Persephone: What's She Really Like?

According to Greek Mythology, Persephone was the Goddess of Spring, Queen of the Underworld, and the daughter of Demeter, the Goddess of Growth. This refers to plants, not animals. For those of you who are not familiar with the story, you may be wondering about this. Apparently, Hades fell in love with Persephone due to an arrow of love, whisked her away to the underworld, Demeter said "I am angry" and turned the world into a barren place, like in winter. Zeus found out about this, complained to Demeter, and said he would get back Persephone, but oly if she hadn't eaten anything. Turns out she did, 4 pomegranate seeds. Hades said that because of this, she had to stay for him 4 months, and this is where they thought winter comes from.
Some of you might be shocked that pomegranate seeds are the cause of this, but this is not why I am talking about her. In our class we read an essay that refers to "Pluto, Proserpina, and the three Furies" as "the three infernal deities." These are the Roman names for Hades, Persephone, and the Furies, whatever their Greek name is. I could tell who "Proserpina" was and thought "Why in the world is she one of the infernal deities!? She's forced to rule the Underworld and I'm pretty sure she's kind, not sadistic as the essay implies!" I was ready to talk about why Bacon was wrong, but he's actually correct.
When Persephone is ripped away from her mother, she becomes this cruel person, or at least callused. She is referred to as "The Iron Queen." But when she returns to her mother she becomes her sweet, uncallused self again. This is what I personally think, but there could be two other possibilities. The first other possibility,which I doubt, is that Persephone is naturally cruel, but you wouldn't expect this much of the Goddess of Spring. The other is that she likes Hades. The myth does not talk much about what happened while Persephone was with Hades, so she could have developed feelings for him and tries to be cruel just to please him.
So, Persephone is not entirely as sweet as I originally thought, but the reason is why. Is she bitter about being torn away from her mother for 1/3 of the year and takes it out on whomever she can? Or is it because she loves Hades and is being cruel just for him?
By the way, sorry to ruin the contemplative moment, but here is something else to think about: Hades married Persephone. Persephone is Demeter's Daughter. Demeter is Hades' Sister.

"Taking Candy From a Baby" edited

My last post about Survivor was really bad, so I am making mass edits. By the way, for anyone interested, to do a strikethrough, you put "strike" in these brackets, "<" and to end, have those brackets contain "/strike" like this.
By the way, I know my earlier posts aren't as good as they could be, so if I could get comments on what I should fix, it would be helpful.
P.S. I will move all the strikethrough text to the bottom of the page to avoid confusion.
P.P.S. Actually, I'll just remove all the bad parts, so it will be changed considerably.

Taking Candy from a Baby

Can you imagine the scent of your own socks burning over the campfire while you sleep? Such is the malady that befell protagonist Jaison when antagonist and general annoyance "Bad Russell" spewed his venom around the camp. Ironically, during this episode, Jaison chose to form an alliance with the sock burner. Jaison is trusting him, but "Bad Russell"is just using him and is not planning to share the immunity idol he foud without any clues! Grrrrr.... He thinks he can just control everyone by gaining sympathy with Katrina stories and stirring trouble by burning canteens. I think he's venomous and full of himself. No one has tried this strategy before though, it seems to work, but I am certain he will get voted off when they discover his treachery.
Now, on to another issue, there is a girl named Yasmin in the Galu tribe. When she woke up she was saying "Oh, I can't believe this!" "I can't believe people like this!" I am never taking my kids camping!" I liked this about her because it reminded me of my own mother, she even said it was like her. However, our opinon of her decreased when she started slandering the other team. When she went to their camp to observe after Galu won the challenge, she said that she would help them "So it wouldn't be too easy." She also complained at Ben, he will be brought up later, about him tackling her. At this, Ben said something I will not repeat, but it is not a swear word. Yasmin is okay, but she shouldn't have insulted the other tribe.
On one smaller note, Shambo of the Galu Tribe said she was good at spear fishing, so she was sent to fish. She lost the mouthpiece of the snorkel and didn't catch anything. She told her tribe members that along with "There are a lot of the fish in the reef." I bet you can guess their reaction.
Now, the main issue: Betsy vs. Ben. Betsy is a police officer who is around 47 years old. Ben is 28 years old, but is a troublemaker. In this episode, there is a lot of tension between these two. The tribe feels that Betsy is weaker than Ben and should be voted out next. However, Betsy is saying that Ben will cause trouble around camp. They eventually decided to vote Betsy out, everyone voted for Betsy except for Betsy. I think that they should have voted Ben out. The thing that really matters is how strong your teamwork is, not having strong people. People like Ben just bring trouble, they tear the team apart. If a bunch of strong people need to work together to lift something, but their teamwork is poor, the job will be less effective if it even gets done. Anyway, Betsy may be older, but I haven't seen her do poorly in challenges much. Get rid of Ben, PEOPLE!
P.S. When Betsy was writing down Ben's name, she sang "Bad Boy, Bad Boy, Whatcha gonna do? Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?" This was classic.

