A Safe Space for My Blog Troll(s)

3/4/2018

Regular readers of this blog know that I have a pretty high tolerance for nonsense. I don't mind having arguments, I don't pre-screen comments, and I've only ever "banned" a single person from commenting. I know that being a public academic invites attention of all kinds, and I'm fine with that.

For the past few months, I've been routinely deleting comments by E. P. Grondine on my posts about my actual archaeological work and legitimate academic topics (i.e., those that don't involve giants, Atlantis, and other fringe claims). Recently, his comments have transitioned from being simply condescending and ignorant and have become harassing and (in my opinion) borderline defamatory.

E.P., you are welcome to comment on my blog on this post and this post only. I will delete all future comments from you on other blog posts, just as I delete spam for online gambling except on this post. I will also delete all comments on this post that are defamatory.

I hope this satisfies your need to comment on my blog.

Joeboyer

3/4/2018 07:25:30 am

Sorry to hear this . Have you researched this person.?
Keyboard brutality is at an all time high. Look at the recent incidents of swat -ing a young man did nothing but be online with someone malicious 1600 miles away ,and the aggressor called local police dept. And reported a crime, and the results ended in the young man being shot to death.
Being the AO guy I have had many attacks to my Facebook page ,groups, and hundreds of hate filled messages filtered in messenger.

E.P. Grondine

3/4/2018 09:37:23 am

Well, Andy, let us start at the beginning - I am not a troll.

But I do enjoy reminding your students that other people will examine you own work and grade it. You may find that sadistic and/or arrogant, but after all of these years of working with excavation reports, watching digs, etc., it is what I do instinctively, along with finding unknown sites and trying to line up their preservation.

This will undoubtedly surprise you, but generally really good (A+) archaologists actually enjoy talking with me - I certainly find quick oral summaries of their finds useful and easier than reading. (Your time lapse videos technique is very very good, and you deserve props for using it.)

But then those really good archaeologists are usually both intellectually secure, and secure in the quality of their work, are quite content with letting the data they find tell its own story.

That said, a few key points, which I may add to here as your work progresses.

I take no joy in watching you load up your welding gloves with poison ivy seepage. Perhaps your suffering has played a role in allowing me to pot to you - you can not say I did not warn you. I am sure that those around you are suffering as well.

On the other hand, a GOOD archaeologist sees to the safety and welfare of his crew, and when your crew first suffered from poison ivy, you did not act, but instead removed my notes to you on dealing with this problem. Remember that far more archaeologists than yourself have had to deal with this hazard, and keep in mind that over the years I watched their struggles with it as well.

This is a non-trivial problem, and staph infections in poison ivy can become fatal. Look up the fatal colonial "scritch" sometime.

You could use 2-4-DF to kill off the poison ivy at your site. Aside from that, a shower in temperate water and immediate laundering of work clothes are essential measures after exposure. Outdoor workers sometimes are given ferrous chloride solutions to apply to prevent the urushol from binding, but I do not know if they work. The only treatments I've found to work are the most expensive wash from Walmart (and as to how you would obtain that at a lower cost and provide it to your crew is beyond me) and swimming in large chlorine treated pools (check out the local Y).

Next item. It took multiple posts by me to get you to look at river flooding data for your site. But as finally you began to move on it, it was worth the effort. As that data is what will make your excavation very good, you should be thanking me for alerting you to it.

You are working your way through it, but in my view still confusing wind blown sand with what is likely to turn out to be high clay sand. As one of your posters here put it, geology, in particular carefully noting soil differences, is ESSENTIAL to being a good archaeologist - this is Excavating 101, the first hour of the first day.

You can use your pottery to at least get some rough idea as to local flood deposition rates.

Another item - GOOD archaeologists are generally aware of the work of their peers, and do not defame them for no reason. Your comments about tall Native Americans (read "giants") generally defame Webb and Snow and Dragoo and Neuman.

