Look Out Ladies

Despite having broken the ties that bind several weeks ago (see: my world is a far brighter place now that you're not in it), I'm only now officially a bachelor. And now that I don't have a ton of work and projects to take up my time, I can focus on ahem other pursuits. Okay, granted that I'm a bachelor of science, but that just means that I can repeatedly and falsifyably be single.
My parents came up for the convocation ceremony and I was given the royal treatment. Each supper I ate was about as much as I spend weekly on groceries, but I'm not complaining. I enjoy a steak dinner. As for the generosity of other relatives, I made out like it was my bar mitsvah. Oh, and really, look out. I'm getting a van at the end of the summer and bachelor van jokes aside, I haven't driven regularly for about 3 years, so it'd be wise to give a blue chevy Astro lt van some space for safety's sake.

My How Much I've Learned

After 4 years of intensive study, including many sleepless nights and GPA of 3.6in my final year, I apparently can't tell the difference between an early jawless fish and a turtle. I was at the warehouse that containes many of the University's not yet studied specimens and was showed a pile of red Australian limestone sitting outside, weathering out. There were several chunks left around that were not in the pile of rocks to keep, so I was allowed to take one home. Finding one with a pit of thin flat bone with a dimpled texture sticking out I assumed that it was a turtle and that the limestone was from a Plio- or Pleistocene limestone deposit like at Riversleigh Australia. Apparently it's devonian and the bone I picked up was an armoured jawless fish similar to Bothriolepis.
Fish:


Turtle:

How to Be a Hermit: shopping smart

Occasionally a thrift store will have a sale so that they can clear out a bunch of merch. This is the day to shop. At Value Village, E-town's foremost thrift store, there is a semi-anual 50% off day.
Purchased:
3-piece suite, grey, fits well
1 tweed jacket, tan
1 belt, black
1 cd, only 2 tracks I actually wanted
Cost: $18.73 CAD
Wise men say "never pay full price for retail"
Hermits say "never pay more than twelve dollars for a suit"

Full Belly on a Sunny Day

It is a shame that anyone should have to work indoors on a day so beautiful. Especially if that person is me.

Why do you drink coffee?

Because (choose all that apply):
you like the taste
you like the atmosphere of the cafe
you need to be alert or energetic
it makes you look cool/ sophisticated
the barista is cute
you’re trying to find the lethal dosage of caffeine
unlike soda/ pop, you can control the amount of sugar in it
it goes well with your cigarettes
you’re proving that it doesn’t stunt your growth
it’s faster than a real breakfast (or any solid food based meal)
heart murmurs are fun
its more socially acceptable to have at work than hard liquor
chicks dig guys who are high strung
you’ve always wondered what it would be like to piss 8 liters in 4 hours
holding in your lap while you drive adds ‘danger’ to your commute
it looks like you’ve been working harder if your cloths are coffee stained
if you don’t, somewhere, a ninja will turn a bunny inside out
you heard that free trade was a good thing but had no idea what it meant
a latte is cheaper than a line of cocaine

feel free to add more

Just so you know. . .

Three Names You Go By:
1. Shaggy
2. Indy (as in Jones, not rock)
3. Hey you

Three screen names you have had:
1. CaliforniaWill
2. IndianaWill
3. Sexkitten69

Three things you like about yourself:
1. IQ
2. Cynicism
3. Inability to turn off 1 or 2

THREE THINGS YOU DON'T LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF
1. Introvery, hermitous tendencies
2. Pyromaniacal tendencies
3. the lonliness that comes with knowing that I'm better than anyone else

THREE PARTS OF YOUR HERITAGE
1. Jewish (eastern europe somewhere)
2. Irish
3. French Canadian

THREE THINGS THAT SCARE YOU
1. the idiocy of average people
2. stupid people in large numbers (Children fall in here or in #1)
3. being close to rapidly rotating firey spheres of death with blades coming out at odd angles of them.

THREE THINGS YOU ARE WEARING RIGHT NOW/ FAVORITE ARTICLES OF CLOTHING
1. light kahkis
2. brown fedora
3. lucky rocket ship underwear

FAVORITE SONGS/ BANDS
1. I listen to whatever corporate radio tells me to listen to.
2. three of the voices in my head got together and formed an acapella group and they're not bad.
3. Wagner, because it just makes you want to invade Poland.

THREE NEW THINGS YOU WANT TO DO IN NEXT 12 MONTHS
1. so utterly warp someone's mind that their grey matter shoots out their ears like science fair volcanoes.
2. Conquer a country: either the USA or a small one somewhere in the tropics
3. develope super powers, then abuse them, possibly for #1 or 2

THREE THINGS YOU WANT IN A RELATIONSHIP (love is neither given nor necessary)
1. A nerd
2. Faithfulness
3. A willingness to partake in my penchant for the unspeakable.

TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE
1. All of my plans for world domination start with conquering Australia
2. I'm not bitter at all
3. I know exactly what I'm doing with my life.

THREE PHYSICAL THINGS ABOUT THE OPPOSITE SEX THAT APPEAL TO YOU
1. skinny
2. naturally blond or latina
3. clear complexion

THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE HOPPIES
1. fossil hunting
2. conversation (yes, it's a hobby)
3. Plotting world domination.

THREE THINGS YOU WANT TO DO REALLY BADLY RIGHT NOW
1. sleep with someone
2. conqur Australia
3. learn the answer to the mystery of where Spark of Life lives.

THREE CAREERS YOU'RE CONSIDERING
1. Professor of Vertebrate Paleontology
2. Curator of Verytebrate Paleontology at a major museum
3. Supreme dictator of Earth

THREE PLACES YOU WANT TO GO ON VACATION
1. Indonesia
2. Germany
3. Morocco

THREE KID'S NAMES
1. Mistake One
2. Error Two
3. William

THREE THINGS YOU WANT TO DO BEFORE YOU DIE
1. finish writing one of my books
2. Stare doon an oncoming bullet train
3. Vanquish the very idea of god in the hearts and minds of every sentient being as part of world conquest

THREE PEOPLE THAT MUST TAKE THIS QUIZ OR BE THE FIRST TO BE QUASHED UNDER MY IRON FIST.
1. Spark of Life (that makes two votes now)
2. Naked drinking coffee
3. anyone else who happens to read this blog

Bum Luck

As I was doing my weekly grocery shopping today I notice a middle aged woman in a green shirt following me around the store. It's obvious when someone is following you if you make sudden changes in direction, do a lap around the store and the person is still there, or tries to non-chalantly walk passed you in an isle only to double back to what every isle you go to next. I concluded quickly, and correctly, that she was the store detective. Once I had as much fun as I could derive from making her follow me in a circutous route around the store, I went to a register and paid for my groceries. As I was walking out, just as I predicted, the woman stopped me.
"Excuse me sir, could I talk to you for a second." she said in a tone that was less asking than demanding.
"Certainly" I replied as I repressed a smug smile.
"I'm the store detective and I saw you shop lift just now. Lets go to my office and I'll have you empty your pockets. Please come with me or I'll have to call the RCMP and they'll deal with you"
"Really?" I asked "what did I steal?" At this point I was contemplating emaressing her infront of real cops, but I decided against it. It would take too long.
"I saw you take some chocolates and put them in your pocket. Now please come with me to my office."
"No need, I can empty my pockets right here. It'll be a good example to the other riff raff." Saying this, I could see the sense of triumph fading quickly from her face. Putting down by bags, I turned my hip and back pockets inside out and let her pat down my cargo pockets. "Satisfied?" I asked.
"Sorry sir, it's just a precausion. Have a nice day." she said with a distinct look of embarassment and started towards her office.
"That's okay, catch me next time I guess." In the back of my mind, I also thought "That's right, now make like good spam and go jump down someone else's throat."
I was feeling so damn smug and riteous that when a homeless fellow asked me for some food a minute later I magnanimously gave him one of my jars of peanut butter (1kg, $3.29). In retrospect I should have given him my loaf of bread, but then I wouldn't have had anything to spread the peanut butter on. Had he asked for money as some of the usual White Ave bums did five minutes later I would have refused as usual, but I was feeling good and thought that a good deed would round out my day nicely. Besides, I doubt that he can trade Jiffy for Jack Daniels.

