Little Books (107)

Nov 15, 2022 16:36

Overcast, rainy, and the high was 52˚F. There is some genuinely cold weather on the way.

Today was less exhausting only because I was still so exhausted from yesterday that, well, you see what I mean. I worked on MP2, running the PAUP analysis again, and the constraint search did what it was meant to do, and all is well. But, honestly, I am having to learn a language I do not know, the very specialized, technical language of translating the graphic/mathematical results of phylogenetic analyses into text, into coherent and convincing arguments. A year and a half ago, this all seemed to straightforward, but the truth is describing new taxa in 2022 is a hell of a lot harder than it was when I named Selmasaurus russelli in 1988. I am not convinced that systematics has made the science better, but it has surely made it far more complex. More quantitative does not necessarily translate to better.

Yes, well. I am very tired.

Also, I got to see almost all the figures for the paper today. Jun Ebersole has done a marvelous job on them.

Oh, and a signed a whole bunch of books we'd sold via Big Cartel today, and almost all of them were signed to people who's names began with J, which was odd. So, I took a photo of the one signed to someone named Sebastián, because it was respite from all the Js.

The afternoon's film was J.J. Abram's Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013). I really am fond of this film, and I wish I knew what happened between Into Darkness and Star Trek: Beyond that led to such a plummet in quality, and why the decision wasn't made to pursue the next obvious story development: War with the Klingon Empire. Anyway, Admiral Marcus' USS Vengeance is one of the most bad-ass things in the history of Star Trek.

Did I mention how tired I am?

Later Tater Beans,
Aunt Beast



9:51 a.m.

star trek, mp2, mathematics, selmasaurus, fort, big cartel, rain, klingons, 1988, exhaustion, science, 2005, mosasaurs, 2013, damned things, j.j. abrams, systematics, then vs. now

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