Yay for Archaeology! The Oldest Nuclear Fam

Doesn’t it almost look fake?

The oldest nuclear family (?) has been found.  Praise the gods.  NOW, we can finally find out ALL ABOUT what family life was like in… well, 4,600 years ago.  Das is gut, yah?

Read the article here.  Then read on.  Or, don’t.  Whatev.

My “beef” with this article isn’t so much the unearthing of these graves, b/c, hey, they been dead a long effing time.  They.  Been.  Dead.  So, why not?

My real beef is this: archaeologists (I typed that about 65 times before getting it right) think that they can tell you sooo much about these fossils they find just from some chip in the skull bone or a lack of density in the femur or something.  Read this:

Many showed injuries that indicated they were the victims of a violent raid. One female was found to have a stone projectile point embedded in one of her vertebra and another had skull fractures. Several bodies also had defence injuries to the forearms and hands.

What exactly “indicated that they were the victims of a violent raid” (italics mine, of course)?  I mean, who in their right mind would actually posit that?  How many millions of other possibilities are there, in fact, that might be the cause of these injuries which “indicate” such and such whatever and so on yada yada yada blah blah, etc. etc., and now I’m a published scientist, yay. (and here’s the “?” because that last sentence was supposed to be a question)

My point is clear (maybe, but probably not).  I just mean to say that there are other possibilities besides whatever the heck these soi-disant experts assert as la vérité.  That’s French for “the truth.”  I could have used English, but French sounded better, and apparently shows up bigger after you’ve copy&paste-d it from Google Translator.  I originally wrote “le vert,” but I think that means “the green thing.”  Which isn’t exactly what I had intended.  Meant.  Yes.

This article also reminds me of a TV spot I saw where a guy presumably tells us that a certain cat was the member of a bigger group of cats (prehistoric of course), because of the following indisputable reasons: 1) it’s femur was clearly injured; 2) the rest of the body was okay.  That’s it.  The femur bone: hurt.  Rest of the body: okay.  So, clearly, based on the evidence, we can conclude that, QED, the cat was a member of a big group of cats.  Are you kidding me?

Ugh.

Whatever.  It’s just that a lot of the scientists that have the media attention are such bigoted idiots that I can’t stomach it, so I react really strongly to stupid, irrelevant details of actually really cool scientific findings like the one in this article.

But just for the record: GO AWAY, Dawkins and your cronies.  Just go away.

Be-cause you list-ened,
Neal

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In-Laws, Shopping with the

My in-laws are in-town this weekend.  They are staying with me and Ash.  Well, they are staying in the same building.  Our apartment building has rooms for temporary rental, like a weekend or a week or something, if you want.  You have to know someone that lives here, and if you’re reading this, it’s likely you do.  They do.  
They know us.  We know them.  It works out pretty well.

We’re going shopping today, because (1) it is getting effing cold, and (2) we need a printer.  With that being said, these are the things I am going to try and get today:

Boots – The North Face – probably something like these …

Goggles – The North Face maybe – you may laugh, but it gets so cold and snowy and windy up here that apparently you need ski goggles just to be able to fly high above all the mucky muck, feeling oh so proudly.  But they’ll probably be something like these …
Annnnd, finally, we need a printer, like bad.  There’s a “business center” (read, “computer lab”) in our building, which has like 5 or so computers, 2 printers, a fax-machine, and a copier.  The only thing that works consistently well is the copier.  SO, we are going to get one today hopefully, b/c it’s getting effing reedickulous.  I have to print stuff off all the time for school, and now I’m fed up.  Or however you spell “fed.”  In any event, here  is the one we are thinking of getting, over at Best Buy, probably a little like this…except we’ll be getting the whole thing, not this abbreviated, cut-off version you see below.  (In case you haven’t ever used a computer, click the image for full size.)
So, yeah, there ya’ go.  ’Til next time, pikcha me rollin…like this…  

B/c u lizened,
Neal
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World::Internet

The internet, like the world for which it is a microcosm (a misnomer if there ever was one), can be a great place.  It can bring out the best in people.  It can also be an awful, horrible, disgusting, evil place, and it bring out the worst, as well.  Sometimes, we aren’t sure where exactly the situation lies on the line from good to evil, but we understand that something has gone very awry.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/11/21/webcam.suicide/index.html?eref=rss_topstories#cnnSTCVideo

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I may actually (kind of) get my wish

I wanted Hillary ’08.  Alas, we have Obama.  However, she may get the Secretary of State position.  Check it out.

And here’s a link, as well:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/1120/p09s02-coop.html
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