The Caveman’s Corner

I just came across this today and it amused me profusely:

http://puntabulous.com/2008/03/17/puntabulous-guest-debate-10/

Welcome to another edition of Puntabulous Guest Debates! Today I welcome Avitable who has my favorite header and headline in the whole wide world. We’re going to wrestle the topic that has plagued dorky science fiction fans (are there any other kind?) since 1977.

STAR WARS VS STAR TREK!

Battlestar Galactica LOLcats is pretty good, too.

Productivity is over-rated.

John McCain is Colonel Tigh. All the time I’ve been watching Battlestar Galactica and whenever I watch McCain speak I keep thinking, I’ve seen this guy before. Who is that?

Ahaha, I’m not the first one to think of this. Victory.

And then it dawned on me. That’s John McCain or alternately that’s Colonel Tigh! Oh, grizzled, bald warriors. You’re all alike. Alright. That’s all for today. Just be sure to vote for the man who will be tough on terror/Cylons.

Yet again, I’m contemplating embarking forth on a research project. Who knows how far this one will go, as my last… several… have died after I got overwhelmed by the preliminary reading. I do think this project has some distinct advantages, however: A) I now have access to the UT database at home on my computer, B) I can do this project without getting approval ahead of time (like with a zoo study), C) I won’t need too much math, I hope, and D) The study might be one that is fully within my resources to carry out.

What I was thinking of is a genealogical study to test the ‘Grandmother Hypothesis.’ For those not familiar, the grandmother hypothesis holds that the long human female post-reproductive lifespan evolved because grandmothers would aid their offspring in raising their children and thus increase their own reproductive success. Was this process active in recent societies? Well, to answer that, my plan is to examine genealogical records from Sevier and surrounding counties where I live. Fortunately, Appalachian people have a taste for this sort of thing, so genealogies aren’t excessively hard to come by. There are a lot of families with very long histories here as well that can be tracked back centuries in a single county. As for the specific methodology of analysis… I’ve found one other study of this type down in a Japanese city, and I’m planning to see how much I can apply from it. Any suggestions would be most welcome.

Oh, my poor blog… I have neglected thee so. And I’ve stopped reading them too. I don’t know why exactly. I still want to blog. The desire has not left me. I just seem to be in a rut. I still haven’t started the Meet a Contemporary I should be doing, not because I’ve been particularly to busy but just because it always seems like I should have started earlier. Ahhh. Oh well. At least this is a post. Yes! The spell is broken! Blog ho!

Ah, but I have that powerpoint to do… And its not due at a soon enough date for me to be procrastinating by working much harder on something else. But actually, I have something I could blog on now. So ha! Rise like a Phoenix, dear blog!

I had to read Book XI of The Epic of Gilgamesh tonight for my Western Lit class. What really struck me was the depiction of the Flood. For those who aren’t familiar with The Epic, it is a Sumerian myth about a semi-legendary king and his travels, culminating in a journey to visit Utnapishtim, an immortal man who survived a great Flood with destroyed the rest of humanity. The story was the inspiration for the Biblical one in Genesis.

Now this is how to depict a Flood

We, or I at least, tend to have this Sunday school image of the Flood, with Noah’s Ark and all the little animals, two-by-two, all of that, and we really forget the awe of the story. It’s a powerful notion; all that is in the scope of human experience is destroyed in a great catastrophe before the eyes of the passengers of a single ship entrusted with the future of all humanity. It’s a singular and striking narrative, and I think a lot of what keeps us from really appreciating it is how geographical we are in the modern age.

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