Playing in the Dirt

kyrelle @ 2009-12-22T11:14:00

2009-12-22T19:14:47Z

My life:

Now! In Seattle, hanging with the sister and her husband, and reliving the joys of working in retail during the holidays. Actually, at this exact moment, babysitting the niece, while the sister and her husband are in Las Vegas.

Thesis! Pretty heavy revisions needed of the final chapter, conclusions, and intro. And then submit to my committee for more revisions. I want this thing done so badly, I can taste it. Problem is I can't stand to look at it anymore. Ugh.

School! After impoverishing myself last semester with no funding, I have a full assistantship next semester TA-ing a 300-level course on Biblical Archaeology for Near Eastern Studies and the Writing in the Majors program. Thesis defense will happen, hopefully earlier in the semester than later. I want to spend my Spring Break somewhere warm, with nothing to worry about except reading a good book (even if that good book is required reading for some class or another).

Summer! I've been accepted as a Pottery Assistant at the site of Tell Atchana, the ancient Amorite city of Alalakh. Its in southeastern Turkey, about 10 miles from the Syrian border. The site flourished during the Middle and Late Bronze Age, and had extensive trading contacts particularly with Ugarit (the Phoenicians)and Hattusa(the Hittites), but material has been found from all over the Mediterranean. It eventually fell to the Hittites, becoming a regional capital until the city was destroyed around 1200 B.C., most likely by the "Sea Peoples." If all goes well, I'm going to get to work with the Mycenean and Cypriot wares and imitation wares. I'm still hoping to go back to Crete at some point, too. That place gets in your bones.

Next year! I have received a Fellowship for a year of study at the University of Heidelberg. The one in Germany. Apparently there's some school in Ohio with the same name, which, I'm sorry, but I think is totally lame. Its one thing to have a town named Oxford (which Ohio does), but to actually give your university the same name as one of the world's great research institutions? Pathetic.

Iran Election Rigging?

2009-06-14T19:35:27Z

I just had to respond to the article currently floating about the net that purportedly proves that the statistical anomaly recognized by many in the Iranian election's results does not exist.

In this article Nate Silver claims that the constant statistical correlation (a linear relationship) between votes cast for Mousavi and Ahmadinejad can be seen in the U.S. 2008 election results as well, and should be discounted as representing tampering with the results.

I disagree. Nate Silver's argument can be easily discounted as follows:

He "proves" his case by taking the U.S. results, which he tallies in alphabetical order by state. This is false supposition, as when results are tallied they are NOT taken alphabetically, they are tallied as they come in. This means that in almost any election the results are going to be tallied regionally. As we know that Iran is heavily divided politically by region - the North heavily Azeri and supporting Mousavi and the west having a higher percentage of supporters of Mehdi Karroubi, an ethnic Lur. Also, Moussavi was known to have higher support in urban centers, while Ahmadinejad was expected to be more successful in the rural regions.
This same pattern can be seen in U.S. Elections where the eastern states report their results first, oftening slanting the results heavily toward the Democrats, with a more even picture only becoming visible as the midwest and western results come in.
The suggestion that all regions of Iran were reporting their results simultaneously allowing their even tallying is most unlikely.

The Farm of the Most Beautiful House ever!

2009-05-23T00:13:22Z

More about this later (posibly) but in the meantime, here's the short little filmy thing I made for YouTube about my trip up there.

Drool....

2009-05-18T17:39:25Z

Most Beautiful House Ever

I really want this house. In ways I can't really begin to describe. It has four standing out buildings including the original 1835 carriage house/stable (which has matching moldings with the house... its exquisite!!) and a potter's shed. And then a huge 19th c. barn, with modern editions which must be close to 8000 sf. And then an ugly sheet metal deal to hold all your farm equipment in because you have -236- acres!!! 236 acres!!! Can we say -working- farm??? Oh, and it has east facing slopes with a great view of the lake, so if you want to get into the winery business (which the Finger Lakes have the perfect climate for) you're all set.

Look at the dining room photos!! With the murals!! *whimpers*

Anybody want to form a commune? A Co-Op? Run an overpriced Bed & Breakfast?

