A few days from the Summer Solstice, it seems the right time of year to consider Stonehenge again. I was ranting on 24 March about the heritage industry and the cavalier treatment of even English Heritage’s major cash cow, Stonehenge, in the name of improving the “visitor’s experience”. (http://www.whydontyou.org.uk/blog/2006/03/) I was also a bit disturbed to find out that Avebury is about to undergo “preservation.”

I was going to have a laugh at the expense of the people who will believe anything about these sites as long as they get to wear silly clothes and invent ceremonies. I was also going to rant about those “proper” archaeologists – especially those of the televisually- rewarded persuasion – who destroy sites at will, with no concern for future generations. They pontificate on theories as ludicrous as some of the most abstract neo-pagan tosh. They will happily help to convert living historic landscapes into frozen heritage “experiences” with convenient fast food facilities and any missing bits of monuments rebuilt in concrete and plastics.

I could even have given another airing to my standard argument that pre-Roman human beings were just like human beings now – mainly concerned with making a living and not necessarily more credulous than the standard 21st century person. So why do we always have to look at their relics on the basis that everything in their lives was devoted to ritual?

Instead I am going to air my own crackpot theory. I can probably argue the toss convinvingly on this, if pushed to it. I could even assemble some evidence to support or falsify it, were I strong-willed enough to get off my butt and go to the library. However, I’m not. So I am just going to present the theory in the hope that someone else will falsify it by proxy.

The theory is – Sefton Park in Liverpool contains the relics of a huge prehistoric site.

There, I’ve said it. It’s batty, I know.

I think that there was probably a prehistoric quarry in the area. I believe that there are also signs of largescale prehistoric construction.

Sefton Park is a large shabby park in the southend of Liverpool. A more or less continuous line of parks goes from Princes Park onwards, ending up in Calderstones Park and CampHill (Both attested megalithic sites. The Calderstones were on what is now called Druids’ Cross Road and have novel markings. Sadly they were dug up in the 19th century (?) and the remaining ones are housed in a Calderstones Park greenhouse) Near the parks are objects such as “Robin Hood’s Stone,” also a megalithic standing stone, moved from its original location. A fair quantity of pre-Roman and Romano-British artefacts has been dug up in the course of building and demolishing Liverpool. A megalithic settlement has been excavated in Wavertree, a mile or two from Sefton Park . There is a hillfort still in existence and cared for by English Heritage on the opposite bank of the Mersey (at Helsby Point)

(Devil’s Advocate : This is a sort of misdirection – setting the scene to make you believe it is reasonable to expect to find megalithic or pre-Roman sites in Liverpool . Which it is, but Liverpool has been so frequently built and rebuilt that even 12th century relics can’t be found in reasonable condition.)

The main basis of my evidence is:

• A fenced off cave on Croxteth Road which is at least partly man-made. Some of the stones were obviously put there when the park was built, some bits of the cave are 20th century attempts to shore up the dangerous bits of the structure and some of the stones fit together in a much more ancient way. The layout is on the same sort of plan as West Kennet or Wayland Smithy, except that the chambers are large enough for habitation rather than sticking corpses.
• There is a line of almost buried stone lintels (or vaguely arch-shaped constructions) on one side of the raised earth mound on which the Palm House stands. This bit looks exactly like the entrance to Stoney Littleton or West Kennet except for being buried up to its neck and being on a much greater scale. (Three apparent entrances)
  This bit is my strongest argument. Any of the other stone arches or constrcutions or caves in the park can be attributed to Victorians following their fashion for buiding fake megalithic monuments. However, it seems insane to fake authenticity to the point of building the buggars and then burying them.
• The mound of earth that this is buried in is decorated with a few (3 or 5, I didn’t keep notes sorry) huge stone “thrones” set at intervals. They are obviously arranged as part of the landscaping process but they are ludicrously big for garden ornaments and are made of a heavy, more solid stone (i.e like the sort of stone you find durable megalithic creations built from) rather than the standard pink sandstone of the rest of the park.
• Being a bit of a sandstone wall afficionado, I can roughly judge the era in which sandstone blocks were cut by the markings. There are blocks of sandstone throughout the park, some of which were quarried long before the park was built and some of which are on a monstrous scale.
• (The least convincing argument, granted, but one that may encourage the obligatory megalithic nutters to support the idea.) Intuition. I’ve been to loads of megalithic sites, (only thanks to the kindness of Tas, Sarah, the Megster and the Newb) and feel like I can almost smell one. In my only argument in support of this ludicrous argument, I can say that I once detected that we were on a hillfort while walking with colleagues near Snowdon, in Wales. There was mild sarcasm from my co-hillwalkers. Then we came across a metal sign that said it was indeed the site of a Celtic hillfort, so score 1 for the intuition capacity. :-p)

There’s more but I’ve already put in enough to introduce the idea. I don’t want to throw away all my aces although I have already thrown out my strongest cards. I will get photographs and post them. I may even do the research to find the original plans of the area when they built the park….