Now I had the pleasure of spending over 10 years defending the reputation of the late Frank C. Hibbens from various slanders. His reputation and work has now been fully vindicated with the recovery of his images and field notes.

I will defend Webb and Snow and Dragoo and Neuman's reputations. From what I have observed, in other words based on experience, the only people who are qualified to opine on the Adena are those who actually have excavated Adena sites, and since those professionals have no problem with my views, while you have never excavated an Adena site, you may want to consider your words very carefully lest you end up humiliating yourself.

When I tell you that Jason Jarrell and Sarah Famer's book the Ages of Giants is very good, and contains the only full excavation reports for many old digs at Adena sites, you can believe me or not. But keep in mind that In the end, the data wins, and you are not the only archaeologist working in the Eastern United States.

As I menitioned earlier, you are not the only qorkin archaeologist, and you need to make your students aware that Cultural Resource Associates archaeologists are very highly skilled, and do most of the paid excavation work in your area.

Well, thanks for at least listening to me and letting me vent. I do not know why, but seeing archaeologists working t less than their full potential irks me.

Your treatment of your crew and your fulfillment of your duties to the local people who paid for your dig are up to you.

Please keep in mind that all in all, I'd rather be troweling through tsunami deposits on Crete, or doing surface surveys in SW Turkey, and I now have to return to several gigs of excavation reports.

But I feel better now.

"if I was wrong, don't you th

Jim

3/4/2018 12:22:58 pm

Ya Andy, you should hose down your hosts forest with 2,4-D , what could possibly go wrong.

https://www.nrdc.org/stories/24-d-most-dangerous-pesticide-youve-never-heard

Better yet, use agent orange,it is a mixture of equal parts of two herbicides, 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D.

E.P. Grondine

3/4/2018 01:00:41 pm

Obviously, I need to make this clearer for the less gifted members of the peanut gallery.

What you do is take a mixture, and use an aerosol sprayer to apply it to the leaves of the plants in your work area.

I do not know if any of the other commercial products very much from 2-4-D. You have to check out the modern options.

I also do not know if a simple concentrated salt water spay would work.

Another course of action is to locate someone immune to poison ivy, and have them remove the poison ivy from your work area and destroy it.

Jim

3/4/2018 12:31:15 pm

http://www.kellysolutions.com/erenewals/documentsubmit/KellyData%5COK%5Cpesticide%5CProduct%20Label%5C264%5C264-800%5C264-800_EPIC_DF_Herbicide_4_3_2007_12_57_39_PMSecured.Pdf

E.P. Grondine

3/4/2018 01:12:35 pm

Jim, you may want to look up no till agriculture.
It is standard usage now.

Your idea of discussing this with the land owner is very good for reasons you do not suspect , as he is likely to be familiar with both the current products, and with dealing with poison ivy.

Jim

3/4/2018 02:55:20 pm

So, your solution to poison ivy is to poison the environment ?
Obviously, I need to make this clearer for the less gifted members of the peanut gallery who cannot follow a link.
Again :

https://www.nrdc.org/stories/24-d-most-dangerous-pesticide-youve-never-heard

"Also problematic: 2,4-D sticks around in the environment. Depending on the formulation, it can drift through the air from the fields where it is sprayed or be tracked inside homes by pets or children. By the EPA's own measure, 2,4-D has already been detected in groundwater and surface water, as well as in drinking water. Australian scientists reported in 2012 that it was found in more than 90 percent of samples taken from agricultural catchments bordering the Great Barrier Reef—bad news for many fish, for whom the herbicide can be toxic. It can also poison small mammals, including dogs who can ingest it after eating grass treated with 2,4-D."

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00288233.1964.10416414

"Wahlin (1959) stated that the salts of 2,4-D can poison honey bees, while Schwan (1960) described a special protective law for bee-keepers in Sweden and listed the esters of 2,4-D with other agricultural chemicals declared toxic to bees."

E.P. Grondine

3/4/2018 06:42:51 pm

No. the idea is to poison the poison ivy in this best way possible.

