What I did at NAPC

1) Wrote my talk at the last minute.
Always a great idea. It's not like I ran over and had to be booted off stage. Worst of all I realised later that I must have been completely oblivious to my two-minute warning. Still, apparently it came across OK.

2) Saw some of my heroes speak.
Including Ken Miller and Sean Carroll, both of whose popular science books I have read as well as Michael Donoghue (whose contributions to evolution have been truly diverse), Steven Stanley (father of macroevolution) and Phil Gingerich (of fractal rates of evolution fame) - all legends.

3) Became addicted to shuffleboard.
A bit like a dry version of curling, but without the brushes. I exclusively play the doubles version and it turns out I have a penchant for the violent 'kamikaze'-type shots.

4) Got my ass whupped at basketball.
It seemed like such a good idea. I mean, how good can a bunch of palaeontologists be at sport? Weren't we all the geeks at school who hated physical education? Anyway, I entered myself and a couple of friends in the 3-on-3 tournament under the name "The Bristol Deciders" (retrospectively the Chickencows would have been better). It seemed victory would be ours when at one stage we were the only team to enter, but as it turned out there was one other - not enough for a tournament. Instead we played a pick up game with such luminaries as Arnie Miller, Mike Foote, Tom Baumiller and Shanan Peters involved. It's safe to say against the average American I am atrocious at basketball.

5) Visited the Creation Museum.
This was a truly bizarre experience. Some 80 palaeontologists, including Arnie Miller, Mike Foote, Christine Janis and myself boarded a couple of school buses for the short drive into Kentucky. I got photographed by the Cincinnati Enquirer, Akron something-or-other and the New York Times. In the end the story made both the New York Times and Bucyrus Telegraph Forum, but the highlight has to be the back of my head appearing in this article, justifying my claim to be the back of the head of palaeontology. It's a shame I'd already gotten my business cards done.

6) Enjoyed a mini PBDB summer course reunion.
It was the first time I had seen three folks from the PBDB summer course in two years and we even squeezed in a reunion photo. All of our instructors were also at the conference and it was good to see them again (and have them remember my name).

7) Learned how to play bocce ball.
Not as fun as shuffleboard, and Bristol taking on Berkeley ended disastrously. Still bocce ball was good fun.

Bits and bobs

Here are a few more things I've found whilst stumbling.

From http://www.vivapixel.com/:

From http://farleftside.com/:

From http://www.birdandmoon.com/:

Dinosaur supertree - now zoomable!

I just got an email from Mike Klymkowsky with a link to an online, zoomable version of the dinosaur supertree. A preview is shown below. To see the site yourself click here (the link to the dinosaur tree is on the left hand bar). It's cool to see other people making use of it, especially as we couldn't fit this figure into the actual paper.

