Poisons in the Palaeolithic?

I've taken this post down for the time being whilst some of the content is under review for publication. Sorry! 

UPDATE

This piece was published in PNAS and can be viewed for free there:

Link to Evans: Arrow Poisons in the Palaeolithic? PNAS

It was quite nice to get it published. Since it was a critique of some questionable work the authors of that original work had the opportunity to reply. This reply can be found here. The conversation really stops there since I have decided not to reply - their reply speaks for itself in many ways.

I can't help but put in the most basic terms how I would respond to their reply if I could see that it doesn't really need it - I think academics reading the reply can see it for what it is but that doesn't stop me continuing to write about it here. In essence they don't accept the criticism and maintain their interpretation. The deflect by questioning my arbitrary line of ethnographic evidence saying that the tribe I cited was from a different region. This doesn't matter since the point was that castor oil can and has been used in different ways that are not poison. The also challenge medicinal use of castor oil which, given that there is strong evidence for this, and it is sold in pharmacies today, is puzzling. They then bang on about my comment on heating and change how there were discussing this originally and note that it could be post-depositional - I agree but this was kind of what I was getting at before since they used the possible evidence for heating as something special.

At this point the only line of "solid" evidence they have for it being a poison applicator is that it looks like one. Literally, this is it.

I'm glad that's sorted out. I'm off on my search for the oldest cricket ball. Plenty of round rocks out there so I should be publishing in PNAS about that any day now.

First kicks

So tonight Lou asked for my hand and places it on her belly. One kick, two kicks. Big smile on my face, I leaned over and said 'hello' - ANOTHER KICK!

I'm aware that I don't want to be 'that guy' who keeps going on about his upcoming baby and posting stuff continually about it - but it's hard to not do that! You quickly recognise that those people who do that are just super pleased and happy and can't help it. And it isn't that they don't have anything else going on in their lives that's interesting - it's just that it really does feel like a top trump.

It isn't that special I know. But this is really special to me. I don't want to keep bleating on about it. There's a little man kicking around in my wife's belly and although that's totally normal (as in the 7 billion people on the planet were all once in that same situation), it's impossible to just brush off as passe.

Now I have to start reading to a belly.

Update

I've spent a great deal of time in Italy recently, and I've got to say - I've had a great time! For a while I was pretty indifferent to staying out there and often outright miserable. I got used to a style of living that worked well once my wife figured out how to get skype working well so we could chat frequently. It also helped that on my last trip to Italy, which lasted over a month I decided to take my bicycle. I have been cycling a lot.

This is me in Tuscany with my bike

Having the bike was a huge amount of fun until this happened:

The worst part was that the bike shop took three weeks to fix it. So for most of my last stay in Italy I didn't actually have it. A good excuse to go back I think. Unfortunately that project is now pretty much finished. Upwards and onwards. I found out a couple of weeks ago that I have been granted some funding from the AHRC for an early career fellowship; looking forward to getting that up and running.

Pisa: This town sucks

'Why all the hate?' I hear you say.

OK. Well in Rome I found this:

It's a weird statue of Batman and Superman. My only interpretation is based on what one can draw from the similarities to The Creation of Adam; in that it suggests that Superman is the creator of Batman. It is possible, while drunk no doubt, to get into a deep discussion of the parallels that can be made here. This modern piece of art is in no way the best thing in Rome; yet there is more cool in it, than in the entirety of Pisa.

I thought I'd give Pisa a chance today, since I've been here five times and have only really seen the inside of the dipartimento di scienze archaeologiche and, naturally, the tower.

The leaning tower

Yes. Pisa is famous for the result of a bad piece of geological survey and poor architectural design. Oh and Superman III which, lets be honest, is the main reason people know of the place.

To be fair, the tower is decent; though it is much more fun to watch tourists posing (nothing wrong with that mind you).

(I stole this pic btw Credit Martin Parr)

The cathedral next to it isn't bad either. In fact lets face it, for all its crappery, the one good thing that religion has given us is some nice looking things. I mentioned Michelangelo's fresco in the Sistine chapel earlier, and the duomo in florence is another spectacular example of this:

but I digress.

Pisa is a dump.

From the train station to the tower requires walking down one long street. It's full of the typical high street shops you'll find anywhere and a few coffee places. You could be anywhere. Today I went in search for the nice things in Pisa off this beaten track, and I used a map with places of excitement marked.

