The magazine for people who cannot leave well enough alone.
In particular see the Rules.
Via Make, which is being parodied there.
The Tinkerers’ Handbook
Leave a reply
Author Archives: gmcdavid
Bronze Age Resources
Life in Late Bronze Age Greece
Notes on Mycenaeans, by Rodney Castleden
I have been interested in the Greek Bronze Age ever since I read Joseph Alsop’s From the Silent Earth back in High School (1964-1968). Mycenaeans is a very readable and recent survey (2005) and I was quite interested in seeing what is new. Quick summary: Some more sites have been excavated, there have been more digs at known sites, and more Linear B tablets have been
found and translated. So there are Lots of new details, but no revolutionary changes in what archeologists think and the big questions remain unanswered.
Where do woodworkers come from?
Survey: What is (or Was) Your Day Job?
The ranks of woodworkers seems to be filled with engineers, machinists, doctors, computer programmers, firefighters and police officers.
I’ve met only a few attorneys who are woodworkers. And, even more interesting, only one fellow newspaper journalist. I’ve never met a politician who was a woodworker – though I know there are some out there, such as Jimmy Carter.
What does it mean? Probably not much. But I think it’s interesting how professions that thrive on conflict – journalists, attorneys and politicos – seem less likely to take up our craft. And those who build or serve – engineers and firefighters – are more common.
Sour Apple
Memo to Donald Trump
What Vaccine Refusal Really Costs
We can argue endlessly, and do, about people who refuse vaccination for themselves or their children. Under law, they have the right to take that risk. But what this Arizona outbreak makes clear is how many more people are forced to assume that risk without being consulted: not only the infants, elderly and immune-compromised among those 8,321 people exposed in this outbreak, but the hospital shareholders and taxpayers who paid the bill for it to be contained. Until we start counting up those costs as well, we won’t achieve an honest accounting of vaccine refusal’s true price.
Minoans Among Ancient Canaanites
Via Explorator
A Royal Funeral
Sleuthing around the Great Death-Pit
In Ur, royal families ordered the violent deaths of dozens of young courtiers and servants so that they might continue to serve dead kings and queens in the afterlife.
So enough complaining about the Royal Wedding. Long before there was a Kate Middleton, long before there was a Princess Diana coyly courting the cameras and a Bertie Windsor wrestling with a stammer, there were royal families whose sense of entitlement truly knew no bounds.
Monday night Irish Class, April 18, 2011
Irish Class, April 18, 2011
Rang Gaeilge, 18ú lá mí Aibreáin 2011
<!–
Fadas: áéíóúÁÉÍÓÚ
From Hilbert Space to Dilbert Space, and beyond 