#seriously though does anyone else hear nautilus???

[hana-the-ghostieee]

what references to previous songs could you find in moonbath -the latest yorushika single?? :O

so far most of it sounds like Kaze wo Hamu, mixed with a bit of Yakou though i think around 2:55 i heard a bit of last few notes from the outro of Nautilus and ofc Telepath's melody from about 3:55 onwards

also kind of unrelated, not sure if the extended tEEEEEEEeeeeeeeEEEEEEEeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE is a reference to Miyakoochi's wAAAaaaaAAAAAAaaaaaaaaAAAAAA which might be referencing Haru Dorobou's kUUUUuuuuUUUUuuUUUUUU

i mean just look at it. they're five notes that alter within the same syllable

if i missed some (or if you think i missed some) lemme know!

[crazyd4esq]

So I'm Watching Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water for the First Time

Here are my initial thoughts:

So I'm guessing it's Gainax's thing to have an opening that starts off like Zankoku na tenshi etc. a choir, then become pop.

I WANT THAT BATWING CAR. I don't care that it can't fly and I don't have a driver's license; I want it.

What is that kid's accent??? I mean, most of the time it's French Caricature, but then it's like "nein! German Stereotype!" or "nope! 'Murican English!"

. . . that kid is Uraraki's ancestor, isn't he? Although I suppose that means Yui Ikari and son hail from Atlantis.

YO DAWG WE HEAR YOU LOVE ASUKA AND LIKE CASCA SO WE GOT U AN ASUKA TO CHASE AFTER YOUR CASCASUKA (casuka?)

Having heard 28yo Asuka's voice, I hereby withdraw my complaint about the kid's voice.

[costume rant]

Grandis Granva: because the best member of Team Rocket is Asuka Langley Soryu cosplaying as M. Bison.

Ever get the feeling that Anno is literally everyone wrong and literally everything right with anime?

OMG EP2 AND WE GET AN EVANGELION MOMENT although it had dialogue so it might not count.

That commercial stinger makes me feel very uncomfortable.

I was gonna say something about not being used to a Gainax male lead being competent or likeable . . . and then he did a proto Gendo Pose and my brain shut down for 5 minutes.

Anybody else notice that they did about as good a job keeping Nadia's boob size consistent as they did with Asuka's? I only notice because that jewel makes staring at Nadia's chest a fucking plot point. I'm ticking down the minutes until Nadia says "what are you, stupid?!"

Could I get a spinoff crossover series staring King and Pen-Pen?

FUCKIN' GRANDIS AND SANSON THO and Hanson is aight

OMG HANSON AND SANSON ARE BASICALLY CHAOTIC NEUTRAL BLUES BROTHERS THAT IS SO obviously a coincidence.

I'd groan about the ugly American stereotype, except 1) food, deep sleep, and play are the best, and 2) I have unhinged my jaw and eaten an entire fish whole on more than one occasion. Still though, I felt rather attacked.

Seriously could this blonde freckly dude just start yelling "OH MY GOD," "HOLY SHIIIT," etc. already?

Poor captain snotstache . . .

So . . . there really wasn't any point to that battleship getting fucked up other than Anno having a thing for U.S. battleships getting fucked up. So the same reason we have a 14yo tsundere in an incredibly skimpy outfit that miraculously becomes less skimpy once she's of-age.

Actually, now that I think of it, is there any point to Nadia being an acrobat other than putting her in that outfit?  I mean, does her skill with acrobatics come into play at any point going forward beyond the hyper-skimpy outfit?

. . . and then Grandis makes everything better. GRANDIS IS MY STAND, SIS.

. . . and then Anno reminds us that he can fuck with visual perspective to make a 14yo girl look topless. T_T Although that "we gon die, let's hold hands" thing was pretty legit, and then Nadia stuck the landing. c:

DAMMIT ANNO STOP MAKING A 14 YEAR OLD GIRL LOOK TOPLESS FUCKING HELL

They really made staring at a 14yo girl's chest a plot point, didn't they?

Any excuse to get a 14yo girl naked and wet, huh Anno?

It is fun to see the various proto Gendo Poses on display.

OMG THE NAUTILUS IS A PROTO NERV

OMG IT IS SUCH A PROTO NERV

"That's the name of our ship. Don't tell anyone." A strategy as reliable and ironclad as that lil red eyemask.

And that's the first 4 episodes. I just want to make a formal apology to all my followers for this long-ass post of imperfect sobriety (that's a nice euphemism). I think I'll continue on with this series, all things considered.

[yippie-ki-yay-blog]

Archeology =/= Paleontology or why not knowing fossil history doesn’t mean fossils didn’t exist before we ‘made them up’

So Imma Paleontologist. While I wish this means my friends would mail me fossils and cool hats, it mostly means I constantly get asked if I’m Indiana Jones who is a fucking Archeologist not a Paleontologist JesusChrist on a Crutch people get sent links about videos ‘debunking’ fossils as fake. Probably because my friends like to hear me rage at a distance. Possibly because they think that I will spend time debunking the ‘debunkers’ (I am a graduate student. My cat barely sees me. I barely see me.). So I rarely have time, but I do have a list of links to link people to edumucate them on fossils, or more accurately the history of fossils.

