By a Factor of 10

My parents brought to my attention that some fossils would be going up for auction in Los Angeles on Friday. This sort of thing always amuses me since I can get just about anything that would be going up for auction at a price significantly lower than would be paid at the auction house. Most things were too expensive by only one order of magnitude, although some were estimated to sell for close to 100 times what I thought it was actually worth on the fair market. I was astonished when I saw that the estimate for a well preserved uncoiled ammonite was less than $3,000, since it is the only thing that I think could be sold for significantly more. Admitidly, there are a few things that I think belong more in a museum than in someone's private collection, but nothing especially new to science is up for sale. I'm tempted to go to the auction if only to offer my services as an aprasor and proffessional shopper for people who have more money than experience with natural history.

Thanks mate

I hope that my readers will forgive the lack of proper accents in the following post since the current version of blogger currently lacks the appropriate symbols for putting them in place. Therefore, where-ever one sees mate, please read it as though there were an accent over the e, therefore transforming it into a hard A sound and reverting the actual A in the word to a soft one. And they say that spanish is spelt the way it sounds.
In his book Attending Marvels: a patagonian journal George Gaylord Simpson (nevermind the middle name) has a recurring gastronomic theme, a large part of which is devoted to mate. Mate is what we would referr to as an herbal tea, which is made from the dried (sometimes roasted) and ground leaves of the yerba tree (a close relative of Holly). As Simpson putts it," it is a cup that cheers but not enebriates. . . Happy are the patagonians to have their mate! They have so little else." As for the cheering qualities of the drink, Simpson was under the impression that mate contained mateine as the primary psychoeffective compound. Upon further inspection however, I've found that it is indeed our old friend caffeine that is responsible for mate's uplifting affects. Mate is even aesthetically pleasing and novel since it is traditionally served in a gourd and drunk through a metal straw.
After such superlative descriptions of mate from Simpson and from others who have gone to Patagonia in search of fossils, I decided to see if I could get a cup here in Southern California. No success did I have at Starbucks, nor at the Coffee bean and tea Leaf (the latter figures, they don't call it the coffee bean and yerba leaf after all). Henry's market carried nothing of the sort that I was looking for, but final I was rewarded at Cost Plus: world Market with what claimed to be a close faximile of the South American beverage. Mate however is only the second ingredient in the product, the first being Rooibos (whatever that is). I am a fan of bitter drinks, so I find this mate substitute to be rather pleasing, even without sugar. I'd someday like to try an authentic gourd of the drink, but then this is just one more reason for me to travel to central Argentina. Someday, someday.

Cute but annoying

Since I'm still without a job to go to every day I've started working on some pet projects. Today I've started working on disproving my hypothesis that herbivores can evolve from carnivorous taxa but not the other way around. The one group of mammals that has so far presented the biggest threat to the validity of this hypothesis is the diprotodonia, the group of marsupials that includes most famously the kangaroos, koalas, walabees and wambats. With the exception of two families, the entire order is herbivorous. The exceptions are the Thylacoleonidae (the fossil marsupial lion) and the Burramyidae, which are pygmy possums. As one might expect, the marsupial lion is currently believed to be a carnivore. The pygmie possum is more of an omnivore, feeding on insects, tree sap and sometimes very small lizards (though how one of these little things could tackle even the smallest gecko is beyond me). the reason that these creatures are so bothersome is that their exact relationship to other members of the order is still up in the air. We simply don't know how they fit in. Kirsch et al. (1997) lumped the pygmie possum in with the phalangeridae, but I suspect that this may be the result of a shared tree climbing habit rather than a true relationship between these creatures. The shrew-like or possum like morphology seems to me to be the basal (see also primitive) condition for most marsupials, so I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out that the phylangeridae was a polyphyletic clade. If it were well known how these animals were all interrelated, I might be able to either go on with added confidence or be able stop right away and just admit that my hypothesis was wrong. I can take dissappointment, it's uncertainty that's a killer.

Spineless Cretons

Having installed a pond in my backyard and stocked it with goldfish, I've decided a little while ago that it would be an interesting experiment to see if I could replicate the clear water of the pond in the much larger pool. For some time now, the pool has been bright green, and quite uninviting to swimmers. This has been largely oweing to a deficiency of maintenance on my part and that of my housemates. Thus, if a small filter and a few fish can keep a little pond clean, then a big filter and a great number of fish should keep a much larger pond swimmable, completely sans chlorine. So far, this has not worked.
I have put in close to 30 goldfish and over 50 minnows (of which I know not how many survive since they are hard to count) with little noticeable affect on water clarity. As someone thuroughly trained in biology, it occurs to me that the water is still green because the fish only eat algae that is stuck to the side of the pool and not that which floats in the water column. Ergo, I need something that is a filter feeder. Now for the invertebrates!
I ordered cultures of freshwater sponges, copepods and daphnia (tiny crustaceans) and introduced them to the little pond. If they do well there, some will be transfered to the pool where they will hopefully improve water clarity. The problem however is that the invertebrates are so small that I can't see if any of them are even still alive in the pond now that I've introduced them. They could all be stuck in the filter for all that I know. Oh well. It is early yet and I suppose that after a few months, simply transfering water from one body of water to the other will be sufficient to introduce any of the invertebrates should they have survived that long.

