Witch Child

I have resurrected this blog out of nothingness, as I feel a need to record all the books I read (of which there are many. If you want to donate a bookshelf to the cause, I'd be most appreciative).

As you might have guessed from the title, the subject of this post is Witch Child by Celia Rees. It's a historical novel - in about 1659 Mary's grandmother is hung as a witch. As she would come under suspicion, a mysterious benefactor dresses her up as a Puritan and sends her off to the New World. This is one of those novels that pretends to be non-fiction. It's actually fairly well done, with a 'typewritten' bit at the beginning and end, claiming that these pages were found sewn into a quilt and if anyone has more information, they should get in touch.

The narrative is powerful, mixing themes of women's rights, community, colonisation, superstition and religious (in)tolerance. The plot is, itself, fairly predictable, but it's worth reading anyway.

Looks like freedom, but it feels like death.

It's something in between I guess.

So, it's been a long while. There have been two games since - suffice to say we have one new character [the other one dropped something on the way and went back to get it while we were still returning] and we're working on our other problems.

On Friday, one of my second cousins gave birth to a son. The last time she was pregnant she had a miscarriage. This time she died. We're still awaiting the results of the autopsy to see what exactly killed her, but some form of medical complications resulting from an apparently difficult pregnancy seems to be where we're headed. Their [immediate] family was even closer than my [apparently] very close [immediate] family.

On Sunday I discovered Unitarian Universalism. I went to speak with the Cape Town congregation's minister. He was very nice and very helpful. It's so nice to encounter a form of religion that requires you to think for yourself rather than blindly accepting whatever they deign to tell you. I really don't have a very good opinion of organised religion, it's nice to know I'm not alone.

We had people over for games and movies over the weekend. It was fun. We should do it more often. I wasn't expecting to enjoy it on account of how I was feeling very unsociable, but I did.

Other things that have happened:

• some ultracentrifuging
• attempts to order more bromoform [what is wrong with these 'suppliers'?]
• creation of dilute hydrochloric acids [one at 0.5M and one at 0.1M] for decalcifying.
• journal club - of which I skimmed most of the paper and spoke to MGG about it before the session.
• read the book of atheist spirituality, which I would recommend to people, particularly the morons who actually believe that atheists go around murdering innocent babies in their beds because they have no moral compass. Which is not to say that it's not a book for atheists.
• read in cold blood - which focused less on truman capote than I would've thought given how incredibly self-absorbed the movie made him out to be.
• buying birthday presents for my sister, who is impossible to shop for and doesn't like what you get her anyway. But I think I may have succeeded this year. Hopefully she'll be okay with the fact that it's arriving late.

I think that covers everything. If it doesn't, then it's probably none of your business anyway.

Yesterday was a mostly good day. It was sadly ruined by the Wombat who was unable to put in an appearance at the game. The game went well - Nagataka was well taken care of by a bird lady with a particular interest in him. She was deeply concerned by his lengthy meditation. Kamenosuke, Ishie, Miu and the two Isawa launched an attack on Maple House. Ishie got to use her lightning spell in actual combat and killed a bunch of Tengu with it. Then she got to threaten Lord Maple who was standing far too close to her idiot sister [Satoko, played by theOtherAmy]. Lord Maple was killed by Miu and his sons graciously agreed to honour his end of the deal - that all the monkey-people get to leave. So we went through the half-trees, and found ourselves being threatened by a bunch of Tengu-pretending-to-be-Phoenix. Most of them left when Kamenosuke informed them that they only had half an hour to get back to their world. It turned out to be a little longer as Kamenosuke had to kill the Head-Bird-Guy first [which he eventually managed, with the aid of the kami - something that Ishie is very glad that she did and very glad she didn't get into trouble for it, though, technically, he didn't tell her she couldn't interfere this time] and then they had to walk the Ratling to the other gate, and he walks slowly. Once the half-trees were returned to their natural state of whole-treeness, everyone went back to normal, though slightly confused. Kamenosuke talked the peasants into doing what they should and everyone left the garden. Except Ishie. Who meditated on some of her alchemical problems for a few minutes before following after the others.

The other thing making me so happy yesterday? The SEM. The images show that after a mere 15 minutes in the microniser, the samples have particles under 10 microns. So that's what I'll be doing next week.

