Eagle

Not long now till the release of the new movie adaptation of Rosemary Sutcliff's classic The Eagle of the Ninth! I'm pretty excited about it. Frankly I'm willing to go and see it just for this reconstructed shot of Hadrian's Wall.

This is a photo I took a couple of months ago:


Here's a grab from the movie trailer:

How awesome is that? Pretty awesome.

Mouthy bitches

Scene: Morrison's checkout. I am packing my purchases. A woman is walking in a nearby aisle with a little dog in a green body warmer.

Man in checkout queue: Look, that lady's brought a dog inside. She's not allowed to do that, is she?

Checkout lady: I don't think so. [presses buzzer to summon reinforcements]

Woman with dog: It's all right, I'm allowed, I'm deaf. [exit]

Me: It's a hearing dog.

Man in checkout queue: A what dog?

Checkout lady: Oh, a hearing dog. I've heard of them.

Man in checkout queue: A hearing dog? How does that work then?

Me: They teach it to speak.

Man in checkout queue: [ponders this idea for a moment] I like it. So long as it's not a female dog.

Me: Ouch! [exit]

I like a bit of old-school misogyny when I go to the supermarket. Now I think about it, though, it wouldn't do much good to teach a hearing dog to speak, would it? There was a funny sketch about this years ago by the Not the Nine O'Clock News team. I couldn't find it on YouTube, so here's another sketch instead.

The worst thing about the threat of civil war

As far as I can tell this isn't meant to be ironic. It's good to know the BBC reporters have their fingers on the pulse of the British public.

BBC: Could Ivory Coast turmoil make chocolate more expensive?

Snow picture

Abi said she wanted to see snow pictures of Durham, so here's a snow picture. It includes an awful poem by Sir Walter Scott about how much he loves 'mixed and massive piles'. Whatever, Walt.

Penitente agite!

From the eleventh-century Old English penitential Scriftboc:

"If an animal has been polluted by a man's penis, let it be killed and given to dogs. If there is doubt about this, let the animal live."

I know it's rude, but it's so funny. Not about the bestiality, but the fact that they leave room in case of doubt. As though some Anglo-Saxons were running about having sex with so many animals that they lost track. Or perhaps they got so drunk that the next morning they couldn't remember if they'd fucked a pig or not.

Done done done

I finally finished work on the big book. I've spent almost every evening for the last three weeks indexing it, which involved going through 400 pages of proof with a highlighter at what felt like an agonisingly slow rate. It's a good job nobody told me beforehand how mind-numbingly tedious indexing a book is.

But it's done! After six years of research and revision, all the final typos and errors have been teased out, copyright permission obtained ($230 for the privilege of quoting a single Wallace Stevens poem on the first page!!) and index finished, and the whole thing passed on to my editor.

As I was finishing it this evening I cut my thumb opening a bottle of milk. I didn't have any plasters so I just waited for Mother Nature to do her congealing thing, but then instead I grabbed my indexing proof and scrawled

IT IS DONE

on the front page in my own blood. It seemed fitting. Outside I hear fireworks going off. They may be for Guy Fawkes Night, but I'm going to pretend they're for me instead.

Busy busy

I haven't updated for a while because this new job is a time vampire. Things are starting to calm down slightly now though, so my evenings and weekends may re-emerge from the amorphous blob of seminars, lecturers and admin meetings that has absorbed my formerly innocent post-PhD life.

I sympathise, Steve

To give you an idea of how dull my life now is, the most exciting thing I did recently was buy a little action figure of Mr Spock which I saw in Sainsbury's. I'm not sure if it was really an impulse buy, as after I saw it I rolled my trolley slowly all the way down the home furnishing and kitchenware aisles while I mulled over the pros and cons.

In the end I took the plunge and counted out pennies until I was sure I afford the curiously specific asking price of £4.11. I then had to endure a conversation with a checkout kid who turned out to be a complete nerd and wanted to know my opinion of the latest Star Trek film. (I told him I thought it was shit.)

This is what my Spock toy looks like:

£4.11 well spent, I think. I bought it in honour of a planned Star Trek movie night with Moogdroog and her housemate, to show that even Babylon 5 fans like me are willing to make conciliatory gestures towards Trekkies.

