blivet 2.0

I arrived back in Las Vegas just before noon (PST) to the gleeful cries of Ian and my wife, Audrey. My Mom seems to be doing quite a bit better, if she will only let things progress at their, not her rate.

Gotta get ready to go trick or treat-ing with our littlest monster who is going as the James P. Sullivan “Sully” character from the movie Monsters, Inc.

Garret:

Start a meme, get the crowds chanting. “Quack-quack, Mr Bush.” Flap your arms, make it loud. “Quack-quack, Mr Cheney.” To be precise, al-QaQaa. But quack-quack is close enough, with a secondary payoff …the sound of soon-to-be lame ducks.

Heh. From here, deep in Bush country, let me say, I can not wait for the 44th President to be inagurated.

Interesting news from Indonesia. 5.9 meters down in the sediments of Liang Bua, one of numerous limestone caves on Ebu Gogo (Flores Island), a one-meter tall relative of ours dubbed Homo floresiensis has been identified. The remains are apparently from a descendant of Homo erectus that would have come to the island about 1,000,000 years ago. (erectus not floresiensis)

The twist in this report is two-fold–the dates are about 12,000 years old (if these are ‘radiocarbon years’, then that’s a little over 13,000 calendar years ago) and these folks were the product of what I have heard referred to as ‘Island Dwarfism.’ Not the best term, except that it does describe what happens to some species that are repoductively isolated in sub-optimal habitat in the absense of competition (Hippos in Cyprus, Mammoths in the Wrangel and Channel Islands, elephants [Stegodon] on Flores). As far as I know, this is the first instance of this sort of adaptation in Human ancestors. The notion that non sapiens forms occuring after some 30,000 years ago has been the stuff of B movies.

The other thing (OK, that makes it a tri-partite twist) is the whole ‘H. erectus must have arrived by boat’ thing that is mentioned in the BBC article. I could be wrong, but I thought the archipelago was a land bridge 1M years ago. How to get fully modern humans to Australia without boats is a stickier wicket. But then, no one posits that H. sapiens couldn’t have built boats…

Oh yeah, I’m still in Foat Wurth, Tejas.

My Mom has been discharged from the hospital and is now semi–comfortably enshrined in her reclining chair. I am out on errands, which includes perscription pick-ups for her and a stop at the Benbrook Public Library (internet!) for me.

Mom seems to be doing pretty well, considering. Probably about the same as Doug’s Father. Me? I’m fine, though it is taking some adjustments to come to grips with the humidity that I remember so well from growing up in the Plains.

Perhaps more later…

I will be away until the afternoon of the 31st. I sincerely doubt I will be able to get to the local library, so updates here are unlikely. Take care of yourselves you all…

via Eliot at Follow Me Here…:

“Britain’s geologists are about to celebrate the fact that the universe is exactly 6,000 years old.

At 6pm tonight at the Geological Society of London, scientists will raise their glasses to James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh (below), who in 1650 used the chronology of the Bible to calculate the precise date and moment of creation.

Working from the book of Genesis, and risking some speculation on the Hebrew calendar, he calculated that it began at 6pm on Saturday October 22, 4004 BC.

Actually, he put the date at October 23, and then pedantically realised that time must have begun the night before, because the Bible said that ‘the evening and the morning were the first day.’ ” (Guardian.UK)

Today I joined more than 72,000 southern Nevadans in voting early for the 2004 elections. Now, to see what the results are in a couple of weeks.

I heard from my Mother’s Doctor in the wee hours to tell me that her operation went well. He told me that they removed an approximately handball-sized mass from her upper right lung along with some associated tissue and lymphatic plumbing and that she seemed to tolerate the surgery OK. Based on her reduced lung function, history of heart attacks, and weight, that is better than I expected. Hopefuly the additional tissue is not involved and they got all of the cancer. We’ll see. She’s a tough old bird, so I expect she will be trying to run the ward by the time I get there Sunday morning.

Doug sent me an email this morning saying that his Father just had similar surgery and came through his proceedure well. Good thoughts are heading from us all to you all, Doug.

To finish off with something less weighty, here is something from Dr. Liz I found highly amusing. Not for those sympathetic to the current US President.

This is freakin’ Hilarious. Like fricken’ sharks, with fricken laser beams!

At 7:15 am (CDT -0500 GMT) today, my Mother is going in for a lobectomy to remove a lung cancer. As I write this, that is about two hours from now.

I will be flying the redeye to Fort Worth late Saturday/early Sunday to be there when she gets out of the hospital on either Sunday or Monday. After almost a year of foot-dragging, she suddenly got ‘cut this thing outta me’ religion and away we go.

Yeah, I’m a little tweaky. At least I got a fairly decent airfare at the absolute last minute. Now to see if I can shut the monkey mind off enough to bag some sleep before that get up and go to work thing dances on my head in four hours.

Whine, whine, bitch and moan…