Tuesday, 29 June 2010
Monday, 28 June 2010
Smithsonian
Sadly not true, but it should be:
Smithsonian Institute, 207 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington, DC 20078
Dear Mr. Williams,
Thank you for your latest submission to the Institute, labelled '93211-D, layer seven, next to the clothesline post... Hominid skull.'
We have given this specimen a careful and detailed examination, and regret to inform you that we disagree with your theory that it represents conclusive proof of the presence of Early Man in Charleston County two million years ago. Rather, it appears that what you have found is the head of a Barbie doll, of the variety that one of our staff, who has small children, believes to be 'Malibu Barbie.'
It is evident that you have given a great deal of thought to the analysis of this specimen, and you may be quite certain that those of us who are familiar with your prior work in the field were loathe to come to contradict your findings. However, we do feel that there are a number of physical attributes of the specimen which might have tipped you off to its modern origin:
1. The material is moulded plastic. Ancient hominid remains are typically fossilised bone.
2. The cranial capacity of the specimen is approximately 9 cubic centimetres, well below the threshold of even the earliest identified proto-hominids.
3. The dentition pattern evident on the skull is more consistent with the common domesticated dog than it is with the ravenous man-eating Pliocene clams you speculate roamed the wetlands during that time.
This latter finding is certainly one of the most intriguing hypotheses you have submitted in your history with this institution, but the evidence seems to weigh rather heavily against it. Without going into too much detail, let us say that:
1. The specimen looks like the head of a Barbie doll that a dog has chewed on.
2. Clams don't have teeth.
It is with feelings tinged with melancholy that we must deny your request to have the specimen carbon-dated. This is partially due to the heavy load our lab must bear in its normal operation, and partly due to carbon-datings notorious inaccuracy in fossils of recent geologic record.
To the best of our knowledge, no Barbie dolls were produced prior to 1956 AD, and carbon-dating is likely to produce wildly inaccurate results.
Sadly, we must also deny your request that we approach the National Science Foundation Phylogeny Department with the concept of assigning your specimen the scientific name Australopithecus spiff-arino. Speaking personally, I, for one, fought tenaciously for the acceptance of your proposed taxonomy, but was ultimately voted down because the species name you selected was hyphenated, and didn't really sound like it might be Latin.
However, we gladly accept your generous donation of this fascinating specimen to the museum. While it is undoubtedly not a Hominid fossil, it is, nonetheless, yet another riveting example of the great body of work you seem to accumulate here so effortlessly. You should know that our Director has reserved a special shelf in his own office for the display of the specimens you have previously submitted to the Institution, and the entire staff speculates daily on what you will happen upon next in your digs at the site you have discovered in your Newport back yard.
We eagerly anticipate your trip to our nation's capital that you proposed in your last letter, and several of us are pressing the Director to pay for it. We are particularly interested in hearing you expand on your theories surrounding the trans-positating fillifitation of ferrous ions in a structural matrix that makes the excellent juvenile Tyrannosaurus Rex femur you recently discovered take on the deceptive appearance of a rusty 9-mm Sears Craftsman automotive crescent wrench.
Yours in Science, Harvey Rowe Chief Curator-Antiquities
Smithsonian Institute, 207 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington, DC 20078
Dear Mr. Williams,
Thank you for your latest submission to the Institute, labelled '93211-D, layer seven, next to the clothesline post... Hominid skull.'
We have given this specimen a careful and detailed examination, and regret to inform you that we disagree with your theory that it represents conclusive proof of the presence of Early Man in Charleston County two million years ago. Rather, it appears that what you have found is the head of a Barbie doll, of the variety that one of our staff, who has small children, believes to be 'Malibu Barbie.'
It is evident that you have given a great deal of thought to the analysis of this specimen, and you may be quite certain that those of us who are familiar with your prior work in the field were loathe to come to contradict your findings. However, we do feel that there are a number of physical attributes of the specimen which might have tipped you off to its modern origin:
1. The material is moulded plastic. Ancient hominid remains are typically fossilised bone.
2. The cranial capacity of the specimen is approximately 9 cubic centimetres, well below the threshold of even the earliest identified proto-hominids.
3. The dentition pattern evident on the skull is more consistent with the common domesticated dog than it is with the ravenous man-eating Pliocene clams you speculate roamed the wetlands during that time.
