Fossils, not cookies, or, what I've been thinking about lately...

Oreopithecus bamboli.

Yeah, no. I'm not writing about creme-filled cookies here. Instead, I'm talking fossils.

Here lately, I've been all about fossils, because I'm writing a book about physical (or biological) anthropology and archaeology, and fossils are a big part of physical anthropology. It's all fascinating. It's also very difficult to write about, especially when you're writing for beginning, who more than likely don't have a great grounding in science and might not have much of a grasp on anything having to do with human evolution, who might even have religious or philosophical issues with any kind of evolutionary theory, much less the idea that modern humans evolved through a series of forms before we got to who we are today.

As an example, there is Oreopithecus bamboli. O. bamboli is a Miocene ape, fossils of which have been found in Tuscany and Sardinia in Italy. This species lived 7 to 9 million years ago and has been touted as evidence that bipedalism didn't just evolve in hominids (that was David Pilbeam, or Harvard University).

In the 1950s, Johannes Hurzeler found fossils representing this species and proposed, based on indications that it could walk upright, that it was a human ancestor. His conclusion was widely criticized, with some other researchers saying that any resemblance to hominids was strictly coincidental, a case of convergent evolution. Others didn't even see a resemblance to any creature on the line to humans.

Case closed, right?

Well, this is paleontology, the study of fossils and closely related to paleoanthropology, the study of the human fossil record, so, no. Paleontologists and paleoanthropologists argue about most things related to their field most of the time, or so it seems.

In the 1990s, Meike Kohler and Salvador Moya-Sola, both from the Miquel Crusafont Catalan Institute of Paleontology in Spain, took it upon themselves to reanalyze the Oreopithecus collection in a Swiss museum. After their research, the two concluded, as had most before them, that the fossils represent an ape and is not on the line that led to modern humans. But they also said that the spine and lower body show a resemblance to the australopithecines and to modern humans, and that its hands were capable of a precision grip.

One exception to the general conclusion that Oreopithecus' lower anatomy is hominid-like is that its big toe diverges 90 degrees from its other toes. Then again, several of the proposed earliest ancestors to humans also have divergent big toes. Just something else to speculate about and argue about; how close does a hominid foot have to resemble a modern human foot for that hominid to have walked bipedally enough like a human being to be considered to be a relative of modern humans, directly or indicrectly?

Kohler's and Moya-Sola's explanation for Oreopithecus' traits, which were characterized as intermediate between apes and australopithecines, was that the specimens they looked at had lived on a swampy island, were threatened by no predators, and thus could spend a lot of time on the ground, which led to its development of the ability to walk for short distances on two feet.

Again, others have said they do not see the hominid-like traits Kohler and Moya-Sola reported, and one researcher, Randall Susman, from Stony Brook University in New York, pointed out that these fossils are difficult to evaluate in any case, because they are poorly preserved.

Which leaves us where? Writing in The Last Human (Yale University Press, 2007), Esteban Sarmiento, a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History, said that "Oreopitheucs suggests that features, such as the shape of the pelvis, lower back length, a knee joint with a carrying angle, a skull with a downward directed opening for the spinal cord, and non-interlocking canines, all of which have been used to classify fossils as hominids, are probably shared by the common human-African-ape ancestor, and do not distinguish a human lineage exclusive of African apes."

And this is why it is so difficult to write about human evolution. All we are left with is bones, some of them very old, very poorly preserved, and very difficult to evaluate accurately. Not only that, but most of the time there is no complete skeleton of an individual, and sometimes not even complete bones. We can't see what these fossils species looked like dressed in their skin, and we can't see how they behaved. This makes figuring out who evolved into whom a guessing game.

A game of educated guesses, to be sure, but a guessing game nonetheless.

Which, I hasten to add, does not mean that evolution did not happen. It simply means that the story of how that evolution proceeded is very hard to discern and that paleoanthropologists and biological anthropologists will be putting together the clues for a long time to come.

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Some of the information about Oreopithecus bamboli in this post comes from online reports appearing in Science News and Smithsonian Magazine.

Voyage to the Bottom of the Bottom of the Sea...

Over the weekend, film director James Cameron got in a submarine specially built to withstand the intense pressures of the bottom of the sea and took a ride to the deepest known point on Earth, the Challenger Deep. It took him two and half hours to get to the spot, seven miles down, and he stayed for almost three hours, taking samples, photos and video to bring back to scientists on the surface. He is only the third person ever to reach Challenger Deep, the other two having done so in a two-man sub back in 1960. He is the first to make the trip alone. He made the dive with the cooperation (and, I suspect, the money) of the National Geographic Society, for a documentary he is apparently making with them.

I'm not sure what to think about this.