There are two alternative explanations. I suspect that they both might have some truth. In fact, I’m hoping they both have some truth, rather than just the one that would falsify this idea. One possibility is that there was a major megalithic site in the area, almost on an Avebury scale. (Devils’ advocate rears its head again:) The other (sadly more likely) possibility is that every seemingly megalithic thing in the whole park is a Victorian lawn ornament. My hope is that the park was built on the relics of prehistoric habitation and that the architects made use of the bits and pieces of stone that were lying around, partly to build interesting megalithic style constructions for bridges.

(Devil’s advocate has the last word.) I know the most far-fetched thing about this crackpot theory is that noone – however expert or unskilled – has ever argued it before, as far as I can see. Liverpool has a University with an Archaeology department and a pretty good Museum. The failure of anyone who knows what they are talking about to have suggested it before does argue for the theory being rubbish.

I will place my faith in the concept of falsifiability. Can anyone please come up with any evidence about the area before the park was built or about original park plans? Otherwise I may be forced to go to the local research part of a library ….. Don’t make me do that.

(I am totally aware of the mind’s pattern-making skills, so don’t bother going there when you try to refute it. I’m way ahead of you.)

Apparently a gamer detoxing centre has opened in Amsterdam. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/gaming/2006-06-08-video-game-addicts_x.htm?csp=34 The consultants who operate it say gaming may look harmless but it’s “as addictive as gambling or drugs.”

Well, OK, if I was the director of a spurious clinic to treat an invented addiction, those might be my very words. I thought conning money from the gullible was supposed to be the sort of behaviour associated with addiction to gambling or drugs. I realise that there is a serious new social problem here. The desire to treat any behaviour as an addiction is obviously a dangerously habit-forming thing.

And I can offer a solution.

So I am offering the services of my new state of the art detox centre to any of the unfortunates caught up in the web of offering detoxes for anything that used to be considered a choice or a hobby. Only £6k a week, all in, introductory offer.

You are also included, Carol Vorderman. Offering detoxes for everyday life is surely the ultimate goal of every therapeutic grifter*. You can’t charge as much per “patient” but you have the whole population as potential customers.

* Source- the Simpsons. Before you ask, I don’t know what it means either.

Even our own proto page isn’t seeing what we post for at least twenty minutes 🙂 For example, the World Cup “soccer” page isnt there yes (ten minutes later).

Shame on us.

Amazingly, many workplaces (e.g. mine) are actually encouraging their managers to allow people to watch the World Cup in worktime or give time off to watch it – although in exchange for some repayment of the time spent. This is because it somehow now seems to be our patriotic duty to support our national football team. (That’s “soccer” to you in the USA though I would also require you to wash your mouth out after saying it)

I am all for this principle of time off for leisure activities. It could just do with being extended. E.g., we actually had good weather this week for the first time this year. I will happily swap a few hours in the sunshine for a couple of hours in work in January. I will even pretend to be watching the World Cup if i have to…..

I do enjoy watching football when there’s a good goal or a fancy bit of ball juggling. I just never realised it was my patriotic duty before.

Yes, things move at a slow rural redneck pace here in the UK, at least as far as undertsanding US politics. However, I have just found out about “net neutrality” and why it is no longer going to exist.

No less a person than St. Tim Berners-Lee voiced concerns over this, reported  on the BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5063072.stm. He said that this would be a dark period for the Internet.

The so-called COPE Act (What is with laws having to have snappy names now?) was passed by 321-101 votes. This will basically make it OK to have two levels of Internet – the good bit for the companies that can pay and the duff bit for the rest of us. The bill was opposed by Google, E-Bay and Amazon (and a “film star” I’ve never heard of.) They unsuccessfully tried to get support for an amendment that would guarantee equal access.

Having only just heard about this and understanding as little as I normally do about US politics, let alone the business imperatives underlying the Internet, it seems ominous. I need to look into it. If anyone can explain it better, please write to us here.

Another invented addiction – to text and email – discovered. According to the Register and even today’s television news (so I am told anyway) people are now claiming to be addicted to text and email.