Darth Jesus

Hydrass and I went to see "Star Wars" the other night. Despite the fact that it had replaced most qualities that made the original movies great (ie. pithy dialogue, one liners, insults shared between protagonists and a villain that was really evil as opposed to just pissy) with spectacular visuals and extended fight scenes, I enjoyed it. One thing that caught my attention though was Obi Wan's reply to Anikan saying "if you are not with me, you are my enemy." Obi Wan said that only sith's dealt with such absolutes. Hmmm, really? For those of you who have a bible handy, go to Mathew 12:30 or Luke 11:23. Both appostles attribute "He that is not with me is against me" to Jesus.

Library Legacy

I happened across an antique store on whight ave today that displayed a couple of well illustrated Paleo books in the front window. I wandered in and found that they had an impressive collection of paleo books for sale including "Cope's Bible," which is a report on tertiary mammals and is about five inches thick. Upon inquiry, I found out that the store owner had bought them all at once from an estate sale and that what was displayed was only about half of it.
I can't help but wonder though to whom these had belonged. They must have been purchased in Edmonton and previously owned by someone who's been here for a long time, since one item was a finely printed course manual for a U of A paleo field school in the 50's. There were also several articles from the the mid 1920's and 30's and Cope's bible has been out of print for decades. The family of the original owner should be dragged out into the street and beaten with a cane for deciding to sell the library rather than donate it to the University where it belongs. I wonder if some day the same fate will befall my burgeoning collection of books and articles? We don't collect things like this just to have them eventually sold off piece meal. An academic's library is a reflection of his career and acheivements. To sell it off is to obliterate his memory, and scoff in the face of what we Academics stand for: the accumulation of knowledge.

Conversation while at border station

Old man: So, what is it you do for a livin'?
Me : I was a paleontology student at the University of Alberta, but now I'll be working as an assistant in their museum collections.
Old man: Oh, so you look at dinosaurs, eh?
Me: Yeah, sort of.
Old man: My grand neice used to do that. Yeah, that was back in . . .
(five minutes later)
. . . But what I alway had a problem with was that ten thosand year stuff.
Me: Well, no scientists say ten thousand years for fossils.
Old Man : Oh? How old are they then?
Me: Any dinosaur fossil you see would be at least 65 million years old.
Old Man : What!? That's even worse! How old do they think the earth is then?
Me: Oh, about four and a half billion.

Not that anybody cares but . . .

should I so choose, I can stay in Canada for a year. I have no intention of staying that long, but its an option. It also means that I can attend my graduation ceremony, work for the EAS department and come up with some clever way of letting the people at the Ashfall site know that they'll have to find someone else. All this and I only had to hitch hike 100km and shell out $330.00 CAD in the process.

Border Run

Well, that's it, I have to leave the country. In fact, I'm leaving tonight, catching a greyhound for the border. Hopefully by leaving fleeing this beautiful country, my past won't come back to haunt me and I'll be able to live out the rest of my summer in relative peace. But don't worry, I'll be back. Probably about two minutes after I leave. I'm just going to the border to expedite some paperwork for my work visa. Applying within Canada takes 45 to 60 days (which based on past experience means actually about 6 months), but going to the border takes one day. I just hope that they can process the damn thing in under 30 minutes. Otherwise, I'll have to either wait a full day for the next bus going north or hitch hike to Lethbridge and get a bus from there. Wish me luck.

Patterns of Cartilage condensation

Back Logged Paleo Post

Back in 1997, when I was still a freshman in high school, Alan Feduccia wrote a paper on the homology of the digits in the bird limb claiming that embryonic development showed the digits in the hands of birds to be II-III-IV (index, middle and ring finger) rather than I-II-III as seen in Theropod evolution. Pivotal though it is, I’ve only just now gotten around to reading it. His argument was based on the observation that the condensation of cartilage in the limb consistently followed the pattern of going through the humerus, ulna and digit IV. His sample included a chicken, cormorant, turtle and an alligator. In all of them he saw a central axis of cartilage condensation and called them homologous. He neglected to his own a priori assumption of that if condensation goes through digit IV in animals that have digit IV, that it must go through digit IV in animals about which the presence of digit IV is uncertain. Assumed homology to digit IV negates the point of his study. Consequentially, in birds, Feduccia saw the temporary vestige of digit V posterior to IV and absolutely no sign of digit I at the other end. Had he seen a center of ossification for digit I, then I’d accept his results.

A big problem with his methodology was that the only groups that he used for comparison each had 5 digits on the hand. Furthermore, the evolution of the hand and foot of Theropod dinosaurs identical as Feduccia makes it sound. The hand in theropods is I-II-III (which we can tell from a strong reduction and eventually loss of IV & V in primitive theropods) while the main digits on the foot are II-III-IV (since we can see the outer digits 1 & V be reduced to due claws). In the foot of the chick embryo, one does see the remnants of digits I & V, which is why it’s okay to say that the axis of cartilage condensation goes through digit IV in the foot. However, I suspect that the axis in the hand switched from IV to III early in the evolution of theropods (Ornithischians don’t follow this pattern and sauropods keep all of their digits). To substantiate or refute the possibility of the axis of condensation moving, one might compare the embryology to the fossil of horses, sloths, tapirs, guinea pigs or some other digit reduced animal.
Feduccia further argues that “a variation of this pattern wherein the primary axis runs through digit III, would eliminate any phylogenetic significance from the morphological and molecular similarities in amniote limb development. If such a condition could be demonstrated, patterns of limb development would have to be decoupled from phylogeny, and this stereotypic pattern of development accepted as convergence.” This is just nonsense. The axis of condensation has to go somewhere, and it would look identical whether it goes through digit IV or III. It’s much more parsimonious to assume that the digit IV axis is basal and that the digit III condition evolved once and is just a synapomorphy of birds and theropods.

Kung Fu Hustle

By way of celebrating actually being done for the summer, I went out to the Garneau theater for cheap movie night and saw "Kung Fu Hustle." I thuroughly enjoyed it. Definately a guy movie, it appeals to my love of watching people kick the crap out of each other, cartoonish supernatural powers and slapstick comedy. So really just watching people kick the crap out of each other with a few one liners thrown in. One liners don't lose anything when they are in subtitles. The corney plot (and subsequent twists) works really well with the comedic aspect of the film. There are really two other things that I'd like to add: 1. The soundtrack is awesome. 2. Having seen this, there is no excuse for a movie to have less than visually spectacular, amazingly realistic visual effects. It sets up some rather high expectations/ standards for The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy and Star Wars.

my world is a far brighter place now that you're not in it

We've been together for a while now, about 8 1/2 months, but today I ended it. We first got aquainted over the internet while I was in South Dakota and for a while things were pretty cool between us. Then in September, when I came back to Edmonton we got serious and started spending alot of time together. Really though, I felt that I was putting way more into things than I was getting out. There have been just way too many sleepless nights and too much worrying. We kind of took a hiatus over the Chrismas holiday and I tried not to think about us, but it was impossible. But now its over, the relationship has ended and I can actually start living a semi-normal life again. I feel as though a great burdon has been lifted and that the grass is tremendously greener than it was yesterday. What mistress am I talking about? What succubus have I share my mind, heart and bed with for the last 8 months? My 499 project on the affinities of snakes based on the morphology of their braincases is finsihed and may I never speak of it again. Though I really don't know what I'll do with my life now.

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.