My Top 9 Tips For Fantasy Football

For a few years now I have been playing the official Fantasy Premier League game. Not only has this been a distraction from the heartache of watching Man United reach 18 league titles, but it is completely free and allows you to be entered in both a global competition as well as smaller leagues with friends. Having just won the latter for the second year in a row I thought I'd post some tips on what I think is the best strategy for success.
1) Make the best player your captain. Even if they appear to cost the Earth picking the highest scoring player and making them your captain is key for the simple reason that the captain's points count twice. To save money here is a false economy as the doubling cancels out any expense. Of course the trick is actually picking the highest scoring player, but usually this is the best midfielder at a top four club, i.e. Fabregas, Gerrard, Lampard or Ronaldo. Choose wisely, however, as their great expense will make transferring them later tricky, e.g. if you want to 'upgrade' to a more expensive player you will often need to make two transfers, costing you gameweek points.
2) Fill the bench with the cheapest players. Don't waste money on players that you will never use. Sure, it's great if you get injuries to have cover, but it is a false economy to have someone decent on your bench when the money could be better spent on filling your starting eleven with high scorers.
3) Play your wildcard early. You get one chance per season to make as many transfers as you want in a gameweek without it costing you points. It is pointless to save this for later as by the end of the season players will cost what they are truly worth and bargains are hard to find. Everyone makes mistakes with their initial selection as in my experience preseason form is pretty awful indicator of how players will do when the PL kicks of for real. In addition there is almost always someone who makes the headlines early on for unexpectedly strong performances, e.g. Hull's Geovanni at the start of the 2008-09 season, and you want to get these cheap, but high scoring, players in your team as early as possible. Use your wildcard early to draft in the form players and get rid of the dross. If you need any further convincing then you sould note that the 2008 winner played his in gameweek 2 and the 2009 winner in week 6.
4) Check the fixture list. To get the most out of a player you need them playing when they are on form, but it also helps if their upcoming games are either mostly at home, against lesser opposition or, as is often the case later in the season, are twice in a gameweek. Similarly, it can hurt you if you bring in some wonderkid just before they go on the road against the big four.
5) Don't panic! Just because you get an injury, a suspension or a team doesn't play in a gameweek don't drop good players. Apart from it costing you points if you go over your one transfer per week you may find with shifting prices you can't afford to buy them back. Generally speaking you should only transfer out players that aren't performing for you anymore.
6) Never make more than one transfer a week. As this costs you 4 points it is almost always a false economy, see point 6. The only exception to this is the wildcard, see point 3. I make one (free) transfer a week and so did the 2009 winner.
7) Watch football. A simple one really, but checking a player's fantasy stats won't tell you how well they are actually playing. Just watching Match of the Day can really help identify your next acquisition, or who to get rid of. Apart from anything else I have found that injuries and suspensions can be slow to be added to the Premier League's website. It won't help your cause to make captain someone who got stretchered off in their last game.
8) It's not all about goals. Some of the highest point scorers in the game are defenders and these are often the most value for money. Strikers are actually the least efficient players (in terms of points per million cost). Don't rule out playing 5-3-2.
9) Pick a balanced side. Finally, distributing your team across multiple different clubs is alway a good idea. This is basically "don't put all your eggs in one basket", but it can severely affect your gameweek total if you rely heavily on just a few teams who end up with bad results. In addition, you may actually like to rotate some of your cheaper players. For example, I had both Schwarzer (Fulham keeper) and Jaaskelainen (Bolton keeper) for most of 2008-09, and would regularly switch who started depending on who Bolton and Fulham were playing.

A thought

A brief post to keep this ticking over, but recently I've had a geeky thought probably from watching too much Battlestar Galactica*. In the show the ships are able to make "jumps" across space exceeding the speed of light. This made me think if we could "jump" away from Earth, but still within an unobstructed view of it then we would essentially be looking at a past Earth, potentially much older than present. Better still if we could magnify our image to a high enough resolution, and through gaps in the clouds, we ought to be able to see what was going on at the surface and hence ultimately get the best picture of past life we're ever likely to see. OK, OK, we can't make supra-light speed jumps and currently we can't even get high enough (i.e. literally "life-size") resolution of nearby objects like the Moon. However, there is a theoretical possibility of achieving the former through something like an Einstein-Rosen bridge - the plot vehicle used in Deja Vu - and our imaging could still get a lot better, e.g. even correcting for the bending of light by gravitational bodies between the viewer and the (past) Earth.

What's more if we could continually traverse away from the planet at supra-light speed instead of stills we could actually get a (greatly speeded up) movie of life in reverse. Of course, being a palaeontologist I'm thinking of things like dinosaurs - we could know once and for all what killed them, but there would be immense scope for viewing human history too. The possibilities are almost endless (if restricted to plan view). Am I the first person to think this? Anyone out there from Hollywood want to buy the rights off me?

* no spoilers please - I'm only up to season 4.

Stumbling

Greetings (y')all. It's been a while since I've put something up here, partly because of moving to a new city and new job, but also because my internet time has been dominated by a new obsession, namely "stumbling". If you haven't tried it yet I recommend it. Here's what I've learnt so far:

1) According to Leviticus, I should really be allowed to own a Canadian.

2) The Japanese have some have odd ideas about Obama.

3) Despite what you may have heard, paper can actually be folded 12 times.

4) My knowledge of the states could be worse.

5) There is such a thing as library porn. (I must confess, I am a fan.)

6) A best man can really ruin a wedding.

7) Kids really shouldn't be allowed to use the internet for their homework.

8) True random numbers can be gotten if you really want them.

9) The Tauntaun sleeping bag may become a reality.

and, 10) I have some new tips for indulging in my my favourite pastime.

Rube Goldberg machines

We've all seen these - most famously in a Honda advert - but I've just found my new favourite. Learn more about the man here.