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.