How to handle solicitors

The too much information method:
Will – Hello, this is not Ikea.
Girl on the other end – Uh . . . Hello, Mr. [usual mispronunciation of my last name, indicating either a solicitor or professor]?
Will – Yeah, that’s me. Sorry about how I answered, it’s just that I get a lot of calls for Ikea.
Girl – Oh, well . . . (going into her well rehearsed monologue) I’m with [name of charity]. Did you know that every year thousands of children die of HIV and AIDS related diseases? And that most of these children are orphans because their parents have already died of said diseases? Most of these children contracted this horrible disease at birth, of no fault of their own . . . [ a minute and a half later] which is why a donation would mean so much. Now, we have a $300 level of donation or six $150 donations level. Which would better suit you today?
Will – First of all, that was clearly a very well rehearsed spiel, you didn’t even falter once. You should be rather proud of your self. Second of all, I’m sorry but I’m really quite broke and so I won’t be making any donation at all. Sorry.
Solicitor – May I say again that many of these children are homeless. A mere $300 a month would provide them with shelter, food and treatment. I’m told that our organization is the only one that is raising money to help these children, and your donation would also go to hire doctors and nurses to help the children. Can I put you down for a $50 or $75 dollar donation then?
Will – Perhaps you didn’t get me a moment ago. I’m broke, penniless, barely able to care for my own needs, let alone those of someone in some country I’ll never visit. I’ve been uninsured myself for the last four years. If I get sick, I’m hooped! If you were to call me next month, you’d find that my phone was disconnected due to my inability to pay the bill.
Solicitor – Well sir, I know that you’re a good person and would donate if you could. If everyone I talked to made a donation of $25, then we’d be able to help thousands of children with HIV. I’m sure that you can make a $25 donation. If I could just get your information, we’d be happy to send you a tax receipt so you can deduct your generous contribution.
Will - Okay, first of all, you don’t know I’m a good person. You just assume, or at least say that to make me feel good. For all you know, you called and interrupted a rather in depth session of mutilating hamsters. You didn’t by the way, I’m just saying. Besides, I got bored with that hours ago.
Solicitor – What!? Oh my God!
Will - Anyway, I’m not going to donate simply because I don’t care. I lied earlier. I actually do have plenty of money to donate, but haven’t supped on the milk of human kindness in sufficiently long that I’m rather inclined to just keep it. I couldn’t care less if the surplus population of Kenya or Somalia or wherever dropped of the face of the earth.
Solicitor – Uhhh . . . wha? So um, oh, okay. Have a nice evening.
Will – Please don’t hang up. You’re the first person to call me in a month. I’m so alone.
[Click]

Easter Platypus, we love you

It's Easter, and that means that a small, furry mammals with long ears and which go around by saltatorial locomotion, will be depositing their aposematically colored eggs the world over. A bunny? I think not! Clearly this is a monotreme of sorts, belonging to the only group of mammals that lay eggs. I shale refer to it as the monotreme hare. It isn't so hard to believe that people have been mistaking this previously unrecognized member of the group for a lagomorph. The long eared, long legged condition has evolved independently several times; i.e. Kangaroos, leptictids, elephant shrews and even in rhinogrades. Furthermore, besides shrews, platypi are the only poisonous mammals. Modern male platypi have a poison secreting barb on their hind legs. I suspect that this is present in both genders of the monotreme hare and is used by the females to adhere an outer layer of toxin to the eggs. The bright coloration, deposited by the shell gland in the uterus, as in birds, is meant to alert would be ovivores to the threat. The short spring laying period corresponds closely to just a few days after the emergence of the monotreme hare from torpor.
Unfortunately, humans, able to avoid the toxins placed only on the outer shell, have nearly driven he monotreme hare into extinction. In order to continue to hone the foraging skills of their progeny, in the absence of genuine monotreme eggs, adult humans hide artificially colored avian eggs. Due to the wholesale misidentification of this rare mammal for one that breeds prolifically, there has been nothing done for the conservation of the monotreme hare. Please take this day to recognize the plight of these evolutionary novelties. I'm told that this day also marks the anniversary of some poor fellow getting nailed to a tree for trying to overly nice to people, but we're talking about the possible extinction of an entire species, which must surely take precedence.

Too True

I'm chemically dependant on that most wonderful alcaloid, caffeine. But dispite the fact that I have a pretty descent french press, and buy ok grounds, it still tastes better when it comes from a coffee shop. I don't know what it is. Even Tim Horton's tastes better than what I typically make at 2:00 am. Oh well. At least I'm not on heroine or meth or something. Just imagine how bad it would be if I made that at home.

What's More Important?

I'm bored so I'm blogging and I did a little experiment. I suppose that its fair to say that the number of results something gets on a search engine would be an okay indicator of how important it is to the world community. "Jesus" returns about 36.3 million results, "porn" gives 36.4 million results, "sex" gives a wopping 75.1 million and "god" produces an amazing 89.3 million, "death" generates 107 million, as does "tax" in Google. What does this tell us? That which is definite, death and taxes, is of greater interest that that which is not, sex and god.

Obligatory Dino Post

You've likely already heard about this, but I think that this is a blog that's supposed to have a predominant paleo component, so I'll put in my two cents. The extraction of intact t-rex soft tissues was reported in the March 25 issue of Science magazine, a scientific journal so sensationalist that they stopped calling themselves a journal, must the way National Geographic did. Anyway, it still counts as primary literature. The actual first report of tyrrannosaur soft tissue was in a 1997 Eath magazine article titled "the real jurassic park." It was a report by these same researchers, headed by Mary Schwitzer that they had found "blood cell like" structures in thin sections of the bone from T-rex. Immediately, young earth creationists jumped on the find and argued that since organic matter breaks down over millions of years, that the intact structure was definately the hard evidence that they needed for recent creation. I anticipate that the creationists will pick up on this soon enough. Answers in Genesis hasn't put anything up on their website, but then they're usually pretty good about rapidly misinterpreting paleontology, so I'll give them a few days to work on it. I was impressed though that Boing-Boing picked up on it so quickly.
Anyway, I first heard about their isolation of fibres and possible blood vessels back in the fall at the meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. From what I've seen, they're research is legit and they do have the remnants of actual tissues. Mind you, very little can actually be learned from this. Nobody every doubted that dinosaur bones contained blood vesels or collogen fibres. Don't expect them to be able to pull meaningful protein sequences out of this stuff either and you can forget about DNA. This has really been an excersize in "is it possible" science. Of course they had to use T. rex, not some hadrosaur from the same formation in the same state of preservation, that's about 1000 times more common. If you want to get your article in the news, use T. rex.

Worthy of the Daily Show

Yesterday, someone pointed out to me that the official website for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is basically one big propaganda website for opening it up for oil exploration. There are 'reports' of how well animals are doing around the drilling, even the caribou, who's specific mating ground is now paved over with a well in the middle. There are some stupendous photos of wildlife happily cohabitating with noisy machinery and pipelines. That's right, pipelines make excellent jungle gyms for bears. Arguments are made that people already live in the reserve. Because this population of inuit people, who have lived in relative harmony with nature for centuries, are living there, it isn't right to call the land pristine, or natural. And don't forget the benefits that the oil will bring. There's a handly little table you can use to look up how long your state could run on anwr oil, all 10.4 billion barrels of it. Washington D.C. could run for over a thousand years on it (given current usage). Never mind that California could only run for 16 years and Texas for only 9. I figured it out; Any individual state could run an average of 197 years on the sum of it all, but if all states (including D.C.) shared the oil until it was gone, it would last a wopping 3 years, 10 months. Since this is "America's Energy Insurance Policy" we'll ignore the fact that estimates of potential production are as low as 5.6 billion barrels. Besides, if you don't want ANWR oil; you're killing American Soldiers.

Everything's Coming Up Millhouse!

This week has been excessively packed. To start things off, I have a paper due tomarrow. It's on torsion modeling in mammalian carnivore skulls. I managed to prove that this other guy's model is just a special case of the one that I thought up, but also managed to prove that both models are equally unlike actual reality. This was after about 12 hours with statistical software. What have I been doing instead of working on this paper? On Saturday I went to Calgary for the meeting of the Alberta Paleontological Society; fun was had by all (except Jess who had to sit between two highly critical, highly talkitive people, during the most boring 60 minute lecture on the Pleistoce ever. That, and the two people she was sitting between hate each other. As a result of conversations with various heads of research institutions at the meeting, I now have two more possible job prospects.
Sunday was cool because my parents let me know that since they bought another CNG car, I can have the old family van. I just have to go back to California and get it. One way ticket from Edmonton to LAX, $253. Cost of Gas getting back to Edmonton, who knows. Being able to take my stuff with me when I move: whatever the sum of the previous two would be.
Monday I was notified that the University is giving me back a sizable chunk of change.
The first week of spring it has snowed more than all of February combined. I guess that counts as flooding, sort of.