If you visits Lowe's or Home Depot, you will find what they have to offer, which is usually some variant of 2-4-D..

As I have not had to deal with poison ivy for years, I am not current on what's being used today.

Once again, the other option is hand weeding by a poison ivy
resistant individual.

Looking around the internet for current information we find:

http://www.poison-ivy.org/control

It turns out that a salt solution does work:
http://www.hgtv.com/outdoors/flowers-and-plants/how-to-kill-poison-ivy

(damn, that was a really good guess)

I had my resistant person burn the cable roots while no one was around, after I had used a tractor to pull them out of the ground.
It was that bad.

While Tecnu wash is okay, Zanfel worked best for me.
$32.57 a tube- ouch.

Jim

3/4/2018 07:33:03 pm

O.K. so now you have used the recommended overstrength 2,4 D to further poison this riverbank environment, and now what ? The dead ivy poses the same health risks to the students as live ivy.
You accomplished nothing but harmed the environment and introduced more health risks to the students from the 2,4 D !
You still have to remove it by hand, why bother with 2,4 D ?

E.P. Grondine

3/4/2018 08:30:00 pm

Why bother? That is a very good question, and one that I consider all of the time, particularly in the face of overwhelming stupidity.

I give you the very safe option, but then you ignore it.

Incidentally, it appears you are also incapable of reading Round Up package instructions. The landowner of this site is likely to have Round Up on hand, and to know how to use it.

I can hardly wait until you learn about no till agriculture.

The object here is to remove the poison ivy. It is easier to pull it if its dead. They claim you can use a salt solution to do that, but I've never tried that solution myself.

Just to clarify things for you, I'm not the guy oozing into his welding gloves, and trying to figure out how the hell he is going to clean them.

I'm also not the guy whose wife is undoubtedly overjoyed with the load of poison ivy he brought home. I won't go into the more romantic aspects of this, but you can use your imagination to fill that in.

Finally, I am not the guy with a bunch of itching students. You know, the guy who needs to talk with them about how to treat poison ivy, the same guy who has to at least fake having some interest in how they are doing in their other classes.

Like you said, why bother? Well, there is always the prospect of never having to buy a drink again at SEAC, due to the generosity of grateful former students.

By the way, Andy is not the first person to run into this problem. If he has any sense, he could probably write up his experience in dealing with it.

Jim

3/4/2018 09:28:40 pm

"The object here is to remove the poison ivy"
No, the object here is to protect the students !!!

"I give you the very safe option, but then you ignore it."
You told Andy to use 2,4 D, I disagreed ! You came up with other
options after the fact.

"I can hardly wait until you learn about no till agriculture."
What is the pertinence of this ???

Andy got poison ivy on his gloves,,, so what ??? What does that or any of the rest of your rhetoric have to do with 2,4 D ???
Do try to stay on point.

E.P. Grondine

3/5/2018 06:20:57 am

"No, the object here is to protect the students !!!"

YES!!! THAT IS IT EXACTLY!!!!

Poison Ivy nearly killed me when I was about 12 years old.

Aside from that, several years back I watched when poison ivy took out nearly an entire surface survey crew at the Ferry Farm site.

My brother-in law, no wimp (WWII 101st Airborne) picked up a really bad dose while excavating in the dunes at the southern end of Lake Michigan.

So when Andy first mentioned poison ivy at his site, I knew he had a serious problem. This was long before his current dose.

I do not know current best practices.
I only know how I handled it in Virginia.

As you comments on no till agriculture show, you obviously do not
know that 2-4-D is in industrial scale use in agriculture throughout the US.. You know nothing about its disintegration time, nor dosages. I'm certainly not current on it either, but then I don't have a site infested with poison ivy.

Andy's students take other classes besides his, and my guess is that he has already managed to irritate their other teachers.

To get his A+ grade, I expect Andy to produce an action plan for dealing with the poison ivy, somehow get that expensive wash to his crew as quickly as possible, and also apologize to them.
Now there's a video I'd like to see.

