Great Exploding Toads, Batman!

` I was cruisin' through my e-mail, and it turns out that Dory sent me this strange, sensationalist-type of article...

Exploding Toads Baffle German Experts
AFP

April 25, 2005 — Hundreds of toads have met a bizarre and sinister end in Germany in recent days, it was reported Saturday: they exploded. According to reports from animal welfare workers and veterinarians, as many as a thousand of the amphibians have perished after their bodies swelled to bursting point and their entrails were propelled for up to a meter (three feet). It is like "a science fiction film," according to Werner Smolnik of a nature protection society in the northern city of Hamburg, where the phenomenon of the exploding toad has been observed.
` "You see the animals crawling on the ground, swelling and then exploding." He said the bodies of the toads expanded to more than three times their normal size. "I have never seen such a thing," said veterinarian Otto Horst. So bad has the death toll been that the lake in the Altona district of Hamburg has been dubbed "the pond of death." Access to it has been sealed off and every night a biologist visits it between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m., which appears to be peak time for the batrachians to go bang. Explanations include an unknown virus, a fungus that has infected the water or crows, which — in an echo of the Alfred Hitchcock movie "The Birds" — attack the toads, literally scaring them to death.

Revel in creative intellect: hug a writer. . . .
Dory's Law

What is really going on here? I decided to try my best to pick through the local Hamburg news...

` I found a string of articles in the Hamburger Abendblatt (Hamburg Daily Evening Paper). This is the first one, with a crucial difference; I have attempted to decipher it for English-speakers such as myself.
` Just to warn you - though I have my mom's 1952 German Dictionary ('The Latest and Best'), and a few other resources, my understanding of Deutsch sentence structure is only slightly better than cataclysmic.
` To make it even more confusing, I have scattered my translations throughout the text, with rearrangements of words pulled from here and there for grammatical reasons, but I am sure it isn't too hard to follow. [Edit: I've switched to a sentence-by-sentence translation in order to make this less confusing to read.]

Altona: Erdkröten sterben qualvoll (Toads die in agony)
Tümpel: Mehr als 1000 Tiere sind bereits an mysteriöser Krankheit verendet.(Pond: More than 1,000 animals have perished from a mysterious illness.)

Die Erdkröte atmet nur noch schwach, ihr Körper bläht sich auf wie ein Ballon bis ihr Magen schließlich herausquillt. (The toads weakly draw a deep breath, their bodies blow themselves up like a balloon, until their stomachs finally pop out.)
` Es ist ein schauriges Schauspiel, das sich am Tümpel am Altonaer Friedhof abspielt. (It is a chilling spectacle which takes place at the pond at the Altona Cemetary.)
` Mehr als 1000 Kröten sind in der vergangenen Woche schon an einer geheimnisvollen Krankheit qualvoll verendet. (More than 1,000 toads in the past week that got a mysterious illness met a painful end.)
` Die Ursachen für das Massensterben sind noch ungeklärt. (The causal factors for the widespread deaths are still unsettled.)

Am späten Sonntag abend vergangener Woche hatten Spaziergänger beim Naturschutzbund (Nabu) in Altona angerufen. (On late Sunday evening last week, walkers had called the Nature-protection-league (Nabu) in Altona.)
` Sie hatten Hunderte Kröten tot am Rand des kleinen Tümpels gefunden. (They had found hundreds of toads dead around the edge of the little pool.)
` Werner Schmolnik (58) vom Nabu besuchte den Fundort und informierte sofort das Bezirksamt Altona: (Werner Schmolnik (58) from Nabu visited the discovery-site and at once informed the local office of Altona:)
` "Uns bot sich ein Anblick wie aus einem Science-fiction-Film. ("A sight like from a science fiction film was offered us.)
` Die aufgeblasenen Tiere quälen sich noch einige Minuten, ehe sie endlich sterben." (The bloated animals suffered for some minutes before they at last died.")

Zur Zeit untersuchen Biologen und Veterinärmediziner am Institut für Hygiene und Umwelt acht tote Erdkröten sowie aus dem Tümpel entnommene Wasserproben. (At present, biologists and veterinarians from the Institute for Hygiene and Environment are examining eight dead toads obtained from ?water tests immediately out of the pond.)
` "Ich habe so etwas noch nie erlebt. ("I have never experienced such a thing.)
` Wir stehen vor einem Rätsel", sagt Janne Klöpper (45), Sprecherin des Instituts. (We stand before an enigma," said Janne Klöpper (45) spokeswoman of the institute.)
` Der Veterinärmediziner Dr. Horst Siems (63), der mit den Untersuchungen am Institut betraut ist, schließt auch ein Umweltdelikt nicht aus: (The veterinarian Dr. Horst Siems (63), with whom the institute is entrusted, does not exclude a ?crime against the environment:)
` "Bei dieser Größenordnung müssen wir alle Ursachen in Betracht ziehen. ("On this order of magnitude, we must take into consideration all causes.)
` Viren, Bakterien, Schimmelpilze, aber eben auch eine Gewässerverschmutzung." (Viruses, bacteria, mildews, but even also water pollution.")

Schmolnik hat schon einen Verdacht, woher die Krankheitserreger stammen könnten: (Schmolnik already has a suspicion from whence the pathogen could be derived:)
` "Ähnliche Vorfälle sind uns aus Südamerika bekannt. ("Similar incidents in South America are well-known by us.)
` Auf der nahe gelegenen Trabrennbahn laufen auch Rennpferde aus Südamerika. (Racehorses also from South America run at the nearby horse-racing track.)
` Durch ihre Pferdeäpfel könnten die Erreger in das Oberflächenwasser und so in den Tümpel gelangen. (Through their 'horse-apples', the pathogen could get into the surface water, and in that way, reach the pool.")
` Bislang sind nur die Kröten im Tümpel betroffen, doch solange eine Gefahr für den Menschen nicht ausgeschlossen werden kann, bleibt das Gelände rund um das Gewässer abgesperrt. (So far, only the toads in the pool are concerned, nevertheless, so long as the danger for humans cannot be excluded, the area remains railed-off around the water.)

` hplk erschienen am 9. April 2005 in Hamburg
(appeared on...)

Hmm... so they think it may be some kind of pathogen from South America carried by horses, but they're not sure what it is, so they've roped the lake off to the public... amazingly, this sounds more like a story to inform the locals than just sensationalism. But is it?
` The next article is called Krötensterben offenbar vorbei (Toad deaths evidently past) They found two live toads that 'do not exhibit disease symptoms,' and they also don't think that bacteria were the culprits.
` The next follow-up is called Krötensterben: Ursache unklar (Toad deaths: causes unclear) - a small statement basically saying that they still have no idea what it could be if not toxins or bacteria. And now, there's yet another article so as to keep readers up-to-date about their local 'Tümpel des Todes.' (Pond of Death) Do they ever figure it out?


