Unintentional ghostliness

Normally I wouldn't find the internal anatomy of any critter off putting, but when I saw what color the folks at digimorph are using for the soft parts of the green winged parrot, I shuddered. This was not because of the nature of bird anatomy but because it wounded my sense of good taste in science. Come on guys, you made it look like a ghost parrot! I can see it being used in a sequel to Pirates of the Caribbean. Some other color would definitely have better maintained the sites dignity. I have to admit though that the video is really cool looking.

Diatribus magnanamus

Family (particularly my grandmother), has been asking me what I would like as a graduation gift. We hermits by and large don’t really want for much. My parents are giving me a car (chevy astro van) that they aren’t using anymore, so that takes care of my transportation issues. Odd as it may sound, I certainly don’t want money. I feel guilty whenever family sends a check. So long as I can get by, I’m okay, and a job really helps there.
Obligatory gift giving gets on my nerves. It’s what’s wrong with Christmas. People feel that they have to give you something, because either you or someone else gave them something for the same occasion. For example; I gave a friend a 128 MB USB flash drive as an early graduation present. She’s also been one of my better friends for the last few years and really really wanted one, so I used the graduation as justification for the gift. I got the thing at a really discounted price due to a mix up with some price tags at STAPLES (their doing not mine), and it was really worth it to see her face when my friend opened her eyes and realized that the graduation gift that I was surprising her with was exactly what she wanted. “It’s really too much, you shouldn’t have,” she said. “But I didn’t get you anything, you really didn’t have to.”
“I know,” I replied. “That’s kind of the idea of a gift, its giving even though you don’t feel obliged to. Besides, the gratitude written on your face makes it worth it.”
Just as a side note, I feel sorry for people when they give me things because I don’t emote very much. I look back at the person and on their face I can plainly read “Really, that’s it? I was kind of hoping for a bigger reaction. You know, I put a lot of effort into that. You’re not exactly an easy person to shop for and those aren’t cheap.”
Regardless of whether the giver actually wants to give and derives pleasure from the act, regardless of the intensity of the reaction, feeling that one should or ought to give, makes it less pure. I'll illustrate my point. I've decided to give going away gifts to the other (and not yet gifted) paleo students. This is because I’m committed to being at a farewell dinner with them and because I’m huge on equality and making sure that none of my peers feel excluded. So although there is no cultural pressure or precedence to give, I still have the feeling of obligation. I obviously want to give, otherwise I wouldn’t. The problem is that I really don’t know these people. I’ve only have a class this year with one of them, I don’t know what they like, dislike, prefer in terms of music, art, culture, have or don’t have. We’ve also never seen each other outside of class or official Paleo Society events. Consequentially they are all getting identical copies of a book on the T. rex named Sue, that I picked up from the bargain shelves at the local book store. Beyond the paleo theme, it is in all respects a hollow, meaningless, impersonal way of mollifying these occasional twinges of ethical thought and of making me feel better about myself by affecting what I know will be their last memory of me. The ethical side will really backfire though if my friend (out of sudden feeling of a need to reciprocate gifts) gives me something, I give the other three some things, and they feel awkward and excluded because they didn’t think of gifts.
Really, what I’d like most for graduation; something that I find disturbingly lacking in my life, is a sense of accomplishment. “Wow, four years just flew by! Looking back, I’m glad that I ____ and ____. I really feel like I’ve grown as a person because _____. Moving to another country for University was worth it because ___. Now that I’m done, I’m well prepared to ____, because I now have skills which I can take into the marketplace including ____, _____ and _____.” But unless someone can fill in those blanks, I’ll settle for a “Good job so far. Well, I guess we’ll leave you alone now until you’ve accomplished something. Good luck.”

procrastination

Hydrass who would lambast
Those in lower academic casts.
You speak all night,
on subjects light,
a distraction from my study.

Star Wars, Crack Whores, Spanish Moores,
"In my defense",
and clenching cactus gore.

It's great fun to jest,
even without rest,
But did it have to be before my test?

I'm normally pedantic,
this morning was quite frantic,
only hoping for pass,
I more than kicked that final's ass,
So there was no harm in having hung out with a buddy.

Mammals

I hate mammals, all of them, every last one. From Alphadon to Zalamdolestes. I hate them with every fibre of my being, from the core of my heart. After a semester of practically nothing but mammal studies, I just know more of them that I hate. And the next person who reminds me that I am a mammal is going to get a swift kick in their furry mammalian ass.

