At an agility trial last weekend I was hanging out with one of my former students and her dogs, when, in all seriousness, she asked me if she could put me in her will to take her pups in the event of her death. If this were to ever happen, I don’t know how I’d deal with adding two more to the pack of four that live here. But I’ve known her and her dogs for years, and her pups are small and well-behaved and cute, and so we’d all make do somehow.
Well, this has never happened before…
Post Number 600.
Yeah, 600 posts. I guess I’m here to stay.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
As promised, here’s Hallucigenia, track from my album “Sea Of Tethys”. I uploaded this in response to this earlier post about this tiny bizarre prehistoric creature.
Debunking the Bootstrap Myth
His father, George W. Romney, was CEO of American Motors Co. (1954-62), governor of Michigan (1963-69) and secretary of Housing and Urban Development (1969-73).
His mother, Lenore LaFount, was a U.S. senate candidate in 1970. President Calvin Coolidge appointed her father to what is now the Federal Communications Commission.
Romney may have worked hard. But he hardly started off in a cheap pair of boots. No, he probably started off with a closet full of expensive shoes, suits, shirts and neckties.
If he had any boots, were they work boots or boots for recreation? If he had a job interview, what was the likelihood that the interviewer wasn’t connected to his patrician society?
Can one really claim they earned it the old-fashioned way when their father was CEO of one of the largest corporations on earth and at the head table of a political party?
Point taken, but with one qualification: American Motors is not General Motors - It trailed in size behind GM, Ford, and Chrysler for most of it’s existence.
(Source: azspot)
Turnabout is…
“To protest a bill that would require women to undergo an ultrasound before having an abortion, Virginia State Sen. Janet Howell (D-Fairfax) on Monday attached an amendment that would require men to have a rectal exam and a cardiac stress test before obtaining a prescription for erectile dysfunction medication.”—
Huff Po (via rachelfershleiser)
This is the most beautiful thing. Can we send her flowers?
(via jaimealyse)
Ha - wow. Congressional warfare.
The rectal exam seems a bit much. But the cardiac stress test? That could save hundreds of lives, given that those who ask for such prescriptions are not likely to be young men.
dailyfossil: Hallucigenia
When: Early to Middle Cambrian (~540 to 500 million years ago)
Where: Found in what is now British Columbia and China
What: Hallucigenia is another odd fossil first known from the Burgess Shale formation of Canada. This largest individuals only reach 1.2 inches (~3cm) long, but there has been a lot of scientific debate centered around this tiny species. Before we get into the debate over its phyogenetic position, first we need to talk about which way is up! Or anterior for that matter. The first reconstructions of Hallucigenia had it walking on the stiff looking spiny projections, with the more flexible tentacles used to bring food to its mouth, which was reconstructed as being on a large bulbous projection. The modern interpretation is reversed in almost every way; it walks on the tentacle feet, the spines are on the dorsal surface for protection, and its head is on the opposite end. The modern reconstruction does not even have a large bulbous projection, as it is now thought the appearance of this blob in fossils is the inner organs of Hallucigenia being squeezed out though its posterior as it was flattened either at or after death. This strange form walked along the ocean floor, eating tiny food particles.
So now we /might/ know how this animal really looked… but what is it related to? Common suggestions have been: velvet worms (Onychophore), an extremely basal Arthoropoda, or as a member of a phylum now extinct. There is no firm consensus even today.
The Royal Ontario Museum recently put up a spectacular website on the Burgess Shale that you should check out if you would like to learn more about Hallucigenia and its contemporaries.
I wrote an instrumental about this weird little creature. When I get a chance I’ll put it up on my Soundcloud.
Frank Zappa
I went to college and spent most of my time in the library*
*File under “You’re not doing it right.”
majdnem jó.
Perhaps this offer makes a tacit assumption about the arithmetic skills of athletes.
Joseph Cornell holding an Untitled Bottle Object. Duane Michals. 1969
Joseph Cornell. I think this is one of the very few photographs of him - He didn’t like the limelight much.
