I have no idea what precisely this means; if you click on the banner above, it will take you to a website that tells you the reading level of your blog. This 'genius' rating means either that the language I use here is far too stilted or that my audience, small though it may be, is the intellectual cream of the crop. I choose to believe the latter. Incidentally, if any of you are reading this post, it means you are not only very bright (apparently), but very patient as well. I have been terrible about posting lately, and in the off-chance that any of you look to The Oregon Trail for part of your day's entertainment or edification, I will try to be much better about updating things. Welcome back to my weird little world!
The Northwest certainly isn't the only part of the world in which rhododendrons grow (the middle stretch of the Appalachians, I understand, has some particularly nice groves), but they do seem to disproportionately common in gardens here. Presumably this is because our climate mirrors that of the Himalayan foothills where the greatest diversity of wild species occurs; whatever the reason, rhododendron blooms are perhaps the most spectacular symbol of spring in this part of the world (a fact that Washington has recognized by declaring a native species, Rhododendron macrophyllum, the state flower). On the premise that there are few better subjects out there on which to test my "new" camera's macro function, I spent an hour or so today in the gardens at Eugene's Hendricks Park photographing rhododendrons. The result is the slideshow below (which also includes shots from my trip to Seattle a couple of weeks ago); I'm no Ansel Adams, but if you've had a hard time believing that spring has actually arrived, I hope these photos do their part to get you in the spirit.
Today marks the 184th anniversary of music's acme. On May 7th, 1824, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was premiered in Vienna. The Ninth and it's signature Ode to Joy (based on a work by poet Friedrich Schiller) has routinely been recognized as the greatest piece of music ever written, and I'm not about to second guess received wisdom in this case (especially when you consider that Beethoven was stone deaf when he wrote it). The same concert also saw the premier of Die Weihe des Hauses and Missa Solemnis, both brilliant works in their own right. If that weren't enough, today is also the birthday of two musical giants, Johannes Brahms (whose eponymous lullaby you've heard many times even if you don't listen to classical music) and Peter Illych Tchakovsky (long a personal favorite of mine). So if you, like me, regard music as something near a religion, I hope you had a chance to enjoy what would undoubtedly be one of the faith's high holidays.
I'm well aware that I'm prone to hyperbole, especially when writing about the Pacific Northwest, but it looks like there is at least one category in which an unbiased third party also believes we belong among the elite. The results of the World Beer Cup were announced recently, and the region did disproportionately well. The Oregonian has a nice blog entry on Oregon beers, but several entries from Northern California, Idaho, B.C., Alaska, and Washington placed very high as well. I very much doubt we will ever surpass England, Germany, or Belgium in terms of beer quality, but it's nice to know that we at least belong in the same league.
The Northwest has seen some bizarrely unseasonal weather over the course of the last couple of weeks, but the gray pall of winter gets thrown off today. It is, of course, Opening Day for my beloved Seattle Mariners, signaling the onset of Spring for all of us fans. This opener is sweeter than most, not only because the M's expectations are higher than they've been for years, not only because of the optimism and anticipation of warmer weather that are always engendered by the return of baseball, but because the heart and soul of the franchise will, at long last, be going into the season as a hall of famer. For many of us growing up in the Northwest the voice of Dave Niehaus has been as integral a part of summer as blue skies, idyllic temperatures, and hours upon hours of daylight. He has been a finalist for the Ford C. Frick Award (the broadcaster's equivalent of a Hall of Fame induction) for several years now, and this winter he was finally recognized as belonging among the game's great orators (he'll be inducted alongside Goose Gossage, meaning that for the first time two Mariners will be recognized in one year...sort of). I have listened to enough broadcasters to be able to state with conviction that Dave truly deserves this honor. For my entire life - indeed, for the entire life of the Mariners franchise - he has been synonymous with Northwest baseball and, for that matter, with summer. His approach to calling a game is a very narrative one, approaching each game as an unfolding story. Because of this, people sometimes complain that his style is rambling and unfocused, but to those of us that grew up listening to him, his voice is as familiar and his stories are as welcome as those of a grandfather. There is no Mariners fan out there that ever gets tired of listening to his calls from the 1995 postseason, in particular "The Double," a seminal moment in Northwest sports history. Here's hoping Dave gets a chance for an encore performance this Fall.
I have waxed poetic about Barack Obama several times on this blog, but I think in this case it's best just to let him speak for himself. All I'll say is that this is probably the best speech any US politician has given in my lifetime. They'll be talking about this one for a long, long time.