Congradulations, here's your welfare check

So towards the end of last year I was running out of cash and applied for a suplamental bursary from the university. I went through a period of tough times and eventually my parents baled me out with a wire transfer. Now, long after I'd given up hope of ever hearing from these people ever again regarding my application, I got an e-mail saying that I could pick up a check some time after March 30. How much of a check? Enough to pay back my parents for the wire transfer. I'm not going to say much beyond that just in case people think that i'm suddenly buying the drinks from now on. Also, given the constantly improving canadian dollar, I'll actually have a little bit left over to put into the emergency fund. That's emergency, not beer!

executive decision

I've decided that I'm going to ask for two weeks off from work for the beginning of June so that I can go to my own graduation and participate in a dig here in Alberta. Of course, it'd be nice if I knew where I was working this summer. This uncertainty is getting on my nerves.

Counting Down

It's just a little over a month until I give my talk on the braincases of snakes an varanids (including mosasaurs). What have I accomplished in the last 6 1/2 months of hard work? Well, I can identify just about every little bump and nob on the braincase but I really can't find that many sinapomorphies (not that anyone was expecting me to). Not only that, but even at this late date, I can't assess any of the intracranial features. That would require disarticulating (ie breaking open) the braincases and I really don't think that the people that we borrowed them from would be too keen on that. I spent 6 hours in the lab today, and I only really managed to get down 2 pages of notes on the skulls (no synapomorphies found, but alot of autapomorphies of snakes and few instances where a few other researchers are just wrong, contradict themselves or making a huge deal out of absolutely nothing). And to think that I'm actually considering speciallizing in squamates as a career. Well, I suppose that it beats competing for the dinosaur jobs.
I really wish that I had a less open ended project. The other students have to figure out if a certain fossil belongs to a certain clade. Granted, it's not as easy as it sounds, but at least all they have to do is see if the fossil matches the diagnostic characteristics in the literature, not come up with a few new ones. I come up with the stupidest sinapomorphies too. They usually have to do with the most minute details of the skull, like the path of the palatal nerve (aka the palatal branch of the facial nerve/ CN VII) in relation to the suture between the prootic, the basisphenoid and the basioccipital. If you understand what I just said and have even the slightest idea of why its important, then you're clearly over-educated. In reallity, that kind of thing probably doesn' t make the least bit of difference and has probably changed several times during the evolution of snakes. It's practically a rule that you see a mosaic distributuion of characters in intermediate forms. Not the case here, its either a snake or its not, with nothing in between.

Pain

Sticking one's fingers, bearing open cuts, in 5% Hydrochloric acid or drenching them in grapefruit juice, both surprisingly hurts less than getting one of those same fingers caught in a door. Ok, so I've got a few cuts on my fingers but I need to etch rocks as part of my job (hense the HCl) and I need to eat (hense the grapefruit, which was surprisingly juicy), but I really didn't need to get my middle finger caught in a door before writing a 7 page philosophy paper. The grade that I'll get on this paper because it's pure BS, half way through which I actually manage to prove that Darwin's theory of evolution is not a valid scientific explanation, will certainly hurt most of all.

Spare Some Change?

Well, its starting to feel alot like spring here in e-town, and you know what that means; homeless people have come out of torpor to ask you for your spare change. They've once again gone from invisible parasites which drain resources from shelters and soup kitchens, to overt, bothersome leaches on the skin of the city. This week-end I saw more homeless people on White ave than I saw Santas during all of December. Spare some change? Of course not! If I was indeed in a magnanimous enough of a mood to part with my meager earnings, don't you think that I would have given it to one of the other 15 people who already asked me? Since I'm clearly not in such a mood, what makes you so special as to deserve what I have deemed that all the others do not? I'm sorry, I've only got 50 cents on me, if I gave it to you, it really wouldn't be fair to all of the other urine stained, crazy troglodites. Each one has a story too: "I'm from Manitoba, I'm trying to buy margerine," was actually what one woman (who, by the way, clearly had only one incisor left) said to me inside of the Chapters store. Manitoba, you don't say. Yeah, I understand that it's pretty tough begging for butter money in Winepeg.

word of the day:

Isometrics (n.): an exercise whereby someone strikes an uncomfortable pose, and holds it. See also yoga, tai chi and professional modeling.

Purple Nurple

The more I learn, the more I realize just how immature professional scientists are. Ok, so I had my update meeting with Caldwell and he tells me about this time that he was in Argentina. He was there to study (and look for) fossil snakes that could potentially also have legs. The main guy down in Argentina (in paleo) is Jose Bonaparte, who everybody hates and thinks is the biggest asshole in South America. Ok, every one hates him except for Luis Chiappe, but I guess you can't piss everyone off. Anyway, Caldwell had to tell Bonaparte that two of the key team members didn't want him to go into the field with them, so he had to stay behind. The province had recently revoked Bonaparte's collecting permit, so there really wasn't anything he could do about it. So how did Bonaparte, an accomplished scientist, deal with this? He tried to give Caldwell a titty twister and told Caldwell that he wasn't allowed to study the six specimens of Dynalisia that he had come all the way from Canada to examine! When I heard this, I just stared in shocked horror. But then, I can't wait for the day when i can tell someone that a collegue tried to do that to me. Of course, they end of my story will be that I beat his argentinian ass in to the bedrock for wasting my time and money, but that's just me.

Mosasaur

Dr. Caldwell just let me start studying a mosasaur braincase that's on loan from the Royal Tyrrell. It's gorgeous! Whoever did the prep work did an awesome job. I'm not too pleased about the copious amounts of glue that obviously had to be used, but it's still an awesome specimen. The only down side is that the exists for the cranial nerves don't seem to have scaled up proportionately with skull so it won't be easy to assess the characters. Also, there are couple things I didn't realize about mosasaurs: first of all, the teeth that they have on their pterygoid extend all the way back to the contact with basipterygoid process on the basisphenoid. Second, they had piddlingly small brains. We're talking about a 25 foot long, multi-ton carnivorous reptile with a brain that, if you were to bend the olfactory lobe/nerve around, would have fit very comfortably in the palm of my hand. These things were dumber than mud! I thought that iguanas had small brains, but compared to mosasaurs, it's huge! Ok, I should probably consider that if I were to compare brain size to body size on the log scale that I'm supposed to, it would come out more equitably, but justlooking at it, one gets a really bad impression of mosasaur brain power.

Paleontology at its finest

Since this blog is supposed to be largely about paleontology, I think it only fair that I dispell one of the long standing myths about my profession of choise; that is, that paleontology is done in the field where we dig up the dinosaurs (or whatever). Wrong; paleontology is done for the most part in the library, with occasional trips to the lab. Indiana Jones made a similar comment in the third movie, but then he went on a wild adventure on the other side of the globe. Then again, years of library work would have had to gone into the notebook that his father found. If Indy had to do it himself, it would have been a much less interesting movie. To give you folks out there a taste of the sort of stuff that I read, here's an excerpt from a scathing rubuttle from one collegue to another:
"The smooth dorsolateral surface of the parietal is slightly constricted just posterior to its mid-length, as well as behind the posorbital process, thus defininga cerebellar swelling (more distinct than in Dinilysia but less than in booids); cerebral and cerebellar lobes are also marked by smooth ridges on the internal surface. Most distinctively, in both Wonambi and Dinilysia there is a prominent, shelf-like lateral crest (latteral wing; Barrie 1990), rounded laterally in dorsal view and angled somewhat below horizonal, at a level below the postorbital process and extending almost half the total length of the parietal."
Count 'em that's just two sentences. There's 30 pages of material, most of which referring to things that most people have never even heard of; like the crista circumfenestralis, or the basal tuber or even the basisphenoid (one of the major bones in the braincase). Really, it took 30 pages for the author to just say "I'm smarter than you, so just fuck off and leave the rest of us 'real' scientists to do our job." In the paleontological community, a paper like this is equivalent to getting dick slapped.

brought to you by the letter B and the number 50

I will never again doubt the power of the B vitamin. Yesterday I started taking the disgusting little yellow pills of a vitamin B-50 complex, and I can't believe how it's impoved my mood. Case in point; I asked a girl that I had some history with and that I generally felt really good around, if at this late date I had any chance with her. It's a strait forward question and was mostly to determine if I should put any more effort into it. I got totally shut down. But somehow I feel great! I can't explain it. Given how I've felt for the last several weeks I should have logically been depressed enough to follow Hunter S. Thompson's example. But somehow, I feel better than I have in a long time. To give a good contrast; when a girl that I had a huge crush on told me this summer that she was a lesbian, I was heart broken, such that I even had shooting pains up my left side. Now, I could practically dance a fucking jig. Fuck Prozac, Zyprexa, heroine, Zoloph, cocaine, Lithium and any of the other things on the market; people just need an insane dosage of vitamin B.