Come on. Doing something repeatedly, even obsessively, is surely not a disease.  People too dumb to see that spending 10p every couple of minutes to text mnnglss ste are just stpd. 

At least this explains spam - the random strings of words that I used to think existed only to stop me from bothering to even look for real emails aren’t from shady businesses. They are really from poor deluded email addicts and we should try to help them not condemn.

Re- previous blog entry. Good points there but Technorati is still infinitely more democratic in its effects than Google, in that the ordinary person still has a chance of getting listed. Granted it may take a while but at least you’re not starting from a position of 80000000 down if you happen to blog on a popular subject.

I don’t have blogs sorted by authority, just by date. In fact, such are the vagaries of my PC, that I can’t even choose to see Technorati’s lists by authority or by langauge because it just decides that English doesnt exist if I try that.

Anyone reading this blog would be baffled by the doubling up of entries. It reached epic prportions yesterday when i found I had posted the same thing four times. This was mainly my fault. At least I know it’s my fault but I can’t work out what I’ve done wrong. I will see how many times this turns up. Then delete the entry for utter pointlessness. And where has tech gone from the category list. Thats definitely my fault fot adding a new one.

D’oh. Back to the drawing board. Technorati tells you to stick a chunk of code in your blog that tags it for them. Word Press tags arent doing it

The number 666 is so decorative, it looks like a trio of little pigs’ tails. (Cue for a fairytale) Is that why it’s the number of the beast?

I have to do a 666 post before midnight or I’ll change into a pumpkin. (Cue another fairytale).

Although, being something of a pedant, I can’t really see 06/06/06 as a legitimate candidate for the day of the Beast. It’s really 06/06/2006, well 6/6/2006 even. This number is mainly remarkable for being one of the few dates in the year when British and American dates collide and are correct in both systems. If you’ve ever had to deal with spreadsheets where the data has been imported in one date format and you’ve found half your dates get rejected and almost all the others are wrong, you know what I’m talking about.

I have worked out a solution for this. Try to stop Excel (we name the guilty here) from trying to parse the dates itself, first. Insert 4 columns next to the column with the duff dates. In the first cell of one column, type =month(reference the first cell in your duff date column); in the next column put =day(reference the cell etc); in the third put =year(etc, are you beginning to detect a pattern?)

Now, concatenate* these in the fourth column, using

=the cell address with the day in &”/”& the cell address with the month in &”/”& the cell address with the year in

This cell should now hold something like =b2&”/”&c2 &”/”& d2 The cell display should show a date. If you are lucky, it will be in English date format.

Copy all four cells down until you can see a correct date for every date in your range, in the fourth column. Select the lot, copy them then paste the values over the existing formulae. You can now delete the columns holding the original dates, the days, months and years. You will be left with a column of dates in English format. Apply English date format as well, if you need to. (Even if it’s not applied and the dates are displayed in American date format, they are still correct English dates, i.e. 15/11/06 is seen as 15th November not an invalid date that’s trying claim there are 15 months in that year)

(Obviously, reverse the day/month order to change English dates to American. Start saying rout for route and Baysil for basil, while you are at it)

I hope you are impressed. This blog is not just a pretty face shamelessly trying to get higher in the blog reading stakes by picking out words from Technorati’s top searches. As you see, we also provide a public service.

* Concatenate is computerese for joining strings together. It really is a word. Yes, I was just showing off.

Need I say anything about Heather Mills except that she shares a first name with my good self? Would this constitute gossip central or even gossipcentral? :-p

Is she playing in the World Cup? Almost certainly not. Well, I was going to say something flippant there about her probably reduced capacity to score goals in a football match. However,this blog has already blotted its copybook in terms of its callous flippancy, reference Haditha posts apology, so I will pass up the opportunity to make it even worse.

Snort is completely great for finding out what your network is doing. If you want to obsess over every wierd packet passing through your bandwidth, snort’s your program.

And without any due modesty, I would refer you to my introduction to using it on www.sci-tech.co.uk(specifically http://www.sci-tech.co.uk/snortguide1.php)

This guide is the latest in a series on detecting malware, viruses and trojans. The articles are mainly aimed at people with limited specialist knowledge or experience but who have normally working brains. That basically means people about two hours behind me in their experience of network intrusion detection – that’s why it’s a newbies guide. I am certainly a pure amateur myself in this.

The snort guide tells you how to get it and how to use it – very briefly in both cases. If you have any questions or want to contribute your own views or experiences, please email us at sci-tech.