Speaking of which, I read a Babylon 5 vs. Star Trek forum discussion where this comment made me Laugh Out Loud:

I love B5. My missus preferred DS9. It's a good job we weren't seeing each other at the time as she'd have got a punch in the face.

It's nice to see love crossing such great cultural divides.

I've put my Spock action figure on my kitchen window sill next to my British soldier action figure. The British soldier action figure, however, keeps falling over when I try to stand him up by himself.

Maybe I should buy an American soldier action figure for him to lean on.

Dunstanburgh Castle

This column is at Alnwick, which has an impressive second-hand book shop, except for the lack of medieval history books. The column was erected in honour of some big landlord who wasn't a total bastard, or at least that's what the inscription says. Someone had thrown a bunch of dead rabbits over the fence, which were lying about on the steps in varying states of decomposition. Weird.

The rest of the photos are of the coastal castle of Dunstanburgh, which is pretty damn impressive, so the pictures can speak for themselves.

Durham photos

Finally got round to taking my camera for a walk.

This is the History Department

Onion News: Archaeologists Unearth Lousiest Civilization Ever

I think every archaeologist has felt like this at some point...

Naas

While pillaging my old university notes for some help in putting together my new teaching course, I came across a forgotten poem I wrote when I was 23, living in Ireland and evidently going through my W. B. Yeats phase.

Naas, winter 2003

Her senseless mercy shines upon you still
And tempers time and grief with pins of joy;
None but the purest heart would dare employ
That snare of kind and poisonous goodwill.

The worried walk away from beauty's sight
Is set with foreign voices faintly heard.
Into the fog a line of lanterns blurred
Warms the sleeping stillness of the night.

Then rise and face the winter's silver dawn
That over mist-strewn fields pours,
For crowds of stars and mountains are yet yours:
A lover's balm for pity's gentle thorn.

I think we can all be forgiven for turning to poetry once at some point in our lives.

OH NO

The front cover of Saturday's Daily Express:

Turns out someone in London overheard some Algerian guys talking about the Pope's visit, thought it sounded suspicious and reported it to the police, who arrested a bunch of people and searched a bunch of properties.

The police said it was standard procedure to take such reports seriously, but that they had no other indication of a plot. The men were held overnight but haven't been charged with anything yet. The Vatican said it was unconcerned by any of this. According to a brief follow-up story published on the Daily Express website today, "a Met Police spokesman last night said the investigations had ­finished without the discovery of anything significant."

Sounds like a damp squib, all told. Of course the Daily Express could just wait to see if anything concrete actually does turn up, but why waste a good old reactionary, xenophobic headline that might sell a few more papers?

Tabloid editors are horrible people and they make me want to cry.

I must be getting old

This is a long ramble, so I've divided it up into sections, like a Kit Kat.

I

For the past week in my new, unfurnished home I’ve been living through a novel double-experiment: having no chairs, and having no internet. In order to obtain either, I’ve had to come to my new office in the university, or pay the cost of a cup of tea in a suitably equipped café. Of the two deprivations neither has been pleasant, but the latter at least has been beneficial.

The lack of convenient internet access, unlike the lack of chairs, was also premeditated. I’ve been increasingly troubled for quite a long time by the intrusion of the world into private life via the devious means of the Web. (The name of which, if you pause to consider it, does sound rather sinister, like a great space-net dropped on the Earth by a race of malevolent alien slavers in order to capture humans for their intergalactic meat farms. But I digress.)

This growing worry that our society is becoming too dependent too quickly on this new technology, coupled with my natural aversion to crowds and clubs of any sort, has led me, now that I have the free choice, to delay having broadband installed in the house. I somehow feel that it is important to wean ourselves from the tightening embrace of modern technology just as toddlers must eventually be weaned and taught to walk on their own feet. For what infant has ever written a great novel, or led an army into battle, or (Jesus Christ excepted) ever accomplished anything of note, supposing we can agree that wailing at every slight discomfort and continually soiling oneself (and others) do not rank among the noblest achievements of the human race?

In a similar way the presence of the internet in every corner of life threatens to keep us infantile: dependent, amused only by novelty, increasingly incapable of concentration and independent thought. It teaches us not to think, but to parrot and recycle, to cut and paste, to hyperlink; curiosity becomes something to be sated with the click of a mouse, not through a slow and difficult search which leads us to places we never intended or expected. I’m thinking of this now especially because in a few weeks I’ll be teaching my first batch of 18-year-old students, and I’m expected a hard fight to get them in the library reading actual books.