Geplatzte Kröten - weiter Rätsel um Todesursache
(Burst Toads - further mystery about cause of death)
 
Das Rätselraten um die Todesursache von Hunderten Erdkröten in einem Tümpel am Altonaer Friedhof (wir berichteten) geht weiter. (The speculation about the cause of death of hundreds of toads in the pool around Altona's Cemetary (we reported) continues.)

Seit gut zwei Wochen werden einige der geplatzten Kröten im Hygiene-Institut untersucht, doch die Wissenschaftler tappen noch im dunkeln. (For a good two weeks, a few of the bursted toads were examined in the Hygiene Institute, but scientists still grope in the dark.)
` "Die Wasserqualität im Tümpel ist in Ordnung. ("The water quality in the pool is in order.)
` Hinweise auf eine bakterielle Infektion oder Umweltgifte als Todesursache gibt es nicht", sagt Janne Klöpper (45), Sprecherin des Instituts. (It does not hint at bacterial infection or toxins in the environment as a cause of death," says Janne Klöpper (45), spokesperson for the institute.)
` Spezialisten untersuchen die Tierkadaver jetzt auf eine Viruserkrankung. (Specialists now examine animal carcasses for a viral disease.)
` Spekulation, die Kröten seien von Vögeln angepickt worden, hält das Institut wie der Naturschutzbund für unwahrscheinlich. (The Institute, like the Nature League, holds speculation that the toads were attacked by birds, to be improbable.)
` "Wir hielten die Tiere, die an Land gekrabbelt waren, in der Hand. ("We held the animals which had scrabbled onshore in our hands.)
` 15 Minuten später blähten sie sich auf und explodierten. (15 minutes later they inflated themselves and exploded.)
` Vögel waren keine da," sagt Werner Smolnik. (No birds there there," says Werner Smolnik.)
` Er glaubt, durch ausländische Pferde auf der Trabrennbahn seien Erreger in den Tümpel gelangt. (He thinks that pathogens got into the pool came from foreign horses at the racetrack.)

phlk erschienen am 21. April 2005 in Hamburg

Still no clue as to what the agent is! Or perhaps they're looking in the wrong place... Apparently, it really is an ongoing issue for the people who live in Altona. I could be wrong, though.
` Also, in Jutland, Denmark, toads have been reported to crawl up onto land - usually at 2 or 3 in the morning - and expand until their entrails are jettisoned. I found some articles from Danish papers, but I seriously have no way of translating them. Except maybe this part;

. I Hamburg er op mod 1000 tudser døde, efter at deres kroppe er svulmet op til bristepunktet og eksploderet, hvorved deres indvolde er blevet kastet op til en meter op i luften.

` Basically: "In Hamburg more than 1,000 toads died after they puffed up until they exploded, hurling their innards for up to a meter in the air." Apparently, they think the two incidents are related, as though the epidemic has spread.

As far as scientific studies go, I can't find any. They may exist, but if they do, I doubt they're in English. Therefore, I'll make up my own hypothesis:
` Anti-amphibian terrorists have been sneaking around ponds at night and force-feeding the animals Alka-Seltzer.

seo-blog comment:

There can be only one
Howard Hondo | 08/05/2005, 00:56


UPDATE NOTICE: According to an article in Nature, it appears it may be more of a case of mass-hysteria than mass death. I kind of thought it would turn out that way. As the articles read, the only people who report the phenomenon are not scientists. This struck me, but I let it go. I figured if something really weird was going on, I might as well not spoil the party.
` The Nature article looks on the evidence at what was objectively found, such as streamers of guts coming out of the toads, and the fact that no diseases or pesticides have been found which could explain it. Michael Hopkin writes:

'The toads first came to prominence when walkers noticed an unusually large number of corpses splattered on the ground near what has now been dubbed the 'Pond of 'Death'. The current count in Hamburg has reached some 1,300....
` 'Frank Mutschmann, a Berlin-based veterinarian, has examined some of the corpses and says that they bear the scars of a predator's attack. He thinks birds may simply have made a very messy job of eating their favourite parts of the toads, such as the liver.` 'April and May are the months when toads migrate to ponds to spawn, Himmelreich points out, which means that this season could represent easy pickings for birds.... Himmelreich says she has never seen a toad explode.'

In other words, this is not too much different from what happens when salmon mass-migrate to their spawning grounds: There are always grizzly bears to catch so many that when they are assured a steady supply of salmon, they strip off and eat only the skin and fat, leaving piles of skinless fish rotting in the sun.
` I'm surprised that people don't make up stories about fish jettisoning their skins! (Or have they?)
` Apparently, if observers saw a wounded toad in the pond;

'"Maybe they were full of water, and in their agony they were also trying to suck in air," Himmelreich says. People watching bloated, rasping toads might well think an explosion was imminent, she says....
` '"I really think someone needs to go back and check the primary source," comments Barry Clarke, a herpetologist at the Natural History Museum in London. "I've learnt never to say with animals that anything is impossible. But the idea of exploding toads - well let's face it, it's pythonesque."'

Wow, I never thought I'd hear a herpetologist utter the word; 'pythonesque.' Apparently, this phenomenon seems to be another case where researchers go running around like chickens with their heads cut off until they realize that there's no conclusive evidence of what they've been looking for in the first place. At least now we can go to bed at night without worrying about Alka-Seltzer-wielding terrorists.


Note:
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Landslide-sliding - How we celebrated Dirt Day

` Phil and I went on vacation to Whidbey Island... which is within view of our window, but, whatever. We did have some fun - while Butters stewed at home with lots and lots of food.

~ Basically, the trip started yesterday morning, which quickly turned into afternoon when we realized we weren't getting on the ferry any faster than if we were to go around The Long Way, which merely involves a bridge. I was having a seriously hard time waking up.
` We checked into our Really Neat Island Inn and asked for directions to the nearest beach. We went there, seeing a young mule deer along the way, and found that we didn't have exact change for five dollars in order to park the car.
` So we went east into a village called Coupeville. Tiny towns like that are cool, though there are usually no places to park. I can't imagine what it'll Be Like in Tourist Season!

~ We went into a chocolate shop where we got five truffles - for about three dollars each. Well, they were attractively tied in a gift box... whatever. Surprisingly, one actually looked kind of like a real truffle.
` There's a cool Japanese shop there, where we got some placemats that the owner brought back from Japan herself. (She's awesome!!) They're made of bamboo or something - I think we can use them as sushi-rollers (and incidentally, we did make sushi the day before when we Actually Got to See Our Friends, Jason and Andie). Still, I was pretty bored.

