Cool Science

Confirmed: All Non-African Humans are Part Neanderthal

I don't know why exactly I think this is so cool. It might be because I've been fascinated by Neanderthals for well over three years, or because we've been talking around this subject in class for three weeks so to see it confirmed is really rewarding. Or because it explains why some of my family (not naming names <3 ) looks so darn paleolithic.

Anyways, stop using Neanderthal as an insult, because it's demeaning to the real Neanderthals, who as it turns out are some of your distant ancestors. Not the majority of your ancestors - we still did all our evolving in Africa - but you've got a drop of ancient eurasian hominin in you.

I've always felt that colonial rape culture is the best evidence for Human-Neanderthal interbreeding. It's clearly ingrained in the human mind that the one of, if not the first thing you do when you meet an unfamiliar group is you have sex with it. If they don't want to have sex with you, you make them have sex with you. And that's that. Who's not to say this wasn't as true 60 kya as it is now? Or that it wasn't working in the opposite direction? Or that humans and neanderthals weren't involved in some big raping-and-pillaging circle of life?

(Additionally, there are weird little anecdotes in Genesis about human women mating with giants. This is about 25 thousand years after the last recorded Neanderthals in the mideast, but could it be cultural memory? Weird folklore?)

Anyways,  I'm starting to put together some play ideas for class next semester. One of them is definitely a family drama about a father and daughter who are incidentally superheroes, but the other one so far all I have is that there's an emaciated man in a cage center stage and all the other characters say he's locked up for his own good because he's a werewolf but we just have to take their word for it. But there's probably a plot that can go with this setup.

Anyways, that's all for now. :)

Except, wait, here's a grainy picture of Roma and I wearing 3D glasses waiting for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 to start.

(An hour after this picture was taken, we were both wibbling, bawling puddles of fangirl.)

And sometimes really cool things crash-land in my inbox.

Photo credit goes to my friend Kumo, who found the real Comrade Ivanovich hanging out at the Smithsonian Air and Space museum today. Isn't this neat? He's still around! Thanks so much for remembering me! This is awesome!

Mysterious amazon deliveries...

There was no note in the box.... Any idea who sent me this? It's perfect and I'd wanted a copy for a while... but who was it???

A secret admirer???

I am really baffled by this... Investigating shortly. That is, right now.

EDIT: Oh. Oh. It was Houman. MYSTERY SOLVED.

I want to grab people by the shoulders

and shake them

and whisper in their faces

"Isn't this the coolest????"

This is a coat made of salmon skin:

A few weeks ago I saw a similar coat at the American Museum of Natural History.

They're even more impressive in person.

"Right now, there are people watching this blizzard from 350 kilometers above the Earth's surface. Isn't that amazing?"

I was going to make this some long and philosophical post about today being the 50th anniversary of Vostok 1, but instead I'm just going to scream incoherently:

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

And some more:

OHHHHHHHHHHHHH MYYYYYYYYYYYYYY GODDDDDDDDDDDDD!

Because I just got off the most magical phone call ever. I am sad because it is the last of these magical phone calls I will ever get because every time I've gotten one for the last four years it's been like getting a letter from Hogwarts.

In case you aren't following,

I just got a magical phone call from Blank Young Playwrights that Like a Dog in Space is in the festival!

OHHHHHHHHHHH MYYYYYYYYYYYY GODDDDDDDDDD!!!!!!

PERFECT TIMING, I COULD KISS YOU. OH MY GOD.

SINCE I DON'T HAVE ANYTHING ELSE TO SAY, WATCH THIS.

Super intern

So at work we use these things called "purchase orders" that are basically IOUs from school districts promising they'll pay for their orders sometime in the next few weeks. All of these have to be filed by reference number in case they're important later.

When I started working at the office in January, there was an enormous stack of purchase orders. At some point someone had gone through and sorted most of them... backwards? but other than that... nope, good luck. This was made more complicated due to the files that had no clear sense of range - orders in a single file might be in order, but overall they didn't really make any sense.

And purchase orders were arriving constantly, so the pile kept getting bigger.

I swore I would put an end to this. I swore I would battle the villain of office clutter and get the rowdy files under control.