The one cool looking thing that I saw was the water wheel and terminus of the aquaduct. I thought there'd be some cool fountain or whatever:

...not exactly the Trevi fountain is it. And that about sums it up. Other places are less spectacular.

It's not all bad though. This trattoria serves the FASTEST food I have EVER received. And I eat at McDonnalds! It was pretty damn good too. Seriously, they have a time machine or something. Somebody should check that out.

One week to go

My last post was a little downbeat. As I said before, recently these trips to Italy have been less than stellar. However, things are going really well.

There is a whole load of stuff to do in Rome. Number one of which is things to see. Coupled with the size of the place and the less than well designed subway system, it's impossible to run out of stuff to see. Every corner of this city has something new and interesting.

I've met people. Two things have contributed to this. The first is Reddit; These guys hail from the Internet. The second is the yellow bar. It's over the road from where I'm working and full of travelling Europeans, Americans, and Australians. Just show up and it isn't long before I'm having a laugh. So I'm not on my own.

Oh yeah and the stuff I'm working on is good. Without being too technical, sometimes these old tools aren't so well preserved once you start really looking at them. The stuff here in Rome, from Grotta di Pozzo, is in very good condition.

A return to the blogsphere

10% of my posts on blogs have been about how I'm starting back up again after abandoning them or forgetting to post for ages. Here I go again! Will I get back into the swing of it? I don't know. But I'm up for giving it a shot.

Fun fact: I abhor starting sentences with a B. I did it above and while I would usually reword things I'm going to stick it out. I challenge you to find a sentence starting with a B in any of my publications. There are none.

Reason for starting up again

Five things: 1) the social web is getting big, it expects contribution and insight into the lives of people; 2) I enjoy thinking about something that might be interesting to write about; 3) My family and friends are dispersed around the globe, as am I from time to time, and it is a great way of updating them on stuff; 4) I have a ton of other stuff to do and this helps me avoid it; and 5) I'm in Italy on my own for the next 20 days

This last one has quite an impact. This is the third year of my first post-doc, throughout which I have found myself in unusual fieldwork situations. The ones I have been used to, involve working with people and fun. The experience from this post-doc has been somewhat different.

On my own a lot

I do not find myself surrounded by an array of interesting characters as usual. Instead, I find myself sitting in a hotel room with myself and the internet for company. In past fieldwork situations I have been guilty of forgetting Louise wanted me to call to say hi, or even that there was anything to miss at home at all. Previously, I've been out in the Sri Lankan jungle with seriously suspect food and no sign of alcohol for weeks, but camaraderie somehow turned that into the best experience of my life.

On this project I most often find myself surrounded by the stagnancy of solitude; enhanced by a serious lack of local language fluency and my introverted nature. The last couple of years I've found myself lost in translation - and with no Scarlett Johansson; the world can seem a dark, dark place, when you feel/are totally alone.

It's the nature of this specific job. I don't want you to think I'm complaining too hard. This is a very, very good job. It's just this small aspect of it. I'm a one man band most of the time. Some people who don't know me that well might think that that is how I like it. It is not.

The good news is that this time I have WIFI in my room, it isn't a dump, and there's a McDonald's less than five minutes away. McDonald's you say!?! Yes, I am in Italy, the supposed home of good food - why in gods name am I even considering eating at McDonald's? I think the familiarity will keep me feeling close to home and it is one of the few places where I can guarantee there will be some people speaking a language I can keep up with.

I have Skype, Facebook, Google+ (was that an echo), and Twitter to keep me entertained. Louise has managed to get Skype on her phone and this means the previously prohibitive costs of long distance communication are gone.

So, at the start of this trip I feel fairly positive that I will remain healthy throughout. Let's see how it turns out.

Out of Africa

So much for me keeping this thing up-to-date. It was too hard to do.

Recap of the last 4 weeks

• Worked

Yep those ancient lithics are cool to look at under the microscope

• Got ill for an entire week

Some sort of flu

• Did some partying

Where to start - We started fireworks only for a local to come and bust that shit up 'three dogs have died already from running onto the train tracks' - WTF We were too polite to argue but people actually walk to work down those train tracks - there are almost no trains. She called the police - they kept driving by the house. The next weekend we all got sloshed and ran about on the beech firing the remainder of the huge box of fireworks at each other and over the ocean. One of the skipped the waves. I tore a huge ass hole in my jeans and spent the rest of the night exclaiming that it was caused by the tripod effect or 'the dragons wanted to come out' or some shit like that. Epic.