~ With a five-dollar bill now on us, I suggested we go back to the beach at Ebey. I was still bored and jaded, however, as we stepped over the Sea of Driftwood and up to the surf. It was still very dull, though, and I began to fall asleep.
` I forget what we did there, though I do remember sitting on a dried-out tree and eating truffles, watching an intriguing scene of completely still mountains and a buoy clanging to and fro on the waves. Occasionally, there was a boat or some birds going past.
` So then, we went up through this path, up and down through the pine forest. I'm sure it was beautiful, but I was so bored and un-energetic that I stared at the ground while listening to the birds all around and the buoy in the distance.
` Unexpectedly, we got to a gun turret from World War II. It was slightly neat. Then, a break in the trees revealed a clifftop view of - again - the buoy and a tanker chugging loudly in the distance. I was still very closed off to the world when the forest broke (crack!) and there was this hill we were walking along the side of.
` Then, there was an entire fortress that said it was used in 1942. Um, not verbally, though - it was carved above the doorway. Inside, there was nothing to see, unless I used the infrared function of my video camera.

~ Then I followed Phil down the hill and over to the sound, where he was standing on a little pinnacle of land jutting out on a cliff about sixty feet above the water. Beside it, I very boredly noticed a little switchbacked footpath that seemed to lead down to the beach. We decided to follow it, and it was kind of nice - a narrow, solid path going one way, then the other down a steep, grassy slope, little yellow flowers here and there.
` BUT THEN... the dirt became very loose and the path very steep, and before we knew it, we were sliding through a thin mist of dust. It was kind of fun as I slid on my heels - until I had to hang onto a Plant of Very Fine Pricklies to keep myself from falling off a sharp turn. It was actually somewhat level again at that point, but then it became Very Steep and Dusty again - and then Ended Abruptly!

~ Recently, it appeared, there had been a landslide, and so the entire side of the hill was gone from under us at this point. Apparently, this was the cliff that Phil had been standing at the top of. From only seven or so feet above the lumpy soil that still ran down the side, I could see that it was probably very soft and safe to land on. Kind of like the stories Jerry used to tell me (and I actually think they're true!) about jumping off sandstone cliffs onto slanted walls of sand as a child, I thought. It looked perfectly slideable all the way down.
` So I had Phil hold my video camera and jumped down. I sank right into the dirt and rolled diagonally. I was like; "This is fun! Give me my camera and come on down! The dirt is fine!" So Phil plunged into the dirt and he basically managed a kind of escalator-type ride down. (There's a mountain-climbing term for this...[glissading]) By this time, I had really begun to wake up (turning on the camera as well!), so I basically used the cliff as a dirt-slide, sitting in the fine soil and kicking my way down.
` In other words, we had to propagate a miniscule landslide for about seventy feet to the crashing water. Once there, we dusted off and rinsed our hands while talking excitedly and listening to the buoy and the sea birds. And yes, ironically it was Dirt Day, which is what my mom's beercrafter boyfriend calls Earth Day.

~ It wasn't long until we were trudging along the tricky-to-walk-on, brightly-colored rocks, occasionally encountering logs of driftwood and long, whiplike tentacles of what had been a plant at some time. The sun was nearing its setting point - it must have been after eight - and we managed to get back to the beach as I was on the phone, telling my mom about what we'd just done. (Yes, either of us could have called for help on our cell phones, but I decided to jump down the face of a cliff...)
` Mom said she had done the same thing at the strip mines on the hills of West Virginia when she was young, actually, because it was of the Utmost Fun. Just one of those things in life I'd been missing until now, I guess.

~ After a thorough shower at our Really Neat Island Inn, we managed to get tables at The Mad Crab in Coupeville, and I had fun drawing on the paper covering the table. Their vegetable lasagna - and their service! - was the best, despite the understaffment - the host was also bussing tables to get people seated and all. Phil tipped lots.
` Then we went back to our room - at Captain Whidbey's Inn. It appears to be made entirely of logs and masonry - the electrical wires are in pipes that run along the wall. The rooms all have a feather bed, antique-looking dresser and bedstand, a sink with the very mismatched Tom's of Maine toothpaste, Bath & Body Works shampoo, etc (though, no bathroom), Stash teas and hot cocoa, a coffeemaker, robes hanging on the wall, and fun Swingie-Outie Windows That Need Propping Open With a Stick.
` Some overlook the intricate garden, but ours had a view of the elaborate patio and the sound - which is full of Annoying Geese, handsome cormorants, and loons. The bathrooms are fairly nice, though they are out in the hall. But it's a very nice hall - with shelves full of old books and National Geographics, with a Big Dictionary on a Book-Holding Thingy, and the whole place is full of very old-fashioned furniture (some of it authentic!), and weird paintings of people I neither know nor necessarily care about.
` Though the rooms were small, this was actually the first place I'd been in where the smallness only added to the coziness. It wasn't actually what I'd call claustrophobia-inducing - more like Tolkien's picture of The Shire.

~ If you don't know what The Shire is, you are probably not into 'geeky' reading - open another web-browser window and look it up if you like. Speaking of such, I read to Phil from Harry Potter's fifth year at Hogwarts (The Order of the Phoenix) after talking to George from Writer's Club at 2 a.m., his time. Harry Potter rocks, by the way, and so does Geo - more on them some other time. So, we got to sleep fairly easily, even after drinking some of our complementary teas and finishing the truffles off.

~ Next day, we got up and had a wonderful breakfast of blackberry bread-kuchen-stuff, sauteed apples with caramel and toasted, candied pecans, and French Toast made with baguette, powdered sugar, and syrup with blackberries and blueberries in it. It was truly worth twelve or thirteen dollars, along with the fact that we got to watch birds catching fish in the sea, which was sparkling in the sun.
` Then we went back to -Coupe- 'Tourist Trap' ville where we saw that the tide was out, revealing brilliant orange-yellow starfish in the shallow water, as we walked across a bridge to a building on stilts. It was rather like a barn that housed glittering, cooing pigeons underneath and a young gray whale skeleton in the main room, complete with baleen!
` I was bored stiff because Phil had gone behind a locked door (of a restaraunt that's coming soon) and neglected to tell me, but when I got through, we decided on a neat map for framing that was hanging in there.

~ It was beach-time next, where Phil held his cell phone up to the water so his mom could hear it. Meanwhile, on my phone, I babbled on to our friend 'Jonathan' about all the boring things we were coming across, such as dead whip-plants, a cement-thingy that had crumbled and sunk into the beach, a dead crab, and a dead sand-flea! Oh, joy!
` A little later, I was videotaping some more interesting things - squeaking oystercatchers that were hanging out on the rocks. They walked on their long, red legs and probed with their long, red beaks, and otherwise blended in with the dark, round rocks.
` After I gave up on trying to get a better shot of them while slipping all over the place, I sat down on a large, smooth rock that was mostly obscured by sand and began to play with a living sand-flea as it hopped feebly around my feet.
` Suddenly, the oystercatchers flew away and I looked behind me - Phil was flying his Starfire in the very weak wind. It wasn't too successful, though, so we went back to the place were you can get up the hill/cliff (across a boardwalk through the Sea of Driftwood).

