Even Mexico's sold out

Today I saw a visitor to the museum that was wearing a t-shirt that said "Hard Rock Cafe - Tijuana. What happened to the good old TJ of yore. When you could go there to buy weapons, drugs, alcohol all before your 21st birthday. The appeal of TJ was that you could go to some sleazy hole in the wall bar, pic up a cute chicana, promise to take her back to the USA then dump her and go back to your homeland after you were done with her. Or even better yet, pick up an american girl and giver her some disease or get her pregnant so that it'd be really funny when her family asks here what souvenirs she got south of the border. I tell you, the whole world's gradually selling out.

Natural Law

Gelnaw's Law: Nature tends towards maximum irony.

 

Digging with the BHI

   This weekend I went to Wyoming to participate in a Dino dig with the Black Hills Institute.  There were three dinosaur horizons within only a couple of meters of each other.  The first had some sauropod and some stegosaur bits, but the material was really badly weathered from being at the surface.  The next horizon, the one that I worked at contained a nearly complete "Camarasaur."  I put that in quotes because they really aren't sure yet.  Alot of the features look like a mix of camarasaur and diplodocoid characters.  An hour before I left they started to find the skull so that ought to provide some insite.  The next horizon below that contained some more stegosaur bits but that site hadn't been opened yet.  What I found while there included a number of rib fragments, what might be part of the maxilla of the sauropod we're looking and a coelurus tooth.  While walking around a found a couple of large (25+  lbs) bone fragments that everybody else had passed over as rocks.  I guess they weren't expecting to find eroded material that big.  Too bad I didn't get to keep one of them, but it probably would have cost about $30 to send it home to the collection anyway.
   Over the weekend I also read Fight Club.  It's a good book and the movie parted from it a bit, but having seen both I'd have to say that the movie was a really good adaptation.  What was changed was probably done so to cut down on the number of characters and to keep it from getting an NC17 rating.  I liked it so much that I just ordered that author's other books Lulaby and Choke.  But since I found a good deal on Marsh's Dinosaurs, I ordered that at the same time too. 

Bush

I don't know much about politics, but I know what I dislike, and I dislike president Bush.  This November I'll be voting for Kerry.  There are many reasons why (http://drivingvotes.org/bushfacts.shtml) but my biggest reason is that when I started University in Canada, the Canadian dollar traded for roughly 66 cents American.  Now it trades for 76.5 cents.  I've lost money without spending it, and I hate losing money.  I think of the value of things in terms of their permanence or lack of mutability.  I hope that Bush doesn't have much permanence.

Much new stuff

    Well, none of the plans that I had for this last week panned out.  I thought that they might not, hense the "of mice and men" title on the post.  I really wanted to go to the rex dig site, but the van left without me that morning.  I was a little late but they must have left early because if they had left right on time, I would have at least seen them pulling away.  I'm making up for that loss though.  Tomarrow, whether I like it or not, I'm going to a Jurassic Dig site with the Black Hills institute.  My boss felt sorry for me missing the van last time so she arranged me to work with them Friday, Saturday and Sunday. 
    The plan to go cave exploring kind of fell out too.  I wanted to get the most out of my day off so I decided to see Mt Rushmore and go cave exploring in the same day.  And since I don't own a car (and the people who I could borrow one from are still a bit angry with me) I decided to hitch hike.  In the proud tradition of my father Gypsy Gelnaw, I hit the road and stuck out my thumb.  I left at 8:00 in the morning an had made it the 50 miles by 2:00 in the afternoon.  I was supposed to be at the cave by 5:00 pm.  It takes about two hours to see the monument and do everything that there is to do there (I might have been a bit slower because I was tired and my feet hurt).  As luck would have it, one of the people who gave me a ride (specifically the one who gave me the lift to the monument) was actually the daughter of Bob Farrar, one of the co-owners of the black hills institute.  So at 4:30, rather than try to make it 40 miles back to the cave in two hours, I decided to accept her invitation to visit the institute.  I don't know if my positive impression helped me get the weekend spot on the dig, but it couldn't have hurt. 
    On the way to Mt. Rushmore, I stopped in Custer and checked out the rock shops there.  For under $30 I picked up 4 cranial endocasts, two half skulls, one 3/4 complete skull and 3 very incomplete skulls of oreodons (oligocene sheep sized horse).  And to think, my parents got me a 5/6 complete skull for me for x-mas when I was  about 12 for $200.  Boy they charge alot for importing a fossil to California.