• Almost eaten by lioness

This was sweet, so there we are driving through a reserve and I thought it would be cool to get a shot by one of the signs. Everyone agreed. Here we are:

I particularly like this one

Meanwhile, in the bushes at the other side of the road

The whole trip was awesome and all the guys were cool. Top notch.

Week 1 in Africa

Damn it was cold last week. We had a storm and snow on the mountains but now the weather is just like early an early British summer. I've had calamari four times in the last week.

I took this whilst walking back to the lab (building on left). The Outeniqua Choo-Tjoe runs infrequently in the South African winter but came by the lab everyday when I was here last. Once a day it stops just outside the lab to let people off as this is the last stop (the photo is of the train departing after turning around at the junction). It brings tourists to the diaz museum and Mossel bay for a few hours before it departs back to the railway museum in George.

Friday Night

On Friday we decided to have a party. We had pizza, and did a braai, after the braai we stoked it up a little resulting in this:

Yes those are flames (thanks Ben) coming out of the top of the chimney, usually this would simply have a small layer of smouldering coals on which to cook in the opening. At one point we were loading planks of wood down the chimney and I think in the picture you can see the top of one of them amongst the flames. So that kept us warm!

Meanwhile since a friend was leaving we decided to do tequila shots but when that ran out (fairly quickly because of the group size) we moved on to less conventional gin shots, ouzo shots, and whiskey shots. As a result of this wild partying I and a few other spent most of the remainder of the night at the hospital where we decided to admit one of our colleagues...

I and a few others had been dancing and whilst jumping up and down he fell over and hit his head. This resulted in a small cut to the back of his head and a mild concussion. We bandaged and took him to bed where he slept for about 20 mins whilst we continued to party. However, during one of the checks to see if he was okay somebody decided to wake him up and try to get him to go to the toilet. Whilst trying to lift carry and push him to the toilet she could not keep him stable and he fell again but this time into a rough brick wall. The result was a three inch gash to the rear of his head. After promptly being alerted to this we attended, decided to take him to hospital and found the least drunk driver to take us to George. During the thrilling 20 minute drive we kept the dude awake by ripping his local NFL team. There was lots of blood (like 1litres worth) over most things including my new sweater which I was wearing at the time.

I couldn't resist taking this pic to remember the evening. Just prior to this he had been through CT so things were looking better. It was interesting to visit a South African hospital. We carried him into the A and E and handed him over to the doctors and then the dude at the front desk was like 'so before we do anything I'm going to need to take some money, okay' so I had to put 300 rand on my card for entry, 300 for referral, 1600 for a CT scan and another 300 for a admittance. I do not know what would have happened if we had not had any money but the impression was that we would not have been given service. WTF.

Anyway it was a good way to get to know some of the guys. The dude is fine FYI though he can't drink for another week.... Just in time for the 4th of July then!

Saturday

Not much happened, me Sieman, Cathryn and the dude with the bandage on his head were going to drive to the mountains to build a snowman but since one of us was in hospital we decided not to, plus most of the snow evident on Friday afternoon was gone by the morning anyway. We prepared for Sunday, watched the lions lose, and some of us dined out.

Sunday

On Sunday we got a braai going, opened some beers and did this:

I got a kick out of what one of the guys said. 'Some people go to the 'church of Christ' on Sunday, we go to the 'church of evolution''.

Yes, that's a springbok, yes those are video cameras, and yes that is 'lil' sioux', a device that thrusts spears into the springbok with a 28kg load. Some of you may be shocked by this and some may even be appalled. Well the animal was already dead we just shot it another thirty odd times with a spear that's all! After this me and a colleague skinned it and I butchered it. Science in action.

I braaied the tenderloins and one of the backstraps straightaway. By this time, after all the masculine hunter type talk, every vegetarian on the team ate (wasn't expecting that kind of reaction at all). The tenderloin of this beast was probably the nicest bit of meat I have ever eaten. The rest of the good cuts I have saved for a braai next week and the rest will be made into pies or stews. We would have eaten it all right there and then but we had dinner plans.

Later we went out to watch the USA almost beat Brazil in the confederates cup and I had more calamari.

