A Stress Analysis of a Strapless Evening Gown

A while ago I added A Stress Analysis of a Strapless Evening Gown, and other essays for a scientific age (edited by Robert A. Baker) to my Amazon wish list. (I use the wish list as a bookmarks file, of a sort.) The book's out of print and I couldn't remember what sequence of events led me to add the book. (The title alone sounds promising, but I couldn't remember how I came to know that title.) It showed up used and cheap recently, so I ordered it.

It's a collection of pseudo-science essays (hey browngirl, this might be something you'd like), some very good and some only so-so. The title essay is quite amusing; I'll have to share it with Johan the civil engineer. Anyway, as I was reading through it, I came to "Digging the Weans" by Robert Nathan.

Aha. That is why I bought this book. Now I remember.

When I was a sophomore in high school I had a fantastic history teacher. Dr. Wasilack (possibly misspelled) was the first history teacher I ever had who wasn't fixated on names and dates; he wanted to teach us how to think and analyze, and he did it against a backdrop of world history. I was already that sort of person, but he still maanged to teach me a lot. He was one of a very small number of outstanding teachers I had in the public schools.

At one point, he was trying to teach us how to think critically about evidence. We were studying some analysis or other of some archeological find, and most of us were buying what we were reading, and we shouldn't have been. And then he read us an analysis of artifacts from the point of view of archeologists thousands of years hence, and that opened a lot of eyes in that class.

I've carried that memory around since then, but had been unable to remember many details. I did remember that the archeologists concluded that this nation was called the "Weins" (actually "Weans", but I never saw it written back then) because the country was called "US". And I remembered that there was some analysis of an important document that contained the phrase "nor[th] rain nor hail nor snow", and that the Wean city-states were ruled by Queens like "queen of the may" and "the raisin queen".

Eventually, I googled my way to the title "Digging the Weans", and that led me to this anthology. So today, after almost 25 years, I finally read this story.

This is exactly the kind of story that I want everyone in the SCA who does any research to read. It's artfully done and demonstrates just how important a healthy dose of skepticism is when looking at sources.

Sadly, I did not get all of the references. I do not know what the giant metal (sometimes stone) praying-mantis figures in southern California are, for example. I'll probably feel really stupid when someone points it out to me.