Of Mice and Men

Well, this week promises to be a bit more interesting than usual. Tomarrow I'm going to Wyoming with Earthwatch to check out one of Peter Larson's Tyrannosaur sites. It's either where they found Sue or where they found Stan. Either way, their's more Tyrannosaur material there which supports the hypothesis that gregarious behavior is a conservative trait across the tyrannosauria.
Saturday Evening I might be going spelunking in Wind Cave. The park manager is going to try to map some unexplored parts of the cave and said I could join him. It aught to be a very memorable experience if my mild claustrophobia doesn't turn into crippling claustrophobia. Then again, even if it does, it will still be quite memorable, but for the entirely wrong reasons.
On top of this, I'm finally getting some bigger projects in the lab. We're getting in Pygmy Mammoth material from the channel islands of California (The Santa Barbara Museum which sould be handling it doesn't have a preparator right now so we're handling it) but so far I haven't been able to work on any of it. Right now I've got a first thorasic vertebra, two phalangies and a mid thoracic vertebra to work on. I aught to be done with three of them by the end of Saturday.

Bone Bed

I got to work in the bonebed today. This is only the second time that they've let me work in there but this time I was at least closer to bone, though I didn't personally find any. Bonebed work is quite possibly the most satisfying work that I've done here: considerably more enjoyable than giving tours and working in the gift shop and more physically exerting than time in the lab.

Welcome New Readers

I have recently acquired what I believe will be several regular readers and so I say welcome. Perhaps this means I'll soon be able to get more than 1000 hits on this site. And so to them I say welcome.
Today's blog is about villains. Nearly every movie, book and comic book has a villain in it (except for crappy dramas that rely on interpersonal and internal conflict). There is a very fine line between super hero and super villain. It often depends on the point of view. To the British of the 1770's the revolutionary Americans were treasonous terrorists. Villains often could have been hero's if not for some bitterness, spite or resentment introduced to their lives. But what makes a villain and what makes him good at what he does? Quintessential, a villain must inspire hatred in either the protagonists or in the audience. Merely causing fear or pain or injustice is not enough to be really evil. Instead, the victims must vow to exact vengeance on their nemesis. Ideally this must be difficult for the good guy(s), that way there's actually some plot.
In nearly every comic book, the super hero has some weakness which his arch rival attempts to exploit. Knowledge is power and so if the villain knows for example the hero's secret identity (often quite contrary to their usual appearance to the world) then that villain has the upper hand. I rather like Superman as an example. Kill Bill vol. 2 explained it quite eloquently. Clark Kent is Superman's critique of the human race- cowardly, weak and physically flawed (the glasses). But even when he's Clark Kent, he's still Superman on the inside and drops everything to go do some good deed. No matter how hard he tries, he would never stop being Superman. Clark is merely a camouflage cover so that he can blend in with normal society. If Luthor were ever to discover that duality, then Superman would be rendered powerless against him. Bringing Luthor to justice would automatically mean having to accept that everyone would know his secret and that he would never be able to partake in casual society again. It would be lost to him forever and not even Superman has courage enough to give that up.
Until the final resolution, the villain is the one that has the most fun. Toying with the hero's, dangling false leads in front of their noses. Inevitably however, villain always slips up. Otherwise the audience would be outraged at the conclusion and the series would quickly end. The villain's tragic flaw is usually pride. Pride in one's work leads to bragging and the villain makes the mistake of revealing his sinister plot before the job is done. In the really good comics, the hero's even learn something from the villain. The reasons for his megalomania or other such condition as revealed through a very open rant encourage the heros to prevent other from going down the darker path.
Be on the look out for villains everywhere... Mwahahahahaha!!!

