Harrison Bergeron ... Now more than ever

To understand much of the environment one has to face when working in the CSU, one must reflect on the master work of Kurt Vonnegut and his classic short story "Harrison Bergeron." http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/hb.html I suspect that this posting might be viewed as criminal behavior at my institution but it certainly represents one perspective of the decisions being made by the administration here.

Student Papers

Kristin Safi and Veronica Harper each published a paper in the SAS Bulletin this month that describes their Masters Degree research here at CSULB. You can find these papers here:

Harper, Veronica, Hector Neff and C. Lipo

2008 Elemental Characterization of Basalt Sources and Artifacts on Easter Island. SAS Bulletin 3(1): 10-14.

Safi, Kristin and C. Lipo

2008 Geophysical Surveys at the Anakena Dune of Easter Island. SAS Bulletin 31(1):14-18.

Fluid Dynamics and Beveled Pointed Bifaces

I've been working on doing some airflow modeling for beveled point biface using SolidWorks. Using measurements made from cross sections of archaeological specimens, I have been exploring the parameters of the beveling that give rise to spin, if indeed this happens. Actually, it looks like this is the case. Below is an image of flow trajectories around a model. The colors represent pressure (Pa). Note the high pressure right on the leading edge of the bevel and low pressure below. On the opposite the same (but opposite) is also seen.

Doing calculations of force normal to the beveled surfaces with velocity at 40 meters/second, I get values of -0.00500964 of force in the Y direction (i.e., direction of spin) for one beveled edge, and +0.0049776 for the other side. Thus spin!!

More analyses and experiments to come...

Human Culture Subject To Natural Selection, Study Shows

The quotes in here suggest that no one has ever demonstrated that cultural variants are shaped by natural selection. Odd, considering that many of the folks I know have been doing just that since the late 1970s. I guess our marketing and press releases weren't up to snuff - or we didn't get the right validators to gush over our work. Nonetheless, it sounds interesting - though it won't be out in PNAS until Feb 19th.

[From Human Culture Subject To Natural Selection, Study Shows]

Nicholas Nicastro -- Why I am Not a Cultural Anthropologist

A nice discussion on why one wouldn't want to be a cultural anthropologist these days. This is not to say there couldn't be value in cultural anthropology (and there are many who do excellent work, though they tend to cluster around a few universities) but there is limited value in most of what the discipline has become. Nicholas Nicastro does a nice job of summarizing some of the problems and arguments that many find in department laden with cultural anthropologists.

[From Nicholas Nicastro -- Why I am Not a Cultural Anthropologist]

LiDAR

With MA student Katie Eskew and with the help of Cliff Jenkins at the USDA in Jackson, I have been working to assemble DEM, DLG, orthophotos, satellite imagery, etc. for the Lower Mississippi Valley. This work is derived directly from the chapter I did on LMV settlement patterns with RC Dunnell (in the Time's River book). Yesterday, I got the LiDAR data for Tunica County, courtesy of Cliff. These are monster files - the county takes up 250 gigs - we have to mail hard drives around to share access to the data.

At any rate, the data are spectacular. With LiDAR one can pick up small elevation changes and identify them as potential earthworks. Here are some quick and relatively random examples. In the center of each image are features that appear to be mounds....

LIDAR

Orthophoto

LIDAR

Orthophoto

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