Testing the Waters

According to my Oceanography prof, the coriolus effect (which causes the winds and the oceans in the northern hemisphere to generally spin clockwise), is not strong enough to affect things as small as your toilet bowl or sink. Therefore, the spiral in the toilet is a result of the construction of the toilet and not some global force. My dad, who didn't even know how the coriolus effect worked until I explained it to him, was so powerfully convinced that sinks are affected that he bet me on it. We therefore set up an experiment in the sink, which has a large, straight drain. We filled the sink to the brim, pulled the plug straight up and put in a drop of green food coloring so that we could monitor which direction the water moved. We agreed that 5 trials would be enought to significantly rule out chance if the water always drained spiriling clockwise. Only one counterclockwise rotation would be needed to falsify my dad's claims. In the end, we discovered that the water always drained clockwise (5 for 5) but was not strong enough to force water to go clockwise if you gave it a slight nudge in the other direction first. So much for people who know everything from books.
In other news, it was my birthday the other day and my family treated me to El Torito for supper. My dad really didn't like the waitress. She had trouble with the margarita orders and didn't give my ID a good check beyond the big red stripe with white lettering saying that I was 21 in 2004. Therefore my mom made sure to point out that it was my birthday. The rest of the evening went well and after plates had been cleared, I was still engrossed in conversation when a group comprised of the waitress and 4 large Mexicans snuck up behind me. They suddenly started singing "Happy Birthday" in spanish loud enough that I jumped in shock and horror. The waitress put down a custard dessert with a candle in front of me and then proceeded to cross the line. She picked up my spoon, took a piece of the dessert and stuffed it in my face! Who does that?! My advice to anyone in the service industry is that unless you're female, possibly topless, and (most importantly) the patron is expecting it, don't do this. I'm sure she had her reasons (like a total lack of personal boundaries or job satisfaction) but that just crosses the line!

The OC

Flying in to LAX, one notices something that is never captured in the movies; the shear enormity of a city. From the air, one can see the borders of Edmonton. Las Angeles and the surrounding counties seem to go on forever, staight to the horizon, nothing but glittery points of blue and yellow. In the movies, a space ship goes from a planetary view to a view where buildings are easily distinguishable and loom close at hand. Lost is the perfectly flat sea of lights that extends until finally a mountain is reached. Islands of high cost, hilly real estate stand out as dark patches.
Everybody knows the stereotype of people in southern California being tan and lean and generally better looking than everywhere else. After 4 years away, I have to say that this stereotype has merit. Normally I visit Californi in the winter, so despite the fact that I'm walking around in a t-shirt and shorts, the locals are wearing heavy coats and stay in doors where they crank the furnace in their non-insulated homes. In the summer however, hardly a shred of clothing is worn. I've spent the majority of my time here in my swim trunks, lounging by the pool and ocasionally sipping a fruity, frozen beverage. I saw a friend at his appartment and learned that he pays $1000 per month for the one bedroom place. That's the low end of the scale. I'll never be able to aford to live here again, but its nice to visit.

Pleistocene Park

Ideas often sound alot crazier when you hear them from somebody else. Last year, when I was working at the Mammoth Site of Hot Springs SD, I thought it'd be great if someone would create a Pleistocene Park (same idea as Jurassic Park, only Mammoths and American Lions instead of Sauropods and Tyrannosaurs). Apparently Paul Martin (quaternary paleontologist not prime minister) came up with this idea about 20 years ago, and a group of conservation biologists proposed the same idea in Nature just recently. There are a few important differences and similarities between my idea and theirs. First, their idea doesn't require anybody to clone anything; they just take close relatives of pleistocene megafauna (asian elephant to replace mammoth, African lion to replace American lion, llama to replace Paleollama) and set them up in a park somewhere in the American Mid-west. Second, somebody will actually take their idea seriously as a way to conserve endangered species. Third, neither their idea or mine is very good. We have a hard time preserving the natural fauna of North America, let alone species from widely differing habitats around the world, that aren't used to each other. A few North American Pleistocene remnants include wolves (extinct in the U.S. until their recent re-introduction from Canada), bears (range dramatically reduced in the last 100 years), Mountain Lions (nearly extinct), Bison (only rebounding on farms and a few national parks and forests), house hippos (rarely seen and presumed endangered) and pronghorns (rare). The problem with introducing asian elephants (or even African ones) is that they are not cold adapted. That's pretty much the reason that mamoths and mastadons made it into the Americas while their cousins remained in the old world. Not only that, but so surpisingly little is known about elephant physiology that they do abysmally and die young in zoos and parks. Furthermore, much of what these conservation biologists are suggesting has already been done. Its called a wild animal park! People drive around in a tram or their own vehicle, thought a park like setting and gawk at the transplanted African wild life!