II

I’m too young to be a trenchant technophobe, but I’m also old enough to remember a childhood spent in the uncertain dawn of the digital age. We bought our first home computer when I was nine, I was making computer games with my friends at fifteen, and at university I first grew acquainted with the World Wide Web, like me a child of the 80s which reached maturity in the late 90s (in August 1980, as I was busy being born, Tim Berners-Lee was busy fathering his pre-WWW ENQUIRE software experiment at CERN). I got myself an email account and a mobile phone, and joined MySpace, then Facebook, as the fashion demanded, which were followed by accounts on last.fm, Spotify, XBox Live and I don’t know what else. The internet is the miraculous tool of a thousand uses, an all-pervasive, ever-adapting pocket knife, the defining technological triumph of our age, and I’ve recognised and exploited its benefits as much as anyone.

But when a tool starts to determine how we think, feel and behave, we change from being controllers to being controlled. Like all cults, the cult of technology succeeds through giving the illusion of freedom and the security of acceptance. And we are fast approaching a decisive juncture, if we have not already passed it. Witness a recent TED lecture by tech-guru Seth Priebatsch entitled ‘The Game Layer on Top of the World’, where he predicts, surely correctly, that whereas the last decade saw the steady construction of social networks which bound us ever more closely together (Facebook being the obvious winner), the coming decade will be about the exploitation of these networks through game theory - that is, through the subtle manipulation of our behaviour in ways that advertisers and social scientists have known about for years, but which Web-based social networks have allowed to become exponentially more powerful.

Priebatsch, standing on stage, is the archetypal prophet of the digital church: young, healthy, hip, with a pair of wraparound shades propped on his head, a Princeton drop-out (as he is fond of reminding us) who evidentally does not play by the rules - except of course he does play by the rules, merely a different set, the rules of game theory, which he promotes with almost creepy enthusiasm and seems to take for granted we also will follow. Judging from the mindless applause of his audience, he is quite right. And if you think you’re not already the plaything of game theorists, think again: anyone who regularly plays Farmville or uses any kind of retail loyalty card has already lost the first fight, even if they were unaware it was being fought.

III

Concerned voices have been echoing around the Web for the last few years. The other week Teknofobe (a deliberately ironic nickname, I should note) told me about Nicholas G. Carr’s new book The Shallows: How the Internet is Changing the Way We Think, Read and Remember, which I’ve since ordered and await eagerly. As far as I can tell without having yet read it, Carr is vexed chiefly by the cognitive effect of excessive internet use on the brain, and it seems that there is some scientific evidence for the rewiring of neural pathways even among relatively light internet users. Whether the overall implications are good or bad, I have no idea. You could probably also detect the rewiring of neural pathways in people who played gin rummy for an hour a day.

My own concerns are personal and instinctive, and found some resonance in a recent essay by Hal Crowther entitled One Thousand Years of Solitude. Unlike me, Crowther is an unrepentant technophobe: he damns the growing obsession with social connectedness and talks melodramatically, but with genuine feeling, of hives, cocoons and electronic slavery, of the internet as Trojan Horse and Gorgon. His is the parting shot of a dying, bewildered breed of pre-internet writers and thinkers: ‘If you’re offended or threatened,’ he laments bitterly, ‘console yourself with the impotence and rapid extinction of my kind.’

Yet he has a point. Solitude - not just physical solitude, which is irrelevant in the age of Blackberries and Twitter, but true, unwired social solitude - is becoming rarer and more precious by the day. I can’t deny that the sci-fi nerd in me likes the idea of a hyper-connected society of ease and plenty, a futuristic utopia where everyone is linked by beneficent technology and we all skip gaily towards a horizon of Tweets and rainbows.