On the one hand, it proves that the man has guts. It was a dangerous thing to do, and he did it and survived. A million things could have gone wrong, and most of them would probably have meant a watery grave for him and his submarine. The dark so far below the surface of the ocean is profound, and the pressures immense. To have gone and returned is an amazing accomplishment. To have done it alone, in a small submersible, down in the dark and silence...I have no words.

But, while he is apparently not inexperienced in making deep-sea dives like this (from what I understand, he made about a dozen dives while making the film "Titanic", and has made others since then), Cameron is not a scientist. And there is a big part of me that believes that it should be qualified scientists doing things like this, to get the most benefit of new knowledge from this place that is so difficult and dangerous to visit that only three people have done it over the space of a bit over half a century.

I guess I envy him a bit, as well, truth be told. He has seen a place that almost no one else has seen, ever. That is a huge, amazing thing. It's like (and he compared it to) going into space, considering that the bottom of the ocean is such an alien place and completely hostile to terrestrial life. It must have been truly amazing to be able to do what he has done. Must be nice to have the money and clout to do things like that.

I'm glad this dive went well for Cameron. I keep thinking of the many things that could have gone wrong. As it is, he had to return to the surface after only half the time he had been scheduled to stay at the bottom of the bottom of the ocean due to what were reported to be difficulties with the sub's hydraulics system.

But, other than the few samples and the pictures he brought back, I wonder exactly how valuable this event really was. If it leads the way to more visits to the area, and to the gathering of more knowledge of the planet we live on, it is a good thing. I will be disappointed if it turns out that it was mostly a publicity stunt, with little or no real knowledge gained in the process.

Say WHAT?

So many idiots in the world.

First, there's Geraldo Rivera. Not that we haven't known for awhile that he's a few sandwiches short of a picnic and all. I had figured that out by the time he opened Al Capone's hidey hole and found precisely...nothing.

But now, Geraldo has decided in his great wisdom that the real reason George Zimmerman murdered Trayvon Martin was that the boy was wearing a hoodie.

What the hell? That's right up there with, "That woman wouldn't have been raped if she hadn't been wearing...", or "That person wouldn't have been shot if they weren't wearing red [or blue, or some other color identified as a "gang color"].

Way to blame the victim, Geraldo. It couldn't have been because George Zimmerman appears to be a wanna-be cop who has bigotry issues, could it?

So, okay. We knew Geraldo was an idiot. But then I opened up Wikipedia (yeah, I know) and it's feature article of the day is all about something called the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement.

What?

Yeah. Apparently this group was founded in 1991 and has as its goal convincing everyone in the world to quit having kids, so that human beings will become extinct so that that Earth can heal itself. Or something.

Well, good luck with that. It isn't going to happen. Still, I cannot even begin to fathom the amount of hate someone would have for themselves and their fellow human beings to propose that the best thing that could happen would be for the species to commit suicide.

I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that there are people who think this is a good idea, but somehow it does. There is, after all, PETA.

And Peter Singer, who thinks it's a good idea to kill babies who are disabled, and who disabled activists have accused of believing that the lives of disabled people are not worth as much as the lives of people who do not have a disability. Singer claims he is misunderstood, but I'm not so sure about that. An article from the UK Guardian in 2009 calls Singer an "intellectual heavyweight", whether or not one agrees with him. I'm even less sure about that. What he comes across to me as, is someone who thinks he should be able to make decisions about other people's lives based on his own prejudices rather than letting people make their own decisions about whether their lives are worth living or not.

In other words, another idiot, and one who has been able to gain fame while going around making shit up.

Sort of like Geraldo Rivera, come to think of it.

This just in...

A couple of posts back, I wrote about how the Utah legislature had passed a bill outlawing sex education in the public schools, and that the governor was widely expected to sign the bill.

Well, in an unexpectedly delightful turn of events, the governor of Utah has, according to a report on MSNBC's website, veoted the bill. I applaud him on his sanity in doing so, and on the cojones it took for him to stand up for sanity in a state where the far right has so much political and cultural power.

In which Mitt Romney appeals to (religious) authority...

What is it with Mitt Romney?

According to a story on CNN's website, Romney was asked during a radio interview in Alabama recently whether he believes that "America is the new 'Promised Land'," which the interviewer characterized as something taught in the Book of Mormon. The interviewer asked for a yes or no answer.

But Mitt, being both Mormon and politician, couldn't - or wouldn't - commit. His answer was, according to the CNN story,"You're gonna have to go to the church and ask what they think about that." He continued by saying, "There's no question about the fact that Israel is the 'Promised Land.' That's what the Bible tells us. And my guess is that they're the lands of promise to other people."

Sigh.

Mitt, Mitt, Mitt. The interviewer didn't ask you what the LDS church teaches about the location of the Promised Land. He also didn't ask you what the Bible says about the question (which could actually be two different things). He asked what you believe about it. It doesn't speak well of your independence from your ecclesiastical leaders that you have to depend on them to answer a simple question about what you, as an individual, believe about a question touching on spiritual beliefs.