I had to throw out the severed head you gave me

Since my trip to California extends past the first of September, and since my current land lord is a douche and won't let me keep the place for an additional six days, and since my new place isn't ready to move into yet, it looks like I'll be enjoying my annual act of being temporarily homeless. This leaves the question of what to do with all of my stuff. I'd rather lose a digit than deal with U-haul again, so I've decided to hide it all in a descrete location somewhere on campus. Given that I'm carrying all this stuff the approximately 1 mile to the hiding place, I've decided to dispose of alot of the things that are no longer or never have been useful to me. For instance, a friend once gave me a rudimentary replica of myself to use as a decoy for Immegrations. All I have left of it is the head, and I'm finally throwing it away. Also going are many papers, a few magazines, dead pens, a dead hooker, and some snow boots that my dad insisted that I bring to Canada but have only been used twice in 4 years. Other items are simply going to California and staying there. Ironically, many of these things were once gifts from the very family that I'm leaving them with. Seriously, I've played Risk twice since my brother gave it to me 4 years ago and I can only really use one polar fleece, tent-like parka. Were I outfitting an expedition of 10 to Antarctica, I might use more of thermal undewear or poofy jackets. Given the average Californian's idea of bitter cold (about 65 degrees F), my family would actually get better use out of the gear than I would.

Burgess Shale Fossil

Burgess Shale Fossil
Originally uploaded by wgelnaw.

Okay camperoos, its time to have a look at another mystery fossil. The last one turned out to be a fish fin known as Listracanthus (rest of the fish is unknown). This one is from the world famous Burgess shale and represents some of the best soft tissue preservation of early Cambrian metazoans in the world. This one was originally described as just a worm, but the structure in the middle suggests a notochord, and the bars around it suggest myomeres, which would make this thing a Pikiea (one of our earliest ancestors). But then again, that 'notochord' could just be the gut, and the 'myomeres' could just be segments of the worm.

Wilde with anticipation

I just finished reading "The Picture of Dorian Grey" by Oscar Wilde, and am compelled to write about how unimpressed I've been. I'll grant that Wilde was very forward thinking for his time, but I found his work to be an utter failure. I didn't mind the fact that all three main characters were blatatly homosexual (or perhaps bi), which was one of the main issues that victorian society took with the novel. I say, you have to write what you know. However, in the preface, Wilde asks the reader to believe in art for art's sake, and then procedes over the next twenty chapters to demonstrate that he's not even sure if such a thing exists. His style was tiring and long winded, fild with frilly, superflous detail that were supposed to make the book more artistic, but came across as merely an illustration of Wilde's own vanity.

Google Print

After reading a boing boing post about it, I decided to check out Google Print. At first I was very excited by what it had to offer and the power of it. Type in the words you want google to search, and it finds books with what you want. Excitement however quickly gave way to frustration as I tried to skim some of the material that it had found on the regarding "osteology of the reptiles." When looking at the text of a book, it is only possible to view three pages without doing a separate search for the next page. Also, no matter what I tried, I found it impossible to produce any search results for books that were no longer copyrighted. I tried Authors that have been dead for 100 years, titles that have been out of print for 50, esoteric topics only interesting to 10,000 people in the whole world. But alas, all of it was copyrighted. What I would really like to see is a search option along the lines of "copyrighted" or "not copyrighted" with all of the bothersome restrictions taken off the non copyrighted material. Furthermore, there are many titles which don't have to fall under restictions, but do anyway. To my knowledge, any publisher can pump out copies of "Dracula," "A picture of Dorian Grey," "Great Expectations," the complete works of Mark Twain and many many others without consiquence, so why can't a totally unrestricted version be available on Google Print?

Guy Talk

Religion, physics, literature, the biology of aging and economics. Although they sound like Jeopardy categories, they're actually topics of conversation brought up while I was jogging with a friend last night. Being so far from the stereotypical guy topics like sports, sex and beer, it made me wonder if the stereotype was off, or if I'm such a domineering conversationalist as to always drive conversation to things that I can actually say something intelligent about. Perhaps its just a trend among academics? It got me wondering too, what the hell do academic women talk about when amongst themselves?

California Here I Come

California here I come,
Right back where I started from,
Where bowers of flowers bloom in the sun,
Each morning at dawning
Birdies sing an' ev'rything:
A sun-kiss'd miss said, "don't be late,"
That's why I can hardly wait,
Open up that golden gate,
California here I come

After much exasperation with scheduling, pay roll and ticketing, I finally picked up my ticket back to LA today. I'm leaving at the end of the month, so I'll have to have everything here in E-town in order before I leave.

Like a water fight, only different

Have you ever wondered how much blood you could clean up with a roll of paper towels? If you aren't squeezing the towels out to re-use them, the answer is 115 ounces.

I'd be pretty pissed off if someone wasted this much virgin's blood, but there's not use crying over it . At least they had the sensibility to clean it up afterwards.
Seriously though, this is shockingly close to how I picture things going if ever all the regular bloggers in my side bar ever got together.

The above pictures are actually from a funny website where people test just how much use you can get out of products or if claims about portions are true.

The Tortoise

einstein-2
Originally uploaded by wgelnaw.

Some people miss their dog or their cat, but I miss my tortoise. His name is Einstein and I think he weighs about 50lbs. My parents have been gracious enough to care for him while I'm in reptile-unfriendly climates. It'll be good to see him again when I go back to California.

Step in Time

This weekend was spent in northern British Columbia, near the coal mining town of Tumbler Ridge. I and a few other members of the paleo society were there to check out a series of dinosaur track sites and B.C.'s first dinosaur fossils as well as check out a mississippian invertebrate site and generally enjoy nature. A good time was had by all. Unfortunately footprints don't show up that well in photos, and I returned home to find out that I'd lost the case carying all of my cd's (possibly ended up in someone else's bag or vehicle by accident, in which case I'll get it back in September).


a water fall taller (but narrower) than Niagra falls


ankylosaur foot prints