~ As there was utterly nothing to do under the hot, burning sun, Phil was feeling rather creative - so he made a Sand-Mr. Murphy. He's a Vacuum Cleaner Salesman coming out of the beach that has a speech-bubble saying; 'Would you like to buy a vacuum cleaner?' in letters made out of pebbles.
` Well, he did manage to sell an Invisolux to this one guy for a shell, and I must say I was impressed by Phil's ability to make such a talented sales representative!
` By then, though, the edge of the water was creeping up to the sandy patch between the rows of rocks where it sits at high tide and low tide, and I'm afraid, our Mr. Murphy was probably drowned in another half-hour. We couldn't bear to watch, though, and as we were heading back to the car, our old friend Emily called - from the same timezone as us! Apparently, she's taking a vacation in Ventura, California. Neat!

~ Well, we had 'linner' at the place next to The Mad Crab called Toby's Tavern. Predictably, Phil and the pilot who I noticed was sitting next to us at the bar had much to say to each other about airplanes and what it's like to make and fly them. I listened attentively as I ate my sandwich.
` Apparently, this guy is a Real Pilot - he doesn't get bored sitting up there all day. I guess it would be more fun to fly an airliner than to sit in a cubicle, staring at a computer screen at any rate. The bar itself, by the way, was ancient, grooved by Various Implements for several decades.
` After that, we checked out a half-antique, half-pet stuff place, where I saw a mostly-black cat named Freddy, the Biggest Cat I Ever Saw. Twenty pounds! From there, we got a new collar for Butters, as she's partly destroyed and ripped off the old nylon one because it Greatly Bothered her.
` She's wearing it now and even though she could take it off easily (it's velcro and stretchy!), she isn't tearing at it. That's good to know, considering I had to fasten it properly and then slip it around her neck before dodging Angry Cat Claws. I hope that with this collar, the silver-dollar-sized patches of fur she's dug out around her neck will eventually grow back in unhampered.

~ Otherwise, she is very happy because We Came Home. That's a big deal for a cat. Just ask... a cat. She meowed with happiness and enjoyed being fooded by me again, although all I did was pick up all the pieces of Eukanuba that had spilled on the placemat while we were gone and put them back in one of the bowls. Good to know she's not mad at us for leaving like that.
` I regret to say that it's late now and I've neglected to read Harry Potter [using hilarious British accents] to my Philly-boy and he's gone to sleep without it. Awww... poor boy didn't get a story. Anyhow, I need to get sleep before midnight. I've got boring things to do tomorrow.

Does Insomnia Ruin Your Life?

` I can't stay awake.
` I can't stay asleep.
` Don't you hate it when that happens?
` It's true for me all the time - therefore, I'm always somewhat asleep, and I really don't know what's going on half the time. I spent my teenage years at home, alone, sleeping a lot while my parents were at work, barely seeing anyone else but them when they got home.` In sixth grade, when I had a 'real desk', along with two of the other students, I slept on a bean-bag chair in the back of the room (after trying to sleep two hours in the short bus). In elementary school, I slept in my cubicle all morning, and usually nobody cared.
` I find that very strange, as another student was kept up all night by seizures and he was always being woken up! I didn't even have an 'excuse' to be sleepy that anyone knew.

` Of course, I did have a very good excuse - my dad did not always allow me to go to bed at night. He'd have 'talks' with me, sometimes until the sun came up! He'd say; "I'm glad I can have these talks with you." and I would say "Yeah, me too, really!" because I believed them to be quality time in which I learned many exciting, useful things about myself.

` As you can expect from people like my dad: 'Talking' = Logorrhea. And Logorrhea + me alone = brainwashing sessions. This, coupled with severe, chronic depression, is why I became an insomniac.

` Of course, it was not every night - most nights, he'd scream at me to "Git tibet!" (as he pronounced it) and "Don't wake up Mahm!" Wake her up? Okay... like... he was yelling?
` But whenever he felt like it, he'd make me stay up half the night or more 'having a talk' which consisted of me dozing off at the table, punctuated by my crying or otherwise responding to the crap spewing out of his mouth, though I wasn't really allowed to talk.
` What was more, I wasn't allowed to leave the room! He'd make me stand on the steps for a half hour - easy! - before I could take a bathroom break, unless I gave up and sat back down, because the way he engages you and looks at you as if you're really listening makes you want to try to tell him you're leaving for a minute, but he doesn't acknowledge it!
` Sometimes, I'd go into the bathroom and I could hear him, still talking like I was sitting in front of him!

` Anyhow, I thought that him paying so much attention to me and letting me stay up was some kind of privilege, because I didn't have many - I wasn't even allowed to draw at any time after dinner!
` It turns out he was just using me, abusing me, confusing me, depriving me of sleep, and not actually paying any attention to me or my feelings at all. Still, it was enough to make me feel special: I was getting attention!

` According to my mom and brother, he's been an insomniac since before I was born. He's had his own problems, not the least of which is his mental illness.
` To me, though, the child he blamed for everything, what do you think he said?
` "It's yer fault! Yer always up awl night an' yew keep me up! I heard yew up las' night! Yer lucky I didn't kill yew! Yew always shlam yer door!"
` "I-accidentally-shut-my-door-too-fast-because-I-was-standing-there-for about thirty seconds, wondering-when-it-was-going-to-close,-and-then-I-realized-it-was-open too far,-and..."
` "That's no excuse!"

` Daily, I had to take this crap. Gee, sorry for causing you your lifelong insomnia, Dad!

` Now I'm stuck with it... There's problems galore. For example, I have the tendency to say things in my sleep over the phone.
` There was an entire year like this - I'd always answer the phone in my sleep, and usually people weren't able to tell, so that got me into a lot of trouble.
` That doesn't happen as often now, but it is annoying when I'm talking to someone and I start saying things I don't mean to.

` I've fallen asleep hundreds of times while driving, but only for a second at a time. Not only that, but I can't pay attention to anything properly, and therefore, I can't do anything I really would like to.
` At least not often... and when I do, I just don't enjoy it.

` Anyway, now I can't get to sleep when I need to. Thanks, Dad! I lay in bed all night, and I can only sleep during the day unless something wakes me up in the morning and I stay up, but usually not the whole day.
` Then I always cycle back to getting up in the afternoon. Sometimes I won't be able to sleep all night or day either and yet not be able to fall asleep until the next morning.
` I have to schedule all my appointments for the afternoon, like I did today. Luckily my Post Traumatic Stress Disorder group also meets in the afternoon. It's so ridiculous! In fact, every time I sleep a good eight hours and wake up in the morning, I still fall asleep before evening!
` Basically, sleep and lack thereof seem to cause all my awareness problems.