Because really, the land OR the house separately would be worth the asking price. Not that I, or anyone I know, has 1.6 million lying around. I'm driving up there this afternoon to buy my mom some Toby Jugs at the most underpriced and best hidden antique shop in Central New York. Maybe I'll shoot some footage with my new camera...

Japanese Tea Set

2009-03-01T21:33:20Z

Some of you have already seen this, but I thought I'd share it to a wider audience. I found this tea set in an antique's mall in Ithaca, labeled at 1800's. I now know that its Kutani (those top two character on all the signature marks, it means 9 valleys, and is a recognized and very collectible type of Japanese porcelain), and its probably mid-20th century (those green dots are called Ao Tsubu, and only appear in the Early Showa period, around the 1920s), but its so pretty I had to buy it anyway. If anyone has any thoughts/insight into the texts (probably poetry) or the signatures, that'd be awesome. Thanks!!

kyrelle @ 2009-01-16T12:07:00

2009-01-16T17:13:48Z

Back in Ithaca. I know everyone has been posting about how freaking cold it is, but I do want to share that when I went out to go to my orthopedist this morning it was -8. NEGATIVE. In Fahrenheit.

The semester starts on Monday, and I don't think I could possibly be less excited. I'm taking Modern Greek, which I AM looking forward to. And for Ancient Greek I'm taking the Alcestis becuae the department doesn't think I'm advanced enough for Homer. Which initially I admit made me really cranky, and then I realized I had no desire to do the work necessary for a 300 level Greek class, so I probably would have taken the 200 anyway.

For my third class I -should- take either a class on the Ancient Economy (read: Roman economy, but supposedly they'll talk about other classical models as well) or the Phoenecian city of Ugarit. But truth be told? I'm really just not that interested. All motivation to participate in academic navel gazing is shot.

Instead I'm contemplating taking Building Materials Conservation and/or Mesaured Drawing, both of which are in the Historic Preservation Department and both of which feel like they may serve some greater purpose in the universe. Certainly much more practical for someone who wants to return to commercial/public archaeology instead of hiding in the ivory tower.

My advisor doesn't return until mid-February. I wonder if I can just get awy with no telling him what I'm doing?

archaeologists FTW!

2008-12-09T00:35:29Z

Holy crap. Over a 1000 views, and it just keeps going!

Apparently Nobel literature prize winner Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio in his acceptance speech on Sunday said that he believed Hitler would have been unable to rise to power in the age of the Internet.

So, sxephil, the guy who I originally made my video in reply to, posted his daily video today talking about Hitler and the internet. Sxephil has the 10th most subscribed channel of all time on Youtube. And my video is the #2 "Most Related Video."

Woohoo for driving internet traffic!!

My favorite comments so far:

grrgrrrl: Awesome. Congrats on being the first intelligent girl to put a video up on Youtube :)

WilliamBlake69: OMG ..... an intelligent woman ..... you are awesome ..... great points .... someone else would fill in the gap

And the absolute best...

3IckyThump3: "Archaeologists FTW!"

Thesis, Blog, stupid stupid people (and governments)

2008-12-05T21:11:03Z

So... freaking out a big. My advisor sort of left the country last week. For two and a half months. With 24 hours notice. Not the best thing ever. Especially since the apps for Penn and Chicago are due next week, thus making it nearly impossible for me to submit them. Grrrrr.

Still, working on the thesis, I decided I wanted to add an additional data set to my GIS, from the Early Bronze Age site of Sotira-Kaminoudhia. So, I get the site publication and I sit down with it and Google Earth and go to work locating the darn thing. Turns out the village of Sotira is an insignificant enough little speck that no one has bothered to label it. And that's really saying something... the village of Pera (pop. 400 or so) and the village of Maroni (pop. 621) are both clearly designated.