The anti-social loner in me, however, long ago came to loath the banality of continual Facebook updates from people I hardly know, and even from people I do, when I would not trouble them to reveal such mundane facts and observations even if they were sat two yards from me and I was in a particularly friendly mood. The critical thinker in me is repelled by the ways in which total connectedness encourages group-think, and the internet, far from encouraging independent thought amidst mutually constructive dialogue, can just as easily become an echo chamber for a thousand isolated tribes of bigots and fools. The libertarian in me fears the seductive embrace of a virtual network which is founded on data-mining technology and by necessity regards human beings as nothing more than a collection of digits to be shunted around and manipulated en masse according to the models of game theory. The leftist in me fears the fact that this technology already lies in the sweaty hands of a global plutocracy.

IV

The internet is a tool. We should no more let it determine our thoughts and actions than we would restructure our minds according to the uses of a Swiss army knife. Let us decide when we need to use it, and then use it, and then put it away, and not have it pipe itself into every room of the house every minute of every day. I confess it makes me nervous to think of a life without broadband wi-fi at home, where I have to walk 20 minutes to my office or to a wi-fi café if I want to use it. On the other hand, I spent the first twenty-seven years of my life in such impoverished circumstances, and the fact that the prospect of doing without the internet makes me so nervous is perhaps the only reason I need to go ahead. If I habituated myself to it so easily, surely I can de-habituate myself too, hopefully before it’s too late.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the potential of the internet, not least because it allows me to post such long ramblings as this to my audience of literally a dozen or so readers (few in number, but treasured, except for Vlad, who represents the most devious and spiteful depths of the internet community, and everything that is wrong with the modern world). Yet as much as I love the potential of the internet, I also love the potential of a printed book to encourage deep reading and slow, active engagement in what I read without fear of distraction. For that matter, I love the potential of a bottle opener to open bottles, but I don’t keep it always in my pocket. If I did, it would be indicative of a serious addictive problem. And there’s the crux of it, and the reason why I shall try to continue to deprive my home of the internet.

Although I will eventually buy some chairs.

House and Housesteads

This is my mascot at the kitchen window. I was going to put him at the front of the house but I was afraid people might think I was some kind of flag-waving nationalist, and I'm never going to make that mistake again.

I found this pot in a charity shop and was instantly smitten. Not only is it perfect for storing teabags for easy access, but it can be used to reflect my inner mood. For example, if I hear some good news, such as that HBO have given the green light to a 5-season remake of the 90s sci-fi cult classic Babylon 5, I can have the pot like this to express my joy.

If, on the other hand, I hear some bad news, such as that HBO have decided not to give the green light to a 5-season remake of the 90s sci-fi cult classic Babylon 5, I can turn the mug around to express my anger and sadness.

I also went up to Hadrian's Wall today. The last time I went I was 17 and cycling the length of Britain with Dunk, and we stopped one night at a Youth Hostel near the Wall and in the evening I walked up to take a look at it, was disappointed to find that it was the size of a garden wall, and then pulled a calf muscle to boot. This visit was better.

Here's a text exchange I had with Mithraea, who shares my reasonable infatuation with all things Roman. (I apologise in advance for the obscenities, but it was an emotionally charged moment for both of us.)

TARQUIN: I'm sending you this text from hadrian's wall. I am literally standing right on the actual fucking wall with a boner the size of the parthian empire.

MITHRAEA: That is totally fucking awesome. I hope you have your gladius out and your helmet too. Marcus Aurelius would be proud!

TARQUIN: I am stabbing every scotch person i see.

MITHRAEA: I hope you scream "remember mons graupius!" at them in latin as the blade sinks in.

New job

I just arrived in Durham for the start of my new job. Dad and I came in two cars loaded with books, I met the estate agent and received the keys, and then decided to make tea, quickly realising that this was no mean feat without a kettle or pan to boil the water. Then I remembered I had my camping cup thing, so the disaster was averted.

After dad left I stood about the house for a bit because I don't have any chairs yet. Indeed I don't have any furniture except a little coffee table, which actually functions very well as a stool, so between the coffee table and my boxes of books perhaps I won't need to buy any chairs after all. After a while I grew bored of sitting on my coffee table, so I decided to go and look for a supermarket, following the faint rumours I had once heard of a Sainsbury supermarket at the north end of Durham.

And by god, the rumours were true. Not only did I find a Sainsbury, but it was the largest Sainsbury I've ever seen, and it was besieged by a whole damn retail park with about a million different shops. Since I'd brought practically nothing with me except clothes and books and CDs, I ended up filling the car with stupid household crap that nobody really needs, like a couple of little bins, a box thing to put towels in, a bag of dishcloths, detergent and a dustpan and brush, et cetera.