` Now I'm getting even more concerned! Yesterday at the kite field, Phil was chewed out by his former kite mentor, Larkin. Instead of telling him how to do things, he laughed at him and also told him that maybe his kite was not made for doing something or other, finishing, with his face two inches from Phil's; "What do you think about that?"
` And why? Aside from the fact that Phil noticed he smelled like he was high, it might have something to do with something else he said: Something about how I supposedly told him that I had 'whorish feelings' and stuff that he really didn't want to hear, and asked him; "Seriously, is she your sister? No really, man, is she? Because why would you go out with someone like her? She's not eccentric, she's insane!"

` Needless to say, Phil was in too much shock to say anything. If he hadn't walked away at that point, I think Larkin may have wound up black and blue.

` Whorish feelings? Now, did I say that to him the day before, when I was in the kite field? I don't remember even talking to him at all!
` As far as I was concerned, I spent the entire time crashing my kite into the ground, puddles, trees, etc, because I was busy watching everyone else or dozing on my feet. Was I talking to him in my sleep? Or at all?

` A few days before that, I also went to the kite field with Phil. Now, the last time I had seen Larkin, he was in our apartment and I was practicing this song on my piano about my insane dad that I wanted him to hear as an outsider audience - barely anybody I know actually knows that I even have musical inclinations, and it's hard to find people to at least listen to my music. [Even Larkin refused to listen!]
` It turns out that he also has an insane dad, although his dad just seems to hate people and try to live alone. I told him my song was about how my dad accused me of everything under the sun. I told him that my dad wanted me to grow up to be a whore so that he could yell at me, but in no way did I have any inclination to be one.

` So what really happened? What did I say? Was I asleep? Was it me? Was it him? Was it both of us? I can't say. If I really did say I had "whorish feelings" then I must have been dozing off, because what else could cause me to say that? (And not remember!)
` And my insomnia causes me to doze off [while I'm talking to people!]. Is that it? What's more, the teacher of my Post Traumatic Stress Disorder class thinks that I probably do really belong there. My next class is at three this afternoon. Now, I don't recall having 'missing time,' but such a thing is a common enough symptom of PTSD. Could it be that? Will I ever know what's going on?

` No matter - I have singlehandedly caused Phil to be alienated from the kite field, and he's having trouble finding another one from within twenty-five miles. Though this is the first time it's happened, will my lack of attention keep causing these problems? Will I always be too bored to stay awake, no matter what I do?

` Stay tuned for more 'Misery!' on SQN, with a special thanks to my dad!

Update! I've written another post about the fact that Larkin is a psychotic pot-addicted, conspiracy theorizing Nazi who is both delusional and blows up at people unpredictably. I think it means there's hope for me yet...

What did one Barnes say to the other? (And who are these weirdos, anyway?)

` There is much cheese in the world, thanks to such weirdos like Barnes & Barnes. And so, this blog entry was inspired by Art and Artie Barnes ('The Great' Bill Mumy and Robert Haimer), who fill my e-mail box with weirdness, in response to people constantly asking and advising them about their music - and sometimes sharing their own; for example, Joey Migeed, who also has a blog called 'The Blog No One Will Read' at Blogspot. (Now: The Swill Files.)
` It's not bad. I downloaded one of his wonderful songs from Swill Records called "Grandpa is a Porn Star" (spoof of that insipid 'You're an All-Star'), as heard on the Dr. Demento Show. You can tell he really was was thirteen when he sang it - his voice can't go down quite enough to reach the lowest note.
` Anywho, they're all going on about all kinds of things - right now, they're all trying to figure out what Art and Artie should put on their next albums, etc.
` At one point, Art is asking everyone which songs (good ones, anyway) they should put on, and R.T. (Artie), who evidently never agrees with him, replies:
(11, April, 2005)

> They're ALL good, anal butt sniff head! Name a bad one? Don't you like High Heels And Cheese? Or A Day In The Life Of Green Acres? Or When Uncle Bob Comes To Dinner? Or????So Bill Mumy retaliates:

> They're NOT all good, looby juice stench breath! Name a bad one? "One More Squirrel With Mustard"! AND "When Uncle Bob Comes To Dinner!!" OR..."Beautiful Naked Women" shall I continue????

yeah

Note: They end all their songs with 'yeah' for some reason.

Anyway, because I'm idiotic, I actually wrote this:

The way you squabble makes me giggle girlishly. That's okay, though. I am a girl. At least that's what the doctors say.
` I just gotta idea... I think you should try writing a song called Barnes vs. Barnes, actually, and you should be arguing about mundane Lumanian things. You know... really boring things... (by which I mean may not really be boring.)
` If you think that's a dumb idea, it seems to be my lot in life - last night I made up a song about Laura Schlessenger and my cat rejected it immediately. If you think I'm saying this out of the blue as part of some twisted plot to get you to eventually kill each other... I'm not good at twisted plots anyway.

- Stupid Q

` The 'S' in my name, by the way, is not meant to stand for Stupid - I am thinking of trying 'Spoony', short for something like Spoonocious.

` Spoonocious Q... Don't think what I think you're thinking.
` Anyway, I tend to be kind of annoying like that. I keep forgetting questions and other stuff I mean to say. It's a common aggravating problem I have in life.
` Long DadRant short; my communications skills are an artifact of my dysfunctional upbringing. I had to settle for what my dad wanted me to settle for: Everything he said was everything there was to know, so there was no reason to ask anything at all; for all of my developmental years, I was conditioned not to even think of questioning anything.
` So I don't ask people questions for any reason, usually.

` In fact, currently, I am working on a song about my blathering dad, tentatively called 'King of the Universe' for now. This new song goes in a hypothetical album called 'That Explains Some Things'.

` Anyway, I mainly just annoy these poor people in the Yahoo Group known as Voobaha (approx. meaning; 'aloha').` Joey, as you already know, is a big fan and has landed himself on Dr. Demento's show. In fact, he has made his own edition of the 'I Had Sex With' series (B&B did ones like 'I Had Sex With ET', '...Pac-Man', etc), Joey's is called 'I Had Sex With William Hung.' Gkhhh!

This part corrected by Jeff Shippen:
[Reply]

"Jeff Shippen, I have come to realize, has a website with Barnes & Barnes songs on it. You can find it here. (By which I mean, highlight the below URL and drop it in the long white box at the top of the web browser and you will instantly go there.)" [I didn't have link ability at seo-blog...]