The shameful bit aside I have to report a certain degree of success. There was a comment. Archaeoastronomy, I salute you – despite being pretty well unable to spell your blog name properly – and thank you for your good advice. Your blog is really good, as well, as we’ve already said here.
That was not the royal “we”, by the way, it referred to the collective writers of these blog pages.

This encouraged, and with my conscience appeased, I will have another stab at more of the same. I reserve the right to be as flippant as before but this time I will try and avoid being flippant at the expense of massacred people.

However, when I say a certain degree of success, this has got to be mightily qualified. The pages didn’t actually appear in Technorati lists. Agreed this may turn out to be a major stumbling block to the whole scheme. My new plan of attack is therefore to limit the references to one or two at a time. Here I will talk about gossip central. Just don’t tell me there is a serious subtext to that. (There is probably a US TV programme or something with that name but you will have to bear with my ignorance if you want to extract any reading matter from this page.)

Gossip is dull when it’s not malicious and evil when it is.

The one thing that makes it even remotely compelling is actaully knowing the unfortunate person that the gossip is about. Gossip about people you have never met is just a story with a very short narrative and rarely has a decent punch line. I can’t even begin to guess why there are dozens of publications that contain nothing but “gossip,” produced by publicists, about people that you have not only never met but who you would cross the street to avoid if they weren’t celebrities.

The gossip consists mainly of whether they are too fat or too thin. If you are unlucky enough to know anyone who obsesses about their own weight like that, you probably steer well clear of them. If you really do know someone who discusses other people’s weight/cellulite/ clothing choices in the sort of prying and judgemental detail that the magazines discuss z-list celebs, you have probably already injured them in some excruciating way. If not, why not?

And if you actually spend your own cash on these magazines, why not buy some of the Guest Publications featured on Have I Got News for You instead? Mattress Manufacture News or Lawn Ornament Collectors’ Monthly would easily outstrip the readability of Heat magazine and would give you a much-needed new interest.

I’m sorry to have to admit to being not just shameless in trying to get some blog visits but also horribly callous, not to mention poorly informed.

When I threw in the Haditha, Loretta Nail and Clay Aiken words, I was just treating them as words. I wasn’t even thinking of what they referred to. While this blog yields to noone in terms of superficiality, this was really going too far for common decency. If you were offended, you were completely right.  I was offended myself when I thought about it.

All of which means, that I will report on the succcess or otherwise of the shameless venture in a separate blog, next.

Well, we are blogging doggedly – if intermittently – here. However, it’s been a while since anyone gave us any evidence that we get read – like comments and links. So I am going to have a stab at getting closer to the top of some lists by going for what Technorato reckons are the most popular topics and tags. 🙂

So- it’s nice to meet you if you have come here because of this. Please forgive me for the underhand attention-seeking blog behaviour.

I copied these links from Technorati top searches:

Loretta Nall Pirate Bay Clay Aiken Supporting Our Troops Over A Cliff Macbook World Cup Haditha Reboot8 all mean basically nothing to me. Well, the World Cup does but you can probably get better information on thet from the feral cat that’s sitting by my PC at the moment. The feral cat definitely has better information on Loretta Nail, Pirate Bay and Clay Aitken. They sound suspiciuosly like country and western singers. Well Pirate Bay sounds like a new fbrand of White rum falvoured with some plant substance that doesn’t exist except as shampoo ingredient. Macbook- what can I say- Is it the Scottish volume? Haditha- the islamic daughter of Samantha in Bewitched? Reboot8- that’s what happens when everybody in a small office presses CTRL Alt & DElete at the same time.

Wow, this is like shooting fish in a barrel. Let’s move on to the top tags.

• Bush A small tree. Invasive habit. Keep well supplied with oil.
• Microsoft A company that bought up DOS and never looked back.
• soccer This is really called “football”. The s word is basically only used by the inhabitants of a the Northern part of the American continent, who unaccountably use the football word to refer to a bastardised form of rugby in which impenetrable numbers are shouted at random at people who never put their foot to the ball. This somehow stops the rest of the world from being able to use the “football” word online, without fear of being misunderstood as referring to the other “game”
• China This is what you put tea in. It is also used to make plates. There is an incomprehensible use of it in cockney rhyming slang. Note to farmers and toreadors- it is generally considered inadvisable to allow bulls near shops that sell it.
• Iraq This is next to Iran. Or is that before Iran?
• Sex This isn’t allowed on the Internet.
• Iran See, it was after Iraq.
• Would people like Iranian cats as much if their name had been updated when teh country was? Ditto, Iranian rugs.
• Terrorism This is a good reason for giving up every freedom won since Runymede.

There, that was easy. Shameless but easy.