National Geographic

Yesterday the public library held a book sale, at which there was quite alot of crap, but also a couple of gems. I picked up a copy of Darwin's "On the Oriin of Species" and "The Descent of Man" for a dollar as well as the major works of Levoisier and Faraday and some other chemist who's name I can't remember for another dollar. I also picked up a whole bunch of old national geographic magazines. Unfortunately they didn't have anything from 1919 (the year I really want because it contains an article by on Barnum Brown) but they did have 1920, 1921, 1922 and 1923. Despite this wide range of years, none of them were complete. There was another collector there competing with me for posession. As a result I got a little over half of each of the above mentioned years. I normally wouldn't have wasted my time on National Geographics that don't have a Paleo article but for $1 each, it seemed like too good of an offer to pass up. The Wee book in in Edmonton near where I used to live offered National Geographics from the 1920's for $32 CAD each, so I feel that I got a really good deal. Even if I can only sell them for $10 USD each, I'm still making $270 USD profit on a $30 investment. If anyone would like to buy some old Nat Geo's off me for $10 a piece, I'd be more than happy to sell. Otherwise, I'll just be mailing them back to California to join the rest of the Gelnaw Library and Museum.
Just as a side note, I'm at the public library and the guy sitting next to me at the computers is watching copious amounts of gay porn. I reallize that it's gay pride week or month or whatever, but that is just rediculous.

William Gelnaw's Guide to Frugal Living

The people at google have recently reintroduced the ignorant masses to one of my favorite words; frugale. Unfortunatly, They spell it Froogle so it matches the parent company and now nobody anwhere will be able to spell it properly (heaven help us if it ever makes its way onto spell check lists). I have often found myself trying to explain to people why this word is such an appropriate discription of me. If you know me and know the meaning of the word, then its clear. But when the girl is asking if you want a private dance and all you have is ones, I find myself coming up with synonyms like cheap, pennywise, thrifty, a miser etc.
Frugal is not only a word but an idea that is sorely out of use. People today really don't know how to save their money. Granted, there are alot of circumstances in life that prevent one from being able to save (like getting knocked up), but for much of the population there is no excuse. The American economy practically runs on the fact that Americans buy more than they can afford thereby keeping inflation and interest rates pretty constant. As such I have decided two write the great unamerican novel (or manual). "William Gelnaw's Guide to Frugal living" or just "The Guide to Frugal Living" will instruct the ignorant and spend happy populace of this great nation in the ways of making their money last. If it works en mass then its true that my followers will see an initial reduction in the quality of their lives, but in the long run they'll be glad. I've come up with a few chapter headings as follows:

Never Pay full Price for Retail

Making it Last

Shared Living Arangements or Try Living at the Office

Never Buy Name Brand

The Gender Difference

Peasant Vision

Ebay, the Dollar Store, the Salvatio Army and You

Comparison Shopping

Don't have kids, Please

The Credit Conspiracy

It's Cheaper to Keep'er

Sugar Mamma's/ Daddies and You

Don't Let Grades Get in the Way of Your Education, Attending University for Free

Gambling Losses

Charity

The Tax Man Cometh

Police Auctions, the Repo Depot

Don't Have Much, Will Travel

Free Lunch and other Myths (getting/stealing free food, and pot lucks)

Grow Your Own, Make Your Own

Penny Wise but Pound Foolish

Black Hills Institute

Yesterday, I went to The Black Hills Institute of Geological Research in Hill City South Dakota, and it's awesome!!! It's only a three room museum (the mineral room, the fossil room and the gift shop) but its great. When I picture what I would really want my own museum to be like, I picture something like that. It is the former home of Sue the T. Rex and is the perminant home of Stan of the same species as well as several other Tyrannosaurs of various nick names. Generally, I think t sucks that they had Sue taken away by the FBI and then sold to another museum for $8.3 million (all procedes going to the guy who was leasing the land from the Soix). The institute saw no money from that sale despite the fact that they gave the guy $5000 to dig on his land, and pumped thousands more into its excavation and partial preparation. In spite of this, and the fact that the owners both did some jail time for alleged fossil poaching, the institute seems to be doing ok. The skull of Stan is quite possibly the best preserved dinosaur skull I have ever seen. Ironically, they also have a cast on display of MOR 555. I can't imagine it should have been too hard for the Chicago field museum to sell them or even give them a cast of Sue. The Institute should have at least have been offered a discount (you know, for finding the damn thing!!!). They've also got awesome displays of lagerstaten fossils from the Green River Formation, Lebanon (Yay lebanese fossil exports) and the Solenhofren, Germany. They've also got the biggest, best preserved Euriptyerid I've ever seen.
I highly recomend a visit to any avid fossil nerd. Admission is free but please give them a donation. They've earned it.

writing friends

I've been getting the impression lately that I may be trying to contact people by the wrong e-mail addresses. I've sent out a couple of e-mails to friends but I get the impression that nobody is getting them. Either that or they just haven't written back yet. Michelle wrote me back and did it rather promptly. I've written Sudeep twice in the last two months and haven't gotten any reply. Perhaps he feels bad about the fact that I spent more time with Michelle the last time I was in California than with him. If that is the Case, I'm sorry dude. Ok, that could explain one lack of response. What's wrong with the rest of you. I lead a really boring life here in South Dakota and it means alot when I get correspondence.