"If I was wrong, don't you think I'd know it?" - Sheldon Cooper
"We all make mistakes; its what we do next that counts."

Jim

3/5/2018 08:07:03 am

"Poison Ivy nearly killed me when I was about 12 years old."
"Aside from that, several years back I watched when poison ivy took out nearly an entire surface survey crew at the Ferry Farm site."

Just to be clear, are you talking about the plant or this Poison Ivy ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klO9P2xlHyU

"I do not know current best practices."

Agreed.

"As you comments on no till agriculture show, you obviously do not
know that 2-4-D is in industrial scale use in agriculture throughout the US."
Actually I did know that. I still am having trouble working out why it is relevant to the conversation.
Did you know the USA used nuclear bombs to win WW2 ? Should Andy use nukes on Poison Ivy in his dig site ?

"To get his A+ grade, I expect Andy to produce an action plan for dealing with the poison ivy, somehow get that expensive wash to his crew as quickly as possible, and also apologize to them"

Are you the one grading Andy ? Does he answer to you ? Do you feel that you are more qualified than Andy and that he should run everything past you, and bow to your superiority ?
Because that's what it sounds like you are saying.

E.P. Grondine

3/5/2018 01:05:07 pm

It took a while to get Andy to get to work on the flood data from his site. Whenever Andy comes up with a plan for dealing with the poison ivy at hi site, I may even go out and buy myself a beverage.

Now if I can get Andy to read the standard archaeology texts on the Adena, then who knows, I think I might get falling down drunk.

I certainly will have earned ir.

.

Andy White

3/5/2018 06:30:46 am

Jim,

It's really not about the poison ivy (a nuisance plant that everyone who has worked/played outdoors in the Eastern Woodlands has experienced).

The best I can figure, I must have said/did something that upset E.P. and he is having a hard time getting over it. It may have been when I asked him to stop spamming with his videos talking about giants, or maybe one of the many times I pointed out to him that he has no idea what he's talking about when it comes to actual archaeology and that no real archaeologist gives a hoot what he thinks.

Anyway, he's just using his fantasy of a poison ivy crisis to try to attract attention to himself. It's good for a laugh or two but also distracts from the adults who actually want to talk about things I write about. That's why E.P. is now in the blog equivalent of a pack-n-play.

Jim

3/5/2018 07:32:25 am

Oh, I get it. I'm kinda having fun.

E.P. Grondine

3/5/2018 12:45:49 pm

Andy, clearly my experiences with poison ivy have left me with a different perspective on it than you have. Bu your assumption that all of your crew will have the same mild reaction to poison ivy that you may have is not well founded.

I am not asking the other professors at your college to fire you, nor am I the college to relieve you for endangering students' health.

( I will add that if you keep fooling around with that stuff, the inevitable will happen. In that sad outcome, at least there will be a good paper trail.)

I am simply asking you to come up with an action plan to deal with the poison ivy. Calling me a troll is no way to deal with it.

As far as real archeologists go, you do not know who I work with. As I have found that anyone who I work with will be harassed, let's leave it at that..

Now as far as tall Native Americans go, they did exist, and in addition to the physical evidence we have colonial narratives of them before their genocidal extermination in 1676.

I simply pass on what was passed on. That is a far higher standard and burden than any you deal with.

If you want to insist that they did not exist, that is exactly what you will do, until someone who works with Adena remains publicly calls you on it, say a professional who you can not dismiss by calling them a troll. Or perhaps a 7 foot tall Native American.

Now that is a video I'd like to watch.

Andy White

3/5/2018 01:37:10 pm

Sorry E.P., but you haven't convinced me to do anything other than put you in time-out. And you never will. I imagine you will still be throwing a hissy fit on this blog post at this time next year. Or you won't. Either way is fine with me.

E.P. Grondine

3/5/2018 06:23:00 pm

Dale Carnegie wrote a book about how to make friends.
I never read it.