Crows can recognize Human Faces

NPR, National Public Radio, recently reported that crows are able to tell humans apart. For some of you, this may come as a complete shock, others may have already heard about it, others yet may have felt that they have known this all along. John M. Marzluff from the University of Washington decided to do an experiment. He noticed that crows seemed to recognize certain people in the more urban area and cawed at them often, but in an area where there were more guns, they stayed there distance. Marzluff wanted to see if crows actually did recognize people, so he tagged some crows around campus while wearing a caveman mask, then asked his students to wear the mask around campus for a while. Whenever crows saw them, they started cawing at the person wearing the caveman mask. Not just the ones that were tagged, but others around campus as well. Just to see whether it was something about the mask itself, Marzluff also decided to have people wear a Dick Cheney mask around. Various humans had reactions to this, but the crows had none. Something that helps add evidence was that sometimes the caveman mask was worn upside down. When this happened, the crows turned upside-down in flight, then started cawing at the caveman mask. Marzluff guesses that crows do this because some humans feed them, while others try and hurt them. Okay, crows can recognize humans and tell themselves apart. We can recognize other humans, but its harder to tell crows apart. I am challenging you to try and tell these crows apart. You will be given a photo of a crow, you can study it as long as you want, then you try and pick it out from 5 other crow photos at a different angle. You will be tested 3 times, so do you think you can do it? Let's see.... http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111040421
P.S. By the way, this is a comment someone left about the story. It isn't very meaningful, but it is entertaining :
This just in from WCRO-FM, National Crow Radio…The humans are at it again. This week a couple of their best and brightest reported to Robert Krulwich of National Public Radio, that several studies have determined that we crows do a remarkable job of telling humans apart from one another. Puullleeezzze. They seem completely surprised that as their “white coated" ones invade our nests and attach rather unattractive bling to our young, we mark them as one of our Most Wanted. We then quickly spread that information to our flock and friends through our scream, squawk and dive-bomb system. Granted, sometimes we are a bit over zealous, but, have you seen those bracelets? These same scientists have also found, in less formal research, that we all look alike to them. Big surprise! How do they think that we’ve been able to successfully exist among them for so long? Of course we can tell you apart and no, we’re not telling you our method. For any humans that might be spying on us through this radio broadcast, listen up. We know where you live, where you bank, where you grocery shop and best of all, where you get your car washed. No masks with scary faces worn upside down or even backward are going to fool us. So don’t mess with us. We’ve been here longer than you for good reason. My fellow Crows, keep up the fine work. Continue to identify invaders with shock and caw, and, hope that one day soon, our diplomatic efforts will allow us to co-exist more peacefully.

