anthropometrics – the Museo Cesare Lombroso

This post is in a series of commentaries on a class running at Stanford, Winter Quarter 2010 – “Transformative Design” ENGR 231 – [Link] Anthropometrics – part of human factors design. Its roots lie in nineteenth century anthropological science, and forensics. Measuring the distances between eyebrows for evidence of criminality, correlating shapes of skulls with…

more fantasy archaeology

– the never-ending search for the Holy Grail … The BBC is reporting what looks like another publicity scam Fascination with the Holy Grail has lasted for centuries, and now the Bletchley Park code-breakers have joined the hunt. But what is it that’s made the grail the definition of something humans are always searching for…

Why fakes and counterfeit pasts are fascinating

A couple of things last week have got me thinking about an old fascination of mine – fakes and ideas of authenticity. My angle – some notions of authentic reality and truth can be quite mischievous and misleading! And lying can be liberating! It started in the Washington Post – Sure, It’s Real! Real Fake…