This quarter saw the return of our department's paleontology discussion group, and over the course of the last few months we've gone over several papers of note. Here are some of the paleontological highlights from the first quarter of 2008:
Two of my former MSc supervisors, Sarda Sahney and Mike Benton, published a paper on faunal recovery after the Permian-Triassic extinction. Their research yielded two particularly interesting results. First, extinction at the P-T boundary was the last of three extinctions that occurred during the late Permian. Second, ecological recovery took much longer than had previously been thought. Though some organisms - in particular the pig-like reptile Lystrosaurus - survived the extinction and thrived afterwards, ecosystem complexity remained low until 30 million years into the Triassic. You can read Sarda's much more detailed explanation of the paper's findings on her blog.
My current advisor, Samantha Hopkins, has also published a paper this year. It deals with the issue of rodent body size estimation. In particular, it emphasizes that previous estimates likely overestimate the size of the giant South American rodent Phoberomys, which had been described as "buffalo-sized." Just before this paper came to press, an even larger South American rodent was reported: the cumbersomely-named Josephoartigasia, which was estimated by the authors to weigh 10,000 kg (11 English tons). Unfortunately for fans of giant rodents, this reckoning is likely also too high, though it still would have been a massive animal, far larger than any rodent alive today (as is made abundantly clear in the picture at right at which the skull of Josephoartigasia is compared to a living rat).
On the paleoclimate front, Wolfram Kürschner and his colleagues published a study of Miocene plant stomata, orifices in leaves that allow carbon dioxide to enter the cells. The density of these openings varies with atmospheric CO2 content, and as such they provide a proxy for climatic conditions. This line of evidence is significant because marine and terrestrial isotopic studies show different climate signals. Stomatal data confirm the pattern observed in the terrestrial isotopic record, showing a period of global warming (the mid-Miocene climatic optimum) between 17 and 15 million years ago, followed by a prolonged period of global cooling.
Perhaps my favorite paper of the quarter was a description of the Eocene fossil bat Onychonycterus. Before the discovery of this specimen, all fossil bats looked for all intents and purposes like modern forms. This was frustrating, as these fossils told us nothing about the early evolution of bats. Onychonycterus effectively settles one major debate that had been raging in the paleochiropteral community; its ear showed none of the features associated with echolocation in modern species, demonstrating that bats took to the air before evolving "sonar." Even more interesting are the implications for the evolution of bat flight. Onychonycterus has wings similar to those seen in modern bats that fly by intermittent fluttering and gliding. What's more, it had relatively long legs and large claws on its wings, both of which would have made it an adept climber. Taken together, these lines of evidence suggest that the first flying bats were climbing trees and gliding rather than evolving wings from the "ground up" to help them catch insect prey. Another glimpse of early bat evolution was provided by fossil from the Fayum of Egypt, where - among others - a giant species was recently described.
There were several other stories in paleontology that we didn't discuss in our group that deserve mention anyway. Fellow Bristol and Chicago alumnus Steve Brusatte has described two new carnivorous dinosaurs from Africa. Dinosaurs weren't the only big things around in the Mesozoic, though, a point underscored by the discovery of a giant, dinosaur-eating frog (shown at right). Our Primate ancestors seem to have been part of the dinosaurs' world for longer than expected as well, and our own species seems to have evolved into more diverse niches than we had previously realized. One thing our species is not, according to a U of O anthropologist, is a duck-killer. The debate over how old ducks and their relatives really are rages on, but at least one contentious issue seems to have been solved: if a modern lion and an extinct marsupial "lion" got in a fight, who would win?