The Talk

Bright and early this morning I gave a talk in front of professors and peers on the research that I've been doing for the last year. All and all, it went well. So well in fact that one of the grad students, a Mr. Takuya Konishi sent me an e-mail afterwards to regarding my braincase character:
"I have had some resistance to those characters as they are somehow hard to observe and also visualize in my mind especially with compressed fossil specimens in most cases, but I will no longer make any excuse whatsoever for not noticing those features now that you had skillfully demonstrated the usefulness of those "difficult" cranial characters on identifying the phylogenetic significance for both extinct and extant squamates, including some characters that no one ever suggested before. "
I just don't have the heart to tell him that alot of the characters that I used are almost if not totally impossible to see on the specimen that we're both studying. The specimen is partially crushed, distorted, filled with sediment and broken pieces of bone. The matrix/ sediment is the same color as the bone and some of the really important bits are obscured by other bones like the quadrates, pterygoids and supratemporal bar.

Paleo Paluza

Much has been going on lately in my little paleocentric world. Yesterday I had my lab final for paleomammology. It went ok, but definately could have been better. This afternoon, I had a chat with Rick Otto of the Ashfall Site in Nebraska about a job. It was supposed to be an interview but he pretty much told me what I'd have to do and offered me the job. Finally I have a little bit of certainty about what I'll be doing this summer. If I don't get offered the collections assistantship here at the U of A, then I'm going to Nebraska. For those of you who don't know, Nebraska is on the edge of the corn belt, just south of South Dakota and north of Kansas. Not a whole lot of anything out there (four hundred people in the town that I'd be working in) but at least there's a job.
Also, if you haven't heard yet, a recent discovery of an oviraptorasaur with eggs in its abdomen is creating quite a stir. If this had been found ten years ago, then it would have been hailed as 'proof' that it's name (which means egg stealer) was justified. But then, ten years ago, we hadn't found an oviraptor embryo inside that variety of egg. What this new discovery does confirm instead is that dinosaurs layed two eggs at a time. This had been strongly suspected before because of the arrangement of theropod eggs in pairs within the nest, but this is even stronger evidence. Birds lay one egg at a time and only have one ovary. Where the debate should lie now is whether the eggs were in the same ovary or in separate ones. Some people have suggested that the same ovary produced two eggs which were layed one right after the other. Others have said that its two eggs that were in separate ovaries. The new specimen shows two eggs side by side, which suggests the two ovary hypothesis to me. Naturally though, some people have proposed in the past that the one ovary hypothesis would work if the two eggs were side by side within the ovary and layed at exactly the same time. This wouldn't work however because the shell gland would cement the two eggs together if they were in the uterus at the same time. Not to mention the discomfort associated with laying two eggs instead of one at a time.

Girls Don't Make Passes . . .

Decisions, decisions. . . hmmm. Well, I think its time that I let out a secret that I've kept for quite a while. One that only I know. One that I'm kind of ashamed of though I know how socially acceptable it is these days. That's right, I'm near sighted and I have astigmatism. Ha! Bet you thought I was turning gay, didn't you. Nope, I'm just getting nerdier. Today I went in for an eye exam and the guy basically told me what I already knew, that my distance vision isn't that great, but not that bad either. According to his read out I've got -1 in my left eye and -0.25 and very slight astigmatism at 160 degrees (where 180 is horizontal) in my right eye.
My distance vision has never been quite as good as my dad's. He can see a watch skrew across the room and tell you whether its copper or gold. His problem is short arm syndrom. Now that he's older, he first started needing reading glasses of stronger and stronger perscriptions, and has now finally broken down and bought trifocals (which he likens somewhat to a drug trip). As for myself, over the last year, I've noticed my distance vision getting progressively worse. Lately, I've been squinting at notes on the board and finding myself dangerously close to a street sign before I can read it. Unfortunately, I've never seen the near sighted equivalents to cheap reading glasses. That's really what I want; some $12 pair off a rack, not $95 frames (that's the cheapest) with $112 lenses. If my eyes continue to get worse, then I'll just need to buy a new pair.

