The Daily Sabbatical

Every reviewer that talks about this Seattle band begins by admitting that they first listened because they were intrigued by the band’s name. Add me to that list. Every reviewer then says they were drawn in, however, because the band (surprisingly) doesn’t suck and is in fact fun as hell. Add me to that list too.
NPSH’s new album “Glistening Pleasure” (which I gotta think amounts to an admission that they are themselves a guilty listening pleasure) won’t make many year end lists, admittedly, but it’s better than a lot of similar albums out there that have gotten much more press. (I’m looking at you, CSS.) It’s electro-something-or-other, and reminds one of The Faint, a bit, minus the self-seriousness and even at moments Franz Ferdinand, without the sophistication. It falls in the category of mix tape source material, in my opinion: I probably won’t sit down and listen to the whole thing much, but I’ll pepper some mixes with “Iceage Babeland” or “Me + Yr Daughter.”
Leave it to me to find something serious in something like this, but I do wonder at what point it becomes ok to appropriate someone’s name or features in a product or band name and at what point it goes too far. Can I finally start my band “Saul Kripke and the Rigid Designators?” Must I worry about that hot young act, “Robert Howell’s Left Nipple?” I don’t know how Miss Portman feels, but the whole thing makes me nervous. Better listen to some electro-irony.
Iceage Babeland.mp3
Mouth Full of Bones.mp3

Artistic rendition of Gerobatrachus hottoni lunging at the mayfly Protoreisma between stands of Calamites and under a fallen Walchia conifer. Credit: Michael Skrepnick

Gerobatrachus Hottoni – The Missing Link Between Salamander And Frog
Submitted by News Account on 21 May 2008 – 9:45am. Evolution

The description of an ancient amphibian that millions of years ago swam in quiet pools and caught mayflies on the surrounding land in Texas has set to rest one of the greatest current controversies in vertebrate evolution. The discovery was made by a research team led by scientists at the University of Calgary.

The examination and detailed description of the fossil, Gerobatrachus hottoni (meaning Hotton’s elder frog), proves the previously disputed fact that some modern amphibians, frogs and salamanders evolved from one ancient amphibian group called temnospondyls.

“The dispute arose because of a lack of transitional forms. This fossil seals the gap,” says Jason Anderson, assistant professor, University of Calgary Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and lead scientist in the study.

The Gerobatrachus fossil provides a much fuller understanding of the origin and evolution of modern amphibians. The skull, backbone and teeth of Gerobatrachus have a mixture of frog and salamander features—the fossil has two fused bones in the ankle, which is normally only seen in salamanders, and a very large tympanic ear (ear drum). It also has a lightly built and wide skull similar to that of a frog. Its backbone is exactly intermediate in number between the modern frogs and salamanders and more primitive amphibians.

The new fossil also addresses a controversy over molecular clock estimates, or the general time salamanders and frogs evolved into two distinct groups.

“With this new data our best estimate indicates that frogs and salamanders separated from each other sometime between 240 and 275 million years ago, much more recently than previous molecular data had suggested,” says Robert Reisz, professor, University of Toronto Mississauga and second author on the paper.

Gerobatrachus was originally discovered in Texas in 1995 by a field party from the Smithsonian Institution that included the late Nicholas Hotton, for whom the fossil is named. It remained unstudied until it was “rediscovered” by Anderson’s team. It took countless hours of work on the small, extremely delicate fossil to remove the overlying layers of rock and uncover the bones to reveal the anatomy of the spectacular looking skeleton.

“It is bittersweet to learn about frog origins in this Year of the Frog, dedicated to informing the public about the current global amphibian decline,” continues Anderson. “Hopefully we won’t ever learn about their extinction.”

Article: Jason S. Anderson, Robert R. Reisz, Diane Scott, Nadia B. Fröbisch & Stuart S. Sumida, ‘A stem batrachian from the Early Permian of Texas and the origin of frogs and salamanders’,Nature 453, 515-518 (22 May 2008) doi:10.1038/nature06865

Our house, located on a street of identical houses, has finally gone on the market. The floors are polished, the nicks and dents are sanded and painted, and the windows pass a cursory glance for translucent. There are new spruce trees, which if not thriving are managing, fresh periwinkles dangling in plastic pots, and recently mown St. Augustine that only slightly outpaces the voracious crabgrass. The damn place looks better than it ever has, and it was a severe pain in the ass to get it that way.

Yesterday was the first day on the market, and we had a showing. That’s a good sign, I suppose, probably a result of our recession-days pricing scheme. We were still missing a few serifs here and there, but we were confident that the house would show well. Most of the neighboring houses, while identical on the outside, are Brady Bunch time capsules on the inside. These are the interiors that would have surrounded Marsha and Greg had they been pushed from the palace with an incestuous love-child in tow: wood paneling, wall-to-wall crimson carpeting, and a knick-knack shelf for all those pewter figurines that stand proxy for dreams. In our house, on the other hand, the paneling was the first to go—it was a testosterone boost to rip it out with a clawhammer, actually, making me feel like a man instead of a philosopher. (Using the word “clawhammer” has the same effect, actually, but putting the word in quotes to signal that I am mentioning the word instead of using it pushes the testosterone levels back down to nerd-level.) The color scheme actually lets one believe one is not suffocating despite the fact that the suburbs still await outside the front door. Best of all is a back patio, where I can speed read philosophy of religion in preparation for the dialogue on god Torin Alter and I will write later in the summer.

Despite my hopes, however, there is some sign that the showing went less than well. To begin with, Lanie ran into the prospective buyers as she was leaving the house, so any appearance that the house was occupied by normal Texans was loss. Also, it appears I left my overused shoes filling the closet with sockless odors. And perhaps worst of all, one of the ferns on the back porch apparently fell from the eaves pulling the hook out of the wood and making the house appear one step away from a tumbling house of cards. So, I suspect we’ll have the house on the market for more than a week. That’s fine: it’s fun to follow cats around the house with a lint brush. Just dandy.