The big news in the Seattle area yesterday was the arson of a group of suburban houses, apparently by the Earth Liberation Front. This is not the first time ELF has gone and done something stupid (their torching of the Urban Horticulture Center a few years back still baffles and angers me), but this time it really stings. For all their zealotry, ELF was apparently protesting the unchecked sprawl that has gobbled up most of the rural landscape of the Puget Sound lowlands, which is a matter of genuine concern. By resorting to criminality and terrorism, though, they have done more harm than good, marginalizing those of us who think that sprawl is just one symptom of a much bigger problem that needs to be addressed. This is a topic I've been mulling over quite a lot since I was up in Seattle over Christmas, and this seemed a good opportunity to put it into writing, awkward as the segue may be. I should preface everything by saying that, though I currently live in Oregon, I was born and raised in Seattle, and there is a lot I really love about the city. First off, it has one of the most fortunate geographic settings in the world, on an isthmus between Puget Sound and Lake Washington, with sunrises over the Cascades' most spectacular peaks and sunsets that silhouette the Olympics. It also has a much richer cultural heritage than it gives itself credit for, especially in regards to music (which goes back a lot further than the grunge bands of the '90s). It has an enormous Vietnamese population, salmon runs through the Ballard Locks, a beautiful baseball stadium, a series of Olmsted parks that rival New York's for scenery, and is - for some inexplicable reason - the best place in the country to get a hamburger. It's a city built on boats, both those of Scandinavian fishermen and of the so-called "Mosquito Fleet" that kept the city in business after its upstart neighbor Tacoma was named the rail terminus for the region. Seattle succeeded against all odds, cementing its role on the national stage during the Klondike gold rush and on the world stage during the dot-com revolution. It has, however, become a victim of its own success after a quarter-century of unchecked growth. The most obvious - and ugliest - change has been in the suburbs. Farms have been plowed under, forests have been leveled, and once-rural towns have become soulless bedroom communities for the big city. This is the trend that was apparently being "protested" by ELF in the most ineffectual and destructive way possible, but things have been changing for the worse in Seattle itself as well. An article that I read in the Seattle P-I over Christmas is what really got me thinking about all this in the first place. The story was about a jury from the American Institute of Architects giving the city a failing grade on its new architecture. The main argument of the author was that Seattle's greatest failing was its lack of vision. A sudden influx of money led to myriad new construction projects that were not necessarily ugly or useless, but that lacked any distinctly local style, leading to what the author referred to as "a watery Dallas." Ouch. This may sound trivial, but a lack of foresight or desire to retain the city's original character has cropped up many times over the past few decades. Voters have several times rejected measures to fund transportation that the city now desperately needs (the new South Lake Union Streetcar is a nice idea, but the route is almost comically short and no more effective than a bus line), as well as an initiative to create what would have been one of the world's great urban parks in a former warehouse district. Several urban neighborhoods are thriving, which is nice, but almost everything that made those neighborhoods interesting to begin with has disappeared. I am thinking in particular of Ballard, which almost overnight went from a Scandinavian community to a hipster enclave; it's still a perfectly nice place, but with barely a hint of Nordic heritage. All this may seem ludicrously petty to someone who didn't grow up in Seattle. The region's economy was in the tank during the '70s, only to be rescued by Microsoft and the high-tech industry of the '90s and it may seem as though I have a lot of gall to complain about the city's near-miraculous turnaround just because it made things change from the way they used to be. That, however, is not the point I'm trying to make. Cities should try to grow their economies, of course, and development in and of itself is not a bad thing, nor is the change that is necessarily attendant on that development. However, I know the reason I loved growing up in Seattle was that it was not just a nice place to live, but it was genuinely unique. I also know I'm not alone in this, and that one of the major reasons the city's economy exploded in the '90s was that people wanted to work somewhere that was not a carbon copy of so many other urban centers across the country. The irony, of course, is that so many people wanted to live somewhere different that they wound up building over many of the things that made Seattle stand apart. For years, Seattleites have put the blame on new arrivals to the city, in particular those from California. Scapegoating is easy, but I think it's time we recognized the problem lies squarely on our shoulders. The people and the government of Seattle had plenty of chances to allow development within a framework that preserved the city's heritage, but we failed to do so. We need only look to Portland, which has managed to balance economic success and local identity spectacularly well, to see how effective such a framework can be. It is my fervent hope that someday Seattle will follow the lead of its southern neighbor and finally make itself a city worthy of its setting and of its own history. The miles of suburbs aren't going anywhere, and places like Ballard and Fremont will likely never return to the way they were, but there's still a lot of Seattle worth saving.
The trial run of my blog poll is over, and the people have spoken (all sixteen of you; is that really the extent of my audience?). Apparently there's no consensus on which southern continent would be most fun to visit, with four votes each for Australia, Antarctica, and South America. Poor Africa didn't get a single vote, though for my part it's an easy second choice. I've decided to try again, this time with only two options. The question is simple: what is the greatest comic strip of all time? What this really comes down to, of course (and with apologies to fans of Peanuts), is a debate between the often arcane nerd-humor of The Far Side and its cartoonist, Northwest native Gary Larson, and the often cynical philosophy-humor of Bill Watterson's Calvin & Hobbes. Frankly, this is an argument in which I'm not sure I can take sides: both were an integral part of my childhood, and I still find myself laughing just as hard as ever when I read them today. I'm curious to know what the rest of the world (or at least the infinitesimal portion of it that reads this blog regularly) thinks. So please, chime in on this hugely important issue. I can't think of any other big voting-related events going on right now that might distract you...
