The distinction worth holding is between measuring and comparing. A ruler asserts a length and can be wrong about it. The instruments below compare one thing against another, or against…
The useful question about any unusual shoe is what it was standing on. Almost every answer is a property of the ground rather than a preference of the wearer. Here…
Look at any vernacular building and the roof tells you the weather before anybody mentions it. Here are eleven of the things a roof is arguing with.
1. The Steep…
The technical term for this is path dependence: an early decision constrains everything afterwards, not because it was right but because too much was built on top of it. Here…
Source: Wikipedia
Most ancient monuments survive because they are made of something durable. Stone lasts. Metal lasts. Fired clay lasts. Their survival requires nothing from anybody.
There is a category of…
Source: Wikipedia
Archaeology depends on context. An object in the ground is surrounded by information — what layer it sat in, what was beside it, how it was arranged, what the…