However, Sturt Swiny and his collaborators did an amazing job with their site publication, and the maps are fabulous. So following major topographical landmarks (rivers, penninsulas, etc.) and judicious use of the measuring tool, I easily located the village, whose identity I was then able to confirm by finding the small circular plateau of the Ceramic Neolithic site of Sotira-Teppes about half a kilometer west. Perfect... so then I use my happy measuring tool on Google Earth, along with a protractor and a ruler on the 1964 small scale aerial photograph of the site (Plate 1.1) and find the excavation trenches. And its great! They're really visible... I can even see the walls of the bronze age houses in the open trenches. Woohoo! So I carefully mark each trench, and then using the more detailed sitemap (Fig 1.3) I go in search of the cemeteries.

Now the site was excavated in the 70s, so things have changed, but only a bit. The village is slightly larger, but the field boundaries are the same as they've probably been for 200 years or longer. A few of the paths have been paved and turned into roads, but basically its really easy to see whats going on. So I find cemetery A very easily. Its looks like the same bare patch of dirt on the side of a valley as it was 45 years ago. I double check with the measuring tool in GoogleEarth, and a ruler and protractor on the site map, and I KNOW I'm in the right place. So, then I go across this narrow little valley in search of cemetery B.

And there's a house.

I double check my measurements. I check the old aerials. I check all the site maps. No, I am DEFINITELY in the right place. And there's a house. Actually it looks like it may be three separate houses, built squarely on top of what I KNOW is registered land, which means its ILLEGAL to build on, because, well, its a registered archaeological site. In fact, that site has been registered since Dikaios excavated there back in the 1930s!!!!

I know the Department of Antiquities only has some dozen employees, and an entire country to monitor but first off - readily available sattelite photographs you MORONS!!! Yes, Cypriot Department of Antiquities, I'm talking to you. God only knows how long that development has been there. And you could be doing yearly inventories of all your registered archaeological sites in less than one week (and that's with only one person working on it) without even leaving your offices!! Secondly - you could try fining these idiots! But you don't!! You'll stop people mid-construction, or if they're stupid enough to actually apply for a permit, but if the house is already built you just let them get away with it. And as a result, Cypriots have learned that the way to get around heritage registrations is to build really quickly in the winter when none of the foreign expeditions are around to see whats going on, and when we come back in the summer, whoops!! There's a giant (UGLY I might add) pink house barely 25 meters from the OPEN trenches of Maroni Tsarroukas, one of the most important Late Bronze Age sites on Cyprus. My advisor only found it two years ago, because he happened to decide to show his studets where his old sites from a survey 10 years ago were!!

This has GOT to stop. Maybe the EU needs to start fining its member states every time they let this happen. Then, maybe, the Cypriot government would start fining contractors who build on top of historic monuments. Make examples out of these idiots!! And then, tear down their damn houses! That would convince them pretty quickly that this was a stupid idea. And you can use all of the money from the fines to improve your site inventory, protection, and maintenance program. Or maybe to START a site inventory, protection, and maintenance program. Heritage MANAGEMENT, people. Try it. You can't just slap a "protected" label on it and magically expect it to stay standing.

So yeah, Hadrian's Wall is being delayed. I think I'm going to talk about site inventories. Which will conveniently lead into Hadrian's Wall, since that's a great example of the Brits doing it right.

Girl Archaeologist #2 is up!!

2008-12-01T01:51:54Z

Here's the next one... let me know what you think.

Not a Vlog

2008-11-27T04:21:45Z

Actually a video response to someone else's Vlog, but apparently people like me ranting about Baby Hitler and Prop 8 more than talking about archaeology. Got to work on that.

Developments

2008-11-26T13:42:55Z

May not be applying to PhD programs. My thesis is currently screwed due to lack of data, and my rage at my advisor grows daily. Thinking a year off digging square holes somewhere out west may be in order. Either that or I'm going to snap completely and apply to Premed Post-Bacc programs, and at least put myself in debt for a profession where I might actually help people and have a reasonable chance at getting a job. I actually contacted the Land Grant college here at Cornell to find out what would be necessary for me to transfer into a program in Molecular and Cell Biology.