There was a Game

So, on Wednesday we had a game, with 5 people present. BT arrived and while she wasn't playing her character yet, she was getting into the swing of things by NPCing. So what happened:

Our intrepid heroes were bundled off to the 'Monkey House' by the bird people. There we met Isawa Something-with-an-S and his son, Nichiren. Ishie and Nichiren had a brief conversation about the trouble he'd caused by rushing off after his father instead of marrying her sister. Ishie restrained herself from mentioning that his return may cause more trouble [who's going to marry her other fiance? It won't be Ishie!] Ishie was less restrained when approached by their Matsu companion [played by BT]. Whatsit arrived in bird-land about 15 years ago, his son and Matsu Miu arrived 7 years ago, during the Phoenix-Dragon war. So seeing a Phoenix travelling with a Dragon and a Crane was a little surprising. Ishie has clearly spent too much time with Kamenosuke, as she suggested that the reason for the Lion's disgraceful withdrawal from their alliance with the Phoenix was due to their uncalled for massacring of the Dragonfly. We had tea and discussed the situation and the possibility of escaping. We met the Ratling, Flaky Claws and discussed his plan for putting an end to the problem. There was an awful lot more exposition than action, so there's not much to report. Stay tuned for next week.

In other news, I tried out the Geology Department's Swing Mill. I have to wait until March 2nd to check the powder out in the SEM, but it's quite finely ground. I stuck some in one of my sieves, just to see and while some of it went through [I could tell 'cause the acetone was cloudy, not clear], most of it didn't. So I suspect I will need to find a way to get it even finer. DLR, the guy from the Geology Department [who taught me in first year - and remembers me], suggested I speak to the chemical engineers who have an actual Professor of Making-Things-Smaller [that's not his actual title]. How long did it take for the Swing Mill to get the powder as fine as it could? Less than 1.5 minutes.

Also, Happy Birthday Mom!

[even if it was yesterday, she's at the cottage so she won't see this till Sunday/Monday anyway]

I tried to call her, but the signal was absolutely shocking and I think we exchanged all of 5 words in a couple of conversations [those were the times where her phone actually rang] before I gave up and smsed her.

Because you can't have too many words strung together with hyphens!

So, Button's parents have [presumably] returned to the US safely. They left here safely, but I've heard nothing since. I assume that any information would have gone to Button, who is back up at Elandsfontein being uncommunicative. It's hard to be anything else up there as signal is patchy at the best of times, unless you're on top of a very tall dune.

Delilah is delightful, though slightly less shiny than she was when she arrived. I think I may need to invest in some sort of cover/case thingie for her. I spent the better part of Tuesday downloading Open Office, and I'm oh so very glad I did. It's a bit of an adjustment at first, but it's kind of like having the shift button in a funny spot. You get used to it very quickly. And, for me at least, it's more intuitive than Office 2007, though I didn't have any particular problems with that. I do still want the bubble screensaver though.

My plants are much happier now that I'm home. The ones that have been repotted are a lot happier and the one that was moved outside, is slightly smaller, but still happy [the violent winds removed most of the leaves that stuck up past the olive tree's pot]. For Valentine's Day Button has promised me a return trip to the Kalk Bay Garden Shop, with the intent to buy plants. He has his eye on a Juniper bonsai, and I have my eye on just about everything else. We may also stop at the Indigenous Nursery near Cape Point on our way home, as we'll be staying overnight at the cottage.

