Pictures from Thanksgiving and Luci

Thanksgiving and Luci

Some artifacts from the Massachusetts Survey and Crew Photo

Coldest and Last Day of Project


Quartz Point

Lamoka Point

More artifacts

Pipe from the 1800's recovered in Deadwood at site SD0969

Pictures from the dig in Deadwood

Deadwood

Pictures from the trip to Deadwood from Chicago

Here are some pictures I took with a disposable camera while I was on the road last Sunday and Monday. I wish I could have taken more but I ran out of room on my lowly disposable. I hope to buy a camera in the near future so I can update more regularly on how the dig is progressing.

Entering Wisconsin

Rest stop just before Mississippi River in Wisconsin

Over the Mississippi

Wind power generators in Minnesota

Sunset in western Minnesota

Morning at the Super 8 in Murdo, SD

Lots of fog

Free range cattle during their morning graze

New Fossil Strenghtens Theory of Evolution

“You ever noticed how people who believe in Creationism look really unevolved? You ever noticed that? Eyes real close together, eyebrow ridges, big furry hands and feet. "I believe God created me in one day" Yeah, looks like He rushed it.” - Bill Hicks

Today, in New York the primate fossil dubbed, 'Ida', was unveiled. The significance of Ida is monumental. Not only is the fossil 95% complete, but even the remnant of her last meal is intact. "It tells a part of our evolution that's been hidden so far. It's been hidden because the only [other] specimens are so incomplete and so broken there's nothing almost to study", says Dr. Hurum of Ida. Ida is similar to other 4 legged mammal like the cow, sheep and dog.

The amazing preservation of this fossil is attributed to a volcanic deposit at Messel:

"The basin in which the deposit accumulated formed during a volcanic explosion. It filled with water, which seemingly, one way or another, accumulated gases that poisoned animals individually, episodically, or periodically"

Archaeologists here in the Midwest wouldn't mind that kind of preservation!!

A monumental find like Ida helps to solidify the theory of evolution, not that it was ever in any real harm. Science is not a guessing game, or a set of dogmatic rules. It presents facts to us and we place those facts in context. Ida will allow us to understand more fully how our species has evolved. Even with all of his research shortcomings, Darwin attempted to put the human existence into context, so it is fitting that the scientific name for Ida is darwinius masillae.

Pure Bliss

My Eyes Are Open

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed." - Albert Einstein

In December, I graduated with a B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Illinois, Chicago. Since then I have been looking for work and catching up on some reading.

Lately I have been wondering, what is a B.A. worth these days? Well lets do some simple math;

-About 11,000 in Federal Student Loans

-About 15,000 in Private Student Loans

-4 Months, 5 days a week, 8 hours a days of looking for a job totaling about 640 hours

-Over 200 resumes and applications finished

As the summer months approach and the ground thaws, the American Archaeology season is just beginning. In the next few weeks I am interviewing for archaeology positions in the Chicago area, Iowa, the Dakotas, Wisconsin and Wyoming. Considering the wide range of possibilities, I will keep a journal of sorts here on my experiences as an Shovel Bum over the coming months.

The worth of a degree is different for everyone; a chance for financial growth, a stepping stone to a higher degree or plain self gratification, but for me it's worth will be measured by the adventure into the unknown. Or as one of my favorite TV series puts it, "to boldly go where no man has gone before".


My Eyes are open.

20's Reporter Asks Hilarious Question

This is possibly the funniest post-game question ever:

Republicans and their tea bags

Fascism is a plebian movement in origin, directed and financed by big capitalist powers. According to Fox News's Glenn Beck he plans to attend a $500 dollar-a-plate fundraiser for the tea party movement. Obviously, this "Tea Party" movement is really a way for the GOP to raise money.

Here is what went on at one of the tea party meetings:

Listen to the scary woman yell about burning books around 4:40:





Does anyone else find it offensive for these people to use the moniker "Tea Party" for an ultra-conservative movement aimed at financial gain?

The Greatness of the White Stripes

Conan O'Brien is leaving late late night, destined to become the new and improved host of the Tonight Show. For the last night of the Conan O'Brien Show, the White Stripes agreed to appear as the musical guest. Although I missed the show, here is an appearance they made in 2003 on Conan's show, compliments of Pitchfork.com.