Seriously, do you smell that?

Since my last project ended in Chino Hills, I've been put temporarily on a new project in Newport Beach. This one is currently in the Capistrano formation, which is a mire of thick, organic rich shale, siltstone and infrequent sand. It's an okay locality for fossils, though not super. Most of the fossils are small and fragile and the rock doesn't split readily along its bedding plane. The most distracting thing however is the abundance of hydrogen sulfide gas that is seeping out of the ground. For those of you who don't know, hydrogen sulfide is the compound responsible for "rotten egg" smell. It is also lethal in the parts per billion. Consiquently, I wear an alarm that warns me if there is more than 10 parts per billion of the poisonous gas. On the plus side though, the site is directly next to Hoag Hospital, so I aught to be well taken care of if something happens.

Do You Smell That?

It's the smell of civic responsibility, it smells like duty!
I voted today, just a few minutes ago as a matter of fact. For the most part, if i didn't care who won because I didn't know the candidate, I just left it blank. This was the case for the majority of the judicial positions. However, I decided that for major state rolls, I'd throw my vote away in a different manner. I voted for people who couldn't possibly win as a symbolic way of showing that I think that both of the two major parties have done a bum job over the last few years and that I think that they will continue to "stay the course" in this respect. The one section of the ballot that I genuinly cared about was the various initiatives up for the vote. I'll admit that I voted in a rather leftist manner, but I was constrained on a couple of initiatives because provisions had been built in which I thought aught to be on a seperate measure or just shouldn't be regulated at the state level. Besides, on issues that were contentious such as new property taxes for education and eminant domain, the people that I voted for for city government appear likely to vote my way on a case by case basis, obviating the need for the state control.
That's my political rant, one of millions being posted today.

When you got it. . .

Anybody'd be willing to give it to you. Inuendo aside, this means in my case that I can't get a lone from a reporting credit agency until I can sufficiently prove that I absolutely don't need it. This is one of the truisms that has plagued the young go-getter for generations but I feel that it warrents re-iterating here.
Today I spent much of my time in the library, pouring over consumer reports; thuroughly analysing just how poorly made American cars are these days and determining just the vehicle that would best suit my needs and means and then I went to two financial institutions to see if I could borrow the money. As it turns out, given my short credit history and brief time at my current job, I won't be able to get a lone until such a time as I'll have already saved up enough that I'll have no need of it. Heck, at that point I might just get the lone and pay it back the next day just to spite the crediting agency.
Naturally though, publically traded financial institutions aren't the only option. I can still go to my family for a very reasonable rate on an auto loan, but I'm the sort who would only go to relatives for help if and only if I absolutely couldn't do it myself. Call me stubbourn I guess. In the end, this turn of luck just means that I'll need to fix the astro van before getting a permanent replacement rather than after. I intended all along to fix it so that I could get a much higher resale value for it, but I guess that I'll just have to make that investment sooner than later.

Excellent Atavism

Japanese fishermen recently netted a dolphin that posesses atavistic rear fins. This means that it has an extra set of hand sized fins in front of its fluke. These appear to likely be a result of a mutation that has turned back on the genes that produced the back legs of the dolphin's terrestrial ancestors. Since the front and back legs are serially homologous structures, if the gene is turned on, the other genes that regulate shape and structure of the limb will produce a fin shape even if ancient whales lost their rear legs before they got to look like functional fins.

Mysterious ways

Anyone who declares themselves an enemy of the theory of evolution, I declare an enemy of mine. That said, it makes me glad to see my enemies get terrible news. The particular case that brings this all up is that of "Dr. Dino" an evangelist in Florida who makes it his life's work to try to debunk evolution. He just found out that he's been found guilty of 58 counts of tax evasion and fraud, meaning that he and his wife could face upto 200 years in prison between them. Apparently he thought that because his organization is religiously based, that it received tax exempt status. Evidently, he didn't actually consult a tax advisor in the matter. The lord may work in mysterious ways, but the IRS is only concerned with the mysterious nature of his payroll and tax returns.
link to the news article
link to boingboing article

the picture at the side is Richard Dawkins