Last night saw the resurrection of our game [yay!]. Our new players, BT & theOtherAmy are yet to join us. BT due to LARPing and theOtherAmy due to Operations. After a massive recap at speed, we launched forth into our journey to Inconsiderate River Village. We found it without difficulty and set about investigating stuff. Nagataka spent some personal time with a mostly deaf, totally blind monk while Kamenosuke and Ishie toured the Gardens. All while being spied on by yet more crows. Because the ones in Suspiciously-Perfect-and-Happy Village weren't enough [I forget the Village's real name, something about Sparkling Sunflower Fields]. Having discovered the two half trees of nausea, we decided to set out for the quarry that Nagataka's monk friend had suggested we visit. Nagataka did not sleep well, having divinated and seen that which was not meant to be seen. He did not elaborate, so Ishie and Kamenosuke still don't quite know what's in store for them. After a quick visit to the quarry [natural grey stone as opposed to weirdly out-of-place bright white granite], our intrepid explorers followed the drag trail up to another pair of half trees. Nagataka stepped through and disappeared. Ishie and Kamenosuke decided it was their duty to follow him. They are now in Willow House, a disturbing bright white city of bird people. Who is at war with the other bright white city of bird people, Maple House. Willow's two trees signify the city of arrivals. Maple's two trees make it the city of departure. We currently are being held prisoner by the bird people [though they're too polite to come out and say it], but need to find: [a] Flaky Claws, a ratling that attempts to communicate with Nagataka through meditation or divination or something [b] Isawa Guy-who's-going-to-fix-our-grandmothers-inhabiting-granddaughters'-bodies-problem and his son, [c] Isawa Better-hope-his-reappearance-doesn't-mean-Ishie-has-to-marry-her-sister's-second-fiance. Quite possibly we will also find: [a] Ishie's missing sister [b] our new players! Once we've found these people, we need to escape. Currently Ishie's in favour of the 'set the bird people alight until they leave us alone' plan. Or, Cherry Experimentation!

February Already!

2009 has snuck past me in a most sneaky manner. After a restful Christmas/New Year's, spent avoiding just about everyone I know [with the exception of my extremely privileged family]. Here are some of this year's highlights so far:

• The Korean Thesis - JS photocopied this thing while she was on sabbatical overseas. So now we know what was done in that other project. It does not render my research irrelevant, thankfully, but it would have been nice to know about the mills she tried two years ago. So now we have located a similar mill to the one used in this thesis [it's across the road in the Geology Department, very convenient] and we're going to try it out and hopefully it will all work splendidly. One can always dream after all.
• Elandsfontein Field School - Both Button and I were working at the third year field school. He will be going back for the Honours field school, but I am beyond done [and I have a lot of other work to do]. The students were fun and mostly nice. The completely crazy one was also fun and reasonably nice to spend time with when she wasn't being completely terrifying. She had to leave early, but everyone else seemed to cope with the hecticness okay. We had a number of guests coming to visit and they all gave very nice seminars/lectures on their current research. Funnily enough, every single one of them was an isotope person, so it was very well-placed of me to be there at that time.
• Button's Parents - They've come to visit [which is why Button isn't at the field school right now]. It's very nice having them here, though rather exhausting. I don't know where they get their energy from, but I guess when everything is new and exciting you do have more energy than when it's the same thing you've seen every day of your life [or, at least, fairly regularly]. So far we've done: Just about every art gallery in Cape Town, the Iziko SA Museum, the Planetarium, the Slave Lodge, the Riebeek Valley, Evita se Perron, the Cape Philharmonic in City Hall, Signal Hill, the Winelands [specifically Franschoek and Stellenbosch] ... possibly there are other things, but I don't remember them at this moment.
• Delilah - With them, Button's parents brought my beautiful tiny red computer, who is named Delilah. It's absolutely adorable. Of course, if I were bigger, I'd have trouble typing - Button can't type on this keyboard, but me, Button's Mom and Mom can all do it without trouble.
• Gardening - No new plants as yet this year, though some have died. I blame Mom, who was watering them while we were at Elandfontein. To be fair, some of them were already mostly dead before then, it's just the one fern that obviuosly couldn't cope with watering on a less-than-daily basis. But I think ferns are just fussy that way.

And now, I'm off to bed, as we're waking at a horrendously early hour to show Button's parents Elandsfontein. It will be fun, but far too early.

Just. Don't. Mention. It.

Seriously. Don't bring it up. It will result in severe unhappiness. On my part at any rate and I firmly believe in spreading the unhappiness. What should you not mention? My project. Or, worse, the mill. Why not? Because, despite everything I've done, that worthless thing is still leaking. One uninformed person [though, by that stage, he knew what was going on, but he did ask for it] asked if it was still salvageable. My sample? Why yes, my sample is actually okay and probably not too badly contaminated. My project? There are a bunch of uncontaminated samples ready to be sent [or taken] overseas and milled. My two years of wasted time and effort? Not so much.
So don't mention it.