And within the last two days, I did. There are currently ZERO purchase orders waiting to be filed, and everything is neatly ordered and labeled.

HOORAY!

Of course, there will probably be more when I go back on Friday. By which I mean there definitely will be.

But for now? I am super intern.

Also, paper cuts are battle scars from filing, don't let anyone ever tell you otherwise.

We made a movie

A few weeks I participated with some friends in the Tisch 48 Hour Film Festival. There was very little sleep, a lot of hilarity, and a ridiculous amount of talking like Sean Connery involved in making this movie.

Enjoy!

A cool few days:

SO JUST A QUICK RECAP OF MY LIFE SINCE SATURDAY.

True Grit / Sushi Pizza (better than it sounds) / Japaenese Soda (see above) / Wizarding World of Harry Potter (see below) / Animatronic Triceratops / Single Rider Line (Here's a reward for not bringing small children to a theme park!) / Roller coasters / Catching up with the bestie / Tron Legacy / Starbucks with the bestie / The Fountain of Youth archeological park / Gypsy Cab Co. / St. Augustine Pirate and Treasure Museum / Spinning / Interviewed and photographed for the Times Union (See Friday's metro section! Really I have no idea what is going on.)

I will elaborate on any of these points further upon request!

One week to Young Playwrights Inc. Conference!

WHO HAS TWO THUMBS, AND JUST GOT AN A IN HUMAN EVOLUTION, PLAYWRITING 1, AND FUNDAMENTALS OF THEATER ARTS?

THAT'S RIGHT.

THIS CHICK.

(New American Gothic and Evolution of the Earth grades haven't been posted yet, but I'm counting on them being a B and an A respectively.)

Like some kind of weird fanfic (My friends are the best.)

So last night I finally sent my friend Caleb (who writes an amazing blog called Does This Make Me Look Hipster?) a copy of Like a Dog In Space since he's been begging to read the whole thing for literally forever. And he read it and loved it and raved about it, and then he was like, "I've had Katy Perry's song Firework stuck in my head this whole time."

Five minutes later, he was adjusting the song lyrics to vaguely summarize the plot of the play, and it was quite honestly the most awesome thing I've ever received.

With his permission, I'm reposting it here. (The first stanza is in capslock for some odd reason.)

DO YOU EVER FEEEEEL LIKE A DOG IN SPACE
DRIFTING, THE RUSSIANS LOSE THE RACE
DO YOU EVER FEEEEEL LIKE YOU'RE INANIMATE
HAVE NO WAY TO TALK, YOUR BEST FRIEND IS A ROCK
YOU HAVE TO FIIIILE THE PAPERWOOOORK GET MISTER PAPPEEEERS TO SIIIIIGN
JUST WEEEEEAR THE ROOOOOCK AND TRY NOT TO DIE
CAUSE BABY YOU'RE A MAAAAAAANEQUIN
FOR DECADES YOU WILL TRYYYYY TO WIN
MAKE US GO AW, AW, AW
CAUSE YOU'RE STILL NOT A COSMO NAW, NAW, NAW-UT
Do you ever feel like a dog in space,
Drifting past the moon,
No way to come back home?
Do you ever feel, feel inanimate,
Unimportant,
Like an old Maket?
Do you ever feel you’ve been decided for?
Your time’s already up and you have just barely begun.
Do you know that there’s
That there’s a guy for you
And he’ll help see you through
You’ve just gotta create
Your fate
And take
The bait
He’ll give
You life
Just open your eyes
‘Cause baby you’re a Mannequin!
Doomed from the start, never to win.
Show them all the mi- i- ight
The might that you personify-y-y.
Baby you’re a Mannequin!
Prove to them that you can win!
Make them go ah-ah-ah!
As you become a cosmona-a-aut!
You don’t have to feel like a dog in space.
‘Cause now you have a place
To help in the space race.
If you only knew
The possibilities
The opportunities
Borne from necessity
Could be they’d help you find
The place that you could go
A man whose sure to know a way to keep you comin’ home
Bring him a meteor
He’ll open up a door
It won’t be long before
He will help you create
Your fate
So don’t
Be late
He’ll set
A date
There’ll be no more dummy crates!
‘Cause baby you’re a Mannequin!
Doomed from the start, never to win.
Show them all the mi- i- ight
The might that you personify-y-y.
Baby you’re a Mannequin!
Prove to them that you can win!
Make them go ah-ah-ah!
As you become a cosmona-a-aut!
[This part didn’t need to be changed:]
Boom, boom, boom
Even brighter than the moon, moon, moon.
It’s always been inside of you
And now it’s time to let it through
‘Cause baby you’re a Human!
And now you have a chance to start again.
Leave them all behind in fli-igh-ight
And redefine what’s wrong and ri-igh-ight.
Baby you’re a Human!
Papers let you start again!
Be what they all said you’re no-no-not!
You will become a cosmonau-nau-naut!
Boom, boom, boom
Even brighter than the moon, moon, moon!
Boom, boom, boom,
Even brighter than the moon, moon, moon!

