A Singer, A Song

Well, this should freak you right the heck out.

The footage is of El camino del Rey. Originally built in 1901, this walkway now serves as an aproach to makinodromo, the famous climbing sector of El Chorro.

So with all of these summer projects, I’ve been digging up plenty of detritus from the back yard. It’s never once occurred to me that any of it might be of interest to the world at large. What incredible discovery, I wonder, have I let slip through my fingers, cast aside as nothing more than common clay clods, forever lost to posterity and to humanity? Alas, alack.

There’s an internet legend that’s told of Scott Williams of Newport, Rhode Island, who dutifully submits his paleontological discoveries to the Smithsonian Institute. Although the story is evidently fiction, it’s still pretty funny. Here’s the supposed response he received from the Smithsonian in 1994:

Paleoanthropology Division
Smithsonian Institute
207 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 20078

Dear Sir:

Thank you for your latest submission to the Institute, labeled
"211-D, layer seven, next to the clothesline post. Hominid
skull." We have given this specimen a careful and detailed
examination, and regret to inform you that we disagree with your
theory that it represents "conclusive proof of the presence of
Early Man in Charleston County two million years ago." Rather, it
appears that what you have found is the head of a Barbie doll, of
the variety one of our staff, who has small children, believes to
be the "Malibu Barbie". It is evident that you have given a great
deal of thought to the analysis of this specimen, and you may be
quite certain that those of us who are familiar with your prior
work in the field were loathe to come to contradiction with your
findings. However, we do feel that there are a number of physical
attributes of the specimen which might have tipped you off to
its modern origin:

1. The material is molded plastic. Ancient hominid remains
are typically fossilized bone.

2. The cranial capacity of the specimen is approximately 9 cubic
centimeters, well below the threshold of even the earliest
identified proto-hominids.

3. The dentition pattern evident on the "skull" is more
consistent with the common domesticated dog than it is with the
"ravenous man-eating Pliocene clams" you speculate roamed the
wetlands during that time. This latter finding is certainly one
of the most intriguing hypotheses you have submitted in your
history with this institution, but the evidence seems to weigh
rather heavily against it. Without going into too much detail,
let us say that:

A. The specimen looks like the head of a Barbie doll that has
been chewed on by a dog

B. Clams don't have teeth.

It is with feelings tinged with melancholy that we must deny your
request to have the specimen carbon dated. This is partially due
to the heavy load our lab must bear in it's normal operation, and
partly due to carbon dating's notorious inaccuracy in fossils of
recent geologic record. To the best of our knowledge, no Barbie
dolls were produced prior to 1956 AD, and carbon dating is likely
to produce wildly inaccurate results. Sadly, we must also deny
your request that we approach the National Science Foundation's
Phylogeny Department with the concept of assigning your specimen
the scientific name "Australopithecus spiff-arino." Speaking
personally, I, for one, fought tenaciously for the acceptance of
your proposed taxonomy, but was ultimately voted down because the
species name you selected was hyphenated, and didn't really sound
like it might be Latin.

However, we gladly accept your generous donation of this
fascinating specimen to the museum. While it is undoubtedly not a
hominid fossil, it is, nonetheless, yet another riveting example
of the great body of work you seem to accumulate here so
effortlessly. You should know that our Director has reserved a
special shelf in his own office for the display of the specimens
you have previously submitted to the Institution, and the entire
staff speculates daily on what you will happen upon next in your
digs at the site you have discovered in your back yard. We
eagerly anticipate your trip to our nation's capital that you
proposed in your last letter, and several of us are pressing the
Director to pay for it. We are particularly interested in hearing
you expand on your theories surrounding the "trans-positating
fillifitation of ferrous ions in a structural matrix" that makes
the excellent juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex femur you recently
discovered take on the deceptive appearance of a rusty 9-mm Sears
Craftsman automotive crescent wrench.

Yours in Science,

Harvey Rowe
Curator, Antiquities

Congratulations to my NGU friend and colleague, Dr. Lilia Stoytcheva!

Dr. Lilia Stoytcheva is a firm believer in miracles. She’s experienced too many of them to have any doubts.

As she prepares for a Tuesday performance at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Stoytcheva is reminded of her first exposure to music in her native Bulgaria at age 5 — and a series of improbable steps in between.

Stoytcheva, an associate music professor at North Greenville University, says it was divine intervention that enabled her to attend a music conservatory that led to a teaching job in the Czech Republic. Another dose of special intervention provided a full music scholarship at Winthrop University, and yet another miracle paved the way to U.S. citizenship.

Read more at Greenville Online.

Congratulations, darling! It’s nice to have the gag removed, isn’t it?

http://kbjournal.org/lewis

Read more at my wife’s blog: Another Ebenezer: Camille Lewis, Independent Scholar.

The little kid in me who built pinball machines out of plywood and nails and who took clocks apart to see what made them work… that little kid found something very cool today.

Here’s the software:

http://phun.cs.umu.se/wiki/Download

… that will let you do this stuff on your computer:

(Note that there are a bunch of related videos on the above YouTube page.)

This is a follow-up to my earlier post, Landscraping 1.

Well, things happened for us (praise the Lord) more quickly than I ever thought they would or could. The awful pit that was our back yard is now so lush and inviting, it looks like a park back there. There are no trees or shrubs yet — those will have to come later as finances allow. The shed is still pending for the same reason, and the flower seeds that Camille planted for a little more immediate color have yet to sprout… but the hardest and most dramatic work is done. The transformation is mind-blowing. I’m standing here looking out the kitchen window at it all: “Is that my back yard? MY back yard?”

Almost as amazing to me that it’s done is that it was done in one week. The men from Stagg’s Landscaping — I can’t compliment them enough — showed up onSaturday, May 3 and finished their portion of the job on Monday, May 5. Then I got to work… and work I did! I was out there every day, sweating and puffing. On Thursday Camille and I put the sod in, and I spread mulch (mulch and more mulch) through Saturday night.

I think the effort was worth it! See for yourself:

Hey, BJU… you listening?

Letter to Bob Jones University: Please Reconcile

It’s sad, so sad
It’s a sad, sad situation.
And it’s getting more and more absurd.
It’s sad, so sad
Why can’t we talk it over?
Oh it seems to me
That sorry seems to be the hardest word.

Lyrics by Bernie Taupin

Whee! Fun!

From the pictures posted on BJU’s website after last year’s graduation:

From the pictures posted on the front page of BJU’s website for this year’s graduation:

So we’re ’shopped beyond recognition. Our faces are no longer welcome… but our credentials? Well, those are okay.

Sort of a microcosmic argument of form over substance, isn’t it?