Severe Lack of Work Happening

The Gemstone Party was much fun and very pretty. There are photos somewhere, possibly I will show you someday. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, the red velvet cake was enjoyed by all who had some and the banana bread wasn't too awful, despite 16 times the amount of bicarbonate of soda.

The Sweet Peas are flowering. So far all the flowers have been a bright, pinky purple. I'm hoping that some of the other buds will mature into flowers of different colours, but quite possibly only one plant is actually flowering at the moment. It's hard to tell them apart.

I'm currently not working on the CMP for Klasies River. I've sent in my November invoice and am wondering when the hell I'm going to find time to do 12.5 hours in December. I'm sure I'll manage it, but given that I was planning to start milling this week it's mucking up my schedule something awful. Currently I am attempting to reformat the bibliography in such a way that it still tells me exactly what I need it to and yet makes sense for the other people who need to read it. [For the record, the wikipedia selection of South African archaeologists is severely lacking. Someone should update it, but that someone isn't me.]
So, how does one compile a bibliography that contains every paper that so much as mentions a particular site? You find yourself a database, do a search and download pdfs of the articles. And then, you scan every single one of them for every single mention of the site and make sure that you make a note of the references it uses, so that you can hunt those down too. I'm quite sick of it, to be perfectly honest, and more than ready to move on to the next phase. But as you may have noticed, I still have a little bit to go...

Tonight we'll be at the Book Lounge for the launch of a new book by Phillip Tobias. After that [or, in fact, in the middle of that], we'll be off to the Opera. Hopefully we'll get to see my darling Patsy with the Orchestra again. As a result of going to the opera, we're missing out on Dystopia's birthday sushi. A sad state of affairs, but somewhat mitigated by the fact that I had sushi on Monday, with theOtherAmy.

All of Nothing

So, today is Friday and tomorrow is the night of the Gemstone Party. I am excited. I'm going to be leaving here early in order to go shopping. In addition to medication, I require ingredients for innumerable baking projects. Not all of which will happen. I also have to decorate. Button plans to work all night, so I can be busy doing other stuff without him getting in the way...

I have [unsurprisingly] a number of Gemstones with which to decorate the walls. My plants are mostly looking fantastic, and some of them are even flowering. I'm extremely pleased with the new plant stand and wouldn't mind a few more. Maybe even a couple for inside. My peace lily has four flowers, with more coming. One of the flowers has opened, the other three are still in pristine white bud state. This is very exciting, as it hasn't flowered since it was first given to us, when Button arrived in the country 3 years ago. Of course, that's in the bedroom, so people might not see it, aside from through the balcony door. And if it's as hot and windless tomorrow night as it was yesterday and so far today, the door will be open. My sweet peas are also set to flower, though all there is to show that is a multitude of buds. I can't wait to see what they look like when they're flowering! My sad nasturtium has once more rallied and has yet another flower about to open. Hopefully the olive tree doesn't get blown over again before the plants have a chance to actually grow.

I've done quite a bit of KR work lately, but not enough for this month. So I guess I'll do that before I go shopping and leave the milling till next week.

The Stench of Flesh

The THF seems to have done the job. I shall commence freeze-drying later this afternoon, weigh them in the morning and then it'll be back to the milling. The reason that I'm going to start freeze-drying this afternoon, rather than this morning, is that they're going to freeze-dry overnight and I've got to be out of here at around 15:00 today. And there's no reason to have the machine going for quite that length of time. Sadly, the THF doesn't seem to have had much of an effect on Wendell. I suspect he just needs more serious milling.

After the freezer was cleaned out, I seem to have lost what was left of my cow bone. Very sad, particularly since I need some of that cow bone now. So I stopped by PnP yesterday to get some more. I spent the whole of yesterday attempting to deflesh what has turned out to be mostly useless bones, not least because I'm not very good at defleshing. It stinks and the abundance of fat and water resulted in more than a few cuts on my fingers. I guess I should be glad I couldn't find a scalpel and had to use an ordinary knife. Last time I had a femur [a whole one!], this time it's a bit of rib. That's currently defatting. What I need that for, is to test the collagen extraction method we use. When I did my first test of the method [with the original cow bone] the collagen yields were very low, which suggests a need for less severe acid treatment. So I need powder to test that on. So I need to make powder.