I suppose it shouldn't come as a surprise that Mitt wouldn't commit. Mormon theology is slippery that way, and oftentimes even the highest authorities in the church won't give a straight answer about the church's beliefs to those who are not LDS themselves. Still, I worry about someone who won't answer a simple question about their beliefs. If you're ashamed of what you believe, maybe you should rethink your belief system. And if you're afraid to say what you believe because it will lose you votes, well, that's just lying for personal gain. It makes people like me wonder what else you might be waffling on in order to win elections. How can I be sure anything you say is what you really think?

Well, I don't trust Mitt anyway. He's a politician. And, as a former Mormon, I'm very familiar with the way that the LDS church, and its members, often have one set of answers for the faithful and another for the members of the church. They call that "milk before meat", and as far as I'm concerned all that means is that they will like about what the church really teaches in order to snag converts. This is not something I'm guessing at; I know this to be a fact because it happened to me when I converted to the LDS church when I was a teenager. But that's another post for another time.

Right now, the issue is Mitt and his reluctance to state his beliefs, deferring to the institutional church when the question clearly asked what he believes, not what his church believes. What his appeal to the authority of the church reminds me of more than anything is how LDS parents will take their toddlers, children who can barely speak a complete sentence, up to the stand on Fast Sunday - usually the first Sunday of the month, when LDS faithful abstain from two meals and give their sacrament meeting over to the congregation to bear their testimonies - and then whisper in the child's ear, for the child to repeat, "I know the church is true..." It is an exercise in ventriloquism. And it isn't attractive when the ventriloquist's dummy is any adult, much less one who aspires to the Presidency.

La, La, La, La, La....or, I'm ignoring the news tonight

I had to turn off the late evening news tonight. It was just too depressing.

I hate it when that happens, because I really think it is my obligation, and everyone's obligation, to keep up with what's going on in the world, if only to keep those in positions of power on their toes. Because, you now, I think a good proportion of them would be happiest if no one knew what they were doing. Ever.

And they've been up to a lot lately. In just the past couple of days I've had items come over my Facebook feed about legislative shenanigans in both Utah and Arizona, and none of it was good. In Utah, the state legislature has sent a bill to the governor for his signature that would ban sex education in the public schools. Nothing good can come of this, but if the governor signs the bill, the only thing teachers in Utah will be able to tell their students is that they shouldn't "do it" until after they're married.

Apparently the good Republicans in that state (the vote ran, so one of the stories I read said, pretty much along party lines, with the Republicans voting for the measure and the Democrats against it) believe that if you just don't talk about sex, teenagers won't have any sex. Of course, their stated reasoning for the legislation was that school isn't the place to talk about such things. Unfortunately, I think their assumption that all parents talk to their kids about these things is a little optimistic. Goodness only knows, my parents never did.

I'm afraid, thought, that ignorance is never bliss, and that if this bill becomes law, both the teen pregnancy rate and the rate of STDs in teenagers will skyrocket in a state that already has an interestingly high rate of those things for a place that is supposed to be so religious and conservative and abstemious (I wonder what the Blogger spell-check is going to do with that word, because I know I didn't spell it correctly...and I was right).

And then, if that wasn't bad enough, Arizona is in the process of passing a law that will allow doctors to not tell pregnant women if there is something wrong with the baby they are carrying if they are concerned that the woman might use that information to decide to get an abortion. There is some controversy over whether this keeping of secrets would also extend to not informing a woman who has a condition such as a tubal pregnancy that could very well kill her as well as the baby if the pregnancy is snot terminated. But even if that is not the case, don't these politicians think that if a woman is carrying a baby that could have some medical issue at birth, the parents would like to know that so that they can plan for what they will have to do when the baby is born, rather than being taken by surprise when the baby is born?

And that's the the news on the ongoing war on women. There's also the continuing bad economic news. Oh, they keep trying to spin it as if they economy is coming along just fine. But here in my county the unemployment rate is still at 16.9 percent, a bit over double the national average. This is not good news for those of us who are in need of work. Nor is the news that fuel prices are continuing to rise. And so on, and so forth.

I was appalled to read, just today, in a thread on a forum I frequent, posts from not a few people who were bragging about the fact that they don't watch or listen to news reports at all any more, and they don't read newspapers or news sites on the Internet. I believe that we all have an obligation to keep up with what's going on in the world.

But some days, I just can't take it and I, too, have to turn the news off and just go off to my happy place for awhile and pretend that everything is just fine.

An open letter to Rush Limbaugh...

Mr. Limbaugh:

So, you apologized to Ms. Fluke for calling her degrading names just because she dared to speak her mind about the availability of insurance-covered birth control. Just because, you know, you don't agree with her.

So. I don't agree with you about a lot of things. Most things. Well, just about everything. Does that mean it's fine for me to call you degrading names?