Isn't he just adorkable?

Oh Dan Radcliffe, I think I love you. We'd be a perfect match.

IT'S DONE.

Well, first draft, at any rate. Weighing in at 75 pages, two acts and twenty scenes, let it be known that Like a Dog in Space has made it to the point that I'll be going over it ferociously with a ballpoint pen tomorrow morning furiously revising every last detail.

Also,

Let it be known that I do, in fact, understand the difference between Korolyov and Star City. Korolyov is mission control and manufacturing, and Star City is training. One is a suburb of Moscow and a city in its own right, the other is a military base that's slowly been evolving into a town since the 1960s. However, Korolyov was called Kaliningrad in the 1960s, which is incidentally also the name of a different, more major city further west, and it shares its current name with Sergey Korolyov (though in the play I've chosen to go with the alternate spelling Sergei Korolev, since this is the spelling I've seen used by actual cosmonauts). So, even though most of the action of act one more properly takes place in Korolyov/Kaliningrad, I've consolidated it into Star City for the sake of clarity, and also because... come on, Star City is a totally boss name.

(Incidentally, there are no less than four towns called "Star City" in the United States, in Arkansas, Michigan, Indiana, and West Virginia.)

Anyway, the point of that was that I really did do the research, and then chose to ignore it and exercise a thing called "artistic license." I was discussing this with a friend earlier and we came to the conclusion that the battle between factual accuracy and artistic license is one of the big dilemmas that comes with dramatic writing as a field. You want to do enough research to respect your subject matter, but don't want to include too much information that you sacrifice clarity. If you don't do enough research and just make shit up, then your name is Dan Brown and the Catholic Church puts you on their blacklist.

That and this is subject matter I'm really, really passionate about and I'd hate to do it any less than what it deserves. My geekiness must be shared!

Alright. Big day of revisions tomorrow. I'm off to bed.

Astronautically yours,

Leez.

PS - Did anyone notice I rewrote my bio in the sidebar? c:

I see what you did there.

NASA logo (USA)

RKA logo (Russia)

Starfleet logo (Star Trek)

Politically incorrect maps

(Click for big!)

So my friend Caleb (credit where credit is due) forwarded me this:

And said, "It's perfect, except it's missing a reference to 'The rent is too damn high.'"

So a few minutes later, he sent me this:

Let it be known that my friends are awesome.

Where are all these people coming from?

I just recently discovered that I can actually see where in the world the hits on my blog are coming from, so I decided to check out what kind of international fanbase I've got. For some reason it will only show me things from the last six months or so, but it's looking like people are checking in from the US, Canada, Israel, Brazil, Argentina, the UK, Japan, Latvia, Norway, Thailand, and...

...Iran.

I am so confused right now. Who could possibly be watching my blog from Iran? Did I flag their government search engines or something? I mean, I can account for some of these hits based on where I have family/friends/where people I know have traveled recently, but I have really got no idea how I pulled in hits from Norway and Latvia.

It's cool, though. :D

Today is ape day.

This picture from Zooborns just kind of made my week. :) Apparently some dumb kid was playing video games instead of paying attention at the zoo, dropped his DS, and this happened. Gorillas that play pac man! What's next?

People who make my day:

Apparently there's a guy named Fish who works at Starbucks who thinks it's a tragedy if he gives you the wrong drink. When I asked him about his unusual moniker, he replied, "It's native american. Short for Swimming Fish. I'm grand chief of the keep it real tribe."

