The discovery of remains of another species of homo that lived alongside modern humans only 18 or even 13 thousand years ago is everywhere today – Guardian Unlimited | Life | “From 18,000 years ago, the one metre-tall human that challenges history of evolution” – a new “hobbit” species found on the Indonesian island of…
Author: Michael Shanks
Michael Casson – studio potter – 1925-2003
In class this morning I ran a google search for a picture of Mycenaean marine style pottery, and it turned up an obituary for Michael Casson, the studio potter. He was a giant in the world of craft pottery, a pioneer of 20th century studio ceramics, and a lovely man. He died last December. We…
the power of the monument – more on Dennis Oppenheim and Stanford
A bunch of comments on the veto by John Hennessy, Stanford’s President, of Dennis Oppenheim’s “Device to root out evil” from sculpture.net. Dennis was also in the New York Times this week – [Link] My blog entries – [Link] [Link] [Link] [Link]
Remix Radio Show This Sunday in San Francisco! | Creative Commons
Earlier this week I was airing the matter of copyright and intellectual property in connection with academic citation, pulling it all into the issue of democratic cultural creativity. [Link] The The Creative Commons blog announces a radio show this Sunday on the art of remix in a broad perspective – from Roman intertextuality to DJ…
remembering Michael Jameson
A sad occasion this afternoon – a remembrance service for Mike Jameson, my colleague in the Department of Classics here at Stanford. He died in August. It was in Stanford Church – first time I had attended any kind of event there. A good turn out. There were some very nice anecdotes told by friends…
intellectual property and copyrighting the past
I am sitting in a colloquium on Open Knowledge and Social Research Networks at Stanford Humanities Center. On the agenda – more of the issues that I summarized the other day in another colloquium at Stanford. [Link] how does open knowledge work with digital technology in academic institutions? how does collaboration at a distance work?…