The new URL is:
http://jeffshippen.homelinux.com/pub/barnes/

Thanks,
Jeff Shippen | 13/05/2005, 13:27

[Reply]

Hey, thanks for the update!
Jeff Shippen, everyone! :D clap clap clap!
(I wonder what he thinks of my neurotic problems!?)
seequine | 13/05/2005, 23:31

` If you are still with me, I'm sure you would like to know who Art and Artie are, unless you know who I mean. Well, this should help:

` Art Barnes is an alien or something who lives in Lumania, which is on the continents of Africa and Australia in an alternate dimension. He is the alter ego of Bill Mumy, who also played my favorite alien, Lennier the Minbari on Babylon 5. (Minbari decidedly resemble caucasian humans with weird heads in appearance - as is usual on Sci-Fi shows - but their way of life seems to be picked from the various cultures of Asia, including martial arts, which Lennier is highly skilled in.)` One of the first things you see on Bill Mumy's web site is a picture of him as the bald, spiky-headed Lennier with a guitar. [Right>]
` Because of that, whenever I listen to Barnes & Barnes, I have always thought of Lennier with his hands [like that], leaning from side to side, metronomically, singing; "Fish heads, fish heads, roly-poly fish heads..."
` (Or even worse; "I married Mama, 'twas the proper thing to do, I had to marry Mama, because our baby's due! We'll love our little baby, we'll name it after Dad, oh, I married Mama, the best girl I ever had... except for maybe Grandma-ma-ma... yeah!")
` That is utterly the last thing you would expect to come from cute little kickass Lennier... and so it is funny, ha.
` Ha. Ha ha.

` Also, there is another picture of him with a guitar as a boy. Does he look familiar? He might. That's because when he lived on another planet and his mom was June Lockhart, he used to have a robot that would emit useful information such as; "Warning! Warning, Will, Robinson! Danger approaching!"
` That reminds me, one time, I watched this episode of The Twilight Zone about all these people who are trapped in a town which seems to be isolated from the rest of earth (or else it's no longer existant!) and you see this kid who creates a two-headed badger and kills it.
` If you annoy him too greatly, he will tell you that you are 'bad' and turn you into something awful which will probably wind up in the cornfield. Yet, that was little Billy, long, long ago.
` (They still talk about the cornfield at Voobaha...)

` I guess he's done a lot of weird things in his life, as well as being a musician, so he eventually wound up becoming a music-loving Lumanian, inventing words such as 'Spazchow' (to suffer at the hands of women and make art) and 'Zabagabee' (celebration, festival).
` Since the seventies, he and Artie would travel via sound waves to this dimension, where they became regulars on Dr. Demento.

` Artie Barnes is the other guy from Lumania, the alter ego of Robert Haimer. He has done songs by himself, with Bill, and both of them have done songs as part of the band The Jenerators, etc.
` Sadly, I don't know the most about him, but you can always learn more by going to Barnes & Barnes' website instead of listening to me [in text?] blathering on about someone I don't know that much about.

` Anyhow, that's Voobaha, just another group I hang on around the outskirts of and occasionally try to timidly assert my existence to make sure nobody forgets me. It's always been what I've done...
` (And though it's on the internet, I find that the humons are very interesting to study even there!)
` Other than that, friends, family, whatnot, I'm always the odd one out, and have been told for eighteen years that I am the center of evil in the world and I cause everyone horrible problems, which my dad always said he could fix.
` I always had the impression that if I even looked at someone, it would defile them and so I hated it when anyone wanted my attention. Today, I actually ask people if I can 'bother' them.

` 'Bothering' the Voobaha gang really cheers me up!
` So my dysfunctionality continues...

But enough about me, I need go schweepy. Bye for now, I need sleep. It's after three in the morning and I need to be in PTSD therapy in twelve hours. Whoo. Sounds fun, doesn't it?

Richard Roberts, Little People, and Snits

Okay, I'm not going to bother any more with this - I've just spent since last post working on this one, something about the supposed controversy over the Homo floresiensis. But it went bye-byes. So instead I'm going to give you some badly-spelled transcript pieces about a certain professor Jacob swiping the complete skull without letting very many people look at it.
` These are from an Australian show on ABC called Lateline. I'm going to copy this down and then go to bed, sorry if I made any annoying mistakes, but I'm not feeling well.

Here we find archaeology Professor Richard Roberts from the University of Wollogong being interviewed... on 25-11-04. Yea.

Roberts says: "...the team leader on the project has been living in Indonesia this year for longer than he has in Australia. He's living with these guys day in and day out. He has daily updates on what is happening.
` To say we weren't kept abreast of information is completely misleading. In fact, Professor Jacob wouldn't know that or not because he is not part of the project.
` From Mike's perspective, he is there telling everyone what is going on right up to point of publication and for three or four years before that. I do find that a really exceptional claim of his."

*Interviewer Tony Jones asked: "The Indonesians were named in the publication?"

* "They were. They are holding prominent positions, including one who is claiming at the moment that he hasn't been given enough information. That I find mystifying."

* "But not Professor Jacob?" Jones said. "He obviously wasn't named. Could that be part of the problem?"

* "Maybe. Perhaps politically we would have done better to have included him in the project from day one, but as you have pointed out quite rightly, he does have a reputation for hoarding away fossils and not letting people look at them.
` We would probably not be having this talk now if we'd given the material to Professor Jacob in the first instance. It may have simply stayed in his fault for another five, six, seven, eight, nine or ten years!"

* "How critical is it for you to have access now, we have seen the hairs that are going to be DNA tested, but we heard from that scientist from Britain that in fact you desparately [sic] need to dig into teeth to get DNA from them as well?"

* "There is no replacement for the original material. We can take casts of specimens but sometimes you really need the genuine article and DNA analysis is just one of these examples.
` We do need the original material. This year we have found a completely new jaw, lower jaw with a whole set of teeth. Any of these would do the job for our present purposes of extracting DNA."

* "Where is that?" Jones asks.

* "That's back in Jakarta with Professor Jacob. We are in something of a difficult position where we don't have access to the material we really need access to. But as Allan Cooper correctly said, if we can get DNA from the hair, perhaps we can make a good case to the Indonesian Government to say let's look at some DNA from the teeth."

* "It's an extraordinary situation. This was billed as one of the great scientific discoveries of our time?"

* "It is." says Roberts. "It has moved beyond science now into the political arena. We're trying to take it back to the scientific arena which is where it belongs.
` It shouldn't be used as a trophy to trade around as a power base. It is something for the scientific community to say; 'This is what it is or isn't.'
` I don't object to Professor Jacob having a different view from ourselves. I think he should let others look at the material and he can come to his own conclusions as can everyone else."

* So Tony says: "Let's look at his different view for a minute, that's the bigger picture. He is claiming that this is a human, not a new species."

* "That's right."

* "He is saying it's a modern human, human suffering from microcephaly. Microcephaly is an extremely rare disease amongst modern humans.
` The fact we have found a human with microcephaly would be an acheivement [sic]. The probabilities of finding it are vanishingly small. The fact that we now have seven indiviuals [sic], from this cave, presumably all with microcephaly... the chances of that are utterly remote.