perminance and imperminance

I was surprised today to find out that the wiki that I created about the value of public participants in field work still exists despite the fact that it was at one point slated for deletion due to its enormous size. It's no longer under the heading field work, but you can get to it from a link in that heading or using the above link. I am kind of depressed that whoever relocated it specified it as archaeological despite the fact that there isn't one archaeological organization that I surveyed. He must not have even read the abstract.
Besides checking out my old Wiki, I've been filling up my G-mail account. I think I must be the only person to have already filled close to 30% of my free Gigabite of space already. I've been sending myself my digital photos so I can get them off of my memory card. I didn't want to burn them onto a cd yet because it seemed like only 240 megabytes of an available 700 would be a waste of space. In retrospect I should have just burt the cd as a session and added more later. Oh well.
In other news, somebody took my idea and is making a whole lot of money off of it. Well, actually they just had a similar idea and are making money off of a limited academic circle. There's a book called "the dinosaur paper 1676-1908" (dates may be wrong here) in which it repuplishes all of the original papers starting with the very first description of a dinosaur and going to the start of the 20th century. My idea was a bit more limited in scope. I just wanted to do this for each major journal that published dino papers separately. Whoever compiled this is briliant, and clearly very hard working. I have no idea how they got some of these papers. Anyway, I must have this book. Unfortunately, It's just as costly as a text book ($75 USD) so I think I'll wait until I can get it used. Or, since I'm only buying used texts now, I think I'll use what I save on those to buy it. I've spent alot lately on my paleo adiction (Lebanese and Moroccan fossils) so I think I should wait.
Another book that I'm really sorry that I have to wait to buy is Alfred S. Romer's "The Osteology of the Reptiles." It looks like a great book but its about $110 USD. That's alot for book that hasn't had a new edition in over 30 years and doesn't have a single color plate. Perhaps some money making scheme of mine will cover it. Who knows?

Good to be me

It's good to be me, especially since I've got some seriously cool hookups. Matt Vavreck is currently in Lebanon doing some research for Dr. Chatterton. While there, he's doing a little shoping for me. I'm not quite sure what I'm getting, but its between several varieties of Cretaceous age fossil fish. Apparently, I could get some small ones for $5 each or bigger ones for more. I might even get a cretaceous ray (now if only I could remember the name of the Alberta variety so I could do some comparison, beggins with an M,I think).
Meanwhile elsewhere in the Middle East (Morocco) Stacey Gibb (also doing research for Dr. Chatterton) has money from me specifically for some dinosaur material and an enormous Trilobite.
I'd personally rather be doing this shopping my self but it's nice to be able to get the local price discount on otherwise expensive fossils. A great example of just such a discount is something I happened upon just the other day. I was walking around town (window shopping without the intention to buy) when I spied a couple of fossil turtles from the White River formation. A smaller one (about 10 inches long and 6 inches wide) was missing the majority of the carapase (showing just the endocast) and the plastron was obscured by matrix. The larger one (12 inches by 7 inches) still has about half of its carapase (also showing an endocast where shell is missing) and the plastron is once again obscured by matrix. Normally, If I were to buy this from a retailer in California who knows anything about fossils, I would be charge about $100-$150 for the better one. I bought it from a shop that had a couple of fossils (but mostly used books) for a grand total of $35, plus tax. Now I have a project in cleaning it up. I particularly like it because if reminds me of when I was a kid and I preped the same Oreodon skull (from the same formation) for 5 years (I'm alot faster now).

DinoData

Once again I would like to sing the praises of Dinodata. It's been a while since I've visited the site but I'm glad that I did. Apparently an oviraptor called Ingenia (one who's photo has long eluded me)has been shown to gave numerous impressions of blood vessels on the inside of its brain case, indicating that at least in that group, the brain was snuggly fitting within the skull, much like modern birds and mammals. As for what this evidence indicates in terms of phylogeny its pretty inconclusive if you ask me. The camp that says that oviraptors are within the crown group birds would argue that they inherited their larger brains from their birdy ancestors, where as the group that puts oviraptors in an outgroup relation to birds would argue that birds and oviraptors inherited the larger brain from a common ancestor. I personally like the idea that an ancestor with either a much lower body mass or a dramatic change in bite mechanics (reduces shock transmission to the brain) facilitated the transition to a more closely fitting brain. Still this hypothesis could go either way in terms of phylogeny.

