2010. Meh.

2010 was an all right but not spectacular year. All in all I hung about, got work done, had some fun and really good moments, some nasty pain and frustrations, and got some useful things done without making any major changes in my life. Meh, but overall good meh, I think. I don't mind the occasional meh year.

2011 has the potential to be a good deal more interesting. I will be facing at least one, and potentially two changes in employment, and possibly a major and thoroughly awesome relocation. I may be visiting two countries, including my first trip south of the equator. I also may have as many as SEVEN papers on which I am first or second author in review and/or in press by the end of the year, and at least one other where I am at least part of the list. I missed the 2010 Paleo Project Challenge but compensated for it by getting a SEVERAL papers not done. And these aren't bullshit crappy mass-produced papers that don't really figure stuff out and couldn't survive peer review that you might publish in your self-edited bulletin neither. These papers that I have not gotten done are all Awesome papers that Solve the Mysteries of the Universe.

Sorry, didn't mean to jerk off in your face there, ha ha! Here's a hanky.

Yes, anyway, I am working on a few of them tonight. Yes, I am at home on New Years all alone, working on papers. This makes me both lame and awesome. I am in one of my high productivity episodes where all I want to do is work and work, so I am working and working. It's too fucking cold out to go anywhere anyway.

Actually, it's just lame. I'm writing papers on New Year's Eve. This is bullshit.

One thing that really made me laugh. A friend forwarded me a text message from her sister, which reads:

I tried to read Gus' new book of Bible stories to him today, but had to shelf it as God was a dick in every single story.

Happy New Year!

p.s.: I considered doing a list of my favorite posts of 2010 like John Wilkins the albino gorilla but realized that most of my posts suck. This guy needs a fucking editor I think to myself when I read them. Why can't he stay on topic? These paragraphs do not follow a natural progression.

Also, I somehow missed this great posting by Matt Wedel at SV-POW on soft tissue reconstructions in sauropods; his thoughts on breaking up the familiar skeletal outline with funky soft tissue madness definitely mirror my own.

Answering Michael Ruse

Michael Ruse asks a question, and John Wilkins at Evolving Thoughts thinks he has a point. I don't.

Here is Ruse's question:

The first amendment of the U.S. Constitution separates science and religion. (Don’t get into arguments about wording. That is how it has been interpreted.) You cannot legally teach religion in state schools, at least not in biology and other science classes. That was the issue in Arkansas and Dover. (I am not talking about current affairs or like courses.) But now ask yourself. If “God exists” is a religious claim (and it surely is), why then is “God does not exist” not a religious claim? And if Creationism implies God exists and cannot therefore be taught, why then should science which implies God does not exist be taught?

Let me field that one, Michael.

"God exists" is NOT a fundamentally religious claim. "God does not exist" is not a fundamentally scientific one. The specific reason WHY the claims are made is what separates religion from science.

This question is a point of confusion only for those who argue that belief in God or the supernatural is BY DEFINITION, a non-scientific issue, something that I have argued in the past is bullshit. Science makes claims about things that are real vs. imaginary, not things that are "natural" vs. "supernatural", and the latter terms don't really mean anything anyway. If the REALITY of the "supernatural" (i.e. forces acting outside of the known laws of physics and chemistry) could be demonstrated by repeatable scientific testing, they would be scientific...but it can't, so it is unscientific, and also therefore probably imaginary (i.e. bullshit).

Disbelief in God is not necessarily scientific; people can certainly reject God for irrational and emotional reasons (although this is not the case for most atheists I know), just as they can accept His existence for irrational and emotional reasons. However, atheism as I "practice" it is scientific. Rejecting claims for which there is no evidence is about as scientific as you can get.

Ruse's confusion is yet another reason why I consider the NOMA approach to be not just misleading, but downright destructive of to our understanding of what it is that science actually does. If Michael Ruse, someone who has been writing on the Creationism-Evolution debate for some time, can actually be confused about why rejection of the supernatural is a scientific AND non-religious position, how can the general public be expected to understand what science is at all?

LNJ

Potentially Interesting.

Is It OK To Think That This Is Great? I'm Not Sure.

If you have even heard of the Internet you have probably seen this by now, but I thought I'd post it just in case, because it is very important for you to see it.

The following news story of a foiled rape attempt would be a disturbing but fairly unremarkable evening news story, were it not for the absolutely astonishing statement by the victim's brother.



There are fairly interesting things that you can do with such material, if you are a couple of smartass kids with a computer and some spare time.



It is terrifyingly catchy. I haven't even memorized the lyrics to "Silent Night" yet, but I've got this one down.

There is an iTunes version available for purchase, with some of the proceeds going to the Dodsons. So actually, it is all in good taste. That is the only reason I posted it.

Stereopairs Are Cool.

Bill Mueller of Texas Tech University has an extremely simple set of instructions up at Matt Brown's fossil prep site for making stereopairs. I had never actually tried this before, but wanted to try putting together stereopairs for the Longosuchus cranial material Bill Parker and I are redescribing, and decided to try it with the lectotype braincase.

The entire process was ridiculously easy. All you have to do is get the two images the right angle apart as would be seen by your eyes from the distance the camera is from the specimen; for a camera two feet above the specimen on a tripod, this is about six degrees. I literally just taped two pencils to the underside of a clipboard with scotch tape at the right distance to make a angle of six degrees if I pushed down on one end of the clipboard, put the braincase on the clipboard under the camera, and started taking pictures; for each stereopair, I took the first photo with the clipboard level, then pushed down on the end with my finger to tilt the specimen for the second picture. I assembled the entire figure below in about a day, and can get the images to pop out right on the screen just by crossing my eyes.

If you have ever been able to get those "Magic Eye" pictures to work (or not), the principle is the same; just let your eyes relax so that each image for each stereopair splits in two, and get the splits from each photo to cross over each other. It helps to identify particular landmarks on each photo and concentrate on getting them to cross over. Just WILL them to do so, and eventually your eyes will figure out what they are supposed to do.



The main disadvantage with stereopairs is a size restriction. Equivalent landmarks can't be more than about 60-65 mm (the distance between your eyes) ON THE PAGE (or screen), so the stereopairs can't be more than about twice the size they are on the screen now. This is an obvious disadvantage if you want to show details on something big like a braincase, so I will probably end up just using stereopairs for particular details like the middle and inner ear. Still, it was pretty cool to be able to assemble something like this so quickly and easily.

Followup: Mike Taylor at SV-POW has a post showing a couple other methods of presenting stereopairs which are pretty cool.