The music speaks for itself:

The White Stripes
Uploaded by molivera

Wow.....

Please sir, can you pass the logic?

It seems that the "Conservative Idiocracy" theme continues...

McCain's tweet not sitting well with one newspaper

McCain has been Twittering his '10 Porkiest Projects.'

WASHINGTON (CNN) – A South Carolina newspaper isn’t too happy with what John McCain’s been Twittering.

McCain has been using the microblogging site to post a near-daily list of the “10 Porkiest projects” in the omnibus spending bill. On Wednesday, the Arizona senator posted “#6. $950,000 for a Convention Center in Myrtle Beach, SC.”

The Myrtle Beach Sun News editorialized Friday that McCain is using the site “to make congressional earmarks a political wedge issue for the Republicans” by posting such earmarks without context.

The paper wrote that “readers of McCain's Convention Center tweet are now invited to think — without the inconvenience of critical reflection — that the Myrtle Beach Convention Center project has no value.”

The editorial argued instead that the convention center project has the potential to create long-term wealth and jobs in the coastal resort city.

“The irony in all this,” the paper wrote, is that the earmark was inserted into the spending bill by one of McCain’s closest friends: South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham

Star Trek Lives

I have spent many hours watching the Star Trek series in my 25 years on this planet. As my friend Ben knows, sometimes when you admit this people gaze at you in wonder. For Ben and I, and any other intelligent people out there who appreciate the creativity of Gene Roddenberry and the Star Trek world, this article is for you.

Galaxy may be full of 'Earths,' alien life:

By A. Pawlowski
CNN

(CNN) -- As NASA prepares to hunt for Earth-like planets in our corner of the Milky Way galaxy, there's new buzz that "Star Trek's" vision of a universe full of life may not be that far-fetched.

Pointy-eared aliens traveling at light speed are staying firmly in science fiction, but scientists are offering fresh insights into the possible existence of inhabited worlds and intelligent civilizations in space.

There may be 100 billion Earth-like planets in the Milky Way, or one for every sun-type star in the galaxy, said Alan Boss, an astronomer with the Carnegie Institution and author of the new book "The Crowded Universe: The Search for Living Planets."

He made the prediction based on the number of "super-Earths" -- planets several times the mass of the Earth, but smaller than gas giants like Jupiter -- discovered so far circling stars outside the solar system.

Boss said that if any of the billions of Earth-like worlds he believes exist in the Milky Way have liquid water, they are likely to be home to some type of life.

"Now that's not saying that they're all going to be crawling with intelligent human beings or even dinosaurs," he said.

"But I would suspect that the great majority of them at least will have some sort of primitive life, like bacteria or some of the multicellular creatures that populated our Earth for the first 3 billion years of its existence."

Putting a number on alien worlds

Other scientists are taking another approach: an analysis that suggests there could be hundreds, even thousands, of intelligent civilizations in the Milky Way.

Researchers at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland constructed a computer model to create a synthetic galaxy with billions of stars and planets. They then studied how life evolved under various conditions in this virtual world, using a supercomputer to crunch the results.

In a paper published recently in the International Journal of Astrobiology, the researchers concluded that based on what they saw, at least 361 intelligent civilizations have emerged in the Milky Way since its creation, and as many as 38,000 may have formed.

Duncan Forgan, a doctoral candidate at the university who led the study, said he was surprised by the hardiness of life on these other worlds.

"The computer model takes into account what we refer to as resetting or extinction events. The classic example is the asteroid impact that may have wiped out the dinosaurs," Forgan said.

"I half-expected these events to disallow the rise of intelligence, and yet civilizations seemed to flourish."

Forgan readily admits the results are an educated guess at best, since there are still many unanswered questions about how life formed on Earth and only limited information about the 330 "exoplanets" -- those circling sun-like stars outside the solar system -- discovered so far.

The first was confirmed in 1995 and the latest just this month when Europe's COROT space telescope spotted the smallest terrestrial exoplanet ever found. With a diameter less than twice the size of Earth, the planet orbits very close to its star and has temperatures up to 1,500° Celsius (more than 2,700° Fahrenheit), according to the European Space Agency. It may be rocky and covered in lava.

