive Care. Anyway, that’s what I think that’s what ‘Nic-Yoo’ (NICU?) stands for. I parsed it that way, but never thought to ask her. She will be an asset wherever she ends up. I would hire her in a second if I was a hiring type person.

Hi. I’m still here.

OK, back to work…

Wanted: ‘Civic scientists’ to educate the public, press and policy makers. via David Carter-Tod (SiT)

Dave is Just like the Iron Chef today. The flavors are dancing in my mouth!

I’m assuming you’ve already stopped by dangerous meta, wood s lot, Time’s Shadow, and BookNotes.

lots of good things out there…
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Um, we had some forest fires too! They weren’t as big as yours, but it was really hot! And, …, and it was dry, really dry. Can we have a tax extension too? via garret

Burnt Rock Mound
I’ve been neck deep in radiocarbon dates and paleoclimatic data for a week or so. Hmm, can he still write html 3.2? Writing about d¹³C/d¹²C (carbon isotope ratio changes) values is suprisingly fun when you can point it back to things in the past. Not that I think this climate change information from 15,000 to 6,000 years ago will really have any bearing on the analysis of our climatic flux today, but I like to feel like we’re making a contribution in a small way. I need to get all the graphics done so we can make slides on Friday. They say they need three days so, if we give them 10 we should be OK. <cross fingers> Right? Then I can get back to the verbiage.

silence at traumwind. See you in a while Martin.

diong… heh. that about sums it.

It’s a slow ascent to sentience this morning. I hope you all are diong fine.
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I SING THE PROFITS ELECTRIC from Steven Baum (Ethel the Blog). Its about the situation in California and power shortages, well written, as always, with background links that substantiate things. I held this illusion for a while that it was our country, now I remember why the 1980s were so disillusioning.

Birthy Hapday Brent!

Apparently the story about the The Mandlebrot Monk is a hoax. Sorry about that. again, via Angus at Where’s My Latte?

Now comes the working elsewhere part of the day.

Heard on NPR this morning: Leonard Nimoy is 70 today.

Good Morning. My calendar reports that today is Thor’s Day and the Festival of Esus, the Hunter, though I don’t personally know anyone who celebrates them.
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One thing for sure - is there is another Manilapalooza, Radiopalooza, ‘blogpalooza, whateverpalooza - I’m going this time.

And we’re off. It will be later, perhaps tomorrow. Be well.

garret ranges far and wide, omnivorous and enthusiastic, often touching territory I tangent as well. But from a slightly different tack, still sailing the same seas. Where does that breeze spring from? Labels, categories, you, me and us. Many similar observations - “What’s this? Hmm, must go and see.” Its a pleasant way to get to know ones friends and fellows by what we share with one another. I am richer for it.

It’s a beautiful semi-overcast day. Perfect for a sojourn in glorious Mother desert. And a New Moon (jsut past) night. Dark and quiet, owned by the truly nocturnal.

Late start, but that’s OK. We’ve had far too much furious running around here in the last several weeks.
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Hi Matt! Welcome back.

Harvey Blume talks with Karen Armstrong, biographer of the Enlightened One in The Atlantic. via the excellent wood s lot

John has taken View from an Iowa Homestead on the road. Is this a shakedown for an upcoming World Tour? Will there be satin VFIH World Tour jackets for the roadies? These questions beg answers. You can tell he’s serious ’cause he has the O’Rielly drill book with him.

We’ve got Death Valley wildflowers in the queue for tomorrow.

David Singer can probably summarize better than I from his recent visit here, but I was astonished at the number and variety of kid-friendly activities my relatives found to do on the Las Vegas Strip this week with their two children, Ryan, who is 8, and Katie, who is 11. We don’t go to Casino-land unless family is in town and so don’t really know these things. They went to aquaria, saw sharks, dolphins, lions and tigers (no bears), rode roller-coasters, and watched pirates battle the British Navy and volcanos erupt. My favorite is still the illuminated moving fountains set to music at the Belagio. I always get very emotional during the set that uses Copland’s Appalachian Spring. One thing I have noticed that hasn’t changed in the 15 years I’ve been here is that the buffets are overpriced and serve you yesterday’s food.