* "Let's take a point of argument that this particular individual with a small brain is a microcephalic individual, is such an individual." Roberts continues. "They have other features that indicate they're not suffering from microcephaly, they have unusual tooth structures - three roots to the teeth.
` You find those in three-million-year-old people like Lucy in Africa, that only exist in very early Homo erectus. You don't find those with modern humans. We don't suddenly develop three roots to the teeth. Nor do you suddenly develop long arms if you have microcephaly. And that's what the hobbit has, they have slightly longer arming[?] compared to ourselves.
` "The pelvis is wider than in modern humans. They have very thick eyebrow ridges. None of these are features of microcephaly. When you look at a complete set of features of the skeleton, one or two of them might be credible as being microcephalic problems, but the rest of them can't be explained by microcephaly. If you pick some of the ones like Professor Jacob has done I can understand how he reached that conclusion. But not on the basis of all available features."

(Gee, do you think he's suggesting that this Jacob guy isn't being OBJECTIVE!)

* Jones asks: "What about the other conclusion that you got the sex wrong?"

* "Peter Brown was always saying he thought it was a female. That's not absolutely locked in stone. He might say maybe it's male and that might come out in the wash. I'm less worried by that then by his claim that it's a modern human.
` None of the referees on the papers, and we had lots of them, of course they were looking for something simple like this, saying it's a modern human suffering from a medical problem, it's something the referees on the paper thought 'is this going to be the explanation?' and they quickly reached the conclusion, 'it's not the explanation.'
` "This is definitely a new species of human. In fact, so different, originally Peter Brown even thought this was a new genus of human, that's how different they are. Professor Jacob is really out there by himself.
` Interestingly, it is history come full term again. Every time a new human species is discovered, suddenly everyone is saying it's some sort of demented modern human."

* "I was going to say you have to be a bit philosophical about it." says Tony Jones. "This is pretty much what happened with the Neanderthal man?"

* "That's right." Roberts confirms. "They were first thought to be some poor cossack [sic] who got stuck in a cave and died or some demented human.
` Same with the first Homo erectus, Java man, people thought; 'Oh, look, he's a sad case of a poor soul who's a demented human.' As the fossils began to accumulate, everyone says, 'No, that's not the case.' We've now got too many 'demented humans' for that to be an explanation. It's a new species."

* "From Professor Jacob's point of view there's some history here. He refers to a Dutch Priest called Verhoven who made similar claims for a discovery in the 1950's, at least that's who the professor is saying. It appears he was directly involved in refuting those claims. Is history repeating itself for him?"

* Roberts explains: "Verhoven was the first person who found this cave. He was a very talented archaeologist, ?be he was a full-time priest, or was supposed to be a full-time priest, but he did an awful lot of digging but never dug deeply, only about the first two or three meters, then stopped. All he ever did find was modern humans.
` If Verhoven claimed it was another human species, Verhoven would have been wrong. So Professor Jacob might have been right then but I don't think he's right on this one."

* "He does claim that many people have been hunting a pygmy population in Indonesia. He seems to be suggesting this is some sort of mythical creature, a holy grail for archaeologists."

* "There is a population of pygmies who are throughout Southeast Asia. There's no doubt there are very small modern humans and there are pygmies in other parts of the world, but they're just dwarf versions of ourselves - they're just small modern humans with rather large brains compared to their body size.
` This individual had [a] brain only the size of a grapefruit. A three-year-old child has a brain three times the size of that hobbit. They would have to be not a modern pygmy human, but a malformed pygmy human. And if it had been the only one, but there are now another six or seven of them. So it really becomes implausible as an explanation for everything we've found."

* "What will it take to settle this argument once and for all?"

* "If we can get DNA from the hair and the tooth as we can say, as they did Neanderthals, and say they are not related to us, in fact we seemed to have diverged 500,000 years ago anatomically the hobbit is even further back in time, two million years ago. They should be even more distinct genetically from us that they are from Neanderthals."

* "We seem to be in the scientific version right now of a diplomatic stand-off. Do you think in the end there's such tremendous interest in this around the world that the scientific community will band together behind you and put pressure on the point where it's needed."

* "Yes, I mean we don't want to put pressure on Professor Jacob so he feels bitter about the way things have turned out, we have tried to be as inclusive as of all the Indonesian scientists as we possibly can be.
` Others do need access to these specimens, other scientists need to be able to take a look at them. They should be able to go to his university or the Institute for Archaeology in Jakarta and look at this specimen and then the scientific community might reach a final consensus as to the species."

* "Are you hopeful that will happen?"

* "I'm sure it will happen in the fullness of time."


From another episode of Lateline, on 03/03/2005, the guests are Professor Richard Roberts again, and Professor Maciej Henneberg - who supports Jacob's view that Homo floriensis are Homo sapiens and says that Jacob is not really hoarding the skull material away. We also learn a little bit more about the specimen:

* Naturally, Richard Roberts is arguing with this Henneberg fellow... "Two things: firstly, Professor Henneberg is wrong about the memorandum of understanding. Both parties have to agree to allowing a third party to look at it, not just one party. Therefore, that one is incorrect.
` "Second one - the people who have looked at the material at Professor Jacob's invitation have all been people who agree with Professor Jacob's position in terms of human evolution. People from another point of view, which is in fact the majority point of view, have not yet seen the specimen themselves apart from ourselves, and we've not been allowed to look at it because Professor Jacob hung onto it and hung onto it and hung onto it, each time pushing back the deadline, until he was only forced to return it by his political masters who actually put a great deal of pressure on him to return it to us immediately, and that's the only reason it happened - otherwise they would still be there in Yogyakarta now."

* So, what have they been doing with the skull, now that it's been returned?

* Roberts answers: "It's compared it to 3-million-year-old people who used to live in Africa, modern human people, modern human people with a medical condition called microcephaly as well as pygmy modern people, Homo erectus - a whole range of different sorts of human brains, and the outcome is certainly in our favor in that comparison as opposed to Professor Henneberg."

* Tony asks: "Maciej Henneberg, are you prepared to reconsider your position on the basis of the endocast results if they do indeed show that the brain of the hobbit is not a diseased brain as you seem to be suggesting it is?"

* Henneberg replies: "I'm not, and the reason is that... [t]hey compaired [sic] it to one single brain of a person who has the kind of microcephaly that we never suggested the LB1, the skeleton in question, ever had. So it's like comparing a patient with tuberculosis to a patient with bronchitis or pneumonia. I don't think it bolsters their case in any way."

* "Let's speak about your other objections or your other views about why this skull and the other bones are not the bones of a new species."

* "Well, I have now had an opportunity to study the skeleton. I must add that, when I did any discoveries on skeletal material, I welcomed my colleagues to come and have a look, especially those colleagues who had a different view because I thought that when they come and look at the original material they can change their minds, and I'm talking only about looking at the bones that were already described.
` "Those bones clearly indicate that the person suffered from a growth anomaly and this growth anomaly caused anomalous, very slow or retarded growth of the brain...."