Yeah. I didn't think so.

I also don't think your apology counts for much, since it didn't come for several days, and then only after calling her even more names and having some of your advertisers pull their ads from your show. I might buy it if you had used your "poor word choice" once, that first time. But when you did it again, on a completely different day, you lost the right to claim that you just used your words poorly, in the heat of your - what did you call it? - your "attempt to be humorous". What is ever humorous about calling a woman what you called Ms. Fluke?

There are things I could call you that you would find insulting. I won't do that, because I was brought up to believe that one just doesn't do that. Ever. And especially in public, in an attempt to gain ratings and earn money.

I am not personally an advocate, Mr. Limbaugh, of calling for people who do and say things I don't agree with to be fired from their jobs. Not even when their job is, as yours is, being a syndicated broadcaster who should know better. But, you know, I might be willing to make an exception in your case. You've been doing this for years, publicly assassinating the character of anyone you don't agree with. Even defenseless pre-teen or teen-age girls who did not ever ask to be in the public eye, but were only there because of the position of their parents. Yes, I remember what you said about Chelsea Clinton when she was very young and you insulted her looks in the very same venue where you insulted Ms. Fluke.

So, you know, Mr. Limbaugh, if you were sincerely sorry, you would take some time off and think about what you did, and what you do so often as part of your very privileged place in front of a microphone five days a week. You can afford it. Just think about what you do, how you seem to believe that anyone you don't agree with deserves to have their very reputations ruined in your attempts to be "humorous".

I'm sorry, Mr. Limbaugh, but I don't find you to be very funny.

Still, I'm not demanding that you be fired. All I'm asking is that you take a little time off and think, really think, about whether your part of the problem in broadcasting generally today, where character assassination seems to be completely accepted as a legitimate form of discourse, or whether you might be willing to be part of the solution by criticizing positions that you do not agree with rather than taking cheap shots at the people who hold those positions.

I'm not asking you to abandon your beliefs, or the beliefs that you seem to think you need to espouse in order to keep your ratings. I'm just asking you to limit your criticisms to the ideas without assassinating the character of the people who express them. That is what civilized discourse is all about.

I'm old enough to remember when that was common practice in this great country of ours. You are slightly older than I am, sir, so you should be able to remember that time, as well.

Politics as usual?

I was going to write about my weekend today, now that I've recovered from it. No, nothing bad happened, it was just a fun, busy weekend. But after reading my usual news outlets, I changed my mind about what I need to say today.

And what I need to say today is that I'm really getting tired of listening to the candidates for the Republican presidential nomination trying to read each other, President Obama, and a lot of other people out of Christianity because they don't agree on their Christian theology. We have the evangelicals in the group insisting that Mitt Romney isn't really a Christian because he's Mormon. We've got the evangelicals bickering amongst themselves about which one is the "real" Christian. And we've got Rick Santorum, who seems to have some very peculiar hang-ups, being exposed as making a statement in 2008 that liberals cannot be Christians and saying, separately, that not drilling for oil and gas goes against Biblical principles because the Bible says that humans "have dominion" over the Earth.

I'm not trying to rob any of these people of their religious beliefs. However, I'm pretty annoyed that they seem to think they have the right to impose their various theologies on the rest of us. Which, by the way, Santorum is not even denying, with his statements that his religious views would impact the decisions he would make as president. Some of the candidates have been making some pretty strong statements about how they think President Obama is stomping on the religious rights of Christians, but they don't seem to have any compunction about privileging their religious beliefs over the religious beliefs of those who don't agree with them.

This all makes me kind of cranky, to be honest. Not that I expect any politician to exercise any sort of intellectual honesty, but I have to say it is pretty damn hypocritical for these guys (yes, it is back down to just guys now) to complain about having religious ideas they don't like imposed on them, while having no compunctions about imposing their religious ideas on others.

Then again, I don't think that candidates for secular office - and the Presidency is a secular office - should even be talking about religion, theirs or anyone else's. Whether they like it or not, the First Amendment clauses on religion, both the establishment clause and the free exercise clause, are still in effect. This means that anyone is free to believe and behave according to their religious beliefs, but the government is not free to establish any particular flavor of those beliefs so that those who don't hold them have to live by them anyway.

Yeah. I'm ranting. To be totally honest, I think I've done very well to last this far into the primary season without a good rant about it all. And to be even more honest, while I don't love everything Mr. Obama has done during his term of office, he does not scare the crap out of me like the candidates for the Republican nomination do. This is not to say that I would never vote for a Republican for president, although that would be difficult for me to do while the Republican party is as far to the right as it is now, institutionally speaking. But I sure as hell would not vote for any of these Republicans.

Parade? Football? But it isn't New Year's Day anymore...

Since I woke up early anyway, I've been watching the Tournament of Roses parade this morning, the first time I've watched the whole thing in quite a few years.