BECAUSE PEOPLE SEEM TO THINK FOSSILS ARE ONLY DINOSAURS SO NOTHING ELSE MATTERS

And I thought maybe some people would like some of those links so they can do it themselves. But more importantly, a lot of the ‘debunker’ power comes from a basic lack of knowledge around fossils. Call me Indiana Jones again I dare you. So consider this a post around the 1st of the common arguments of debunkers and some cool background knowledge of fossils. Cause that argument is my pet peeve.

The biggest argument I hear: Fossils were only found after they were ‘theorized’. It is start of all “Fake fossils!!11!!1!” videos and posts. And I hate it.

First of all, people only ever, ever discuss this when looking at vertebrates. No once does it ever occur to care about the to the debunker that much cooler invertebrates make up the majority of the record and are literally found all the time and have been used by ancient cultures.

a.       Echinoderms, aka the cool sea critters that are made up of such groups as sea urchins, starfish, crinoids, and sea cucumbers, were used in various ancient cultures. Sea urchins held significance in more than one culture as ‘otherworldly’ stones – called fairyloaves, thunderstones, snake eggs, pixie helmets, Jew stones and more, these ancient fossils were often use to prevent disasters (see thunderstones and how they supposedly stopped lightning. MacNanamara 2007) and as medicine (see snake eggs and Jew Stones for a few. Duffin 2006.)

b.       

A Bronze Age Burial (we are talking 4,000 years old here) was found with hundreds of fossil sea urchins. The fossil sea urchins were in a circle around the ancient skeletons, which goes back to the point of them being used by ancient cultures as something ‘otherworldly’. So this even falls in the line if you are determined to claim the Earth is only 6,000 years old (I’ll have another post for you someday…) http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/press/press-releases/2011/november/the-star-crossed-stone (Pic from link)

 C.      Want older? Remember those thunderstones? The Norse used to use them as pendants and charms to evoke Thor in battle – as it was believe they fell from the sky during storms, their five point ‘star’ being a symbol of thunder. You can read more about their history and role in Norse folklore if you want here: https://archive.org/details/cu31924029910951

d.      If that is not old enough for you, my debunker friend, here is a fucking hand axe. As in, pre fucking Homo sapien old handaxe.

(pic from London Natural History Museum)

Echinoderms aren’t alone in the handaxe fossil either – here is a cool little piece looking at how fossil hand axes were actually ancient art: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~feliks/impact-of-fossils/west-tofts-handaxe-geometrics.feliks1995-98/index.html  

e.       Just in case you think I’m too fond of sea urchins – here is another echinoderm, the crinoid. The stem’s columnals – little disk hard parts made of calcium carbonate – were often collected and used as beads, and in some places money(Lane and Ausich 2001). In England they were famously known as St. Cuthberts bead – and first written and drawn in 1792, though the first written reference to the beads was in 1671. https://digventures.com/lindisfarne/timeline/diary/site-diary-the-story-of-st-cuthberts-bead/

(Once again from the London Natural History Museum)

g. Robert Plot’s (1705) figure of Star stones:

Crinoids got into the thunder action too. Robert Plot mocked common folk back in 1705 for their thinking that they were “sent to us from the inferior Heaven, to be generated in the Clouds, and discharged thence in the times of Thunder and violent Showers …”  He sounds like a bit of a dick but he did have a nice, early mention of these lovely fossils.

But wait, some debunker who has actually bothered to learn about echinoderms so is clearly fake because lets be real none of these people actually do research cries, you’re talking about creatures that are still around today! Sure, crinoids and sea urchins today are different species, but they have obvious modern analogs! Foul! They could just have died, become mineralized, turn into fossils, so, well, ok, fossils of modern creatures are possible, but I’m debunking fake animals!

You mean like ammonites? Cause if we need a fossil creature without a close modern analog (while Nautilus is similar, it’s body plan has significant differences. This gets a bit more into phylogeny and the difference between the degree of separation two subclasses have (like for the ammonites and nautilus)vs genus (like some of the fossil and modern echinoderms). I have already rambled too much on this subject than I have time for. If you really want to discuss this pm me) but has a fantastic history, let’s go with these cephalopods of the Mesozoic world.

Some letter I forget now. Deposit Magazine has an excellent article summing up many of the folk lore usage. So I’m not going to rehash all of it. But some of the highlights are:

“Horn stones” in Chinese writings. The Plains and Navajo Nations, ammonites were called wanisugna, meaning ‘life within the seed, seed within the shell’ (Bassett 1982). The long history of saligrams, the Jurassic ammonites associated with the Vishnu in India and mentioned in Sanskrit texts dating back to the second century BC. Really, go read the article. It’s a delight. https://depositsmag.com/2016/09/27/fossil-folklore-ammonites/

z.       But, if you refuse to trust the long documented folklore history – Do you trust the Romans? Ammonites feature in architecture around the world, but some of the best and oldest examples come from Roman ruins still standing today. Go to Arena of Verona, Italy and check out the limestone full of ammonites! Go get on a plane. I’ll wait. http://www.gly.uga.edu/railsback/BS-VA.html

(Have a look at these beauts. I didn’t go to Italy. I used the link.)

m.       So now that we have discussed some invertebrates, let’s get back to what most people probably actually mean when they claim Fossils were only found after they were ‘theorized’. What most people mean by this is “dinosaur” fossils were only ‘found’ after. Cause all anyone fucking cares about are dinosaurs, assholes. Which is actually a bit harder to discuss because it involves the simple act of remembering this: people find shit all the time without knowing what it is. And for thousands of years this was true with dinosaurs.