...if you live in the Pacific Northwest. This news is a few days old now, but I couldn't help but brag about the region's strong showing in Popular Science's list of greenest cities. Congratulations are due to Portland in particular, which edged out San Francisco for the #1 spot (further proof that Portland is the best city in the world). Eugene shows up at #5, and is rated as having the most environmentally-friendly electricity in the country. The third top-ten finisher from the Northwest is Seattle in the #8 spot. Surprisingly, Seattle's strength was its transportation, which has to be one of the most woefully underfunded and underdeveloped systems in the nation (though it must be admitted that Metro does a very good job with what little they're given). Northwesterners - especially Portlanders, Eugenians, and Seattleites - should give themselves a pat on the back for showing that, despite all the changes we've seen in the past several years, we still deserve our reputation as leaders of the pack on environmental issues.
While I was in Germany a couple of years ago I took the train from Berlin to Hamburg. I had a few hours to kill in the morning, and since the Berlin station is directly across the street from the world's largest zoo, I decided I'd pay it a visit. Without a doubt, my favorite part of the zoo was its aquarium/reptile house, not just because of the animals within it, but because of the building itself. It was built in 1913 and is covered in a series of colorful murals of prehistoric animals. I remember thinking at the time that the reconstructions were nicely done, if more than a little dated, and wondering who had painted them. Fast forward to earlier this week; I was looking for paintings of fossil horses that I could use in a presentation, and serendipitously stumbled across those same murals on the Internet. It turns out that the artist's name is Heinrich Harder (who, if nothing else, gets points for being alliterative) and he was quite a prolific painter of prehistoric life. "Paleoartitsry" is a term that has been coined to describe visual depictions of past life, and it is a field as old as paleontology itself. Working in the opening years of the 20th Century, Harder would have been one of the earliest paleoartists; he would, in fact, have been a contemporary of Charles R. Knight, widely recognized as the old master of scientific illustration. Where Knight was known for his detailed knowledge of anatomy and his ability to paint animals in active, lifelike poses, Harder's strength appears to lie in placing his subjects in interesting landscapes. According to what little biographical information I was able to track down, Harder was particularly inspired by the countryside of northern Germany and Scandinavia, as is apparent in his painting of a cave lion, though more exotic landscapes were well within his abilities as well; I particularly like his Hyaenodon in an Everglades-like swamp. I am sure this all seems very arcane and possibly uninteresting to most of my audience (such as it is), but I confess I have always had a soft spot for prehistoric landscapes. It was, in fact, the gloomy, expansive landscapes of Czech paleoartist Zdenek Burian that really cemented my interest in paleontology as a child; I always felt a mixture of excitement, wonder, and a tinge of melancholy when looking over his re-creations of an Ice Age taiga or a wind-blown Carboniferous swamp, and I knew then - as I still do now - that nothing could be as fascinating as reconstructing the world as it once was. Harder's images have a similar effect on me, and I thought I'd do my small part to share his work with the world by way of gratitude for reminding me that, even now, when you can barely turn on the TV without coming across some new series featuring computer-animated dinosaurs, a much simpler work inspired by genuine imagination can be more evocative by far.
For some time, I have harbored the delusion that if this whole paleontology thing doesn't work out, I could make it as a travel writer. In many ways it seems as though it would be an ideal life: wandering around the world and telling people about what you saw. Of course, there's much more to travel writing than just describing a trip, and if I ever actually tried my hand at it, I would certainly be a miserable failure. That said, I was thrilled to learn the other day that Lonely Planet has introduced a feature called Bluelists that lets the general public take a crack at travel writing. I couldn't help myself, and wrote a couple of lists about Oregon (describing the state's "seven wonders," both natural and cultural). There's nothing particularly remarkable about them, but the ratings I've gotten so far suggest that people seem to like them, which is gratifying. If you take the time to go read them, let me know what you think; while I enjoy rambling on about places I've visited, it'd be interesting to know how helpful or interesting that rambling is to other people.
Happy 199th, Charles R. Darwin! If you have a subscription to Nature (or work somewhere that does, in the case of you academics out there), check out this article by Kevin Padian summing up Darwin's achievements and looking forward to next year's bicentennial (and On the Origin of Species sesquicentennial) celebrations.