Our cousins have headed back to Colorado and we have returned to our consensual hallucination we like to refer to as normalcy.
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Still focused on the ¹⁴C dates and regional paleo-environmental data. We’re having a great time with relatives in the evening, but that cuts into ‘blog time. Thanks for understanding.
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Happy Birthday to my teacher, Ming Zhen Shakya!

Burnt Rock Mound
Briefly - The second suite of ¹⁴C dates came in first thing and I’m digging in to fit them into the stratigraphy of Burnt Rock Mound. The other major task is to create a summary of paleo-environmental research and findings in the southern Great Basin and northern Mojave (no, it’s never been done). There are continental and regional summaries but nothing below that. So, I have two five foot by three foot sheets of plotter paper on the wall in the conference room, a pile of books, two big piles of journal articles, a rainbow-hued fistful of sharpies and magic markers, and I’m reading, writing dates, and drawing lines and arrows between them. So, we’ll start at the top level (continental) and zoom in, taking several steps to end up at a 400 m² plot of ground in the north part of the Las Vegas Valley. General to specific, just like the big boys do it. What’s exhilarating is that it looks like our work plugs in just where it needs to and spans a gap. (I remember speculating about that a year ago.) It’s almost too neat, it makes me uneasy. I’ve got my eye for things to muddy it up a bit. We’re good, but nobody is that good!

Good Morning!

We have family in town (Audrey’s side) so tonight’s updates are and tomorrow’s will be pretty short. The children of Audrey’s cousins are perhaps my favorite kids of all. Katie is in 6th grade and Ryan is in (I think) 3rd. They’re both sharp as tacks and budding science geeks. Katie took overall in her school’s science fair with a project involving light refraction. Ryan is infatuated with the space program, especially anything to do with Mars. Katie was talking about all the books she’s read lately and asked me if I had anything to suggest. ‘Have you read A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin or A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L’Engle?’ She hadn’t. So we talked about books, books!, wonderful books, for twenty minutes. What’s a cousin for if you can’t recommend wonderful books and feed a curious young mind?

Yahoo EXCLUSIVE: [from the very, very cool dept.] via Ghost in the Machine
Spy Agency May Have Located Mars Polar Lander.

The Mars Polar Lander may have been found ˆ intact ˆ by a top-secret spy imagery agency. The National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) has been quietly scanning Mars pictures, looking for the Mars Polar Lander since early December 1999. According to a source close to the NIMA effort, photographic specialists at NIMA think they’ve spotted something. But NASA officials say it’s too early to tell.

My final project when I was a DOE subcontractor was with NIMA. I was doing ground support as an archaeologist for them in a remote and rugged area of the Nevada Test Site where they placed a large number of very precisely geo-referenced benchmarks. All the better to tweak those z-axis algorithms in the Digital Elevation Models my dear. They were an amazing group of people, all very talented and smart as hell.

The Other Talented Mr. Ripley.

[salon] Finally, a little mud. Big money really seems to hate McCain, though this particular lobby may not be noted for being rational, or confining themselves to supportable allegations.

An e-mail sent out to “many, many” citizens and media organizations on Tuesday morning by Larry Farrell, a board member of Gun Owners of New Jersey, the state affiliate of national gun rights organization Gun Owners of America, accuses McCain, who was a POW in Vietnam for five-and-a-half years, of having “collaborated with the enemy.” The e-mail calls McCain “the Manchurian Candidate come to life” …

Discovery brings home first Alpha crew. The space shuttle Discovery landed in Florida Wednesday morning at 2:31 a.m. EST, ending a mission to deliver a replacement crew to the international space station.

A beautiful sunrise today. turquoise sky and rose colored cloud wisps in the east. Its supposed to break 90°F today. I certainly hope we’re going to have a bit of spring this year before slipping into the fifth season, Inferno.

Good Morning.
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