I bought a cheap set of cookery knives in a vacuum-packed plastic case, and when I got home I realised I didn't have any knives or scissors to cut the case open with. The only thing I had that could cut it open was a corkscrew I'd also bought, but the corkscrew was fastened up with plastic ties that I needed a knife to cut. This is a rum pickle and no mistake, I thought. I was eventually able to liberate both knife set and corkscrew through the use of brute force, which proves that sometimes violence is the only solution.

LOL

Possibly the worst comedy sketch ever written.

Possibly the best comedy sketch ever written.

Asgarth the Invincible: Chapter XX

A mighty army of literally scores of soldiers clad in gleaming armour was arrayed before the foreboding walls of Suno, the great capital of the Swadian kingdom. The city’s defenders bristled on the ramparts like the spines of an immense hedgehog made from steel, its towers and gates rising from the earth like huge cliffs of stone, banners and flags fluttered in the breeze like enormous scraps of cloth on sticks.


Asgarth surveyed the scene before him, his heroic jaw square with determination and lack of fear. “We shall storm these walls and raze this fair city to the ground, and the Swadian curs will run from our blades like lambs fleeing the deadly scythe of the shepherd,” he breathed.

The men around him quivered with fear as the attack trumpets sounded to signal the start of the assault, but Asgarth felt no fear. “Come, my loyal band of warriors,” he triumphalised. “Charge!”

They clambered as a single great mass onto the ladders they had propped against the city walls, storming up to the ramparts as men fell left and right to arrows of the defending archers and fell screaming to a horrible death below. The air was filled with the stench of blood and sweat and piss, with body parts flying everywhere in confusion, detached from their owners for the rest of time, and steel flashing in the bright sunlight as it sliced through arms and legs and faces.


But it was to no avail. The ramparts held as the attackers fell into great carrion piles below the walls, heaped bodies of men who mere hours before had laughed and joked and loved as only men can who know that the hour of their death is near. “Retreat!” cried Asgarth, his tunic claret with the blood of his foes, seeing that the situation was hopeless. He ran down the ladder and back to the siege positions, only to see that everyone in his entire warband was dead.


“This is bullshit!” screamed Asgarth with a fury that shuddered even the distant mountains, and he decided to retire from adventuring and romance and go and find a quiet teaching job in the distant land of D’Urhám instead.

FIN

Eluvium

Asgarth the Invincible: Chapter XIX

And so our hero found a caravan of Sarranid merchants in the south, and rode them down, and put them to the sword to the last man, woman and camel, and stole their chattels and money, and left their broken bodies littering the parched desert sands, and returned with his merry band to Sargoth, where King Ragnar was not impressed and told him to stop behaving like an arsehole. “This is bullshit,” muttered Asgarth, lowering his voice respectfully in the regal presence of the king.

“But I see that your fame is spreading,” conceded King Ragnar. “Thus do I confer unto you, my loyal follower, the fiefdom of Mechin. You are to have all its lands and resources to dispose of as you see fit, and you are to be the liege lord of its occupants. May you treat them with compassion and justice.”


“Thanks,” rendered Asgarth.

“One more thing,” promulgated King Ragnar. “We’re about to declare war on the Swadians. Our marshal, Jarl Aedin, wishes to raise an army of all the lords and march on Suno and put it to the torch. Asgarth, lord of Mechin,” he emitted, leaning close and placing a firm hand on the hero’s shoulder, looking him in the eye with a gaze of regal steel, “will you join us?”

“All right,” expressed Asgarth, his chest swelling with pride at being asked to join the king on his campaign. He was definitely on the right track now.

Asgarth the Invincible: Chapter XVIII

Sad and angry at the failure of his heroic plans, pining for the lovely Lady Kaeteli, Asgarth returned shame-faced to Sargoth. At a feast at the royal castle he happened upon Jarl Gearth, one of the leading nobles of the land.


“Well do I see,” whispered Jarl Gearth to Asgarth, taking him aside, “that thy heroic heart suffers as does mine under this weighty burden of peace. Men such as we can profit little in such times. Thus do I suggest that we provoke a war with the Sarranids, and thereby open a fresh path to glory and renown.”

