V-Day

Happy valentines day!!!
Go find your sweetie and get your groove on.

The Occasional Fossil

Ok I know I'm slipping, first the Friday fossil then the weekly fossil now... the occasional fossil. Work with me people I'm still finding my pace. I think this is the second trilobite I've done but that's ok trilobites are cool. Above there's a slab with a bunch of trilobites, most of them are Elrathia kingi but if you look very carefully near the top and a little to the right (click on the picture to make it big) you'll see a little thing that looks like a fat figure 8, that's Peronopsis here's a close up of one of those.

Peronopsis is a blind trilobite (most trilobites had really wicked compound eyes) and it's planktonic which means it would just float in the water column. Elrathia is a very common triloite you frequently find them for sale. Many times they're missing a part called the free cheek which makes their heads (which are actually called cephalons.. at least I think that's the plural of cephalon.... cephala???) look squeezed, you can see this in some of the trilobites in the rock above. They're still Elrathia kingi they're just missing their free cheeks. As with many trilobites these are great index fossils, these are common in, and restricted to the Middle Cambrian. So if you find one you know how old the rock is. Very handy

All Hail the Honored Dead

REDDING, California (AP) — Raymond Jacobs, believed to be the last surviving member of the group of Marines photographed during the original U.S. flag-raising on Iwo Jima during World War II, has died at age 82.

I tell my students that there are three very important groups of people passing away right now:
World War Two Veterans, The original civil rights workers, and the Astronauts, engineers and managers of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs. These people did amazing things for our country indeed the world, and their passing is always sad. Unfortunately we don't hear about many of them till they pass. While in the Marine Corps I was fortunate enough to meet Joe Rosenthal the gentleman who took that photograph he, unfortunately, passed away in 2006.

Was that a game or what?

Ok I'm not a huge football fan I'll start really paying attention around the playoffs then the super bowl then I'm pretty much over football. I enjoyed going to the games in college but that's more of a social thing. But DANG quarters 1-3 were ok but the fourth quarter was AMAZING and the right team won as far as I'm concerned. Very cool

just a thought

Does it really not bother anyone else that one of the teams in the super bowl, the team that's about (probably) to go undefeated got caught cheating at the beginning of the season? I mean... really people. Dang.

someone is in trouble

There was a relatively minor snafu with the insurance on our house when we bought it. As with all things involving real estate these days it's complicated but what it comes down to is that because of someone else's mistake we might have to have another insurance inspection done, we already paid for one but apparently there is something not right about it. Archaeogrrrl is having NONE of this, she is tooling up. She has phone numbers for state senators, representatives, real estate regulators, insurance regulators and anyone else she thinks could help. Someone is is deep trouble and thankfully it is not me.
PLUS yesterday these inspectors show up with NO notice they call me at work to tell me that they're at my house for this inspection. AND they want to know why my wife won't let them in. As if I'm going to call my wife and tell her to let this strange man into our house with her alone.
But anyway like I said she's tooling up... this should be fun.

Weekly fossil (almost NSFW edition)

Ok so this is a very special fossil. I bought this amber pendant and matching earrings for archaeogrrrl at the 2000 national Geological Society of America meeting. It was the first jewelry I bought her. And if you're wondering about fossil content yes there are arthropod pieces in the amber (no you cannot get DNA from them) While at the meeting I went to the Zeiss booth and put it under one of their microscopes just to make sure (aren't I a romantic dog). As Archaeogrrrl says it worked because today is the 9th anniversary of our first date.
Y'all have a good weekend I know I'm going to.