Friday

. . . is usually my most productive day. Today was no exception:

I am excited about paleontology again.

Not just any paleontology, not the random idea of paleontology, but the stuff I’m actually reading about. It’s fun! Just like italics are fun. I actually know what is going on, and the fact that I know more about the world than I did this morning fills me with joy. I may be going over the top, but it was a realization to me that here I am, tired and with a headache, a point at which I would consider a nap more appropriate than reading a paper on a subject I know nothing about, but I’m reading this paper, and I am enjoying it.

The problem, I think, comes from trying to read too fast. You just can’t digest things quickly, things like paleontology papers. This one is within my comprehension, and even though I usually hate [why such a strong word? 2014-03-05] reading about stratigraphy, I was paying attention and thinking about it all, and how it all went together. It took me a couple hours, but it was worth it.

Now if I can find a way to be able to focus this much all the time and have time for cycling and/or running (although I prefer the former, of course), things will be right with the world again.

There is a cycling race here on the 29th I believe. There is also a road race, just in case I’m wrong about the cycling. Prizes and everything. Who knows, maybe I’m good for something after all 😀

hells yeah

 “Gregg E. Maryniak, executive vice president of the foundation, said he looked forward to having them enter. ‘One of the biggest reasons to do this is to bring in people outside the existing ecosystem,’ he said.

‘Look, a hundred years ago, a couple of pesky bike mechanics from Dayton, Ohio, bested, in effect, the government-funded player, to become the first to fly,’ he added. ‘That’s why you put on these things: to attract the bicycle mechanics.'”

Like to Tinker? NASA’s Looking for You – New York Times:

Scientific Writing at its best

From Flannery, T., Archer, M., Rich, T.H. and Jones, R. 1995. A new family of monotremes from the Cretaceous of Australia. Nature 377:418-420.

“Kollikodon ritchei was a platypus-sized montreme that fed on material that needed crushing but not shearing. Similar adaptations are evident in marine predators, such as sea otters, crabs and some fish that feed on hard-shelled animals.” p.420.

Wonderful train of thought here, and an excellent example of writing for a purpose (at least that’s what I get out of it; I don’t know what their intention was exactly). First, they extrapolate the size of the animal. Since it is known only from a single right dentary fragment, this is liable to be flexed up and down as need be in future papers–although nothing can be done about that, so I’m sure they made their best guess. The closest mammal in size they suggest as a platypus, first I am sure because platypi (platypusses?) are monotremes. This brings up a mental image of (obviously) a platypus. Where do platypusses (platypi?) live? In the water. So now you’ve been hit with a mental image of an aquatic monotreme right before they suggest the teeth could be used to eat hard-shelled things because they resemble the crushing mouth parts of other aquatic animals.

So now, you have an aquatic monotreme that eats mollusks. Isn’t this interesting from a single dentary fragment?

HOT

“The closest known Earth analog to the possible Martian meteorite bacteria
is a critter known as bacterial strain MV-1. Magnetite produced by MV-1
resembles magnetite in *some* of those “fossil” blobs found in the Allan
Hills Martian meteorite (both in size and shape).”

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Earth could seed Titan with life

BTW: If there are any that doubt that some microbes cannot survive in a
space environment for long periods of time:

“The Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF), a NASA research satellite launched in the 1980s, showed that bacterial spores remain viable in space for at *least* 6 years (after 6 years, the satellite was retrieved). The spores were generally un[a]ffected by vacuum, heat, cold, X-rays, gamma rays, solar wind, and cosmic rays. The only thing that negatively affected the spores was ultraviolet radiation. But any spores trapped deep within fissures in an Earth rock would be protected from UV.”

–Phil Bigelow, on the Dinosaur Mailing List

Data

Data my mind has recently ingested–continually updated

* indicates a reread.

*Fanfare, Some Scottish guy
*Schindler’s List, Thomas Keneally
Sync, Steven Strogatz
*An Instance of the Fingerpost, Iain Pears
Firefly Season 01 (18 March 2006)
House Season 01 (15 March 2006)
Analysis of Vertebrate Structure, Milton Hildebrand
Haunted, Chuck Palahniuk
Messi@h, Andrei Codrescu
*Second Foundation, Isaac Asimov
The Wall, Jean-Paul Sartre
The Prince, Machiavelli
*Foundation and Empire, Isaac Asimov
Foundation, Isaac Asimov
*The Cat who walks through Walls, Robert Heinlein
*Belgarath the Sorcerer, David and Leigh Eddings
The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell
Player Piano, Kurt Vonnegut
Everything you know is Wrong, Ed. by Russ Kick (currently buried, but halfway done)
Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, May 1991
Coffee, Tea, or Me?, Trudy Baker and Rachel Jones
Prisoners of the Stars, Isaac Asimov
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J.K. Rowling
Blink, Malcolm Gladwell
*The Scarlet Pimpernel, Baroness Orczy
*The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco
Jailbird, Kurt Vonnegut
*Media Technology and Society: A History: from the Telegraph to the Internet, Brian Wilson
The Wandering Unicorn, Manuel Mujica Lainez
*Dinosaur Lives, John Horner
*Digging Dinosaurs, John Horner
*Eight Little Piggies, Stephen Jay Gould