Spring Time for Hitler

I didn't go to Med Show but apparently one of the skits had Hitler singing and dancing to 'Teddy Bear picnic.' I know this, because there was an article on the cover of the Gateway mentioning that Hillel House thought that this was distasteful because it conjured historical memories the awful circumstances of the holocaust. Since this was in the last issue of the Gateway of the semester and the last one I'll ever read I don't have the opportunity to write an opinion letter. I just have one comment for the folks at Hillel house: Mel Brooks. The Jewish people have a fine, almost tradition, of being excellent humorists. Unfortunately there's also the stereotype/ reputation for getting overly offended alot (e.g. South Park's Sheila Broflovski). These guys should save their outrage for actual incidents of anti-semitism. I've seen anti-semitism. A guy on your floor naming a poorly constructed grill cheese sandwich a 'Jew Face' sandwich, even in jest, is anti-Semitic. A cab driver jokingly stating that kosher means that a rabbi pisses on the food; that's anti-Semitic. A room full of red-necks singing "Throw the Jew down the Well"; that's also anti-Semitic. Having Hitler sing something completely ridiculous; that's just funny.

Prose before hoes

I was sitting in SUB, contemplating the braincases of various reptiles when I couldn't help but over hear a group of people who I could only imagine were either English or Theater students. What I surmised from their conversation was that they had a 'good' play, but no ending for it. The solution: leave it open ended. "Ok, so how do we let the audience know that its finished and they can go home?"
"Why don't we start the play with the exact same lines as the ending. You know, that way, people know that they've come full circle."
"Say, that's good. Mess with the time line, clever."
Before long they had a play with a beginning just as bad as the ending and a middle that could be mediocre at best in that context. They then added some symbolism, a few metaphors, some foreshadowing to the fact that they're going to leave it open ended, a simile here and there, some gratuitous use of the word "fuck" and some equally gratuitous social references just to make it topical.
I'm seriously sorry for Spark of Life if she has to deal with crap like this.

The Hitch Hiker's Guide

Read the following in a British accent, it should enhance it to the point of being bearable:
As I'm sure that most of you know, a cinematic version of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy has been made and is due for release at some point this spring. Finding this out, I recalled that I had listened to the books (all five of them) on tape about 4 years ago while working in the lab of a very small museum, where I employed a power drill to remove troublesome rock. Consequentially, I remembered fairly little. To refresh my memory before I went out to criticize the movie, I bought the books, all five of them. By buying an omnibus edition of all 5 in one, I saved about $15 over buying them individually.
Printing on the cover called the series a trilogy in five parts, though it might have been better to call it a quatralogy in five parts since the first plot is a rather long one, taking up two books, and there are three other plots distinct from it. The third plot in there too, i.e. the fourth book, perhaps doesn't count since its kind of boring and was probably meant to prevent the existence of a fifth book.
I got the distinct impression that Douglas Adams (who I think wrote him self in in the form of Arthur Dent, simply choosing a name with reversed initials and about the same number of letters) wanted very much to end the series at book two, and get on with other projects that he thought would be more interesting. No such luck. In each successive book, he tried his hardest to write in something to prevent Arthur Dent from appearing in another novel. Three times he tried relatively happy endings, the third (ie fourth book) was excessively happy for Dent and simultaneously managed to kill of everyone's favorite character (which is not Arthur). Then finally struck on the idea to have an unhappy one. That did the trick, quite thoroughly too. This kept the publishers, who hadn't yet thought of prequals, from being able to throw money at him till he agreed to write a sixth book.
I have to say that I don't look forward to the movie. There are a lot of ways that the movie producers can go wrong with the Hitch Hiker's Guide series. If the precisely follow the book, then they end up with a first movie that doesn't really resolve anything satisfactorily, a fourth one that's pretty dull, and a fifth (no doubt with a new cast, director and generation of audience too young to have seen, and been tired by the first four) with a really unhappy, though thorough ending. If they don't follow the books, then they clearly can't be as funny, ironic or mind bending as the books. I may recommend though, that before going to see the movie one takes some kind of psychedelic drug. That, I think, should enhance things to about the point that Adam's had in mind. Furthermore, an important quality of the book is that it takes numerous asides and follows bizarre tangents, the way Family Guy does, giving the reader insight into Douglas Adam's unusual universe. I find it unlikely that the movies will be able to achieve this. Adams is also fairly clever with his narrative style, and conveyed a lot of humor that way. Since narrative style is obviated by cinematography, the humor just won't come across.