This latter finding is certainly one of the most intriguing hypotheses you have submitted in your history with this institution, but the evidence seems to weigh rather heavily against it. Without going into too much detail, let us say that:
1. The specimen looks like the head of a Barbie doll that a dog has chewed on.
2. Clams don't have teeth.
It is with feelings tinged with melancholy that we must deny your request to have the specimen carbon-dated. This is partially due to the heavy load our lab must bear in its normal operation, and partly due to carbon-datings notorious inaccuracy in fossils of recent geologic record.
To the best of our knowledge, no Barbie dolls were produced prior to 1956 AD, and carbon-dating is likely to produce wildly inaccurate results.
Sadly, we must also deny your request that we approach the National Science Foundation Phylogeny Department with the concept of assigning your specimen the scientific name Australopithecus spiff-arino. Speaking personally, I, for one, fought tenaciously for the acceptance of your proposed taxonomy, but was ultimately voted down because the species name you selected was hyphenated, and didn't really sound like it might be Latin.
However, we gladly accept your generous donation of this fascinating specimen to the museum. While it is undoubtedly not a Hominid fossil, it is, nonetheless, yet another riveting example of the great body of work you seem to accumulate here so effortlessly. You should know that our Director has reserved a special shelf in his own office for the display of the specimens you have previously submitted to the Institution, and the entire staff speculates daily on what you will happen upon next in your digs at the site you have discovered in your Newport back yard.
We eagerly anticipate your trip to our nation's capital that you proposed in your last letter, and several of us are pressing the Director to pay for it. We are particularly interested in hearing you expand on your theories surrounding the trans-positating fillifitation of ferrous ions in a structural matrix that makes the excellent juvenile Tyrannosaurus Rex femur you recently discovered take on the deceptive appearance of a rusty 9-mm Sears Craftsman automotive crescent wrench.
Yours in Science, Harvey Rowe Chief Curator-Antiquities
Saturday, 26 June 2010
Mac: Combine JPEGs
Open both images in separate Preview windows. Go ahead and save one of them as the name of the combined file you want to use (you definitely don't want to overwrite either part until you have the combined image you want).
In the renamed picture window, Edit/Select All, Edit/Copy, then Tools/Adjust Size... and make the image large enough to hold both parts. Don't worry if it's too big, you can crop it later. When it's big enough the image will be stretched, possibly weirdly if you didn't scale proportionately, but it doesn't matter because you're going to overwrite that image anyway.
Edit/Paste and with your mouse, drag this image to where you will want it on the final image. When you have it placed where you want, Click somewhere outside of that part on the now stretched part of the image, which will lock the pasted part where you have placed it.
Go to the window of the other part you will be adding, and Edit/Select All, Edit/Copy it, then click on the image you will be pasting to, and Edit/Paste, move this part where you want it, and again click on some part of the image outside of what you've just pasted and moved to lock that in place. If you don't do the clicking thing, the paste will not take.
If you need to trim parts of the image, Edit/Select All to select the whole image and move the dotted lines with your mouse and the little circle handles until everything you want is in the lines and everything you don't want is outside. Now Tools/Crop. You may need to redo these steps as sometimes a small bit you didn't want will be included.
If you make a mistake, you can Edit/Undo, so don't worry about making mistakes.
When you're satisfied, just File/Save, and voila, you've joined two images into one.
From: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=344576
In the renamed picture window, Edit/Select All, Edit/Copy, then Tools/Adjust Size... and make the image large enough to hold both parts. Don't worry if it's too big, you can crop it later. When it's big enough the image will be stretched, possibly weirdly if you didn't scale proportionately, but it doesn't matter because you're going to overwrite that image anyway.
Edit/Paste and with your mouse, drag this image to where you will want it on the final image. When you have it placed where you want, Click somewhere outside of that part on the now stretched part of the image, which will lock the pasted part where you have placed it.
Go to the window of the other part you will be adding, and Edit/Select All, Edit/Copy it, then click on the image you will be pasting to, and Edit/Paste, move this part where you want it, and again click on some part of the image outside of what you've just pasted and moved to lock that in place. If you don't do the clicking thing, the paste will not take.
If you need to trim parts of the image, Edit/Select All to select the whole image and move the dotted lines with your mouse and the little circle handles until everything you want is in the lines and everything you don't want is outside. Now Tools/Crop. You may need to redo these steps as sometimes a small bit you didn't want will be included.
If you make a mistake, you can Edit/Undo, so don't worry about making mistakes.
When you're satisfied, just File/Save, and voila, you've joined two images into one.
From: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=344576
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