In the mean time: Look I made a video!! And #2 will be coming very soon... planning something on Hadrian's Wall. I know I'm a dork in this one, but they'll get better, I promise. Still figuring this technology out. So, subscribe to my channel, tell everyone you know, and link like hell.

kyrelle @ 2008-11-09T19:00:00

2008-11-10T00:01:18Z

I'm a dork. Or just a doofus. I'm in this super-nice hotel, in a great city. Last night I dropped $75 on dinner. And tonight? I just don't have the energy. I just ordered pizza to be delivered to my room. :P

Tired. So very very tired.

2008-11-08T08:54:17Z

Still tired. Still fat. Still stressed. Grad school still sucks.

I turned in a big paper this morning, and then promptly fell asleep in class, which of course made the professor think I had been up all night finishing the paper. I hadn't. Just until 2, but I'd made the mistake of having two cups of coffee, so when I went to bed, all I could do was toss and turn for the next 4 hours.

I leave in an hour for Syracuse, from where I will be flying to Calgary via Chicago. I'm giving a paper at a conference there on Monday. Right after my paper I get on a plane to San Francisco, then a red eye back east. Oh, right.... and class first thing Tuesday. Woohoo.

Past few weeks have been completely mad. Next few weeks aren't looking too much better. Talks, papers, applications, exams, conferences (anyone in Boston want to give me crash space? Apparently I'm supposed to go to ASOR in two weeks.), and of course the ever present thesis. Which I am making progress on, thank you very much.

This weekend could be fun, though. I'm going by myself, and while originally I checked out all the crappy hotels by the university (the standards: Best Western, Econolodge, Quality Inn, etc.) I found out I could stay at the Fairmont Palliser for only $100 a night. Lets hear it for Travelocity, and the Canadian currency sucking worse than ours! The Palliser is one of those massive luxury hotels nuilt in the 19th century to service the Canadian Pacific railway. The rooms are huge and the bar/pool/restauraunt/spa/name your ammenity here, are amazing. Of course, now I'm going to have to fork out cash for taxis, and they charge extra for internet (WTF?! Why do only nice hotels do that? Crappy hotels give it to you for free. Pisses me off to no end...). But still, a false sense of wealth and luxury will be cultivated for 48 hours. Maybe I'll get a facial.

I'm also amazed at how affordable the 5 star luxury resort hotels outside the city near BAnff National Park are. Train tickets or plane tickets aren't bad, so I'm suddenly thinking that central Canada may actually be a great vacation spot.

Hope you all are well. Sorry I'm out of the loop again. Email me or call me. Love you all...

Yikes. Not good. Not good at all...

2008-10-10T04:36:40Z

kyrelle @ 2008-10-05T11:11:00

2008-10-05T15:11:31Z

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Hurray for Wells Fargo!!!

2008-10-03T17:59:05Z

Some of you may know that Wells Fargo is my favorite bank EVER. I used Wells Fargo during my time in AZ, CA, and CO and never had a -single- problem with them. I mean, there's always those little things that crop up every once in awhile (my bill came late, my checks are misprinted, where did that mysterious charge on my card come from...), but when I went into a branch they were always friendly and helpful and fixed it on the first try. Or when I called the ubiquitous 1-800 number I got a real person immediately on the phone. None of these 15 minute waits like with Bank of America (house of the devil). And Wells Fargo always gave great rates on CDs and loans, and were generally a pleasure to work with.

So, they're buying Wachovia, which will FINALLY make them an east coast bank. I am beside myself with joy. Sadly, Citibank is not and is threatening to stop the whole thing via a big messy lawsuit. See, Citibank had made a deal to buy Wachovia for 2.1 billion and a bunch of assistance from the government (i.e. our tax dollars at work, folks). Wells Fargo is offering to buy them for $15 billion and NO federal assistance. This makes Citibank cranky. I want Citibank to go suck on a rock.

So everyone cross their fingers for me (and yourselves) that the courts tell Citibank likewise. Because I really want to be able to access my Wells Fargo account again, and finally get to tell BAnk of America once and for all to go shove it.

Full Story on CNNMoney

kyrelle @ 2008-09-18T14:42:00

2008-09-18T18:43:13Z

OK. Here's this one:

Post a photo of you right now.