First of all, I have to say that as nice as the television coverage is, once you've actually been the parade (and I have been, three times during junior high and high school, so a long time ago), watching on TV just doesn't do the parade justice. It's pretty on TV and all. It's just not the same as being there.

Having said that, however, I loved the surfing dogs. And the dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are always bonus.

Mostly, what watching the parade this morning did was make me homesick for Southern California. It's been 34 years since I've lived there, but it still is and will always be home. The fact that the sun was out, the sky was blue and it was apparently about 75 degrees F at parade time, all made me want to be there rather than here. Although, it's supposed to get about 65 degrees here today, way above normal for this time of year. I might have to get up and out later if it really does that.

Also, I have issues with the fact that the parade was today, the second, rather than yesterday, when it should have been. I know. It's tradition that the parade be held on Monday when New Year's Day falls on a Sunday. But it's a tradition I don't like. It would be like having the 4th of July on Saturday or Monday if it fell on a Sunday.

Oh, wait. They do that in Utah. Never mind.

Still, at least I'm not depressed after watching the parade. I expected that I might be. One of the reasons, besides it not being the same on TV after seeing the parade in person, that I quit watching the parade, was that I would watch it after I moved away from Southern California, sit there crying through the whole thing, wishing I was back there rather than where I was, and then be generally inconsolable for about a week afterward.

This time, I'm a bit homesick, yes. But I didn't weep through the whole thing, and I don't want to just go back to bed mope for the rest of the day.

It's an improvement.

Now, if all that football would Just. Go. Away.

It's the holidays, and I'm feeling just a little cranky, or, are the holidays over yet?

Apparently, someone in the neighborhood thinks tonight is New Year's Eve, judging by the noise they were just making outside. They got the timing just about right; it's 11:58 p.m. local time as I write this, but they're off by a day.

Although, actually, I'd be just as happy if this was New Year's Eve. I'm ready for a new year to start. Of course, because New Year's Day is on a Sunday this year, they're dragging the whole thing out an extra day. Personally, I think it is lame to have the Rose Parade and the Rose Bowl Game on Monday when the first is on Sunday, but then I guess I don't get a vote.

You may have gotten the impression, from the preceding two paragraphs, that I'm feeling a little cranky around the whole New Year's thing. That impression would be correct. Some of the crankiness has to do with just wanting 2011 to be over with, but most of it has to do with the fact that I hate the week between Christmas Day and New Year's Day with a a passion the temperature of molten rock.

I might have written about this issue here before, but just in case I haven't, the short version is this: The week between Christmas and the end of the year always seems like a week of wasted days, with one holiday just over and the other one hovering just over the horizon, waiting to happen. Also, to be completely frank, it's just an arbitrary date. A good excuse to have a party, some would say. Me? Not so much. We need a good party in, say, August, where there are no holidays. It's warmer then. A much better time for a party, in my opinion.

Let me be clear. I know the reasons why we in the Western World celebrate New Year's when we do. I know no one is going to change the date we celebrate the New Year. Except when in falls on a Sunday, and then only by one day. But two holidays seven days apart is just too much for me. It's bad enough that Halloween and Thanksgiving fall roughly a month apart, with Christmas following about a month after Thanksgiving.

On the other hand, if Samoa could jump the International Date Line, as it did this year, and lose December 30 altogether, and if my cousin's family could celebrate her birthday, which falls on Christmas Day, on the Fourth of July instead, couldn't we just move New Year's Day a little farther away from Christmas? Please?

One of "those" days...

I think I'm working on a head cold. Yippee!

On the positive side, I'm on furlough from work this week and next, so I don't have to try to work through the lack of ambition that always comes along with any cold I get. It's really difficult to generate any enthusiasm for writing about the crappy economy (or even a good economy) when I don't even feel much like dragging my happy butt out of bed in the morning, but I don't get sick days from work. So, even though my bank account isn't happy about two unpaid weeks off work, if I'm going to get sick, this is probably the optimum time to do it.

Also, I don't have any real plans for the holidays, aside from watching the Doctor Who Christmas special on Christmas night and then having some kind of a DVD-watching marathon over New Year's Eve/New Year's Day - maybe Doctor Who, maybe not - so, getting a cold now isn't really going to interfere with anything social that I really wanted to do over the holidays.

But then there's the negative side of the equation.

I'm working on a couple of writing projects - one the completion of the first draft of my novel that I started last month for NaNoWriMo and the other a short guide for beginning anthropology students (or maybe three short guides, one for cultural anthropology, one for physical anthropology, and one for archaeology) that I aim to e-publish. I had planned to get a lot of work done on these while I'm off work. I'm having fun working on them. But, even if it's something I'm really having fun doing, it's not nearly as much fun in the middle of sneezing fits, headaches, and achy ears from my backed-up sinuses. Oops! Maybe should have put in a TMI warning there. Sorry.