Hunt for habitable planets

NASA is hoping to find much more habitable worlds with the help of the upcoming Kepler mission. The spacecraft, set to be launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida next week, will search for Earth-size planets in our part of the galaxy.

Kepler contains a special telescope that will study 100,000 stars in the Cygnus-Lyra region of the Milky Way for more than three years. It will look for small dips in a star's brightness, which can mean an orbiting planet is passing in front it -- an event called a transit.

"It's akin to measuring a flea as it creeps across the headlight of an automobile at night," said Kepler project manager James Fanson during a during a NASA news conference.

The focus of the mission is finding planets in a star's habitable zone, an orbit that would ensure temperatures in which life could exist. VideoWatch a NASA scientist explain the search for habitable planets »

Boss, who serves on the Kepler Science Council, said scientists should know by 2013 -- the end of Kepler's mission -- whether life in the universe could be widespread.

Finding intelligent life is a very different matter. For all the speculation about the possibility of other civilizations in the universe, the question remains: If the rise of life on Earth isn't unique and aliens are common, why haven't they shown up or contacted us? The contradiction was famously summed up by the physicist Enrico Fermi in 1950 in what became known as the Fermi paradox: "Where is everybody?"

The answer may be the vastness of time and space, scientists explained.

"Civilizations come and go," Boss said. "Chances are, if you do happen to find a planet which is going to have intelligent life, it's not going to be in [the same] phase of us. It may have formed a billion years ago, or maybe it's not going to form for another billion years."

Even if intelligent civilizations did exist at the same time, they probably would be be separated by tens of thousands of light years, Forgan said. If aliens have just switched on their transmitter to communicate, it could take us hundreds of centuries to receive their message, he added.

As for interstellar travel, the huge distances virtually rule out any extraterrestrial visitors. iReport.com: Share your view of the universe

To illustrate, Boss said the fastest rockets available to us right now are those being used in NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto. Even going at that rate of speed, it would take 100,000 years to get from Earth to the closest star outside the solar system, he added.

"So when you think about that, maybe we shouldn't be worried about having interstellar air raids any time soon," Boss said.

Helicopter Madness!!!!

If we elected McCain there would be no wasteful chopper spending, because we all know that Republicans love to cut military spending...



And more idiocrisy from the Republicans....

Lets have a party (Worth 4 trillion dollars!!!!)

No one likes sitting on their hands, but that is what I have been doing for the past month. Even more frustrating is seeing people in Congress argue over too much spending on the "new" stimulus.

Too much spending? What ever happened to that first bailout? Where were the spastic objections on a "bailout" that seems to have been aimed at only the ungodly wealthy; mainly financial big wigs already making millions. Where were the "conservatives" then? Sure some quietly objected, but not from lack of enthusiasm to perpetuate their trickle down economic theory that lead us here in the first place. Those quite objectors claimed to be "fiscal conservatives". These same conservatives, like John McCain who suggested a spending freeze (which as everyone knows only makes the present look good on paper), are now sobbing about a bailout that would actually do something, ie, create jobs.

But isn't looking good on paper what all free market capitalist talk about? That looking good on paper is the key to saving our bleak economic outlook. Theory sometimes doesn't translate into real world economics, but no one told Milton Friedman that.

Yet when it comes to private corporate swinger jets, gold plated garbage cans for worthless executives and bonuses for failing CEO's of high profile banks and Wallstreet firms these "conservatives" let out but a squeak .

Then when we decide to spend money on health care, green jobs, domestic infrastructure and other public needs, these conservatives have a collective seizure. Maybe it's because they are so far up the behinds of the bank and financial executives that they can't see straight.

If we had applied all that wasted money (estimated in the 4 trillion range) of the first bailout to manufacturing, green jobs and infrastructure then maybe we would be on the road to recovery. Sadly, we are still debating...

The only way for us to gain back the respect as workers we deserve is to follow the lead of the workers at a small Chicago window company and demand it.

Batman

This is derived from a conversation had last weekend at a birthday party.

Best Batman

1. Michael Keaton
2. Adam West
3. Christian Bale
4. Val Kilmer
5. George Clooney