Don't change your clothes or fix your hair

DO NOT EDIT

post these instructions

I cheated and smoothed my hair back a bit, but this -was- the first photo I took. Not too bad, I guess.

kyrelle @ 2008-09-16T20:23:00

2008-09-17T00:24:25Z

Hah!

kyrelle @ 2008-09-01T07:03:00

2008-09-01T11:15:23Z

I now have my entire life synced through my iPhone. Its a bit frightening really.

Back at school. Glad to be being academic. Not glad to be in Ithaca. I outgrew this town and this university far too quickly.

To Do List:
Edit conference paper on Shepherd Imagery in Sumerian Royal Inscriptions.
Rough draft of first two sections of MA.
Start GIS of Marki-Alonia (georeferenced coordinates needed for DEMs)
Ditto for Vasilikos Valley
Start Application for Cambridge and Gate Fellowships (due Oct. 15th?!?!?)
Read 100 lines of Xenophon's Anabasis
Pick a third course (Greek Religion, Liminality and Maritime Archaeology, or Identification and Interpretation of Archaeological Artifacts)
Laundry (need quarters)

Is it wrong that I'm contemplating applying for a second BA in Classics at Oxford even though I'm ineligible for the Rhodes Scholarships (you have to be under 24 years old), meaning if accepted I'd be putting myself in debt up to my eyeballs?

kyrelle @ 2008-08-28T14:19:00

2008-08-28T18:26:46Z

All you in posession of my phone number should call me/text me.

My American phone no longer worked upon returning to the States, and since my Sprint contract was finally up and I am SO done with those bastards, I went out to get a new phone/plan/provider.

I now possess a 16 gig 3g iPhone. Its quite possibly the sexiest thing I've ever bought.

It did result in me chewing out a bunch of the IT guys at Cornell though. Apparently as a lowly grad student I only get a postoffice account and a pop account. Not so useful with a smart phone or if you're using multiple devices to check your email (like my MacBook. Trying out Entourage as my new Client... we'll see how it goes.) Blargh. And the postoffice account only has 300 megs of storage, again not too useful, especially when I have people emailing me pdfs of their theses that are 30+ megs each. On top of all this annoyance, there've been network outages off and on all day on campus. I actually feel kind of bad for the guys working the help desk.

So I got me a new gmail account and am forwarding everything there, and tehn using gmail's IMAP service to access the email through Entourage and my iPhone. If anyone has a better solution, please let me know!

But, I don't have people's phone numbers. So you should call me. Or text me. And if you don't have my number and want it, send me an email... emm66@the evil university on the hill.edu

Crete

2008-07-27T10:16:13Z

I made it to Crete two weeks ago today. I am ashamed that it has taken me this long to get onto livejournal and update, but sadly, my apartment is a mile plus walk from internet, and the internet costs alot unless I lug my laptop to use the wireless, so I've been getting up here rarely, and mostly taking care of administrative stuff when I do.

The site is good, though not the best ever. Its go continuous inhabitation from the final neolithic through the Ottoman (that's what? 6000 years or so?) with major Minoan, Classical, and Byzantine occupations. Not so much Hellenistic or Roman, so far just enough pottery to prove they were here. The site is highly eroded, though, being on a rocky outcropping into the sea. The geomorphologists tell us the costline would have been 50m out during Minoan times. In some spots we have 2 meters of deposits. In other places we have the same chronological spread, just smashed into only 50 cm. Makes interpreting the stratigraphy slightly nightmarish.

I'm an assistant trench supervisor in a massive trench (9 x 15m). We didn't mean for it to be that large, but Greek archaeologists don't believe in taking out architecture, so if you hit later architecture you have to dig around it to get to the earlier stuff. At the moment we appear to have the edge of a Byzantine church in the south end of the south end of the trench. We've pulled out fragments of beautiful glass lamps, amazing ceramics (the specialists say their the highest quality you'll find outside of Constantinople at the time), and some carved archistectural elements. All of this suggests a major basilica. We've also got a curved wall that we suspect is part of the apse, though strangely that would indicate a north-south alignment for the church, which makes no sense.