The Puppet Master

This will be the start of me talking about the newest Survivor which takes place on Samoa. If you do not know the rules of Survivor, check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivor_(TV_series). This time there are 20 people and I Survivor, they say “1 Survivor” in the intro, but 1 looks like “I”. Anyway, it seems that every season, there is some person who is mean, rude, or has a bad attitude in general. Somehow this person survives until the merge, and then they have slight control over the outcome. I am convinced that the person this time is Russell, there are two Russells by the way, I will refer to the Russell in Galu Tribe as Good Russell and the other, on Foa Foa, as Bad Russell. Early on, they had to decide who would be leader based on first impressions, without talking. Good Russell was chosen for Galu and Mick was chosen for Foa Foa. Immediately afterwards, the leaders had to choose who they thought was the best swimmer, the strongest, the most agile, and the most intelligent. First, the best swimmer had to get a key from a buoy somewhat off shore. Next, the strongest had to carry two large bundles of wood in front of a balance beam to act like steps. The most agile then had to climb on it and, while laying on it, had to inch along and maneuver the key through a rope on it. This key would be given to the smartest, who would unlock a set of puzzle pieces and assemble a man. Foa Foa won this and received flint as a reward. In this, I noticed that Good Russell said that everyone did their best, which makes me think he’s a motivational leader. Bad Russell was being rude, scheming, and venomous. My mother called him “Evil Incarnate.” He went out and formed alliances with 3 girls whom he viewed as not very intelligent and easy to manipulate. He also got another girl named Betsy, whom he viewed as more intelligent. She formed an alliance, but she did not trust him. This is well founded, because he tried to tell a story about how he was in the flood when the levee in New Orleans broke due to Hurricane Katrina, he used an axe he had as a fireman to get out and was on the roof for two days. He also said that his German shepherd, Rocky, drowned. For those of you who think this story is a lie, you are correct. It was all a ploy to get sympathy. You could just tell in the way he said it that he was lying. Also, that same night, while everyone was sleeping, he snuck out, drained the water from everyone’s canteens, and burned Jaison’s socks. He said that he would just sit back and watch them tear themselves apart. He said, I quote “I’m not in this for the money, I just want to show everyone how easy it is to win this game.” Before I talk about the immunity challenge, I will bring up something funny that happened in Galu. Something was being built, I don’t know what , and a Rocket Scientist named John, yes he actually is a Rocket Scientist, suggested that the tribe place things like the wind into factor while building it. At least some of the others thought he was being too technical and just building it now was the best way to do it. As for me, I think at least some planning and risk assessment is necessary. For the immunity challenge, six people had to run across 3 A-frames, like large wooden triangles, and at the end, use them to pull a crate. This crate would be taken apart and its pieces would be assembled to say “Without Victory there is no Survival.” One semi-notable thing that happened was that Yasmin of the Galu tribe could not climb up one of the A-frames, so the group had to go back and pull her up. In the end, Galu won, received Immunity, which looks like an ungulate skull in front of a wooden square on a staff, and some flint. After the immunity challenge, Marisa said she was a bit worried about Bad Russell because she saw him with the other girls. She was starting to suspect his true treachery. He viewed this as a confrontation, called himself “The Puppet Master,” and pulled some strings to get her voted out and cover his tracks. It always seems like the first ones to get voted off either are viewed as weak, or are going against the strategist who has made connections with many people in the tribe.
P.S. For some reason, whenever Marisa got a vote, it looked like she had an inquisitive look on her face.
P.P.S. For those of you who wonder why I am using different colored words, I am doing it FOR EMPHASIS.

Diatryma

Now, I will discuss my favorite prehistoric bird, the Diatryma. Like the Eohippus, this animal is also known by a different name, Gastornis. This change is not as bad as that of Eohippus, so I will not delete comments referring to the Diatryma as “Gastornis.” In case you are wondering, I got all the names I prefer to call these animals now from an older book. I am staying static in what I like to call these animals. By the way, Diatryma has the same situation as Eohippus. Someone named Gaston Planté discovered the first fossils and named it after himself “ornis” means bird, “ornithology” is the study of birds. Anyway, later in America someone named Edward Drinker Cope found a more complete skeleton and named it Diatryma, ancient Greek for canoe. Okay, the name isn’t very flattering, but still. Just because he found it second?! The second skeleton was more complete anyway! By the way, I changed my mind; all comments with Diatryma’s bad name will also be deleted. My rage is possibly also attributed to two things: One, they used to call it Diatryma, and they didn’t change it to the Bad name until during or after the late 20th century. Second: MY BELOVED EOHIPPUS IS IN THE SAME SITUATION!!!!!! Anyway, now that my rage has mostly faded, I will talk about the Diatryma in more detail. The Diatryma was flightless, large, and fast, just like an ostrich with short wings and a parrot-like beak. Might I add I am getting information from an article, http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/paleontology/85674 , which calls it the Diatryma FROM 2001! Why did they make this ridiculous name change idea!? According to this article, the Diatryma was a member of the order Gruiformes, which currently encompasses quite a few waterbirds, like cranes. But some other sources place the Diatryma in the ratite group, like ostriches. It is debatable whether Diatryma was a predator or not. Its hooked beak could have been used for tearing flesh or hard leaves, similar to Triceratops. Currently, it is more widely assumed that Diatryma was a predator. A random final note, no one knows what Diatryma feathers look like. They are assumed to be similar to ostrich feathers, like hairs, but what they are truly like is unknown…unknown…unknown...