Stole My Idea

On boing boing, there is a link to a great site of sea-bird skulls. I myself have been accumulating photos of skulls of various birds, including sea-birds from the collections of the University of Alberta, and plan to evenually create an on-line searchable database of the photos that I have taken. This way, people will be able to do morphometric and comparative studies of specimens that are thousands of miles away or that their own collections don't have. I have two problems with the sea-bird skull gallery. First of all, you can't enlarge the photos, meaning no hope of doing any detailed anatomical work (though generally you need the real specimen for that anyway). Second, none of the photos appear to have a scale bar in them. When doing morphometrics, its important to know at least roughly how large the skull is. After all, if a goose had a head proportionately as large as that of a humming bird, they would fall over forward (the heads of most humming birds are longer than the rest of their bodies). The humming bird can manage such a large head because his whole body is so small, that his tiny little neck muscles have to do proportionately less work to keep up the head (it all works out logerithmically).

Ughh!

Went drinking friday, couldn't coax myself into having good time. Drank by myself alot Saturday, watched Fight Club. Bordering on clinical depression. Today: worst hang-over I've ever had, but getting better though. I need to make a change in my life.

Brick Wall Here I Come!

Life is hard, then you die. These are famous words that have on several occasions been re-worded as "life is hard, then you graduate." Well, Today, I was given a great big dose of beurocratic Bull Shit. I got my first rejection, from the grad school that i really wanted to go to. Why? not because I'm not qualified or because they don't have room for me. No, because I didn't meet a deadline that isn't posted anywhere. For those of you that aren't aware (most of you) the general deadline for applications to Florida State's Grad dept is July 1 for the fall semester. There is even a little warning telling you to check departmental websites for individual deadlines. I checked, the department's website, found there to be no indication of an earlier deadline, even in the section detailing what the admission requirements are and applied. I was notified today, that the deadline was fully a month ago; SIX MONTHS BEFORE THE GENERAL DEADLINE! What the hell! I wrote a polite but decidedly angry letter and the only responce I got back was that they'd take my suggestions into consideration for changing the website. Well, it looks like I'll be working on the integration of bite force modeling and brain-body allometry somewhere else. Or maybe I can just quit while I'm behind, open up a rock shop and be the bitterest man in the whole fucking world!

The State of the Internet

It's happened, it's finally happened, I'm bored with the internet. That technological revolution that spawned so many horrible companies, banal blogs, and enough porn to cover the globe three feet thick with pictures of girls getting paid to look like they enjoy pussy, is old. That's right, I said that the internet is old. I don't even surf anymore, I don't even have a connection at home. I thought that it was a waste of money (I use computers on campus instead). I don't have favorites, I have links. If I could, this blog would be my home page. I just log in, check out my friends' blogs, the few others that you see listed under 'other links,' check my e-mail, see if Jon Stuart has anything to say, add a post, which almost never has anything to do with paleontology anymore, and call it a day. I can accomplish all of this in 30 minutes when I write a long post. That's it, shut 'er down, declare google the winner and go back to your normal lives people. There's nothing to see here. Not a novel expression in sight.

The Soul Sustaining Power of Fiction

By comparison to the soul crushing power of academia, is pretty weak. I've been reading "The Life of Pi" and have found not a bit of spiritual elevation in it. Granted, I'm an atheist, and I haven't finished the book yet, but come on, I'm more than half way through and though an interesting read, it hasn't told me anything about the nature of the world or faith that I didn't already know. Ok, the kid loves God, he doesn't let denomination stand in the way of that. He had a really tough time at sea with a tiger. The problem isn't the suspension of disbelief in the events of the book, its the fact that I don't see the connection with spirituality. In the Author's note, he makes the claim that this story made him believe in God and that everyone who had heard the story before he terned it into a novel agreed. But its fiction, it's all fiction. It might have made him believe in God, but then a romp with a really hot french woman might have done the same for him. Some people, just believe too easily. Others of us will never believe.
One thing that pissed me off was the depiction of the only atheist in the book. The guy is an atheist because of great suffering in his life and it is so steryotypical that i almost want to puke.

Some of my Favorite quotes for Today

"love, love is like oxygen . . . it promotes radical substitution" - Bent-o-box

"Emotion (n): A prostrating disease caused by a determination of the heart to the head. It is sometimes accompanied by a copious discharge of hydrated chloride of sodium from the eyes." -Ambrose Bierce

"Love (n): A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder. This disease, like caries and many other ailments, is prevalent only among civilized races living under artificial conditions; barbarous nations breathing pure air and eating simple food enjoy immunity from its ravages. It is sometimes fatal, but more frequently to the physician than to the patient. " Ambrose Bierce

Valentines Day

Well, it's V-day and since I'm once again dateless, I've decided to take something moderately romantic and analyze the fun out of it. This year, the Hickie; that mark that says that someone was sexually attracted to you enough to latch onto your neck like a lamprey. The hiky is a buise generated from the bursting of blood vesels in a localized area due to the suddently low blood pressure. With sufficient suction, you can actually get blood to pool on the surface of the skin. The neck, sholders and upper arms are particularly vulnerable to this damage due to a high degree of vascularization of those areas. Low pressure bruising was also demonstrated by the Nazis who placed jewish prisoners in chambers then sucked the air out just to see what would happen. The same sort of thing would likely happen to anyone who uses a penis-pump. A low pressure pocked localized over a region of high vascularity would likely result in extensive bruising and discolation of the phalus. So remember love birds, when you give your partner a hicky, you're doing the same exact thing as the Nazis and penile-pumpers.

Octogoogle

I noticed it before, and it's continued to worry me a bit; google is growing. With the advent of Google Maps, Google Scholar, Froogle and a whole bunch of other services provided to users, totally free of charge, it seem that this huge and growing corporation is doing good for the world. But then, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. I'm naturally suspicious of any major corporation and so I feel that there's going to be a price to pay for so much free information.
Google is all about connectivity, getting what you want faster, from a smaller number of sources and at low cost. Gee, where have I heard that business model before: WALMART! And we all know that a great company that is. It has single handedly destroyed small town business by undercutting and outcompeting smaller specialty shops. Google will inevitably to the same thing. The first thing that started to worry me was Scholar. For me as a private citizen, its great, because I don't have to subscribe to a database to get access to alot of my favorite research articles and see what research is being done out there. There are alot of research journals which you still have to subscribe to in order to see the archives of pdf files, but the number is shrinking. So who is this bad for? All of the database companies that used to have people systematically enter in and cross reference article titles. Next is Maps, which will likely take a significant market share away from other internet map companies and force small ones into extinction.
As a paleontologist/ biologist, I know that the fastest way for an ecosystem to experience a catastrophic breakdown is with the introduction of a new species which finds it's new home quite livable and forces the majority of other species into extinction. Right now, I'm seeing the internet's biodiversity dropping. Perhaps this is just the natural balance being reached after the internet boom of the 90's, but I see ill effects down the line.

Midterm madness

Yesterday was the midterm for my dinosaurs class. I finished the exam in 20 minutes out of the 80 aloted for it. I've been really disappointed by the quality of the class. I haven't learned anything new besides the fact that Nopsca, the guy who named the thyreophora, was gay and killed his lover in a murder-suicide. It wasn't on the exam. Oh well, it'll be as though I just paid the $1000 of tuition to give my GPA a little boost before I go on to grad school.

Interesting Trick

I'm in the knowledge commons at one of the "stand while you type" computers and I just saw an interesting thing. The computer next to me had been empty for a while, having been vacated by a skinny blonde girl, a few minutes ago. Another girl comes up and starts using the computer, but then, a few moments later, an east indian guy comes up to her and taps her on the sholder and informs her that he was using the computer. What?! Who the hell does that? Anyway, he checked his e-mail or something and left. The next person in line came up and started using the terminal and then about 4 minutes later the guy comes back again and does the same thing over. In both cases, the girl using the terminal just appologetically stepped aside and got back in line. It's pathetic.