We also have burials... 7 so far. Brought in a specialist from Italy who stayed for a week, and traine dsome of our digers how to continue her work. It was really fascinating, since I've never worked on a site with inhumations before, and she was a great teacher, giving impromptu lectures on how to interpret skeletal articulations, how to excavate, and significance of burial alignments.

Sadly, while the Byzantine stuff is very cool and is also very under-studied, our permits and funding are all for prehistoric stuff, so we've opened up three soundings (basically mini-treches within our trench that we hope will allow us to reach the earlier levels). One of these mini-reches is mine, 2.5m x 4m. For the first week I dealt with an interesting features of a carefully fitted roof-tile lined pit, with the top half of an inverted storage vessel in it. Nothing too interesting in the fill, though, so we're not really sure what the ting was for. Most plausible suggstion so far is that it would have been used at a stand for a larger storage vessel, possibly water or grain. Anyway, its definitely Byzantine, as is the midden surrounding it which I'm currently digging through. Finally hit what looks like it may be a Late Roman layer on Friday, so maybe there's hope of getting to earlier stuff. The midden itself is a real mystery though... the south half (closer to the burials, is relatively clean fill, with maybe 5% pottery sherds, mostly storage or cooking vessels, and lots of sheel-goat. The Northern half is identical except for the 50-50& rubble fill, crappy rock larger than my fist, smaller than my head, but not fitted into any sort of recognizable platform or structure, and still tone of pottery and goat bone. Weird.

The crew is awesome, and incredibly young. I think your director is late 30s or 40 at most, and everyone else is younger still. Crew is about 30% Irish (half of whom are academics, half are professional contract archaeologists with 10+ years experience), 30% Americans (4 advanced student/grad students (including a guy from Bryn Mawr!), and then an American field school of 8 students and their prof, who is also our Classical ceramic specialist), and the rest is a hodge podge of Poles, Germans, Brits, Czechs, Canadians, Australians, and Croatians.

We had a grand night out on Friday, that I think you would have found most amusing. There is very little to do in Istron, depite it being a tourist town. Basically this place consists of guest apartments, grocery stores, tavernas, and bars. The bars try to keep us amused with a rotating spectrum of entertainment including Bingo (I kid you not. We tend to avoid that one), Bar Trivia (my team got 17 out of 20, next closest was 12 out of 20, at which point we decided we must be ringers and shouldn't be allowed to play), and karaoke. In general, I avoid karaoke. Out of principle. I normally can't stand watching strangers embarass themselves, I refuse to sing in public, and when I lived in Arizona my friends Erin and John used to go every week to the lesbian bar
up the street. Now, John is a professional rock and roll musician with a really solid voice, and Erin is an excellent singer so I just couldn't possibly get up after them. That and they both saw karaoke as practice
and would then critique each other's performances.
But this Friday there was a pre-party at some of the lads' apartment in town where we all got good and liquored up (the Cretan native liquor, Raki, is just toxic. I swear I could take my nail polish off with the stuff, and the best beer available locally is Amstel or Heineken, so the name of the game is to get drunk enough quickly enough that you stop noticing the taste. Ugh.) before heading to the karaoke bar. The whole crew went, and everyone was singing equally horribly, so I went and I actually had a blast. It helped that there were 40 of us, so basically everyone in the bar was an archaeologist. I even ended up singing a few times, though always managed to get several others to come up with me. I got cheered for choosing the best
songs of the night, too... Belted out Jon Bon Jovi's "Living on a Prayer," Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" and Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline." The last was dedicated to the Red Sox, which got a
rousing cheer out of the two other Bostonians on crew, but got the New Yorkers and Chicagoan's right peeved. Still, good songs, because it got the whole bar singing so no one could hear me butchering them. The
Irish crowd also had good fun with the standards... Whiskey in the Jar, Fairytale of New York, and a few I don't know the names to, but knew the words of.
The next morning, though I was paying for it with a hangover that would not quit. I had to work in the apothiki, pottery washing, and working on the photo catalogue, and then immediately aferwards went on the field trip. We went to a site called Lato, a Hellenistic city-state in the mountains up above Agios Nikolaos. The preservation was asounding! Walls were up over our heads, in places even the arches above the doors. The
construction was odd... huge orthostates in the doors and gates, and massive building blocks. When Sir Arhthur Evans first described the site he thought it was Bronze Age, and no wonder. It looks like no other
Hellenistic city I know of. One of the little temples is beautifully preserved, with even the original carved statue base in the naos, though the statue is long gone and the inscription so worn it can't be read, so
we can't tell whether it's the actual temple to Lato (mother of Artemis and Apollo). The construction is peculiar though... the walls are double thick, with the outer construction looking like the rest of the site,
but the inner layer is built with large polyganal stones well fitted, with no mortar, which is standard for the Archaic period (about 500 years earlier), but when the French excavated in the 1960s they found
Hellenistic pottery in the foundation trenches. Mystery upon mystery. The city itself is in the saddle between two peaks, with temples atop each, and the Agora right between, and the settlement clinging to the
mountain sides and flowing down the valley towards the sea. If you didn't know what you were looking at it almost looks Peruvian, like Machu Pichu. I could have spent hours wandering around exploring (more fun if I had the maps from the French expedition before hand), but being out in the sun was a bad decision, and by 3 in the afternoon my head felt like it was being cracked open. I retreated to bed, emerged for two
hours around dinner, read some of Colin Renfrew's theory on hierarchy and heterarchy in prehistoric European settlement patterns, ad promptly went back to bed. At least today I feel human again.

