New Phase, New Title!

Oh My Frog, I made it.

By "it", I mean I passed my doctoral defense. I have some revisions to do, but by the end of this term I'll be done. DONE.

Rich made a wonderfully apt comparison between Alien 3 and the thesis, where Ripley says to the xenomorph "You've been in my life so long, I can't remember anything else."

That's what this thesis feels like. I've carried that "You should be working on your thesis" mantra in the back (and the foreground) of my thinking for so long, I don't know how else to think. I can transfer that thinking to all of the post-doctorate projects that I have chomping and stamping behind the gates, but none of those projects will come with that big hurdle to clear.

With that in mind, I want to change my blog title to reflect more of the things that I actually do, which is muck around in the muck with birds, fossil bird tracks, science and museum life, and other things that impact the life of this particular paleontologist.

The "Shaman of the Atheistic Sciences" title was me mocking what was meant as an insult. A person with whom our institution had a friendly field work relationship did a rather confusing (to us, anyway) 180 degree shift and all of a sudden started accusing us of stealing all of BC's fossils to do...well, that part was never clear. There was some conspiracy-like elements to the rather lengthy rant. For all I know, we were piling BC's fossils in the center of collections and sleeping on them, Smaug-style. Regardless of the perceived reasons for our "fossil hoarding", the finishing line of the last direct communication we had from this person was that they would henceforth be turning to the Bible for all of their information on natural history and not the "shamans of the atheistic sciences".

Well then. In the words of the well-known GIF, that escalated quickly. This was no doubt supposed to be a dig at us, at other cultures, and those working to preserve our planet's natural history. If I had access to GIFs back when the comment was made, the above one would have been the perfect response.

I'm here for all the cool birds, fossil and modern bird tracks, fossil heritage conservation, and all the great paleontology I get to be involved in, and I want my blog title to reflect that.

So...

Hear Ye, Hear Ye! From this day forward, this teeny corner of the Internet shall be known as...

STRANGE WOMAN STANDING IN MUD, LOOKING AT BIRDS.

Cheers!