Summer!

Just as the population over here jumped, I got hit with the end of the semester. Essay exams that go on for five pages longer than they need to, essay exams that go on for five pages shorter than they need to, people who want to know what they can do to fix their grade now (even though they haven't asked all Spring), people switching to a psychology major because they think it will be easy...

I got the last grades in Tuesday, and then spent all of yesterday cleaning. I can see my floor now! This is a source of great joy. Occasionally it's nice to work hard, and at the end of the day have something concrete and appreciable to show for it. Even if it's my office carpet. Such a nice shade of yellow; I had forgotten.

I now have two weeks during which I can actually
-try and move forward on all nine projects sitting in my inbox
-prep for summer session
-prep for visiting family and friends who will be here all June
-write!

It's so nice to have some time off.

Hobbitses?

So now it turns out that there's a community of pygmy humans living on Flores very close to the site where the hobbit skeleton was found. Is this evidence against homo floresiensis being a different species? This article says that they exist--but it doesn't give any indication that they have the same cranial oddities as the archeological specimins (i.e. the small but fully-formed brain). They're a bit taller, by about 50 cm on average, but humans have gotten taller over the last few centuries too.

Although it's not in the article, I have a hypothesis that I like. I've seen some suggestions in recent years that modern homo sapiens actually have some neanderthal DNA--that we interbred with them when we went north rather than just killing them. So maybe these relatively tall pygmies are the modern offspring of h. sapiens and h. floresiensis ancestors? Someone needs to take DNA samples in Rampasasa.