So, yeah. That's what I'm up to. More later. :)

You know its hot when...

2008-07-09T16:45:13Z

...the back of your knees are sweating. Even when you're lying in bed wearing next to nothing with two fans on.

Its was over 40 degrees today. That's celcius folks. So over 104. Not sure how much over, becuase the Cypriot government never admits that its over 40 degrees because then, by their own laws, they'd have to allow government workers (or at least the ones who work outside) take rest of the day off. And I know 104 isn't SO bad. But throw in the reidiculous humidity, and being 30 km from the coast, and suddenly it SUCKS. Too hot to think, too hot to do anything, and to my distress... to hot to fall asleep. Ugh.

Otherwise, missing the boyfriend. Good progress on the thesis. Got a good topic (I think). Good outline (I think). Lots of research. Still no response from my advisor, but I think he might be in Oahaxa, so I'm trying not to take it personally. Ordered my maps from the Department of Lands and Survey this morning, but balked at the prices for GIS data (93.5 Euro/sq. km!!). Then early this evening (I'm 7 hours later then you east coast folks) I ran into a geomorphologist who's staying ehre at the research institute talking to some of my colleagues from the Elaborating Early Neolithic Cyprus project that I worked on last year. Found out that he actually collected all the data and BUILT the digital elevation models, as well as all the geological and hydrogeological layers for the Cyprus government. He even has the stuff at higher resolution than the government is willing to sell. And he looks at me, and says, You work with Bodhi and Sturt, right? Uh, yeah. So, you're a colleague. I'll give it to you. Just get some georeferenced polygons for the areas you need.

Sweet. :)

And then I remembered that he's also an artist... does these amazing acrylics using soil and natural pigments as well as commercial paints to do interpretations of soil profiles. I actually saw him working on one out in the garden later in the afternoon, and he told me that it's part of his process, how he figures out what happening in the dirt. So very very cool. I wish my process was half that fun or productive or asthetic. But it reminded me that there's an opening at the Diakroniki Art Gallery out on Ledra Street this evening. The owner invited me after I showed some knowledge of contemporary Cypriot painters. So I told the geomorphologist and now he and I are going to wander down there after dinner, drink some wine and see some art. Should be fun. I need to do something not related to my research and not related to sweating for a couple hours.

Yay for European Copyright law!

2008-07-01T15:59:21Z

A long time ago, in my foolish foolish youth, I appeared in a bad horror movie. Not only appeared... appeared naked. Mind you, I'm not a total idiot. You can't actually see anything all that exciting (except my well-formed butt, and at that time well-toned tummy) but its all very suggestive.