Andy, if you keep on fooling around with poison ivy, it will catch up with you. Based on my experience, even then you will not admit to having made a serious mistake regarding it.

Now tomorrow I will move on to my other gripes with your limited academic abilities, and your obsession with "early archaic" quartzite points, which appears to be blinding you to the hazards you are needlessly exposing your crew to.

Batman

3/5/2018 10:06:51 pm

E. P. is right, if you underestimate Poison Ivy you will regret it !
Be warned.

GEE

3/5/2018 02:00:24 pm

I am not an archeologist and I don't know a lit about the plant life.. but I do know people E.P Gondine had gone as far as put herself into your work. Maybe a little Jealousy going on here. It's almost "stalker.ish" behavior. Not sure why EP cares so much or why she is putting herself into your work, Andy. ( Sorry, being a female reading this , I concluded EP is a female ).

Jim

3/5/2018 02:16:38 pm

Next up ,, Mosquitoes, and how much DDT should be sprayed around the work site to prevent a catastrophic student blood letting.

Andy White

3/5/2018 02:48:43 pm

The sun has harmful effects left unchecked. Air quality can be poor during pollen season. The ticks will come out soon. And there are some stinging insects, including both flying and non-flying ones. Some of the plants have thorns.

Also, some of the students may experience mild muscle sorenesss after working several hours with tools they don't customarily use (i.e., shovels). There could even be blisters.

I should probably just let the students play World of Warcraft in sterile bubbles rather than expose them to all those hazards.

Jim

3/5/2018 04:29:48 pm

Those pointy trowels look rather dangerous to me. Also, rabid bats.

E.P. Grondine

3/6/2018 02:10:29 am

Ha ha ha - so funny

For the sun, you wear long sleeves and use suncreen.
You watch the water intake of your crew.
For mosquitos and ticks you use insect repellent, and do a tick check after coming in from the field.
For stinging insects, you carry aspirin to wet and apply to the site of the sting, if you can not afford the military grade application.

But coming up with a cure for willful intentional stupidity has me stumped.

Jim

3/6/2018 07:31:58 am

"But coming up with a cure for willful intentional stupidity has me stumped."

Well, you could just stop posting.

Chip

3/5/2018 06:22:49 pm

A discussion on poison ivy and proper herbicide use is not what I expected.

I am licensed to do this sort of thing. But, there's no way I would hijack a blog about it. Well...if it was a landscaping or vegetation management blog.

But, it's not. That's kinda the point

E.P. Grondine

3/6/2018 02:22:26 am

The discussion, Chip, is about what separates good archaeologists from really bad ones.

My goal here was simply to remind Andy of his duties to his crew and to try to get him to take action to see to their well being, but now Andy has turned into a place to demonstrate his incompetence, and it is quite a show.

Andy White

3/6/2018 03:31:24 am

E.P.,

I can't believe you would insult me after I so graciously provided you this dedicated space to display your ignorance. While other sites have blocked you completely, I have given you room to run . . . and this is the thanks I get?

I'm still waiting for you to say something clever enough to put on a t-shit. Keep trying. We're all rooting for you.

E.P. Grondine

3/6/2018 09:29:28 am

Hi Andy -

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.” ― Philip K. Dick

I suppose reality is a lot like a really good case of poison ivy. It simply does not go away.

Truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it, ignorance may deride it, malice may distort it, but there it is. - Winston Chrchill

You can believe that I would insult you, as I have found them to be good tool to motivate behavior change, although I am actually a really nice guy who wishes you the best of luck in your future career. Deep down you know that, and that is why you set up this spot.

I have thought about why I take this abuse, and it is not that you continue to ignore and not use the standard work on the theosophist cult archaeology industry for your class on fringe archaeology:
http://www.danieljglenn.com/the_podcasts/Stelle/Documentation/He%20Walked%20Among%20Us%20Part%201.pdf

Nor is it the fact that you will opine about Adena stature without reading the standard works of Dragoo and Neuman or Webb and Snow first.