“Good idea,” complied Asgarth.

“Excellent,” glowered Jarl Gearth. “Go and attack a Sarranid caravan somewhere near their borders, and make it known who was responsible, and such an outrage will surely provoke war.”

"The king won't like it," cautioned Asgarth.

"The king can suck the spiny tendrils of the demented nymph-beast of the mountains of Lazaroth!"

The two men laughed lustily together, guffawing and slapping each other’s backs in a masculine fashion, as they hatched their scheme.

Max Richter, Vladimir's Blues

Asgarth the Invincible: Chapter XVII

As he led his victorious band of adventurers and misfits out of the sandy wastes, Asgarth encountered a caravan of traders who informed the hero that the sea raiders he had been hired to vanquish some weeks before had been espied far to the north, on the rocky coast of the Vaegir Kingdom.

“Forsooth,” commented Asgarth manfully. “Three days will bring us to Rivacheg, where I can finally vanquish the foe whom I am pledged to vanquish, and collect the reward which is my due.”

“But my lord,” breathed Rolf, “The contract expires in three days. What if thou dost not find the sea raiders at once?”

Asgarth unsheathed his long, mighty weapon and waved its naked length in Rolf’s face, who cowered in terror. “Do thou obey me or face the consequences!” he exclaimed.

Thus Asgarth charged across the hills and valleys and mountain passes of the Khergit Khanate unto the lands of the Vaegirs, lo! to the very gates of Rivacheg, and from there tracked down the roving sea raiders who had eluded him so long.

Soon did he find them, and pursued them unto their beachy lair, where their longships were loaded with their ill-gotten gains. “Now shall ye pay the price for thy murdering and plundering ways!” gasped Asgarth, charging upon the terrified sea raiders with his loyal warriors, murdering and plundering them.


The battle was swift as Asgarth swung his blade left and right, chopping off arms and legs and faces in an orgy of corporeal demolition, blood flying everywhere and seeping into the thirsting earth. When it was all over he stood joyfully amongst the crumpled remnants of his enemies. “At last we can now collect my reward!” he guffawed.

“Not really, my lord,” lamented Rolf. “The contract expired a few hours ago.”

“This is bullshit,” muttered Asgarth, gazing out across the limitless blue expanse of the Endless Ocean, towards his distant home.

*

DISCLAIMER

Imagine my horror when I visited the pictures the other day in order to see new the big screen adaptation of The A-Team, something I've been eagerly anticipating for about twenty years, only to discover that Bosco "B.A." Baracus had been given a new catchphrase which I swear did not appear in the original TV show: "This is bullshit!"

I was so mad I threw my pick 'n' mix bag at the screen, but I was still mad so I got up and punched the screen, and then I was escorted out.

Given that I don't believe in coincidences, the only possible explanation is that some production crew member on the movie read my Asgarth stories and decided to steal Asgarth's catchphrase. I know the movie was probably finished before I wrote any of my Asgarth epic, but they can do wonders these days with digital technology. If they can retrofit a 2D movie into 3D, they can insert a few catchphrases they stole off someone's blog.

I'm not threatening court action or anything, but it's definitely a possibility. This genuinely is bullshit.

Pete Postlethwaite

Fate of the universe

Here's something to make you wish you never bothered getting out of bed.

BBC News: Fate of Universe revealed by galactic lens

I heard this theory years ago, that the universe seemed to be not only expanding, but accelerating as it did so, and that this would eventually distribute matter so widely that gravity would no longer be able to collapse it into stars and galaxies: the so-called Big Freeze. I remember asking Big Bruvva about it and he said frankly, "This is what will happen."

Now it seems that a Nasa-led team at JPL has got final confirmation by measuring the distortion of light from a distant galaxy through the gravitational lens of an intermediate galaxy cluster. While I doubt many cosmologists were surprised, the BBC presents it as easily the most depressing result ever produced by a scientific experiment: "[The Universe] will eventually become a cold, dead wasteland, researchers say."

The media being the media, however, this has nothing to do with the original research article published in the latest issue of Science. Here's a more prosaic account of the Nasa project from the ESA Hubble site, and another from the JPL's own site. The scientists were cheerfully "exploiting a beautiful phenomenon in nature" to tackle the great riddle of dark energy and its role in the development of the universe.