No, I'm not advocating that anyone double-dip our electoral system; I just have two topics I want to address in today's post that both happen to be related to voting. First, I want to draw everyone's attention to The Oregon Trail's newest features: the snazzy photo of Heceta Head at the top of the page that replaces the lackluster witticisms I'd previously posted there, a whole bunch of new links to sites that I think are worthwhile, and most importantly the new poll. Blogger introduced a new feature that lets you post questions that your visitors can answer, and I thought that sounded like a good time. So, each month you'll get a brand new, off-the-cuff question from the random-most reaches of my brain. This month's question, as you can see, is about which southern continent you'd most like to visit. With only six votes in, it's quite a tight race, so please do chime in on this frivolous and entirely meaningless debate! My second topic today is addressed to my audience in Washington (though the rest of you are welcome to read it as well, I suppose). What with Super Tuesday turning out to be entirely indecisive on the Democratic side (though the Republican race seems to be over; congratulations to John McCain, the first GOP candidate in years that I genuinely respect), the Great State of Washington is all of a sudden hugely important on the national scene. The state's caucuses are on Saturday, and I urge - even beg - everyone who's able to go to do so. I urge this regardless of which candidate you support, because as I've previously remarked, caucuses are democracy as democracy should be. That said, I am partisan, and at the risk of proselytizing, I encourage everyone out there to consider Barack Obama. I've already stated why I think he's the best choice out there, and I won't be repeat myself except to say that he's the only candidate we have that truly understands how our system of government is supposed to work and who has any shot at turning the tide away from political dogmatism and special interests. On a more practical level, McCain's apparent victory on the Republican side means that the GOP will be fielding a candidate with significant appeal to independents. Of the two Democratic candidates, only Obama has shown that he has strong support outside of the traditional Democratic base, and as such has a much better shot in the general election. For those of you that are going to the caucuses this weekend, regardless of who you support, it's always good to go in with more than empty rhetoric to back up your candidate; to that end - and, again, because I'm biased - here's a link to Obama's stances on major issues. Of course, if you're a supporter of Clinton, McCain, or any of the other candidates, they all have similar sites that you can look up. Just remember: this is a big deal. It's the first time in a while that Northwest voters will play a major role in determining the course of national politics, and we (by 'we,' of course, I mean 'you;' Oregon doesn't get to vote until May) should make sure we take the responsibility seriously by using the caucuses as a forum for informed debate and rational decision-making. That said, enjoy them as well; the 2004 caucuses were lots of fun because I got to argue politics with complete strangers. As I recall I even changed a few peoples' minds and that, of course, is one of the greatest feelings in the world...
A year or two ago, before the realities of life as a grad student set in, I was considering putting together an honest-to-goodness web page rather than just this blog. Because I'm creatively challenged, I discussed my idea with Michael, creator of The Planet Mike and one of the most creative people I know. He recommended an urban motif, suggesting the name Orcuttopolis. I loved the idea, particularly because the theme lent itself to clever ways of naming sub-pages (my "About Me" section could have been the Chamber of Commerce, and my photos could be displayed in the Art Institute of Orcuttopolis). I even went so far as to download several drawings of buildings from cities in which I've lived and put them together in a cityscape. The web page will likely never see the light of day, but I thought it was a shame to deprive the world of a glimpse of Orcuttopolis' skyline. I'm especially proud of the somewhat cryptic city motto on the road sign.
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
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!
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!
My current advisor, Samantha Hopkins, has also published a paper this year. It deals with the issue of rodent body size estimation. In particular, it emphasizes that previous estimates likely overestimate the size of the giant South American rodent Phoberomys, which had been described as "buffalo-sized." Just before this paper came to press, an even larger South American rodent was reported: the cumbersomely-named Josephoartigasia, which was estimated by the authors to weigh 10,000 kg (11 English tons). Unfortunately for fans of giant rodents, this reckoning is likely also too high, though it still would have been a massive animal, far larger than any rodent alive today (as is made abundantly clear in the picture at right at which the skull of Josephoartigasia is compared to a living rat).
There were several other stories in paleontology that we didn't discuss in our group that deserve mention anyway. Fellow Bristol and Chicago alumnus Steve Brusatte has described two new carnivorous dinosaurs from Africa. Dinosaurs weren't the only big things around in the Mesozoic, though, a point underscored by the discovery of a giant, dinosaur-eating frog (shown at right). Our Primate ancestors seem to have been part of the dinosaurs' world for longer than expected as well, and our own species seems to have evolved into more diverse niches than we had previously realized. One thing our species is not, according to a U of O anthropologist, is a duck-killer. The debate over how old ducks and their relatives really are rages on, but at least one contentious issue seems to have been solved: if a modern lion and an extinct marsupial "lion" got in a fight, who would win?