Arrived in South Africa

So I arrived in South Africa on Monday after a torturous flight from Heathrow. The in flight movie selection wasn’t that bad I watched yes-man, the wedding singer, and seven pounds (which was crap by the way), then I watched the wedding singer again. In Johannesburg airport I found a KFC and had some sprinkle pops (popcorn chicken) before waiting a couple of hours before flying on to George. This is the view as I got off the plane:

I was greeted by Lizelle who drove me to my house over here ‘Rondo house’. I’m living with one man documentary producer Jonahe and Yay, whom does the web/communications stuff for ASU. The crew at ‘Bobby house’ and on the dig is quite large. I haven’t counted people but it is up towards 20. I do not know the names of everybody yet. Aaron, Siemen, Cathryn, Kyle, and Curtis I know from the last time but the majority are new to me. Lets see, I remember Tova and Logan (mac guy) so far. We had dinner (chicken pie) with rice (3 stars) cooked by our chef, Fricky. The first night I walked over the bobby house we watched Blade runner on the big screen.

Tuesday

I walked over to the bobby house with my microscope (must remember to never try to do this again) so I could take it to the lab. This is my office for the duration:

And the view out of the window:

And looking down towards the lab from the museum:

It’s pretty good.

I spent most of the day setting up my microscopes and getting the camera working but I also walked to the town to get some household supplies (since I had to dump most of my stuff to reduce luggage weight) and whilst I was there I found this nice little Italian ice-cream cafe:

My usual hope to lose weight whilst on field work will not be fulfilled again!

Tuesday night I sat next to Luke, from Long Island. Cool guy, now working on OSL. He told me how he did a lithic analysis class with John Shea and how Shea was a really good teacher. Apparently you can knap frozen chocolate. I’ll have to give this a try. Later we watched the big lebowski, that movie never gets old.

Neat new way to type - phone interface of the future?

Caught this video on Make, pretty neat idea and could be a winner.

Yo Dawg...

Love this meme.

New eyes - well sort of!

I have poor eyesight. It began degrading when I was about 10 but has pretty much stabilised. I require a lens at about -5.5 diopters which is medium myopia. Aside from meaning that I need glasses or contact lenses it also means that I have a higher chance of pigment pigment dispersion syndrome or pigmentary glaucoma. Anyway, I wear contact lenses and have been using extended wear (the type you wear continuously without removal for a month - or much longer if you like to live dangerously).

As a guy 'with glasses' I'm often encountered with the question of whether I'd consider laser surgery. Lasik is pretty popular at the moment and seems to do a good job. I thought I'd write about why I do not consider this a good option for most people.

First Lasik surgery is commonly only performed on a small central portion of the cornea which means that during the day, when your iris is contracted it works fine. However, in low light and at night when the iris is open the bad gets in with the good and vision can be degraded. There is probably a way around this issue, such as lasing a larger area, so in the future this might not be a problem. There are, however, other reasons.

If your myopia gets worse getting a second stint of laser correction is not normally an option because they remove some of the cornea everytime and it isn't usually thick enough for more than one correction. This is a good reason not to bother.

Presbyopia - i.e. that thing that happens as you get old. As I age I'll not be able to see things that are close as well as I can now. Currently without any correction I can see stuff that is as close as 5 cm away, and with my lenses in as close as 11 cm away. [side note - it is pretty cool being able to focus on objects that are only 5cm from the eye, good for seeing fine detail and usually only babies have near vision this good. This ability is a feature of myopia. The 11 cm with the lenses in is fairly normal for a guy my age]. As I age this will get worse, to the point when 1m might be the closest distance for objects I can focus on. This is unavoidable. However, this distance of 1m is with normal eyes (aka with my lenses in or glasses on) without them this will be nowhere near as bad. Myopics are less susceptible to the effects of presbyopia. - So, by permanently correcting myopia using laser surgery, one condemns oneself to poor close up vision in later stages of life.

Also, I don't see the point or the unnecessary expense. With new contact lens technology it is like you don't have bad eyes at all. I don't even notice my normal continuous wear lenses anymore... except in dusty environments or when I go swimming or do sports or lose one. This is the rub. The problem that is avoided with laser surgery. However, there is a way around this too.

Yesterday I picked up a new set of contact lenses as part of a research study I volunteered for. These lenses are hard and work by temporarily deforming the surface of the cornea (Orthokeratology lenses). They work as normal contact lenses but you can wear them overnight and then not need any correction whatsoever during the day. Thus all the problems: going swimming or displacing a lens when doing sport or getting grit in your eye, are removed. So the benefit of being able to see without correction.