The Coral Island

"The Coral Island" is an excellent example of a Victorian period adventure novel. R.M Ballantyne writes as though it is autobiographical, despite the fact that while his narrator is a 15 year old in the south Pacific, Ballantyne spent his teen years in Canada, working for the Hudson Bay Company. "The Coral Island" demonstrates the typical aristocratic view of naive, innocent Christian young men. Although stranded due to a ship wreck, the three boys of the coral island are ever optimists and feel that being ship wrecked was the best thing that could happen to them. Through the eldest boy's book knowledge of the south pacific, they are able to harvest edible plants, hunt pigs, build shelter, a boat and an aquarium (that's right, they had a coral reef to swim in but they build an aquarium to satisfy their curiosity of natural history). Among the narrators adventures included aiding a band of cannibals defeat their attackers, being abducted by pirates, observing many cannibalistic human sacrifices, thwarting those same pirates and stealing their schooner, and saving a lovely Samoan girl from the heathen cannibals that they had earlier helped so that she can marry her true love and follow Christianity. Throughout all of this, he reflects fondly and at considerable length on the benefits that the missionaries bestowed upon the islands as soon as the gospel was introduced. Of course, absolutely no mention was made to lust throughout the whole book, despite the fact that these were three teenage boys, and they encounter topless Polynesian young women.
By the way, the narrator also regrets having not thought to bring his bible with him while their ship was initially being smashed on the reef. Did I mention that the boys were saved from certain death by a hurricane that blew a white missionary to the island where they were being held captive by the cannibals. Naturally a pacific islander couldn't do the job in over a year, but a white guy lands on the island and converts everyone in a couple of weeks. Not only that, but the ending was quite abrupt, having been saved as I mentioned before and not mentioning anything past their taking leave of the newly CHRISTIAN natives. I would have liked some mention of how three kids with no money and a schooner that they piloted themselves picked up a crew and got back to England, but alas, the writer is long dead, and with Christ, so I can't exactly write him and ask for a second edition. Furthermore, like this blog, the start of the book was ok, but by the end, the constant praise of CHRISTIANITY became overwhelming and annoying. Christianity, Christianity, Christianity.

Help

if anyone can tell me why my text changed color, font and alignment to be the same as the headings of the side bar, I'd appreciate it. All I did was add some extra headings to the side bar and now I've got this. Help.

Another Case of Gelnaw's Law

The American dollar has been doing pretty crapily over the last 4 years. I've posed several other rants on this topic. I've always regretted leaving my cash in myAmerican acount but did so till now in the hope that there was no way that it could keep falling. So over the winter break, I withdrew all of my funds and deposited it into my account here in Alberta. Naturally, I got a crappy exchange rate and a 30 hold was placed on my check. I'd really only anticipated a 10-15 day hold, so I was in a bind with all my assets frozen. I finally broke down and asked my parents to wire me the money to pay my rent. They got an even worse exchange rate. In a complete turn from the expected, the American dollar has been doing great since then. It's gone from 83 cents being equivalent to 1 Canadian dollar to about 79. It may not seem like much, but when you're talking about the thousands of dollars I spend on tuition, it adds up.
On the bright side, apparently the advertizing folks haven't realized this, so if you click on the exchange rates link at the right, there's a good chance that you'll see an add for how to cope with the falling US dollar (ie, it's a good time to buy foreign currency; HAh!) Therefore, they're giving bad advice to people and that should hopefully push the dollar back down in value.

Thnik About It

If you could restart your life from any point and relive it the exact same way, what point would you pick?

Like the Comic Book Guy Says

Last night's weekly phone call home ranked among the top 5 of my worst, most awkward conversations ever. After a little while of me demonstrating how bitter I am via a rant about what's wrong with American business today, we got onto the subject of how bitter and cynical I am. Apparently, my mom has never met anyone worse. Both my parents are worried to an obscene degree about how unhappy I am. They probably also think that I'm chronically depressed or mentally ill. I'm not. Well, I defended my view of life, and as the conversation progressed, leading questions were asked by both sides. Really, a pessimist can't talk to an optimist, there's no point in it. Both sides think that the other is foolish and wrong, and needs to see the world the way it really is. Furthermore, as with blogging and the media, anytime you respond to a critic, you come off sounding like and ass.
Anyway, things escalated quickly and I said a lot of things that I really regret. After over an hour, I finally regained my head and started a little bit of damage control, but by then it was too late. I'm sure that I made my mom cry, and that, and my dad and many others would agree, was wrong of me. So now my dad has urged me to seek counseling (yeah, it went that bad) and load myself to the gills with 5000% the daily recommended dosage of B-vitamins. Things didn't used to be this tense.

"Who's the Boss" is not a food

ESOTERIC (adj.) : Very particularly abstruse and consummately occult. The ancient philosophies were of two kinds, -- exoteric, those that the philosophers themselves could partly understand, and esoteric, those that nobody could understand. It is the latter that have most profoundly affected modern thought and found greatest acceptance in our time.

Definition of the Day:

Contempt (n): what one quietly has for his enemies whom it is not safe to thwart.

Philosophy of Science

The Philosophy of Science class should not be offered to arts students; that includes philosophy students. Sorry to all of you arts students out there with an interest in the sciences, but seriously, the class is not for you. We've had less than a dozen lectures and every one has moved at a snail's pace because the prof has to explain what should be well known to any science student; like how to make a statistical inference, or why you can't derive causation from statistical correlations. I can even tell that the prof is bitter about it, though perhaps more resigned to it than bitter. He just drones on in his thick german accent about causation pathways, waiting for the next art student to ask a dumb question. Today it was some girl who I recognized from my Science and Religion class as one of those people who try to learn about science so that she can someday tear it down for Jesus but has never spent ten seconds in a biology lab or even taken a geology course. We were using smoking and heart attacks as a situation that could have either a direct causal relation or a common cause (we could have been using ice cream and homicide, but we were using this instead) and this girl tried to say that smoking doesn't cause heart attacks because not all people who smoke have one. WHAT!? Is this girl just opposed to all things reasonable? Of course not everyone who smokes is going to have a heart attack, that doesn't mean that smoking doesn't increase your risk! Perhaps I should introduce her to a bar of Uranium. Hey, there's only a small probability that any one of the atoms therein would radoactively decay, and that would only result in a meaninglessly increased chance of death.

On he positive side of the class however, the prof did bring up and interesting question; can you demonstrate a causal relionship if you can't change he information that is being carried. For example, if you shine a light on a screen, and move he flash light, the dot of light will move. That the dot is on the screen is cause by the light passing from the bulb to the screen. You can put a color filter on the flashlight to change the color of the dot, thereby changing the information that you have sent. But there is no mark that you can put directly on the dot itself that will move with the dot, this is why the movement of the dot is not caused by some quality of the dot, but by the movement of the flashlight. The prof also made the argument that there cannot be a causal relation for the movement of the dot from the dot itself because it is possible to make the dot move faster than the speed of light, and information (according to relativity) is limited to that speed. According to him, you can make the dot of light travel faster than light speed by having a screen thousands of km away and rotating the flashlight quickly. This got me thinking; first of all, either the prof is not up on quantum physics (otherwise he would have said that when the dot reached light speed, the individual photons would sease to look like a coninuous beam of light and would fall at disjointed points along the screen) or he's dumbing things down for he arts students who would need 10 minutes just to wrap their heads around light as photons. Second, there is informaton that can travel faster than light. It's been shown that if you create a particle and its anti particle, then change the rotation of one, the other will always change its rotation at the same time simultaneously, no matter where it is in the universe. Hense, even if they are at oppsited ends of an infinite universe (impossible by definition, I know) then the information traveling between them would travel faster than light. So much for relativity. My questions are these: Is there a way to alter the information traveling between a particle and its antiparticle such that the mark will be carried along? Is the act of changing the spin of the particle the mark itself on information that's always traveling between them? If you tried to simultaneously accelerate the spin of a particle and decelerated the spin of its antiparticle equally and in opposite directions, what would happen? Come on you physics people, fill me in here.