The end result, as reported in the Science article, was that they were able to reduce "the current 2σ contours on the dark energy equation of state parameter wx by about 30%," which admittedly doesn't make for a grabbing headline, but neither does it say anything directly about the fate of the universe, because that wasn't what the scientists were primarily interested in. I suspect the BBC science reporter went angling for some dramatic quotes and made up the phase "cold, dead wasteland" himself, since that is what journalists do. They do it all the time with archaeological news stories.

Ultimately, what depressed me most about this news story is not the scientific research it supposedly reported - for if we can be sure of anything, we can be sure that the fate of the universe will have absolutely zero impact on the life of any human being who ever lived or ever will live. Rather, it was the the media will do almost anything to put an emotional, negative spin on what should be an inspiring and significant scientific accomplishment.

History repeats itself

Here's a strange thing. This image is a nineteenth-century depiction of the Sack of Rome by the Goths in 410.


Here's a photo of US Marines in the centre of Baghdad in 2003.


Look at the composition of the two figures on the statue, the posture of the statue itself, the rope, even the guy at the bottom with the raised hand. Uncanny.

Less nudity in the second one, though.

Asgarth the Invincible: Chapter XVI

“This is bullshit,” uttered Asgarth as he gazed across the flaccid deserts of the south. They had seen neither man nor beast except camels for two days as they trekked across the seemingly endless expanses of sand, like a massive beach or an ocean without the water, that lay between the cities and villages of the Sarranid Sultanate. Their food had run out and they had no liquid sustenance.

“I’m hungry,” whined Rolf. He was a supposed hero whom Asgarth had found in a tavern and hired before leaving Sargoth. The first thing Rolf had done was ask to borrow 300 denars to buy back an heirloom he’d pawned, but he probably just spent it on drink and gambling, which was bullshit.

“Shut up!” cried Asgarth, spinning around on his saddle, his rippling torso gleaming in the shimmering heat of the midday sun, in order to face in Rolf’s direction. “Look, there’s a castle on the next dune!”


They rode to the castle but nobody was home except a few guards who ignored Asgarth, so they left again. Next they came to a remote village which was being plagued by bandits. Asgarth heroically offered to defeat the bandits for them, which he did, and then rather less heroically demanded that the villagers give him all their food and chattels or he would burn their houses.

As they rode away from the village back into the desert, their bags weighed down with precious booty, Asgarth addressed his warband. “This is bullshit,” he remarked. “Let’s go somewhere else to seek my fortune.”

Thus did the hero take his leave of the Sarranid lands.

Asgarth the Invincible: Chapter XV

Greatly was Asgarth perturbed by the sudden outbreak of peace in the Kingdom of the Nords. He pondered upon the news for a slew of moments before he came to his decision.

“Alas,” said he, “but a war-dog such as myself will profit little in peace-time. Therefore I must seek my fortune elsewhere.”

Thus with downturned heart he rode into the foothills of the western mountains, to the gates of Castle Hrus. After much entreatying, he was finally admitted into the castle for an audience with his beloved Lady Kaeteli.

She stood resplendent in a gown of velvet and taffeta, with a hem decorated with gems and lace, covered in a long overtunic called a bliaud, which was in turn covered by a mantel which was trimmed with expensive fur and pinned at the shoulder with a brooch. She wore shoes designed for castle wear made of silk and leather and fitted with a buckle. Her plaited her was covered by a guimpe, which is a piece of silk or linen drapped and pinned over the hair, wrapped around the throat and tucked into the neckline of the gown. She also wore a hat with a sort of band around it.

“Forsooth, my love,” emitted Asgarth, “but I must leave this kingdom. I intend to travel far to the south, to the endless deserts of the Sarranid Sultanate, to win my fortune and then, if the gods smile upon me, your heart.”

Lady Kaeteli looked unto him with eyes like sapphires glittering in the midsummer dusk. “Who are you again?” she asked, her ruby lips parting like luscious strawberries.

“This is bullshit,” complained Asgarth, and left.

Offa's Dyke Path (part 2)

Völlig coventriert

I went to Coventry today to pick up Mithras from the train station and visit Lunt Roman Fort. Unfortunately the fort is closed on Tuesdays for reasons known only to the gods. So instead we popped over the road to the Midland Air Museum, where we climbed inside a Vulcan bomber and pretended we were bombing things, and saw an arsenal of other flying dealers of death. Mithras will probably upload photos at some point, but in the meantime here's an artist's impression of me and Mithras about to bomb things in a Vulcan.


