Old friends

Reading Isaac Asimov is like talking with an old friend. A very freakin' smart old friend.



(ok hands up who gets the picture??)

Random things

Ok so profgrrrrl did this and it was pretty cool so what the heck I figured I would too. The deal is that you write 6 totally random things about yourself. There are some other rules too but this is the internet and we don't need the MAN'S rules.
Ok six random things
1) If I can help it at all I don't walk into dark rooms I'll feel around the wall for the light switch before walking in.
2) If I had it to do over I might be a lunar geologist.
3) Yes Archeogrrrrl I pretended to like U2 way more than I do to get you to like me when we were dating. (actually it was a little more than "get her to like me" but this is a g rated blog)
4) I am so not gay but if I was... Daniel Craig
5) Speaking of Bond. I want to be Sean Connery when I grow up.
6) I feel like I should like baseball: the statistics, the tradition, the stately pace. But every time I try to watch it the stately pace puts me to sleep.

The occasional taphonomic effect

Things with lots of hard parts tend to be preserved in the fossil record. (At least the hard parts do )
So:
Clams and snails and such


no problem
jelly fish



not so much. (took me forever to find a decent picture of one)
dinosaurs and other large terrestrial vertebrates



ok but not great. See the previous post about life position as well.

Still more...

A very interesting extension of the pattern I noted below. See it HERE

Working it

It's been a rough week here. I'm working on getting my head back straight. Meanwhile here's some paleo porn.

Geology Controls Everything

I was looking at the electoral map by county and I saw a familiar pattern. It's most obvious of the picture below that shows the counties that Republicans made gains in this election.


I know it's a little blurry but that's ok we're just looking at at VERY general trend. I've circled the area we're interested in. Now look at the geologic map of the United States. I've circled the same area.


See how the Mc Cain voting pattern ends as the rocks that make up the Appalachian mountains end? Here's a closer pic of the region.


Back in the good old days when dinosaurs roamed the Earth there was a giant inland sea called the Sundance Sea (or Western Interior Epicontinental Seaway for those of you who like the words). In the central Alabama Georgia region this sea lapped up against and weathered the rocks that make up the Appalachian mountains, depositing the younger (green) rocks. Geologically what we're dealing with here are older (Pennsylvanian, about say 300 millionish years old) rock of the Appalachian mountains truncated by and overlain by much younger (Cretaceous, about say 80 ish million years old) rock.
Geopolitically I'm sure there are a number of factors that play into why Appalachia is Republican country (and if there's a political scientist out there who would like to collaborate on something get in touch) my guess is that a lot of them are controlled by the underlying geology.
Interesting that on this map anyway the political boundary and the Geologic boundary coincide.

Mountains and such

The arc of history is long but it bends toward freedom.
--M.L. King

A man who would have had to sit at the back of the bus when he was a child is now the president of the United States Of America.
Thank God.

Have a cry

But in a good way

These two boys waited as a long line of adults greeted Senator Obama before a rally on Martin Luther King Day in Columbia, S.C. They never took their eyes off of him. Their grandmother told me, "Our young men have waited a long time to have someone to look up to, to make them believe Dr. King's words can be true for them." Jan. 21, 2008.

That picture and text come from a great photo essay by Callie Shell that can be found here

Picrtures to soothe the nervous Democrat's heart

Normal paleo-oriented (mostly) blogging will resume after election when I can breathe again.

Bassets for Obama

Continuing a theme (click the picture to enbiggen and get the whole effect)