The point is, I'm not getting nearly as much done so far as I'd hoped. Maybe it's just because my brain has decided that furlough from work = no work at all. A significant part of me would be perfectly happy to sit down in front of the television and watch movies all day. In fact, I was getting a good start on that while I ate lunch, watching Marley and Me while I ate the leftovers from last night's mac'n'cheese dinner. But I couldn't even enjoy that because I knew I was wasting time that I could be writing on a day that I didn't have to write anything for work. So, I came in and turned on the computer (again, for the third time today), determined to get something productive done.

I don't know if I can rationalize writing this post as "something productive" or not. Probably not. So, I'm going to post this and try to get some work done.

It was 39 years ago today...

December 19 - On this day in 1972 the last Apollo mission to the Moon ended as the Apollo 17 command module and its three astronauts splashed down in the Pacific Ocean.

This makes me kind of sad. There were just six successful flights in the Apollo that resulted in landings on the Moon. Only 12 human beings, thus far, have walked on another world, and none have done that in 39 years.

Apollo 17 wasn't the last flight in the program, of course. In July 1975, an Apollo module rendezvoused with a Soviet Soyuz craft in orbit around the Earth. And of course, there were many flights in the US Space Shuttle program and construction of the International Space Station, which is so far still staffed despite the recent end of the shuttle program.

There is talk about going to Mars in twenty years or so - the target date seems to shift depending on the day and on who is talking. But there is also a faction of the scientific community that believes we should only explore space remotely, sending out probes but no people.

My feeling is that we need to send people out into space. Sure, it's dangerous. The two space shuttles that were lost along with their crews showed that. Sure, it's expensive. But I believe it is also essential. We are a species that needs to have somewhere to explore. We have been doing that for as long as we have existed, and we miss something important if we don't have somewhere new to go, something new to see and, perhaps most important, something new to learn.

There is also, in this time of economic chaos, the reality that a vibrant space program creates jobs. Not all of those jobs are for engineers and technicians. There are also jobs for secretaries and constructions workers and food service workers, just to name a few of the job categories that would get a boost from a ramped-up space program.

There is a whole universe of stuff out there to learn, and we will miss a lot of it if we tie ourselves to the Earth, which is what we are doing by not going any farther than orbiting our own planet. That's like only stepping out onto the front porch, like never even going all the way out to the sidewalk..

I'm a NaNo winner...

Yeah. That's me. I won NaNoWriMo. Several days early.

I have to admit that I'm quite proud of myself. When I started out the month, I wasn't sure that I could do this, that I could stick with it, and that I could find enough words to reach the NaNo goal.

But I did do it. I validated my entry today, at an official 53,681 words, although the word count tool I've been using claims that I've written 53,722 words in the month. I'm not going to quibble; everyone knows that every word count tool counts a little differently.

So, I'm taking a little time to bask in the glow of reaching my goal, the NaNo goal. It feels good.

But, really, the NaNo win is just an interim goal. The draft isn't finished yet. I think it might be about half finished. So, maybe a month's more work? A month and a half, since it's the holiday season and I don't know that I'll be able to write very single day. And then there will be a second draft, and probably a third. Maybe even a fourth, if that's what it takes to get this novel in shape.

I don't have any illusions. A lot of what I've written this month will change. There are time-line problems. Dialogue will have to be re-written and cut, and perhaps added to in some cases. Events will likely not remain in the order I've written them in the first draft.

None of this is a problem. This is how a novel gets written. There might be that rare writer who can produce a publishable novel. I'm clearly not one of them, and I have my doubts about anyone who would claim to be able to do that.

So, I'll continue to update the process here from time to time. Because I still need to be accountable for getting the work done. And who knows, maybe as I get this thing in shape, I might even post a preview now and then.

Nearly-the-end-of-the-week NaNo update...

So, yeah. It's been a few days since I updated here on how my NaNo is going.

Well, I've been writing every day, although word counts have not been as high every day as they have been being. Still, I've managed to write more than 1,000 words every day. Since I'm ahead of the curve as far as where I need to be to finish my 50,000 words by the end of the month, that's okay.

So, the daily word-counts:

Day 13: 2,428 words
Day 14: 2,089 words
Day 15: 1,963 words
Day 16: 2,053 words
Day 17: 1,320 words

I think yesterday (Day 17) was my lowest daily word count since the beginning of NaNo. It was a weird day, and a busy day, and I didn't write until evening. Still, it was a productive day, because while I was writing, I realized what needs to take place as far as a big reveal, and that it is nearly time for that to happen. This means that the work is on track and is generating the "and then..." that is necessary to keep the story moving. And, I hope, the reader turning the pages when this thing is finished.

