Recent discoveries
Jan. 11th, 2008 08:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
letterblade1. Katamari Damacy. Yeah, I know, I'm a century behind the world. But you should've heard me laughing in hysterical mania as I rolled away! (And, dear fuck, that's a spiffy physics engine.)
2. Slashy 19th-century paleontologists, via Bill Bryson. I quote, from A Short History of Nearly Everything:
It would be reasonable to suppose that Richard Owen's petty rivalries marked the low point of nineteenth-century paleontology, but in fact worst was to come, this time from overseas....between two strange and ruthless men, Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh.
They had much in common. Both were spoiled, driven, self-centered, quarrelsome, jealous, mistrustful, and ever unhappy. Between them they chnged the world of paleontology.
They began as friends and admirers, even naming fossil species after each other, and spent a pleasant week together in 1868. However, something then went wrong between them - nobody is quite sure what - and by the following year they had developed an enmity that would grow into a consuming hatred over the next three decades. It is probably safe to say that no two people in the natural sciences have ever despised each other more.
I MEAN, SERIOUSLY, COME ON. If this were a movie, they'd be slashed faster than a cheetah with roller skates. Early friendship, 'spending time' together, and then some mysterious falling-out...and one of then is named Othniel. Othniel! (Though you know the fanbrats would give him some horrible nickname.)
Dude. 19th-century paleontology should be a movie. Or, better yet, a musical. Eccentric bone-hunters having operatic manly catfights at society meetings; Richard Owen savagely ruining people's reputations and being all gaunt and sinister; the hopeless and pathos-filled downward spiral of poor cripped Gideon Mantell, Owen's most miserable victim; the unwitting brilliance and raw talent of Mary Anning, left in utter obscurity; and, of course, Cope and Marsh, discovering hundreds of species in their bellowing rush to outdo each other...
2. Slashy 19th-century paleontologists, via Bill Bryson. I quote, from A Short History of Nearly Everything:
It would be reasonable to suppose that Richard Owen's petty rivalries marked the low point of nineteenth-century paleontology, but in fact worst was to come, this time from overseas....between two strange and ruthless men, Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh.
They had much in common. Both were spoiled, driven, self-centered, quarrelsome, jealous, mistrustful, and ever unhappy. Between them they chnged the world of paleontology.
They began as friends and admirers, even naming fossil species after each other, and spent a pleasant week together in 1868. However, something then went wrong between them - nobody is quite sure what - and by the following year they had developed an enmity that would grow into a consuming hatred over the next three decades. It is probably safe to say that no two people in the natural sciences have ever despised each other more.
I MEAN, SERIOUSLY, COME ON. If this were a movie, they'd be slashed faster than a cheetah with roller skates. Early friendship, 'spending time' together, and then some mysterious falling-out...and one of then is named Othniel. Othniel! (Though you know the fanbrats would give him some horrible nickname.)
Dude. 19th-century paleontology should be a movie. Or, better yet, a musical. Eccentric bone-hunters having operatic manly catfights at society meetings; Richard Owen savagely ruining people's reputations and being all gaunt and sinister; the hopeless and pathos-filled downward spiral of poor cripped Gideon Mantell, Owen's most miserable victim; the unwitting brilliance and raw talent of Mary Anning, left in utter obscurity; and, of course, Cope and Marsh, discovering hundreds of species in their bellowing rush to outdo each other...
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no subject
Date: Jan. 12th, 2008 01:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Jan. 12th, 2008 01:34 am (UTC)I need to lend you science books more often. SRSLY.
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Date: Jan. 12th, 2008 01:53 am (UTC)This entry wins on the merit of that phrase alone.
WIN WIN WIN.
:D
no subject
Date: Jan. 12th, 2008 02:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Jan. 12th, 2008 03:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Jan. 12th, 2008 03:13 am (UTC)I have *seen* a t-shirt with fake liner notes for an opera about Marsh and Cope printed on it. Alas, it was at the SVP annual meeting's fundraising auction, and was quickly bid up beyond my means.
no subject
Date: Jan. 12th, 2008 04:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Jan. 12th, 2008 04:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Jan. 12th, 2008 06:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Jan. 12th, 2008 08:44 pm (UTC)Truest thing EVER said. It really should. And I need to finish that Bill Bryson book some day, but you're right, they would be slashed SO quickly if it was fiction.
no subject
Date: Jan. 13th, 2008 05:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Jan. 13th, 2008 06:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Jan. 14th, 2008 01:35 pm (UTC)#2: That is a musical that needs to happen. And, apparently, archaeologists today continue to be drama-filled and snarky to each other.