I must make note of this mess before it leaves my head, and leaves me lost in the pines, in the pines, where the sun don’t ever shine. I would shiver the whole night through. In the newly defined handler object, there are methods that get called when a figure is added to the realm. …
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 7:36 — 4.3MB) | Embed
Pulling the bone over their eyes The fossil record contains, at best, only a few percent of any given ecology during any given time. To complicate the picture, some of the fossils are fakes. From money to reputation to jokes, there are many reasons why such fossil hoaxes are perpetrated. Today we look at a …
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 6:20 — 3.6MB) | Embed
Digging for coal and fossils In the mid 1800/s some fossils were found in a tributary of the Illinois river, called “Mazon Creek.” They had simply weathered out of the ground, but it wasn’t until coal mining moved in, that the true extent and value of the Mazon Creek fossil deposit was discovered.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 4:24 — 5.0MB) | Embed
Yesterday, I got email from the relevant companies. The smart glasses I ordered are on the way, actually shipped this time. This marks the end of a long, and quite Ludacris saga. I wondered just how long it really has been, so I took a look in the journal where I keep track of this …
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:36 — 3.3MB) | Embed
Fossil casts and molds When a creature dies and becomes buried, sometimes its remains can completely rot and dissolve away, leaving a hollow space within the rock called a mold. If that mold becomes filled with sediment and water, it can harden into rock, becoming a cast. Every so often, the same sort of process …
Let’s get started. Putting together the nodes and handlers is going to be somewhat painful, and slow. It might be a bit more fun, along with giving me a way to test the general concept and implementation, if I implement the handlers to help me do a particular experiment or two. There will be no …
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:48 — 3.3MB) | Embed
Doctor Frankenstein’s favorite beer The semiprecious stone amber is fossilized tree resin. Sometimes, insects and other small critters are trapped by sticky tree sap, and become encased in amber. Sometimes, microorganisms are found inside amber. Sometimes, they’re yeast that can be revived and used to brew beer. Here’s an article about the yeast, revived and …
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 8:51 — 5.2MB) | Embed
A walk through other dating methods There are different candidates for the oldest preserved human footprints in North America. The older sight has a less certain date than the younger one. Today we look at ways of dating fossils, other than using carbon 14.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 7:45 — 4.5MB) | Embed
Mystery solve, and dating fossils It took a bit of digging, but I found out why the domestic dog fossil found with the remains of the La Brea woman didn’t cause more of a sensation. Using carbon 14 dating, the dog fossil turned out to be around seven-thousand years younger than the fossil of the …
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 6:59 — 4.1MB) | Embed
Wait… she had a dog? The La Brea Woman was found in close association with the remains of a domesticated dog. Her remains have been dated to between 9,000 and 10,000 years ago. Were there dogs that early in North America? How long ago were dogs domesticated?