* Jones asks: "Richard Roberts, I know you know some of Professor Henneberg's other criticisms. He is suggesting that, in spite of what you're saying - that it's... the brain of a hobbit, a new species of human, but a normal brain, not a diseased brain - how do you answer the claims that it is in fact diseased without referring to the endocast?"

* "Professor Henneberg, in a paper which I've seen in a journal, not a referee's paper but one where he expresses a point of view, pointed out some features that he believed to be that of a microcephalic individual.
` Peter Brown, our expert paleoanthropologist, pointed out in reply that, while individual features such as a very small brain, such as certain things like even perhaps a slightly receding chin or sloping forehead, are consistent with a microcephalic individual, lots of details are not consistent.
` "In fact, they've got nothing like that in microcephalic individuals ever reported. So, when you consider the whole package of features that we found in the skeleton, and not just the facial features but also the post-cranial features, the rest of the body, it has a very flared pelvis and arms that come down almost to the knees - these are not conditions that occur with microcephalic individuals. So, when you consider the whole overall anatomy of this person, it doesn't wrap up into a microcephalic person."

* "Is the problem here there's only one skull? I know there's a part of another skull - I think it's the mandible -"

* "That's right. We've got two lower jaws, and they're both very, very similar to each other which again argues against the fact that we've now got two microcephalic individuals and we've got the remails [sic] of eight individuals now from the cave, so if they're all equally small, which they seem to be, then if Professor Henneberg is right we've found eight microcephalic individuals and it's an extremely rare disease and to find eight of that antiquity would be quite a remarkable find."

* "Professor Henneberg, you couldn't possibly have a nest of diseased individuals in this cave, could you, so how do you answer that?"

* Maciej Henneberg; "We don't. There is only one skull. The so-called seven or eight, they seem to be multiplying now in the discussions, individuals are represented by mostly a single bone or a little bone fragment, like a fragment of a Spinous process of a vertebrae. And those have nothing to do with brain size. The only thing they indicate is small body size of local population....
` "...there's only one - and I stress it - one brain case and actually one face attached to it, and this face is fitting into modern human range of sizes and has a lot of features Australian and Indonesian people who, yet again, live in Flores and islands to the east of Flores until today....
` "It's not normal to have this amount of asymmetry in the face. When we come to long bones, they are actually unusually wide in relation to their rather short length and, yet again, this is indicative of abnormal growth, not of growth that is compatible with a new species. Let me finally straight out say that we are not discussing fossils at all.
` Neither the skeleton LB1 or any comparing remaining bones, but we didn't really study them, neither of these are fossilized. They're as fresh bones as those that are excavated - I have excavated several thousands of them - from cemetaries [sic] and burial grounds that are a few thousand to several hundred years old. This is not a fossil."

* Roberts is given the chance to reply: "Preservation is a geological issue and the particulars of preservation in this case are a wet, damp cave environment can keep things soft for a very long time. It certainly isn't fossilized in terms of minerals getting replaced in the original bone but it's certainly an extremely old skeleton, about 18,000 years old.
` The fact that it's not completely mineral-replaced is neither here nor there. It's a complete red herring....
` "He talked about a slightly deformed skull. Of course we found this skeleton six meters underground. A cubic meter of sediment weights 2.5 tonnes - you'd feel pretty squashed too if you were stuck under six meters of sediment.
` So you're going to expect some amount of crushing of the original skeleton when it's that deep underground. Then he mentioned - there was a point that followed from that one but I can't quite remember what it was now....
` "...What he was saying about the fact that referees never had a chance to look at the skeletal material, it should be said that Professor Henneberg, three days after we published our paper, was quite happy to write himself in the Adelaide Sunday Mail what he thought about it without having seen a specimen himself and he had already made his mind up. All he's done by going to Yogyakarta is made up his mind further. It was always a microcephalic to him. No amount of data will change his mind on that subject."


The very next day on Lateline, Michael Carey interviews Richard Roberts and Macief Henneberg with Peter Brown. We learn more about the new species:

* Richard Roberts says: "I certainly feel that we're vindicated now, that we've got, at the present time, as much evidence as we can possibly stack up in favor of this being a new species of human, based on the fossils and based on the endocast of the brain."

* Carey asks: "The results, which were published today in the journal Science, looked at a 3-D model of the brain cast from the skull found in the cave in Flores. The picture the study suggests about the life of the small creatures is fascinating."

* Brown replies: "One of the interesting things about the endocast of Homo floresiensis is that the frontal region in particular is very, very convoluted and not smooth. So it provides some information about the external structure of the brain. Modern human brains, of course, are very convoluted as well."

* "In other words, the brain is different from modern humans, but surprisingly sophistocated."[sic]

* Richard Roberts answers that: "Foreward [sic] planning activity happens in the front of the brain, and that's where the hobbit brain is really well-developed. That explains a lot of mysteries that we had the first time around, which was; 'how could something with a brain the size of a grapefruit do so many sophistocated [sic] activities?'
` How could they make stone tools so well? How could they hunt elephants as groups? How do they speak to each other? How do they make ocean crossings? All of this is now explicable by the fact that they had a well-wired brain that, though small, could do extraordinary feats."
` Importantly the study concludes that these features are almost certainly not from a modern human suffering from a brain disorder. That claim was made by some dissenting scientists."

* Brown says: "They are not consistent with the size and shape features which you might expect to find in a pathological or abnormal modern human. They are normal brains, they just happen to be different to modern humans and different from those in Homo erectus and much smaller than Homo erectus in overall size."

* Richard Roberts sums it up: "Professor Henneberg said they only looked at one microcephalic individual's brain, and that's true. But out of all the brains that they compared the hobbit to, the microcephalic's was the least like the hobbit's brain; that is, this brain was so distinctively different from the microcephalic it really is very, very improbably that it was somebody suffering from microcephaly."

* Carey says: "The argument will probably go on, given the heat of the debate so far. Bad blood worsened when a leading anthropologist in Indonesia locked away the bones, only allowing access to scientists who shared his view that these were not the remains of a new species.
` The bones have now been released, but the researchers are still angry at the group of scientists who studied them while they were locked away."

* "But he invited in some friends of his from the (?) to take samples from the skeleton, without our permission, in fact without even telling us what was going on, and taking them back, out of Indonesia, again without the permission of the relevant Indonesian authorities."

* "The ill feeling will go on, but for today the researchers are more excited by what they believe they're learning about the life of the Hobbits."

Bone wars... this is why I'm glad I'm not a scientist - it's important to be objective, and when that is denied... it sucks. Anyway, I had something else written but it's gone, so I'm just going to get to bed -- it's 2:06 in the morning here after all my work-for-nothing.

` UPDATE: I have, ironically, another transcript from another ABC radio program with better-studied information on these hobbits on October 16th's post!