As of the end of Day 17, my total word count stands at 36,640, which means that there are 13,360 word to go to win NaNo. More or less; different word count apps give different results. I'll have to see where I stand on the 25th, when NaNo's official word counter is supposed to go live. At any rate, I expect that I will be over the 50,000 minimum by the end of the month, god willing and the creek don't rise.

That doesn't mean, by the way, that I expect to be finished with this first draft by the end of the month. Most novels are more than 50,000 words long, and this novel will be no exception. When you think about it, 50,000 words really isn't a lot. Not if you expect to tell a story with any sort of complexity to it, anyway. But the end of NaNo won't mean the end of the project.

This is the novel that I intend to finish, after starting a few over the years. With any luck, it won't be the only one I complete. That's one of the interesting things about this experience. Even though I've been focusing on this project this month, I keep getting all these other ideas of things, both fiction and non-fiction, that I want to write.

NaNoWriMo, it turns out, is valuable in a lot of ways.

NaNo update, through Day Twelve

NOTE: Because I'm an idiot sometimes, I posted this to my other blog instead of posting it here. So, technically, this is a repost. Full disclosure, and all that.
Since I'm procrastinating on starting the day's NaNo writing, I thought maybe this would be a good time to post an update on my progress since my last report, on Day Eight.

Day Nine saw me write 2,705 words, bringing my total word count to 20,597 words, but I took Day Ten off and recorded no word count. I felt kind of bad taking the day off, but I had an opportunity to spend a good part of the day at the library at Fresno State to do some research for a non-fiction project I'm working on (not much this month, but it's a long-term project, so the time off isn't a big handicap. I found some material that will be very valuable to the project, so I'm glad I went ahead and took the day to do that.

It was difficult getting back in the saddle, so to speak, on Day Eleven, but I managed to write 2,167 words, to bring my total to 22,764 words. I wasn't especially pleased with what I wrote on Day Eleven, but I was pleased that I wrote, and that the story moved forward just a bit, even if there will be major revisions in the next draft. That's a given, so not a problem at all. As one of my Facebook friends said about giving hints ("Spoilers, sweetie!) about what you write in a first draft, everything will change anyway, so it doesn't really matter.

Yesterday, Day Twelve, I wrote 4,023 words, by far my biggest one-day output, and my total now stands at 26,787 words. That means I'm halfway to the NaNoWriMo goal. It's a good feeling, especially considering that it isn't quite halfway through the month. I can see now that my first draft won't be finished by the end of the competition, but that doesn't really matter. The goal is to write 50,000 words in the month, not finish the draft in the month. So, since I wrapped up writing for the day late yesterday afternoon, I've been basking in the glow of being Halfway Done.

But, now it's time to cut out the back-slapping and get back to work. I'm not going to try to equal yesterday's output. I'll be happy if I can do what seems to be my usual output of around 2,000 words today. Heck, I'll be happy if I make the daily average of 1,666 words that it takes to win NaNo if one writes every single day.

One thing I do think is interesting is that I'm seeing, as I write, exactly where some of the changes will have to be made in the next draft. I'm starting to adjust my work as i write, so that the new work will be more in line with what I want the next draft to look like, especially in terms of the story's timeline. But I'm being very good, so far, and not trying to go back and fix things I've already written now. They'll still be there when I finish this draft and go back to do revisions. It's enough, right now, that I know the direction I want to go with the story and can see what I'll need to do in the next draft to point the beginning of the story more squarely in that direction. And, that I can see more clearly every day exactly what I'm going to need to do as this draft goes forward to get to where I want to be at the end of the story.

The bad thing is (and I don't think it's really bad, just more ambitious than I had really planned in the beginning), I'm pretty sure that there is going to be more than one book before the whole story gets told. Which means lots more work ahead. Good thing I love the process as much as I do.

Day Eight...

After an unpromising start yesterday, I managed to write 2,083 words, bringing my total through Day 8 to 17,892, which means that if I'm good and keep to my goals, I should top 20,000 words today.

When I signed up for NaNo, I was hesitant. I'm not good with the completion thing when it comes to my writing. Now, if there is a reward at the end - a paycheck or a grade - I'm good. I don't believe I ever missed a deadline for a writing assignment when I was in college, and the only times I've missed deadlines for work, something out of my control has been going on - family emergencies, electricity outages, computer issues. But if I'm working on a project "just because" - just because it sounded like fun, or just because it might pay off someday - very often the work just slows down to a trickle and then stops altogether when something new and shiny comes along.

This is not something I'm proud of, and I'm getting better about it. But NaNo is one of those things that doesn't have enough of a carrot to it to keep me interested just on that basis. I'm finding, however, that it isn't as difficult as I thought it would be to motivate myself to sit and write every day, and to sit long enough to make my word-count goal each day.

