Snow Day!

I hope everyone enjoyed the snow as much as my cat did...

Wild, Wild West

One of the more entertaining things about working on paleontology of the American West is that you come across a lot of colorful names, in large part a legacy of work done in the region when it was still a frontier. Sometimes quarries or formations are named after something found there (Shark Tooth Hill), sometimes they bear an Indian (Minnechaduza) or Spanish (Caliente) name, sometimes they're ludicrous hyperboles (Mount Eden), and sometimes they're a simple description of the area (Dry Canyon). They are strangely - if unintentionally - poetic, reflecting either the hope (Drinkwater) or despair (Massacre Lake) of whichever settler first stumbled across it. I've come across several in the last few days while doing background research for my project; here are some of my favorites:

Etchegoin
Pinole
Lava Mountain
Black Hawk
Siesta
Nettle Springs
Coal Valley
Fish Lake
Comanche Point
Iron Canyon
Virgin Valley
Skull Springs
Sucker Creek
Hidden Treasure Spring
Boron
Hackberry
Woody
Pyramid Hill
Uptegrove
ZX Bar
Bear Tooth
Snake Creek
Sand Canyon
High Rock Lake
Railroad Canyon
Flint Creek
Deep River
Sheep Creek
Split Rock
Agate Springs
Rosebud
Mollie Gulch
Boulder Valley
Ash Hollow
Six Mile Creek
Horned Toad
Bedrock Springs
Chanac
Esmeralda
Vaqueros

The goose is on the loose!

Congratulations to Goose Gossage for his election to the baseball hall of fame, doubling the size of the Mariners contingent there. He may have only played for Seattle at the very end of his career, but I remember seeing him pitch in a few games in the Kingdome back in 1994 (I especially remember the ridiculous "goose is on the loose" animation they played on the scoreboard when he would come into games), and it's always a thrill to see a player from your hometown team receive the highest honor in baseball. Incidentally, I'm afraid I've disgraced my blog (not that it had much prestige to lose, granted) by allowing the Yankees' logo to appear on it, but that picture was the only one I could find that also showed Gossage in a Seattle uniform. Go Mariners!

The Caucus Race

As no doubt everyone out there is aware, Barack Obama just won big in the Iowa caucuses (the right decision, I think, and a very exciting development, as pundits everywhere are observing). There's been quite the media frenzy in the weeks leading up to the vote, and as always no two news outlets ever seem to agree on things. One topic on which I have heard general consensus is the condemnation of the caucus system. There seems to be a widespread opinion that at worst a caucus is the chaotic, raucous spectacle parodied by Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland, and that at best it is just plain boring. I think that attitude is a shame. In 2004, I participated in the Washington caucus (I was a Howard Dean delegate, I'm proud to say) and loved it. A caucus is politics the way politics should be: a community gathering together to discuss what's important to them and argue about which candidate best represents those interests (I should note that when I say 'community,' I mean it in the sense of a neighborhood, not as the trite platitude it seems to have become). It's true that some particularly vociferous people can drone on about their personal agenda longer than would be ideal (and yes, I realize the fundamental hypocrisy of a blogger criticizing people for long-winded oratories about their opinions) and that the whole process is a much more drawn-out affair than a simple primary. That said, politics is not meant to be some intangible entity of interest only to a few old white men in D.C.; it is a dynamic system that affects each of our lives daily, and it is meant to be discussed not just by congressmen, but by all of us. The beauty of a caucus is that it encourages people not just to pick a candidate blindly because they appear to share many of your values, but to form a coherent argument for why your choice makes more sense than your neighbor's. It's a sad fact that intelligent thought has become less and less prevalent in American politics, and that may account for why the public opinion of caucuses has been on a downturn. It's encouraging to see that turnout for and, by all accounts, excitement during the Iowa caucuses has been unexpectedly high among both republicans and democrats, and it would be nice to believe that rationality is making at least a modest comeback in government (though Mike Huckabee's victory on the republican side tempers my enthusiasm somewhat). Time will tell, but at the very least, the next few months are shaping up to be very interesting. Obama '08!