Monday, June 25, 2007
Digital Rome, versions 1.0 & 1.1
A few weeks ago I wrote a piece for Wired News about the Rome Reborn project at the University of Virginia's Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities. Recently I had another piece on the project published, this time on Smithsonian's website. The Smithsonian piece looks a little harder at the ideas behind the project. It also includes a cool video demonstrating exactly what the model looks like -- although I wish the view was a little closer to the ground.
Labels: rome, Smithsonian, wired
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Patriotism and Profit
U.S. News and World Report's Civil War cover package this week features an article of mine about the Hunley, considered by some to be the first modern submarine. The Hunley's a great story -- it sank three times, killed two and a half crews, and then lay at the bottom of Charleston's harbor for more than a century before archaeologists and conservators recovered it in 2000.
In a classic example of American entrepreneurship, the sub was invented and financed by a group of private Southern investors. The goal was to cash in on rewards the Confederacy was offering for every Union ship sunk. Since the sub's namesake and lead investor died at the helm, the Confederate military eventually seized the ship and, well, the Union won the war, it's hard to say whether it was a good investment.
But entrepreneurship is all about risk, right?
In a classic example of American entrepreneurship, the sub was invented and financed by a group of private Southern investors. The goal was to cash in on rewards the Confederacy was offering for every Union ship sunk. Since the sub's namesake and lead investor died at the helm, the Confederate military eventually seized the ship and, well, the Union won the war, it's hard to say whether it was a good investment.
But entrepreneurship is all about risk, right?
Labels: civil war, hunley, us news
Golden State at war
This week's issue of U.S. News and World Report has a cover package dedicated to Secrets of the Civil War. One of my contributions covers an aspect of California history that is rarely discussed -- what, exactly, went on out there between the Gold Rush and the coming of fabulously wealthy railroad magnate Leland Stanford's transcontinental railroad?
It's a period that includes a little tussle often referred to as the Civil War, and it turns out California's Civil War history is pretty interesting, if not particularly bloody. Afraid of competition, gold miners banned slavery from the start. But a number of Californians remained Southern sympathizers, and there was even a conspiracy to turn the state for the South. Read all about it here, and thanks to University of Massachusetts historian Leonard Richards, whose new book is an in-depth study of the creation of California and its place in antebellum politics.
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Spectator's coffeehouse
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
More Nefertiti
Just out: a brief in Archaeology on Berlin's embattled Egyptian beauty. Although I write a lot for them, Archaeology's web presence is typically limited to abstracts, and my contract signs over "in perpetuity throughout the universe all now or hereafter existing rights of every kind and character in and to the Material free of any claims whatsoever by [me] or any person deriving any rights or interests from or through [me]." So I'm a little reluctant to post the full text of my features on my website.
Ah, contracts.
Ah, contracts.
Labels: Archaeology, contracts, nefertiti