Interesting point. You can not work for the police (for example) if you had moderate or worse myopia and have had laser surgery to correct. But you can work for the police if you have moderate or worse myopia but can see unassisted as a result of the use of orthokeratological lenses.

I'll update how these cool new lenses go.

Office Live Workspace - works 50% of the time, everytime!

Working with Office Live Workspace is not going as well as I would have liked.

Jessica and I have had no problems and did a first round of editing with glee. However, things have not gone as smoothly since. Randy tried to install the applet for editing and it hasn't worked and the same happened to Bill. Bill is in the states so I can not try and solve his problem but Randy is right here. On Randy's computer is up-to-date XP and IE7 with Office 2003. The browser does not show the edit button. If he tries to open documents from within word it will let him open his documents so that part works but he can not see any documents shared with him so he can not open and edit these. I have tried to install on a clone of his system with the same problem. On another system which is the same but for it has office 2007 the applet has worked. The only problem, which it seems might simply be a design flaw is the inability to see shared documents when trying to open from within word. Interestingly, on my system, which is windows7, IE8 and office 2008 I can do everything except open live documents from within word. When I go to 'open from office live' and click on documents it just opens up my windows documents library and I can see none of my live content.

I do hope these issues are fixed. Bill is confused, says 'when I installed the Applet that allowed manuscript editing on the Live desktop it blew up my entire MSOffice package and I had to reinstall the whole thing twice!' EEk.

Cool online document tool - Office Live Workspace

So last week I noticed a comment on my twitter from a guy interested in my USB port issue: Screwdriver. Anyway I was looking through his twits and noticed a link to a CIO blog article 'Five Great Microsoft Web Services You're Probably Not Using'. I couldn't help but look, especially as I'm a bit of a MS fanboy. It did not disappoint. Basically Microsoft have taken a set of ideas usually associated with google and done their own versions. Thing is they are ace because they so easily integrate with the common operating system and office software. I've been trying out the windows live workspace on a manuscript our group are currently working on. The word document was uploaded to the workspace and then the master document resides online and can be viewed at anytime by any invited users or editors. Click on edit and it opens it up in word on your desktop. You can edit track changes do all the normal, familiar office stuff, and click save and it saves the version online. You can make comments to discuss changes and you can even work on the document live with other users whilst they are elsewhere.

I don't mean to go on about it. Experience so far is that this tool is awesome and will become the center of the many of the papers that I work on with other people. Will update as the project evolves.

Benjamin Button TED talk

This talk is worth a watch.  It's about the special effects for Benjamin Button. Impressive stuff. Nice to see this. I've always had the view that 'you can't beat a good pupet'. For example Star wars (ieYoda old and new). Things have obviously moved forward. Movies like The Aviator and Iron man show that great effects can be made of machinery. Now, it seems, good things are happening with CG and people.

Windows 7 = Awesome!

Yep. I had the chance this weekend to carry out said laptop makeover and now have windows 7 running. Flawless, although sadly the usb ports still wont accept usb thumb drives!... not sure what to make of this. I've worked around it by getting an eSATA card and enclosure for my old drive - so now I have uber quick data backup too.

Alec Baldwin, Glengarry Glen Elf - SNL clip

From Crackle: Glengarry Glen Elf

The last slide of my latest stats lecture

Vista and my laptop

Ah, Vista. It seems so long ago that I waxed lyrical about how sweet it looked and how well it worked. Even then everyone and their dog was slandering the OS and I now fall into the fray. My laptop came with Vista preinstalled when I got it in mid 2007. I was impressed because I like gadgetry and it did seem to work well. I have not once lost work because of a system failure and the only long term issue that I have noticed is the notification icons seem to come and go as they please. Not really a big deal. Good times.

Meanwhile, the tubes were clouded with a wrath of complaint at various problems. None that I saw and even my friends had some issues. All this time I was pro vista. 

Now, however, I cant use a memory stick or an external drive. I can't fix it. My USB ports work for other things but Mass storage devices are a no, no. This is a big deal since I can not easily backup my stuff and since I'm writing a PhD thesis you can imagine the paranoia of potential data loss. I have tried many fixes (the tubes are full of these, since it is not an uncommon problem) none of which have worked for me.

Windows 7 to the rescue? Having installed it on three systems so far with no problems and with positive reviews about putting it on my model of laptop - I don't have much hesitation. This OS is 'da bomb'.

It seems to me that Vista has gotten worse over time; aren't operating systems supposed to get better through updates?