Reservoir Dogs

This past weekend I bought the Reservoir Dogs soundtrack, and I'm fairly disappointed. There are 16 tracks, but half of them are just dialogue from the movie, and most of those are just the monotone radio announcer talking about the next song that's coming up. If I wanted that kind of stuff, I'd actually listen to the radio instead of paying for a cd. It actually says that these are tracks with dialogue on the back of the CD case, but I was hoping that it would be like the Pulp Fiction soundtrack where there is a piece of cool dialogue (compared to what I got) followed by music on the same track. Not the case. This leaves only 8 music tracks, and I'm compelled to say that two of them just suck. I'd completely forgotten that "Stuck on a Feeling" was one of the tracks in the movie. Also, "I Gotchoo" is just annoying to listen to. I expected better from QT. Then again, I only paid $10.32, so I suppose that I got what I paid for. Also, this isn't going to stop me from buying the Jacky Brown soundtrack and compiling a QT dance party cd. I sort of picture a QT dance party as one with a Mexican stand off in the middle of it.

Why I Don't Dig Plants

Today was perhaps the most tedious one that I've ever had in the paleobotany lab. It turns out that I was audited by my supervisor over the weekend and she had a whole list of things that I'd done wrong since I started working in November. By the way, this is the first time that she's checked to make sure that I'm doing things right. As it turns out, I'd been mis-numbering specimens. Instead of starting on rock #13546 like I should have, I started on #14546, meaning that it looked in the books like I'd forgotten to enter 1000 rocks that I'd peeled. Not only that, but apparently I'd been entering data into the wrong book. I'd started a black book when I started working and had not seen the book that I was apparently supposed to be using until today. Oh, and two envelopes of peels had the label in the wrong place.
So what I had to do was re enter all of the data in the appropriate book, including redoing the rock outlines, then renumber all of the peels that I'd made (about 250) by scratching out the offending grease pencil 4 and replacing it with a 3. What comes next is possibly the most tedious part; I had to re-number the rocks themselves. For those of you who have never tried, it is just about impossible to erase grease pencil from rock. My supervisor recommended a solvent called zylene, but I wasn't too thrilled about that because its carcinogenic (mildly, but why take unnecessary risks). What I used instead was my favorite, tried and true degreacer: Pumice soap! It was actually working fine until one of my co-workers pointed out (about as forcefully as the fellow could) that I'd ruined the brush that I'd been using and really should have been using zylene. So I ended up using zylene for the last three rocks anyway.
I'd really be much happier if I could just work on macro-vertebrates or even small tetrapods, but no, only the paleobotany department was hiring. I hate Mondays.

A Smile is Just a Smile

You must remember this
A kiss is just a kiss,
a sigh is just a sigh
The fundamental things apply
As time goes by
Never out of date
Hearts full of passion
Jealousy and hate
Woman needs man
And man must have his mate
That no one can deny
it's still the same old story
A fight for love and glory
A case of do or die
As time goes by
----Louis Armstrong

Revenge of the Snow Zombies

I am one of the many people who grew up loving the work of Bill Waterson, but growing up in sunny southern California meant that the wintry motif in about half of the installments of Calvin and Hobbes. However now that I live in the frozen north I've found that they've had more impact on me. In fact, I've been tempted to recreate some of Calvin's snow sculptures, particularly those in which he has snow men suffering terrible fates. But someone's beaten me to it! It was on Boing Boing and apparently someone has constructed a few of the more famous sculptures. I have to say that I don't really approve of the use of color or the embellishments that the sculptor made on the original designs, but I suppose that these may have been essential for making the snow men stand out a bit against the equally snowy background. Waterson had the advantage of being able to create distinct lines on a white background which aren't really possible in real life.

Summer Work

For the first time in my life it seems that I'm actually over qualified for the jobs that I want to get this summer. This is ironic since i applied for the same jobs last year and was underqualified. It turns out that the NSF grants to the Smithsonian Institute and the California Academy of Science prohibit the employment of seniors graduating from their undergraduate this year for the paid summer internships. This pretty much means that I'm SOL. Last year there was not this restriction and so they pretty much only hired people who were graduating and going on to careers in the natural sciences. I get the impression that I was born either too early or too late.

The Life Aquatic

I just watched The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and I really have to say that it wasn’t the comedy that I though it was going to be. In fact, it isn’t really a comedy at all, it’s an eclectic drama; a darn good one. You pretty much saw all of the funny parts in the trailers and just about all of the creature effects too (with a couple of important exceptions). Bill Murry’s is the only acting that is really believable as a real person, but everyone else’s is off in such a way as to set a very distinctive mood that permeates the whole movie. It’s the same with the various creatures that they encounter; they are intentionally fake looking, over the top and entirely too colorful to ever be real, but it still seems appropriate. I really didn’t pay that much attention to the credits, but it had much of the same feeling as The Royal Tenenbaums not to mention at least four of the same actors. I won’t give anything away just in case any of you haven’t seen it, but I highly recommend it if you liked The Royal Tenenbaums, just so long as you remember that it’s not really a comedy.
By the way; something that will be a point of interest for some of my readers is that David Bowie wrote most of the songs in the movie which were then translated into Portuguese.

Craig Dylke

This weekend Craig Dylke, a friend of mine from my days in Drumheller came up from Calgary to visit sick relatives, but also made a distinct point of visiting myself and several other of his friends while here. I have to say, it was good to see him. In fact, I really don't know anywone else like him. We nerds need to cavort with a geek from time to time and Craig is just nerdy enough to be tolerable. And while he seems to have no problem attracting the ladies, he really needs to work on his self esteem and self image. Granted, it's hard to feel good about yourself when one of the ladies is someone who ways two hundred pounds more than he does, but hey, quadrapeds or land cetaceans as Craig calls them can be easily dealt with in three ways. 1) Intentionally don't hang out with them or with people who are likely to feel sorry for them and bring them along to social gatherings. 2) Clearly state to the person that you want nothing to do with them, being as harsh as possible so that they will inevitably go on an eating binge and crush their organs more, or 3) Buy alot of groceries then force feed the person until their stomach tears or the person chokes like in the movie "Seven."

More of Gelnaw's Law

Here it is, a sticker proclaiming that the pan is non-stick. If I was a literalist, I'd expect the sticker to fall off.

mmm... luke warm coffee

So some bank is trying to get students to sign up for credit cards with a 16% interest rate by offering them either a free U of A t-shirt or U of A travel mug. This isn't the first time that they've done this. As such, I now have 3 of their mugs. I know that I'm pretty safe because it isn't legal for me to get a line of credit in Canada without a cosigner, and if I do end up with a card, well that's what scissors are for. Anyway, I was reading the warnings on the back of the box of my newest mug when I noticed that you're not supposed to but extremely hot liquids into it.

What do they consider extremely hot? I don't anticipate anybody scooping up white hot lava with their plastic coffee mug. Ok, how about normal H2O, water. You can't get much hotter than boiling, otherwise you cease to have a liquid anymore. I don't know about other places, but when somebody serves me my coffee or I make it at home, you have to boil the water, then you mix in the grounds, filter it and put it in the mug. All and all, by the time it gets to the mug it's not much cooler than boiling. Does some engineer in China where these classy mugs were no doubt made think its ok to design a coffee mug that you can't put coffee in?! Come on!