Yesterday was a case in point. After I finished work, I had to go do laundry. Because we don't have a washer and dryer here, that means a trip to the laundromat. And laundromats, I've found, are like a box of chocolates. You never know exactly what you're going to get. Well, yesterday what I got was disobedient children and a mother who couldn't control them. They were there when I arrived, and they were still there when I left. I left with a splitting headache. I was so proud of myself that I hadn't yelled at anyone while I was there that I bought myself McDonald's for lunch as a reward.

But, being in a crappy mood after that adventure, and still having a headache by the time I'd gotten home, brought the clean laundry in, and eaten lunch, I really wasn't in any mood to write. I contemplated vegging in front of the television until it was time to go pick my roommate up from work, but there was nothing on TV worth sitting there for. So, I turned the computer on and started to write. With little success. I wrote about 700 words in a little over an hour, but I wasn't especially happy with what I'd written, and thought I'd probably call it a day. I had to leave to pick Pamela up anyway.

The funniest thing happened, though. After I got back home again, I had a couple of hours before time to go to Knit Night, so I thought I'd come back in and at least try to write a little more. I wasn't expecting much. An hour and a half later I had written probably what I like best of all the writing I've done on my NaNo project. I still had the headache. I was still in a crappy mood. But I overcame, and wrote something that might even be good. Goodish. Whatever. I went ahead and I wrote.

So, I'm beginning to think that maybe this is what I'm doing NaNo for: just to prove to myself that I can persevere, can get over the completion issue, and don't have to be "in the mood" to write. I've conquered that in my work writing. Now is the time to conquer it in my writing generally.

A week in...

I'm seven days into NaNoWriMo now, and I'm feeling good about my work and where it's going. New things are happening, and I've introduced a subplot that is meant to merge with the main plot later on. These are good things.

I wrote 2,598 words on Monday, Day 7 of NaNo, and my total is now 15,809 words.

I think one of the best indications that things are going fairly well is that I sat down to write at about 2 p.m. yesterday and came up for air at right around 5 p.m. I had completely lost track of time and had no idea that I had been writing for three hours. It has been my experience that this happens when the writing is going well. If it isn't, I end up glancing at the clock about every five or ten minutes.

I'm not sure when I'm going to find time to write today. I've got some errands to run in awhile, and I should go do the laundry, and then tonight is Knit Night. I could take the laptop with me to Knit Night if I don't get to write before then, but I'd rather knit. One way or another, though, I will get some writing done sometime today.

Sunday writing...

Sunday was Day 6 of NaNoWriMo. I was afraid that by Sunday, I'd be running out of steam/story to tell, or that I'd start to get bored, or that I just wouldn't want to write because Sunday is, well, Sunday, and I take the whole "day of rest" thing very seriously in a secular sort of way.

Turned out I was worried about nothing. I wrote 2,761 words on Sunday, and my total word-count is up to 13,211 so far. I introduced my villain, which was lots of fun. Although it was strange. I found myself writing in a slightly different style in that scene. Oh, well. That's what rewrites are for. But, it will be interesting to see if that continues when I write the villain's scenes.

I'm happy with how Sunday's writing sessions went (I wrote twice, with a sanity break in between scenes). I think I've advanced the story, and that is good. The writing is still probably a little dialogue-heavy, but I like reading dialogue-heavy novels, so I'm not seeing that as a particularly bad thing at the moment. There will be more action to come, however.

I'm on track with NaNo, but not so much with my updates here...

I didn't get to post yesterday's progress with NaNo here yesterday. When I tried to get on the computer to do that last night, my internet was down. Should have known, I suppose. The cable had just gone down, too, near the end of a movie we were watching OnDemand. Anyway...

I wrote 1,792 words yesterday and was not especially pleased with what I turned out. Today, I wrote 2,173 words in two sessions, and I'm much happier. I've got the plot moving along, with little hints in what I wrote today of things to come that will move the action along more, and will put a little more action into the thing, rather than mostly having people sitting around talking to each other. Which will likely change in later drafts, too. But that's what editing is for, to fix what isn't working and what I don't like about what landed on the paper (or, on the hard drive) in the first draft.

My total for five days is at 10,450 words.

Some days, I feel like a real writer...

It's day three. Things are starting to move, story-wise. My characters haven't tried to do anything too out of character yet. And I can still think of the next thing that has to happen without too much trouble. So, I think I'm doing okay so far.

My word-count for the first three days is 6,485. I've exceeded my target every day, which is a good thing. I'm not really happy with some of the dialogue I'm writing, but I'm still managing to resist going back and editing. I can edit as much as I want after this draft is done. Right now it's all about getting words on the paper. Or on the hard drive. (And yes, I'm backing up. And I'm thinking of e-mailing every day's work to myself, as another backup, just in case.) Just throwing words and seeing what sticks (as Stephen R. Donaldson once wrote about novel writing). Probably some of what I've written so far won't stick. But I think some of it will, too, so I'm making progress.

But, it's midnight now, and I've got to sleep sometime. More updates to come.