It recently came to my attention that there were two mobile phone content distribution sites selling downloads of the infamous shower scene. That in itself not too upsetting. Actually, kind of amusing. Less amusing is the fact that they were two of the first sites to appear if you googled my name. I'm applying to PhD programs again this coming year, and I had horrible visions of the chair of the classical archaeology program at Cambridge finding clips of me naked in the shower. Eeep!

So I immediately fied off very simple, polite, and possibly complete bullshit warning letters to what contact information I could find for said companies (one in the UK, one in Slovenia) informin them that they did not have the right to sell copyrighted material, and I would appreciate it reatly if they removed said clips. Otherwise I would be forced to have my lawyers (hah!) contact them persuant to copyright violation and unlawful use of my likeness, and I would likewise be contacting the lawyers of the UK distributor for the film and the film's producers.

The one site has already removed the offending content. The other site I had misidentified the parent company, but their legal department sent me a very polite letter apologizing for the confusion and giving me the correct contact info for the company in question.

All I can say is THANK GOD for strict EU copyright law. Now keep your finers crossed that this other UK company is as cooperative. My worst nightmare is that they actually DO have permission from the european distributors to sell this content. What a disaster!

Especially since I didn't have any internet residuals in my contract...

kyrelle @ 2008-06-05T19:13:00

2008-06-05T23:38:42Z

Luxury boutique hotels are pretty fabulous. My experience in Vancouver already pretty much had be convinced, but my stay in New York has completely won me over.

I'm staying at the Tribeca Grand, and I must say, I could get used to this. Far too easily. Its definitely a step up from the Moda in Vancouver, though at $700/night (yes, one night in this hotel costs more than my monthly rent!) I suppose it should be.

The architecture and deisng is stunning, the lounge and restaurant are quite nice, but the amenities are really where this place stands out.

They have a special arrangement with the SoHo Apple Store, providing special fully Apple-featured rooms on request... and I'm not talking just ipod docks here. They'll provide the ipod, fully loaded with a mix of hip indy and popular mainstream music, G5 imacs, fully loaded with graphics software, and webcams, to keep your vlogging updated. There are even special "Director's Cut" suites, which come with your mac loaded with all the film editing software you could want, and an actual video camera in your room for you to take out and use in the city.

You can rent lovely powder blue 1950's style bicycles to travel the Village on.

You can keep your dog OR CAT (!!) free and loose in your room. The hotel will provide pet beds, kennels, and litter boxes free of charge. There's also a pet menu, including bottled pet beverages, pet food, and pet energy bars (why in the name of heaven would anyone give their cat an ENERGY bar?!).

But my favorite?

Hidden half-way down the second page of the hotel services list is one line...

"We would be pleased to provide you with a goldfish for your room during your stay."

One of Many Reasons Our President Drives me Apeshit

2008-06-02T19:19:12Z

Article from today's Congressional Quarterly

The White House said Monday that President Bush would veto a major climate-change bill the Senate is expected to take up later in the day.

The statement of administration policy said the legislation would, among other things, adversely affect the economy, impose costly regulations and create conflicts with U.S. trade partners.

“The administration believes that climate change is an important issue and is taking significant domestic and international actions to address it,” the White House said. “As Congress debates this important issue, it must recognize that bad legislation would raise fuel prices and raise taxes on Americans without accomplishing the important goals the administration shares.”

The Senate was to vote Monday evening on whether to take up the legislation. Supporters say they have the 60 votes needed to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to the bill, which would cap greenhouse-gas emissions nationwide and set up a trading system for companies to buy and sell emissions allowances.

The bill’s prospects for passing this year are uncertain at best. The measure does not enjoy universal support among Democrats, and many Republicans are expected to echo White House charges that the measure would drive up the costs of gasoline and electricity.

But with the three remaining major-party presidential candidates all endorsing some form of a cap-and-trade system, proponents of legislation to combat global warming see this week’s debate as laying the groundwork for action by the next Congress and administration.

The bill would cap covered emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases that scientists say contribute to global warming at 19 percent below current levels by 2020 and 71 percent lower by 2050. Sponsors estimate that the bill would reduce total domestic emissions by as much as 66 percent.