Peter Pan

I have just finished reading J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan and I must say that it is a considerably darker story than I had imagined. It seems to me that it was not originally intended for a distinctly juvenile audience as it currently receives, but such is the case of excellent children’s stories like Peter Pan or The Little Prince. People are generally accustomed to the Disney version, to Spielberg’s Hook or to the stage production itself. Rather, I have just read the novel, which gives Peter much more depth than other mediums. For instance, Hook briefly examines the fact that Peter tried going back to his window, but found it shut to him, a symbol that his mother had forgotten him and did not have the unconditional, everlasting love which is generally attributed to mothers. In the novel however, this fact fills Peter with great bitterness each time that mothers are mentioned with the exception of Wendy being his make-believe mother, and actually more like his make-believe wife. In tern, his bitterness fills him with wrath and malign cunning. Granted, he is not without his nicer qualities which adequately counterbalance the bad ones, but Peter is much more the Pan in the novel than in the movies or the play.
Furthermore, no other telling of the story seems to include the fact that Peter regularly forgets Wendy, as he forgets many things owing to his own selfishness. What is more, and I hope that I haven’t spoiled too much for some people, at the end of the story Tinker Bell. Tinker Bell, who was described in her feminine qualities with the grace that Victorian literature gives, who loved Peter and was jealous of Wendy, is quite dead and no amount of clapping could bring her back. Furthermore, in keeping with his character, Peter had completely forgotten about her. To some this sounds horrible and shocking as she loved him so dearly. People expect some degree of reciprocity of feeling between two such characters when they go to the theater, but Peter is a boy, as naive and selfish as they come. Perhaps it is only in naïveté that happiness is found at the extremes. To stay young and happy forever, one must remain perpetually without thoughts that wrinkle the brow, and yet to become partially cynical, one automatically feels, by nature of cynicism itself, that it is loathsome to be naïve at all.

amphisbaenus no-complainus

Just this last week I was thinking to myself ‘gee, wouldn’t it be nice if I would look at a disarticulated amphisbaenid braincase’ and wouldn’t you know it, a paper came out this month on that very thing. Not only that, but there are movies of each of the elements at digimorph. Every once in a while the paleontology gods favor me I guess. Now if only I could find out why scolacophidians are considered basal beyond the absence of a crista circumfenestralis I’d be pretty set.
On a related note, I read an interesting paper about all of the various snakes with hind limbs and it got me to thinking. Why haven’t I ever heard of Eupodophis descouensi (Rage and Escuillie 2000) before? And why isn’t Pachyophis woodwardi (Nopcsa, 1923) x-rayed or ct scanned to find out if it had hind limbs? It seems like Pachyophis would be a pretty good candidate for that sort of thing. I know that there’s an articulated specimen of Palaeophis out there somewhere. Why hasn’t a museum or university snatched that up for study?
However, beyond frustrating me with what hasn’t been done, the paper brought up the issue of pachyostosis which is a character that I now find rather interesting. All of these snakes that certainly do or possibly have hind limbs show pachyostosis of the dorsal vertebrae and ribs, about where the lung would have been. Do modern sea snakes show a similar feature? How about snakes that go swimming regularly but are considered terrestrial? The two hypotheses for why this character existed were for either increased erythrocyte production (indicating greater lung capacity or oxygen requirements as for diving) or for ballast to compensate for the levity of the lung in water. Personally I think that it would be a combination of the two. As a snake lineage gets into the habit of diving or staying submerged for prolonged periods, it’d need greater lung capacity (and thicker blood to carry the oxygen) but it would also need to compensate for that increased buoyancy by adding weight to the ribs and vertebrae, which it was doing anyway.

the problem with being a hermit

I must say that I lead a fairly frustrating life. I am by nature, an extremely frugal man, inclined to parsimony, a miser at best. However, it has been the record of my recent life that my various money saving ventures have been entirely in vein, subject largely to Gelnaw’s Law of Maximum Irony. It all started months ago when I seemed to have a fair and decent amount of money. In fact, I had accounts in 3 different banks. What I decided to do was this. In order to maximize the amount of interest that I was earning from my account in California, I transferred the majority of the funds into my savings account. When I realized that I was also being charged a monthly fee on now dwindled checking account, I decided to close it. Little did I realize that doing so meant that I would have absolutely no access to those funds. Normally, I would indeed have access to it, in spite of the fact that the checking account was closed because I had the ability to withdraw cash from the savings account via an ATM. However, since the bank issued me a new card last summer, although the old one would not expire for another 3 years, and with it a new PIN number, I found myself with an utterly useless card when I couldn’t remember the new PIN.
Skip ahead to November. Somehow I’m completely out of money in my Wells Fargo account. If I had kept better track of my spending I might be able to tell you where all the money went, but frankly, I can’t. Near as I can figure, 4 months food and rent, a damage deposit and a trip to a conference in Denver pretty much did me in. For those of you who point out that I know own more than 100 Palaeophis vertebrae, I have only to say that they set me back less than $30 USD. At that time, I switched over to my BMO account. The entirety of the funds there however came from checks from my Wells Fargo account, so really I wasn’t out of money yet, it was just in a different bank. It seems fitting then that my Wells Fargo card was eaten by a BMO ATM.
Skip ahead now to December. At this time, I am completely out of money in my BMO account. And when I go broke, I really go broke. In order to pay for a shuttle ride to the airport to go home at the end of the semester, I had to withdraw my last $20. Going home it was my intention to transfer my funds from California to Edmonton. While in California, I found out that there was a $30 fee for the wire transfer. Going the cheap rout, I decided to close out my account and simply deposit it as a check in Edmonton. Silly me, I had no way of knowing that there was going to be a 30 day hold on that check when I deposited it.. When I found out that all my assets were as frozen as Edmonton itself, I started selling my books, asking my friends for help, and I even got turned down for a loan from the bank in less than 5 minutes.

Amnesia

It's happened yet again. A woman said hi to me, called me by name and actually took the time to have a brief conversation with me, but I have no idea what her name is or where I knew her from. It always bothers me when people who I would view as perfect strangers appear to know me quite well. I did the usual, banal conversation, making due without using any names and not getting into any details. Odds are that I knew her from dance lessons. It's been so long since going that it seems highly plausible that she was there. Oh well, it wasn't the first time and I'm sure it won't be the last time that this happens. At least I'm sure this time that I hadn't hit on her at a party or something, that's always extra embarrassing.

My Christmas Wish

I have two wishes:
1. That the peoples of the world would (including their governments) would realize that we are all in search of a little help and therefore live by a modicum of tolerance and periodic altruism. If you see that someone really needs your help, help them, even if you have to break the rules.
2. That people would stop telling me that these are the best years of my life. The idea that it won't get any better is wholly depressing.

The Hit Parade

Wow, my life is going great right now! In fact, I think I'll take a moment to reflect on a few of the things that have made it so wonderful.
. I wasn't allowed to write the GRE because I forgot my passport at home despite the facts that I paid over $140 to take it and had all sorts of other government issued ID.
. I have an air mattress which is completely deflated because the nozzle came unglued from the rest of it. I now get to sleep on the floor, cushioned only by a few sheets. It's just like camping.
. The stair-well incident: refer back to "drinking with the profs"
. My diet is entirely composed of potatoes, carrots, coffee, corn, eggs, peas, rye flower, coffee, whole wheat bread, onions, butter, coffee, peanut butter, jam, mr noodle (50% msg), oh and coffee.
. The other day the zipper on my back pack failed, spilling my belongings and a pair of borrowed binoculars onto the icy pavement. I'm still trying to find oneof the lenses from those binoculars.
. I have exams, that I really would rather not take.
. Somehow, I'm always short of money on my one card when I really need to print something.
. Universities have consistently told me that they don't have money to fund me
. In order to lighten the load of what I'll be bringing back at the end of next semester, I'm taking so many fossils across to border, that if I'm caught, I'll certainly face a $50,000 fine and possibly up to one year in prison.
. My frying pan produces more smoke than edible food.
. Today I apparently made it clear to a highly respected member of my field that I support the black market fossil trade (which i don't - all the fossils that I purchase are legally exported from their nation or origin).
. I'm procrastinating studying for an exam that's tomorrow by writing this.
. I keep getting the distinct impression in the back of my mind that there is a god, and that he's mildly perturbed about this whole atheism thing.

Google Does it Again

I have to say that I am very pleased with Google as a company. First of all, they own this website. But other than that, the company is making available, free of charge, alot of services that people used to pay for or might not otherwise be able to exist if not for Google's financial assistance (i.e. Blogger). If you want to buy something, go to froogle. If you want the news, go to google news. for web mail, I enjoy a free gig of space thanks to g-mail. If you want to find something on the web, well, that really depends on what you're looking for. It used to be that for everything, google.com was the best choice. As a result, those of us writing papers end up with a whole lot of useless results and very little academic. But now, there is Google Scholar which searches for academic papers only. I was rather concerned that once I eventually left a University (if every) I would no longer be able to make use of the databases which the university subscribes to, to find the papers I need. But now it's free and available anywhere with an internet connection. I can see these other databases eventually going out of business or lowering their prices to remain competitive, but that's not all that bad.

More of Gelnaw's Law

Check it out. Here's an article about Webster dictionary's web site but notice the incorrect spelling in the title.
http://newpaper.asia1.com.sg/top/story/0,4136,78923,00.html