The big news in the Seattle area yesterday was the arson of a group of suburban houses, apparently by the Earth Liberation Front. This is not the first time ELF has gone and done something stupid (their torching of the Urban Horticulture Center a few years back still baffles and angers me), but this time it really stings. For all their zealotry, ELF was apparently protesting the unchecked sprawl that has gobbled up most of the rural landscape of the Puget Sound lowlands, which is a matter of genuine concern. By resorting to criminality and terrorism, though, they have done more harm than good, marginalizing those of us who think that sprawl is just one symptom of a much bigger problem that needs to be addressed. This is a topic I've been mulling over quite a lot since I was up in Seattle over Christmas, and this seemed a good opportunity to put it into writing, awkward as the segue may be.
While I was in Germany a couple of years ago I took the train from Berlin to Hamburg. I had a few hours to kill in the morning, and since the Berlin station is directly across the street from the world's largest zoo, I decided I'd pay it a visit. Without a doubt, my favorite part of the zoo was its aquarium/reptile house, not just because of the animals within it, but because of the building itself. It was built in 1913 and is covered in a series of colorful murals of prehistoric animals. I remember thinking at the time that the reconstructions were nicely done, if more than a little dated, and wondering who had painted them. Fast forward to earlier this week; I was looking for paintings of fossil horses that I could use in a presentation, and serendipitously stumbled across those same murals on the Internet. It turns out that the artist's name is Heinrich Harder (who, if nothing else, gets points for being alliterative) and he was quite a prolific painter of prehistoric life. "Paleoartitsry" is a term that has been coined to describe visual depictions of past life, and it is a field as old as paleontology itself. Working in the opening years of the 20th Century, Harder would have been one of the earliest paleoartists; he would, in fact, have been a contemporary of Charles R. Knight, widely recognized as the old master of scientific illustration. Where Knight was known for his detailed knowledge of anatomy and his ability to paint animals in active, lifelike poses, Harder's strength appears to lie in placing his subjects in interesting landscapes. According to what little biographical information I was able to track down, Harder was particularly inspired by the countryside of northern Germany and Scandinavia, as is apparent in his painting of a cave lion, though more exotic landscapes were well within his abilities as well; I particularly like his Hyaenodon in an Everglades-like swamp. I am sure this all seems very arcane and possibly uninteresting to most of my audience (such as it is), but I confess I have always had a soft spot for prehistoric landscapes. It was, in fact, the gloomy, expansive landscapes of Czech paleoartist Zdenek Burian that really cemented my interest in paleontology as a child; I always felt a mixture of excitement, wonder, and a tinge of melancholy when looking over his re-creations of an Ice Age taiga or a wind-blown Carboniferous swamp, and I knew then - as I still do now - that nothing could be as fascinating as reconstructing the world as it once was. Harder's images have a similar effect on me, and I thought I'd do my small part to share his work with the world by way of gratitude for reminding me that, even now, when you can barely turn on the TV without coming across some new series featuring computer-animated dinosaurs, a much simpler work inspired by genuine imagination can be more evocative by far.
Happy 199th, Charles R. Darwin! If you have a subscription to Nature (or work somewhere that does, in the case of you academics out there), check out this article by Kevin Padian summing up Darwin's achievements and looking forward to next year's bicentennial (and On the Origin of Species sesquicentennial) celebrations.
A year or two ago, before the realities of life as a grad student set in, I was considering putting together an honest-to-goodness web page rather than just this blog. Because I'm creatively challenged, I discussed my idea with Michael, creator of The Planet Mike and one of the most creative people I know. He recommended an urban motif, suggesting the name Orcuttopolis. I loved the idea, particularly because the theme lent itself to clever ways of naming sub-pages (my "About Me" section could have been the Chamber of Commerce, and my photos could be displayed in the Art Institute of Orcuttopolis). I even went so far as to download several drawings of buildings from cities in which I've lived and put them together in a cityscape. The web page will likely never see the light of day, but I thought it was a shame to deprive the world of a glimpse of Orcuttopolis' skyline. I'm especially proud of the somewhat cryptic city motto on the road sign.
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!
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!