We then went into central Coventry, which could be fairly summed up as a confused mess. I hope I never again have to drive into the hellish ring of shit that passes for the Coventry traffic system. On foot it's also rather a confused mess. The few medieval streets which do survive only make it sadder that the rest were destroyed.


As if sitting in a Vulcan bomber didn't get us pumped enough for one day, we went to a bookshop where Mithras bought a book called Empires and Barbarians, and I bought a book with the punchy title War.


I'm off hiking tomorrow and will be in the wilderness for a few days.

Asgarth the Invincible: Chapter XIV

At the royal city of Sargoth, truly the gem of cities, rising above the coast like a great gathering of buildings, Asgarth paused to take rest. But he did not tarry there long, because he received much mockery for fleeing from Count Deglan, and Jarl Bulba even called him a frightened chicken. Thus, his heroic heart convulsing with shame, Asgarth left once more.

“I shall never yield to the rampant vagaries of fate,” he uttered defiantly. No doubt the fair Lady Kaeteli would admire his resolutedness! He galloped far to the west once again, to the Swadian village of Gisim which he had looted and pillaged in the recent past.

The surviving villagers were trying to rebuild their shattered lives, having finally buried their departed loved ones. The pens were filling once again with cattle, the roofs of their humble peasant dwellings bedecked in fresh thatch. Asgarth felt a tear stir his manly eyes as he gazed upon their simple, honest fortitudiness.


But he quickly wiped the tear away. Little did it befit a true warrior to weep for his foe. “Forward, my valiant companions!” he screamed to what was left of his warband. “Leave no survivors!” Then he added quickly, “Except the ones you take prisoner, which is as many as possible!”

Shortly afterwards, as Asgarth stood amidst the burning wreckage and corpses of what was once Gisim, a messenger rode unto him. “What is it?” snarled Asgarth as the messenger approached. “For we are about the business of war!”


“Our great King Ragnar has made peace with the Swadians!” the messenger announced. “The war is over!”

“This is bullshit,” implicated Asgarth. What a stupid waste of time.

Old man

Old art

This is a sketch from about 10 years ago. It didn't turn out quite how I wanted. (It was meant to be a tree.)


I then realised I couldn't really draw anything except faces, so I stopped trying. This one is from 2005. It's a girl from Roman Britain wearing actual proper Romano-British jewelery, looking across at some Roman stuff going on nearby.

Asgarth the Invincible: Chapter XIII

Agarth led his warband and his train of Swadian slaves deep into the lands of the Nords, high up a steep pass at the head of which, like a crown of stone upon a mountainous head of rock, towered Castle Hrus, stronghold of Jarl Harald and home to his beloved Lady Kaeteli.

“She isn’t interested,” shouted the guard when they arrived. “Clear off.”


“This is bullshit,” yelled Asgarth in return, and decided to retain his dignity and ride away. Yet the great warrior was not downcast in his heart. Perhaps a dozen Swadian slaves were not enough to impress so refined a lady, he mused. Therefore I shall bring her two dozen.

He rode to the east for many days until he came upon a different stretch of the Swadian borderlands overlooking the village of Ryibelet. “Behold!” he breathed to his men. “Let us ride forth upon the Swadian foe, and slaughter him, and hear the lamentation of his women, which is surely the finest of musical forms which can please the ears of the valiant!”

Thus they charged and pillaged the village, and were doing quite well when one of Asgarth’s men announced, “Alas, I see Count Deglan of Swadia beriding unto us, with approximately 115 men-at-arms!”

“Bollocks,” cursed Asgarth, whose warband at this point still numbered a mere twenty or so. “You there,” he ordered, pointing at ten of his men, “you stay and hold them off. The rest follow me!”


As half his warband prepared to surrender their lives in a valiant attempt to save their lord, Asgarth led a no less valiant retreat from the village. “This is bullshit,” he complained as he galloped over the hills with the remainder of his warband, his mind burning with the icy sensation of shame. Now he had no prisoners at all. He would never win his fair maiden at this rate.