Nor is it the fact that you dismiss the current work of the geologists working through recent impacts despite having absolutely no geology training. I do not know if your site goes back to 10,850 BCE, and I can make no estimate of what you may find there; all I do know is that you are not prepared to handle any data from that time.

Do you remember the Challenger shuttle, where the engineers from Thiokol told NASA they were worried, but NASA had Go Fever, and launched anyway?

Well, you are right at the level of your early archaic quartzite points, and your are hoping that data from that level will provide you with some explanations for their distribution. This is leading to a bad case of Go Fever, which is causing you to endanger your crew.

I do not want verbiage from you about this, I want a short statement of the safety actions you are going to take to deal with this hazard.

How about showing your students how a good archaeologist acts by example?

As for you t-shirts "I do not want verbiage from you about this" might do well.

As far as blocking goes, I need to move about $450 million of our taxpayer NASA money out of manned Mars flight efforts and into the launch of the NEOcam satellite for hazardous asteroid detection. I've been dealing and pursued by that pack of nuts since 1997.

By the way, in my earlier life I was the first reporter to spot China's new manned space program, and the first reporter to spot their intention to land men on the Moon in the near future.

If you think archaeological debates are fierce, you should see debates over billions of dollars sometime. If you compare your own budget to $17 Billion per year, it will give you some idea of exactly where you stand in the cosmic scale of things.

I expect you to turn out qualified archaeologists who are at least at vaguely familiar with Adena culture and who are capable of working both at at a depth of 10,850 BCE and in the coastal zones. As that is what they pay you to do, and that is what you want to do, and what I'd like to see you do, we actually have a lot in common.

Andy White

3/6/2018 10:10:51 am

That's too long to fit on a shirt. Stopped reading.

E,P, Grondine

3/6/2018 08:30:56 pm

t-shirt? Easy:

The Zanfel logo:
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Zanfel-Poison-Ivy-Wash-1-oz/10324648
along with "Broad River Archaeological Field School 2018"

E.P. Grondine

3/10/2018 07:50:20 pm

t-shirt 2:

Broad River Archaeological Field School
Picture of Quartzite point
"I had to settle for B*** J**s for nearly a month"

Jim

3/6/2018 01:05:09 pm

I survived the verbiage of E P Grondine
And all I got was this stupid shirt.

Peter

3/6/2018 03:20:52 pm

How about: "Jealousy got me nowhere." E.P. Grondine, Troll

Andy White

3/6/2018 04:10:38 pm

Check out the comments from Herve Keptner on this post. Now THAT's how it's done. https://www.andywhiteanthropology.com/blog/more-retractions-from-the-1885-hoax-of-a-buried-city-under-moberly-missouri#comments

Andy White

3/6/2018 04:12:37 pm

"May the GREAT RAVEN GOD TAKE YOU STUPID, also i hope a lizard man eats you!"

E.P. Grondine

3/6/2018 08:43:27 pm

May you share a case of poison ivy with your wife.

Andy White

3/7/2018 03:34:39 am

That's the best you've got? That's barely JV level. I'm disappointed.

Also, you don't understand how poison ivy works.

E.P. Grondine

3/7/2018 05:27:40 am

"honey, please don't mow that patch of grass with those shorts on"

Jim

3/7/2018 11:20:55 am

So far the only actual reason that E P has come up with for using 2 4 D is his unsupported " It is easier to pull it if its dead".
Without any evidence I'm going to assume he is just making that crap up.

E.P. Grondine

3/7/2018 05:07:55 pm

I had settle for b*** j***s for nearly a month.

go right on ahead, andy...

Peter

3/6/2018 04:50:37 pm

Love the pseudonym: Nightshade. What is blacker than black, it can only be shade at night.....Nightshade. ....Damn, I'm stealing it.

Jim

3/6/2018 06:50:12 pm

Nick Redfern is opining on "Slenderman" over on Jasons blog

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/review-of-the-slenderman-mysteries-by-nick-redfern

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