What a Good Day!!!

Today's been going pretty good. It turns out somebody actually reads my blog! Who knew, huh? I've also taken care of the financial stuff for the U of A paleo society (that I to say I'v passed the buck to somebody else), I've packed up most of my stuff and I got Gmail. As for the comment on my last blog about becoming a superhero called Mammoth Man, I've decided to pass on that. After all, I've always wanted to be a super villain rather than the hero and people might be kind of confused when they expect somebody mammoth in proportion but only get me. On top of that, the idea of an evil paleontologist has been done. Remember the 80's movie BABY, about a baby dinosaur that's being hunted by an evil paleontologist in the Congo and a beautiful but ditsy female paleontologist and her husband are trying to save it? The movie did ok, but the evil paleontologist dies at the end, and i really don't want that kind of precedent set for me.

The end is near

Well, despite the fact that everything I touch seams to be doomed to ruin (even especially this blog), I can just about see the end at hand. Eleve more days until I leave for field school and about ten more after that until I leave for south Dakota. My housing situation is taken care of for once and I just have to worry about getting through my exams and field school alive. Given that my shoes are absolute crapola (I was going to buy new ones but cheaped out) I think I'm going to buy some insoles and glue tire tred onto the bottom of my current shoes. That ought to extend the life of them for another year or so. The next time I blog, odds are I'll have something to say about the pleistocene of South Dakota.

Putting an end to it

In the opinion section of the Gateway (the University of Alberta student's union run news paper) there has been something of a debate each week regarding evolution and creation. Since for some reason, the debate is now even being advertised on my site, I figured I'd just try to put an end to it. The fact of the matter is that anyone who has ever become embroiled in such a debate has inadvertently come to the inevitable conclusion that you will never convince someone of a different opinion than yourself that they are wrong and that they will never convince you. You walk away from the conversation wondering how the other person could be so closed minded and blind to the obvious truth. People are stubborn. Pretty much once they've reached the age of 15 their ideologies are set and only life altering experiences will ever change it. A person may become more complacent over time about their ideology and this may lead that person having less of an impact on the ideology of the next generation, but the persons themselves are rather unchanging. It's like evolution is suppose, any individual is stuck in their genetic place. Small changes can occur but its just a matter of how much impact that individual has on the next generation that determines the eventual outcome of the population. The population will fluctuate with changes in the environment, but without the introduction of novel features or a stark need for change, there will be a fair amount of stasis in the relative proportions of ideologies in the population.

piling up

Right now I'm supposed to be working on either of two systematics papers, one on gerrids one on conodons, or an applied ethics paper, or even a paper on the value of amature field assistants to paleontology (particularly in day digs programs) or an interpretation of a wheeler diagram that my strat team constructed this last week. I haven't started any of them. And frankly I really don't feel like doing any of them today. What I'd really like to do is scan through my annotated bibliography of dinosaur paleopathology and find articles relevant to predator-prey relations (for somebody elses research project) or look up the mineralology of dinosaur bone from different locals or continue my ongoing quest to measure all of the relevant qualities of all the fenestrae in theropod skulls. After all, I haven't even been given the topics for my ethics paper, I don't have the references for my conodonts paper and I didn't print out my trees for my gerrids systematics paper. That prety much leaves the Day Digs paper and the wheeler diagram write up. Being that the wheeler diagram is due sooner, in the spirit of procrastination, I think I'll work on the Day Digs paper instead. University would be great if you got to do your own research, on topics that hold your interest. I've been told that grad school is like that (but not by grad students or profs) so I guess I'll have to wait until i've got a degree before people will just let me research what I like in peace.

A call for Wikipedia submissions

I was surfing wikipedia and was shocked to find that there was practically no discussion of marine reptiles. A search for Euryapsida doesn't even turn up any results. I'm imploring anyone with expertise on marine reptiles (even extant ones) to submit to the site. Honestly, how are people supposed to learn if we don't teach them. I set up a stub site that has a basic break down of the marine reptiles into diapsids (mosasaurs, marine crocs and marine iguanas) and Euryapsids (plesiosaurs, ichthyosaurs and placodonts) there is of course a plethora of others but I don't have the time to fill them in.