In other news, I now have the recipe for Red Velvet Cake, which shall hopefully be made for Saturday. I'm currently in the mood to bake. Probably because I really enjoy doing it and I have space and equipment now. I also have finally taken my recipe book out of my mother's enormous collection and so can actually make more than the few things I have memorised. So, ingredient shopping this afternoon [and tomorrow and Saturday, I suspect].

Why Turnover Rate Matters

Hedges, REM; Clement, JG; Thomas, CDL & O'Connell, TC. 2007. Collagen turnover in the adult femoral mid-shaft: modeled from anthropogenic radiocarbon tracer measurements. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 133:808-816.

Highlights:
* Due to the testing of nuclear weapons, the amount of atmospheric 14C almost doubled in the 1960s and then began to decrease slowly.
* Collagen turnover is important in archaeological science because it affects both the precision of 14C dates and the accuracy of dietary reconstructions.
* Terrestrial food sources have the same ratio of 14C to the other carbon isotopes as the atmosphere, though the signal can take as much as a year to appear.
* d13C and d15N were measured as well as 14C. The d-values for males and females were significantly different.
* Between the ages of 20 and 80 years, the turnover rate of collagen decreases from about 4 to 3%/year for females and from 3 to 1.5%/year for males.
* "Human femoral bone collagen isotopically reflects an individual's diet over a much larger period of time than 10 years, including a substantial portion of collagen synthesised during adolesence."

Comments:
The reason I'm interested in this paper is precisely because the turnover rate is important in palaeodietary studies, which is what I'm doing. Now that last conclusion, the one I quoted directly is particularly important to me. Our current dietary reconstructions are fairly broad and spotting changes that occurred in later life is particularly difficult. Which is the entire point of my project. If we can separate out the different stages, then those dietary changes should be fairly easy to see.


Shin, JY; O'Connell, TC; Black, S & Hedges, REM. 2004. Differentiating bone osteonal turnover rates by density fractionation: validation using the bomb 14C atmospheric pulse. Radiocarbon 46:853-861.

Highlights:
* Using bone density fractionation [bdf] to separate older, denser bone from yougner, lighter bone.
* The method can be used to remove diagenetically altered bone from archaeological samples.
* Adequate milling is essential for the method's success.
* Results show that the lighter fractions have 14C values that correspond wtih more recent parts of the bomb curve.
* The results were less clear in those individuals that were older at the time of the 14C peak, presumably due to already decreased turnover rates.

Comments:
The importance of this paper lies in the fact that it's another tantalising glimpse of the method at work. The conclusion drawn by the authors is that bdf does in fact separate the bone into older-denser and younger-lighter fractions. It offers a hint at the conclusions of the paper above, with regard to the slow turnover rates after cessation of growth and the long residence times of bone. Adequate milling might be something to consider in the case of Wendell.

Progress!

So, it's been a few months since my last post. But that's okay. I had a lot of work to be done and blogging wasn't part of that. And, as you might have guessed, the work is actually moving forward! Exciting stuff.

So, the majority of my samples are still defatting. Which doesn't sound much like progress, I'm sure. But it is, and this is why: they are defatting in a different chemical. I was using a chloroform-methanol-water mix. It's a fairly cheap solution and works pretty well. But after 6 months, there was still fat coming out, even with the help of the sonic bath. So, having a look through previous work on this method, I thought it might be worth trying something stronger. The chemical in question is a lot nastier than the solution I was using. But it works oh so much quicker. Chemical nasty in question: tetrahydrofuran. So, while getting chloroform on the skin is annoying, getting THF on the skin is dangerous. Cue lab coat and gloves. I don't object to the lab coat so much, but the gloves annoy the hell out of me. Also, be careful of spilling THF, because it makes the beakers stick to the fume hood.
The reason why this is progress, is because the fat appears to have disappeared. Now one could possibly make the argument that this is because I wouldn't be able to see the fat if you hit me over the head with it. You could also suggest that it's because the THF evaporates so quickly I'm yet to actually change the solution properly. I prefer to think it's because the fat is finally out. I'm going to check on it later today and hopefully I'll be able to start milling later this week [like tomorrow]!