I’m going to start this story off with cyclops. Yes, that beautiful one eyed giant of Greek Myth. You know what started that myth? Elephants. Because if you look at a lovely elephant skull without knowing it is an elephant, the nose cavity might look mighty like an eye socket.

 Seriously. Imagine someone bringing that back and you’ve never hear or seen of an elephant. And leaving it over your bed while you sleep so you wake up to its terrifying maw. To be fair, or perhaps to drill the idea that fossils were found for centuries and thought to be something else, it wasn’t actually modern elephant skulls. Cyclops are usually said to live on the island of Sicily in the Mediterranean Sea. Significantly, the island was once home to ancient elephants whose enormous, fossilized skulls and bones can still be found today eroding out of cliffs and hillsides. But sure. Go instead with people never found fossils ever and mistook them. http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/mythic-creatures/land-creatures-of-the-earth/greek-giants/

I bring up the Cyclops not to turn us away from boring dinosaurs, but because they are an extremely well document example at this point of myths based on fossils. But dinosaur bones do have a long history as something else – see dragons.

n. Dragon bones have a particularly long and documented history in China as being used for medicine. While some of the more modern records have been linked to mammals, many record point to the bones having been “unearthed” (Zhiming 1992, Chronicles of Huayang written during the Jin Dynasty which, if you want or don’t believe it, can be read in the original Chinese here: https://archive.org/stream/06061130.cn#page/n2/mode/2up ) and even recent discoveries of villages with decades of history of digging up dinosaur bones and selling them as “dragon” bones as medicine are seen. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/07/070713-china-dinos.html

o.   And look, if you don’t want to trust the dragons, the first record of a dinosaur described was in 1676. That 134 years before Darwin. I mean, thy did think it was probably a giant, but it was found, recorded, published (1677) and is now recognized as Megalosaurus. Other early discoveries include teeth, which were described and not labeled as dinosaurs until much, much later (Lhuyd 1699). THESE THINGS EXISTED PEOPLE JUST DIDN’T CALL THEM DINOSAURS.

So they existed. They have always existed. 

But maybe, maybe we now have a different point to consider. The second point people always bring up in debunking – maybe it will now be admitted they existed before- and that I will mention even though I said only the 1st one was going to be discussed since it also bothers me. But! BUT! these things existed but “became” dinosaurs later when everyone was suddenly “finding” because MOOOOOOONEY.

That right folks, although the top ramen lifestyle of most Paleontology students would suggest otherwise, people always, always claim they made up dinosaurs for the money. And this is true – if you are selling to private collectors. But if you are a researcher, an academic, digging up fossils doesn’t get you rich. It never has. We could describe a thousand fossils and we would get a pat on the back (and, ok, a good job at an university), but that’s it. There is literally no point in making this shit up for academics. Especially for us poor sods who spend literal years poor as fuck just so we have a chance to spend the rest of our lives studying dead shit. Sometimes literally dead shit.

Seriously if there is a way to get rich being a researcher let me know.

 Refs:

Bassett, M. G. 1982. Formed stones, folklore and fossils. National Museum of Wales, Geological Series No. 1, Cardiff.

 Dong Zhiming (1992). Dinosaurian Faunas of China. China Ocean Press, Beijing. 

Duffin, C. J. 2006. Lapis Judaicus or the Jews’ stone: the folklore of fossil echinoid spines. Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association 117: 265–275.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/248606245_Lapis_Judaicus_or_the_Jews'_stone_The_folklore_of_fossil_echinoid_spines

Lane, G, and William I. Ausich. “The Legend of St Cuthbert's Beads: A Palaeontological and Geological Perspective.” Folklore, vol. 112, no. 1, 2001, pp. 65–73. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1260865.

Lhuyd, E. (1699). Lithophylacii Britannici Ichnographia, sive lapidium aliorumque fossilium Britannicorum singulari figura insignium. Gleditsch and Weidmann:London.

McNanamara, Kenneth. (2007). Shepards' crowns, fairy loaves and thunderstones: the mythology of fossil echinoids in England. Myth and Geology, (273), 289-293.

Plot, R. 1705. The Natural History of Oxfordshire: being an essay towards the natural history of England. 2nd Edition by John Burman. Paul P.B. Minet, London.

Sarjeant WAS (1997). "The earliert discoveries". In Farlow JO, Brett-Surman MK. The Complete Dinosaur. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 3–11. 

So, if you guys happen to see some of these fossil ‘debunkers’ link some links for me. Or the papers. I’m good either way