I know he was joking, which just makes me more curious about the nickname, but it kind of made my day. :)

GUSTER.

Was amazing. My brother has lots of pictures of the interior of the Beacon theater (Both Guster and their opening act, Jukebox the Ghost made a big deal about how it was "The most gorgeous room they'd ever played in.") so I'll get those from him and post them later. The opening act played about a forty minute set and I was pretty sure I had no idea who they were until they played this and then I was like, WAIT I'VE HEARD OF THEM. Anyway they were pretty cool, gonna look them up on iTunes later.

(Also, re: this video, last night I was thinking the song reminded me of Charlie Brown and hey look what they're referencing!)

At that point the theater was pretty empty and Max and I were eying each other like, "This is a sold out show?" but apparently the pros know to skip the warm up guys and show up sometime between 8:45 and 9. By the time Guster launched into their first song (Manifest Destiny, from Ganging up on the Sun), it was a packed house. So they played two older songs, followed by Stay With Me Jesus off the new album (Pattering to the audience, "We're a couple of Jews who don't really believe in God who went and wrote an album that keeps talking about Jesus") and people were still kind of filtering in and getting warmed up, but by the time they started on Ramona, everyone was singing along and it became very clear that audience participation was mandatory.

They played a mix of new and old stuff, a lot of crowd pleasers and favorites - at one point a guy somewhere behind us shouted "AIRPORT SONG," at which point they played Airport Song and I have no idea if he knew the set list or was a good guesser or they listened to him. (They did not respond to similar requests for Timothy Leary).

Some highlights:

"Do I pull off the white denim look?" - at which point they launched into an impromptu jam session about "White denim, black shades, white shirt, shoelace."

During Happier, Max turned to me and asked, "Is this new? I've never heard it." "No!" I yelled back. "It's really, really old!" And then joined the rest of the crowd in shouting "ONE MORE INCH, YOU SON OF A BITCH."

For the start of the first encore, they played "Diane," which has a really distinctive opening base line that will forever stick in my head as the first Guster song I ever heard and is still one of my favorites. This video isn't from the show last night, but it's a pretty good approximation. (People really do sing along to every single song at these shows. See!)

They played two encores, which the crowd seemed really intent on forcing to go on and on and on. Every time you thought they were done, one of the stagehands would hand them a different guitar and they're play something else. The second time they got dragged back out by popular demand, they came down to the edge of the stage and waited for the whole room to be quiet and played an acoustic of "Jesus on the Radio," which was an awesome way to end the show.

In total they played 25 songs in just under two hours, and it was absolutely awesome. So worth the jacked up ticket price I paid on Stubhub!

HERE, I FOUND A COMPLETE SETLIST.

Anyway, when I get Max's photos I'll post them but currently that is PFAD. (Post for another day. Max's word.)

And then, Aliza was a superhero.

So my friend Caleb of the newly-minted and absolutely fantastic Does This Make Me Look Hipster has given me a blog award. A sort of tag thing, actually, I think, but it comes with the condition that I fill out an interview and tag more people and stuff like that so hey, let's have at it! It'll be fun!

1. Thank the blogger who gave me the award.

Hey, Caleb, you are pretty cool! Thanks for being a friend and an inspiration for crazy and a source of great stories and one of my biggest fans. You rock!

2. Sum up your blogging philosophy, motivation, and experience using five words

Here today, gone tomorrow. Maybe.

3. Pass this on to 10 other bloggers that you feel have a substance in their blogs.

I don't /know/ ten other bloggers, but I'll give it a shot.

Max @ Jumbo Sized (uhhh... my brother.)

Ryu @ Eldritch at Home

James @ Arbitrary Musings

Roma @ Roma's art blog

Snikki @ Snikki's Say

I made it halfway to ten. That's good enough!

We had a fire drill tonight. Excellent way to start Halloween weekend. Not.

A cocktail brewed of equal parts win and what the fuck.

This would appear to be a 50-something Christopher Lee singing a villain song production number in a 1980s movie called The Return of Captain Invincible. From the looks of it, it is the spiritual precursor to such great works as Doctor Horrible's Sing Along Blog.

Or maybe not.

Either way, I really want to find the whole thing and watch it.