For the rest of today, I should probably work on other MSc related things. But it's getting close to the end of November and I have done very little work on the Klasies River Conservation Management Project. So, I'll probably get to that, once I see it sieving Wendell with THF makes any difference. Hopefully it doesn't make enormous holes in my sieves.

Yesterday, I was at the museum, attempting to find canids for a researcher from the US. She's doing ancient DNA stuff, and is hoping to look at samples from Nelson Bay Cave (NBC) and Boomplaas (BPA). I've pulled out the NBC samples, but I couldn't find the BPA stuff in the store. There were only three boxes of identifiable bone. So, being the bright spark that I am, I hung around and waited for Tyler to get to his office. He did, indeed have the BPA boxes. He was not particularly thrilled to find out that he'd missed three boxes. He's going through and measuring and doing whatever else faunal analysts do to the BPA material. So once he's had a look at the canids, I can prepare them for shipping to the US.

And now, back to work.

Boring Week

So, Button came home. This was both exciting and weird. I'd gotten used to living alone and now there's a giant man in my house. But we're adjusting nicely. And doing house shopping. This is exciting. Finally we have a mirror in the bedroom [now if only there were a way to attach it to the wall], among other essentials. Some [many] things must still be obtained. Gardening continues apace, with plans to rival our most extravagant house ideas. Though I was most disappointed to discover that one of my plant labels is lying.

On Friday, there was a LARP, Last Days of Winter. It was far more fun than the second [or third or fourth, for that matter] LARP I play around Dragonfire usually is. I tend to get LARPed out, occasionally. Luckily this LARP was saved, presumably due to the fact that I was completely preoccupied with something else when I arrived and we did not stand around waiting for hours. For whatever reason, the LARP was most enjoyable while being of a serious nature. I completely failed at attending Dragonfire however. On the upside, I presume that roleplaying will start up again on Wednesday!

On Saturday, we did house shopping, attempted to do blood tests [just because it's a public holiday it doesn't meant that the medical places should (a) be closed or (b) close early], bought pots and things, went out for sushi and watched a movie. We watched the new X-Files movie. There were a lot of things wrong with it, but I really enjoyed it and it made the shipper in me very happy. I'm not really sure why though, as that's about the only fandom I've cared about where I've never been a shipper.

Not much else has happened, it has been a boring week.

Fountain of Youth

The LARP happened. It was most enjoyable and people should play it. Once again I was playing a character in love with Verolin's character. I shall attempt to restrain myself from details, as I'll get into trouble for that [and then you won't be able to play and you must!] The point is that is was most enjoyable, far more enjoyable than I was expecting it to be. That sounds like a very nasty thing to say, but it's true. My general experience with LARPs is that few of them live up to the expectation and many are marred by long waiting times prior to playing. This was plagued by a long period of waiting, but for a change the LARP actually made up for it. There are a few problems that need to be fixed, but I'm sure they will be.

This morning I spend working on costuming for next Friday's LARP, Last Days of Winter. All the Chinese-style dresses were too big [at least, all the ones in the right colour that I'd actually consider wearing]. But eventually I found something that was the right colour and could be made to work. I never thought I'd say this, but it would fit better if my chest were flatter. But it fits very nicely, though the plan of two underdresses will not work. I have other ideas though... Particularly considering the character's mixed heritage.

And now I'm going home to cuddle up on the couch with a blanket and watch movies while eating strawberries and chocolate :)

Movies!

So, movies with theOtherAmy happened. We went to see the new Batman. Unfortunately they were almost completely sold out, so we decided to see something else. We ended up watching Lust, Caution. I am quite sure I enjoyed it far more than I would've enjoyed Batman. It was a very good movie in that it was (a) a war movie (b) a spy movie (c) a love story. Also, it was directed by Ang Lee. You should go see it. Yoga with theOtherAmy also happened. Though it did involve a few complaints ["you never said it was going to be hard"], she has since come back and this is good.

Also: more repotting, communication and other things.

This evening, there is a LARP. I wasn't looking forward to it this morning [and my enthusiasm for next week's LARP has also waned drastically, unfortunately], but I'm feeling better about it now. Not feeling so good about tomorrow's much needed shopping, though. Sunday night's trip to the airport, however, is a high spot.