Eohippus

My favorite extinct mammal is the Eohippus. This name means “dawn horse” and is said to be an ancestor of the modern horse. Some of you may know this creature as the Hyracotherium, or hyrax-like beast. For those of you that do call the Eohippus “Hyracotherium,” DON’T CALL IT THAT. You should only call it that if you are trying to adhere to calling it by the first name, or if you possibly think that name is better than Eohippus. Other horses in the series flow better with that name Going in reverse order it goes Equus, Merrchippyus, Miohippus, then Mesohippus. What name sounds best to end off the sequence? Also, think about it, would you rather be called a horse, or “something that resembles a hyrax.” By the way, if you don’t know what a hyrax is, check http://www.awf.org/content/wildlife/detail/hyrax to find out. By the way, all comments referring to the Eohippus by its bad name will be deleted, seriously I will do it. Now that that’s out of the way, the reason the Eohippus has its bad name is all about timing. A paleontologist named Richard Owen dug up an Eohippus skeleton in 1841, saw some similarities between it and a hyrax and decided to call it the bad name. Later, Ontheil C. Marsh found another Eohippus skeleton in 1876. He saw that it was truly more like a horse than a hyrax and decided to call it Eohippus. They found out they were the same species and called it the bad name, just because it came first. Just because it came first doesn’t mean its right. I can name several examples of how this is true but I don’t feel like it. The Eohippus is about 2 feet in length and 8 to 9 inches tall. Unlike Equus, it has 4 toes on its front feet and three on its hind feet. Eohippus was probabably a browser, which means that it ate from bushes. Its family is currently considered Palaeotheriidae, not the same as horses, but it is genetically related. Do not try looking up this family. You will find nothing but this : This prehistoric mammal-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. Strike that, the material was there, but it was hidden for some reason. You will find some info, but it is still a stub. Anyway, that it is it for the Eohippus, aka The name which must not be said. Next, I will discuss my favorite prehistoric bird which has also had a name change.

Compsognathus

Now I will be discussing my favorite dinosaur, the Compsognathus. It lived in the late Jurassic and is the only Dinosaur I think I will be discussing for a while. Compsognathus' name comes from "compsos," which comes from the Greek word for dainty, elegant, or refined and "gnathos," which means "jaw," also from Greek. That isn't the kind of name you would expect a carnivore to have. But, the name probably comes from its small size. That is probably why I like it. Its DNA is quite similar to that of the Archaeopteryx, and pterysaurs such as Pterydactylus It was estimated to be 3 feet in length and weigh 6.5 lbs. It was first found in Deutschland in Bayern. For those of you who do not speak Deutsch, and NO, it is not Dutch, with technology the way it is, you can translate it, so get used to it. The Compsognathus fossil found in Bayern was about the size of a chicken, so they called it a chicken-sized dinosaur. This is not correct because of another nearly complete skeleton found in Canjuers, France. This skeleton was about the size I described earlier. Now, it is assumed that the first skeleton was a juvenile. Also, in the places where they found this dinosaur, they found it near marine organisms. It is also assumed that at this time, Europe was a tropical archipelago. In addition, no other dinosaurs were found with it. This makes people think that it lived on a tropical island where it was the top land predator. If this is true, it could account for its small size. This is because of insular dwarfism. When there was little competition, it could adapt by becoming smaller so it wouldn’t have to eat as much food. This is opposed to Island gigantism, where the animals become larger because they don’t have to hide from predators, but if predators are introduced, they are the first to go. I do not know why some grow larger and some smaller, that’s meiosis for you. The Compsognathus’ diet can only be guessed at, due to there being both aquatic and terrestrial life that could be eaten. The Deutsch fossil had a smaller dinosaur being digested. Hey, I said it was probably the largest, not the only one. The dinosaur, Bavarisaurus, that it was eating was fast and agile , so scientists guess that Compsognathus’ eyesight was sharp and that it could quickly accelerate. Now that I am done talking about my favorite dinosaur, I do not plan on returning to the Mezozoic era anytime soon. Instead I will discuss two more ancient Cenozoic vertabrates, a mammal and a bird.

Felis Atrox

The next creature discussed will be an animal from the Cenozoic Era and a different possible name for this blog. This animal is known by me as Felis Atrox, or the American Lion. Yes, there were lions in America, they are extinct now, and you don’t see lions in America anymore except for at the zoo. These lions were not as large as the African lions, they were 4/3 larger than modern lions and also had longer legs. For those of you look at this later on Wikipedia, you see the lion there does not have a mane, these lions do have manes. If you check for “Felis Atrox” on Google, you will not get as many results as you might expect. This is because I heard about them from an outdated book and only found out the current name a few years ago. This is also true for two other animals in the Cenozoic Era. Regardless of it now being Panthera Leo Atrox, it will always be Felis Atrox to me. They probably did this because lions are considered as Panthera and not Felis. It is estimated that the American Lion lived from Alaska to Peru, but was absent from Eastern North America, East of the Mississippi River. However, they could possibly have been living around Lake Michigan. They probably preyed on deer, horses, apparently there used to be horses in North America too, American Bison, Mammoths, Camels, and other larger herbivores. Atrox means “cruel,” but I did not know this when I found out about it, so I like it anyway. There are not as many of these lions in the tar pits, apparently because they either were smart enough to know that the pits were a black, gooey death trap, or they just didn’t rely on using the tar pits to catch prey. All in all, Felis Atrox is great, but I’m somewhat glad they’re extinct, especially for those who live West of the Mississippi River.

Trilobites

Next, I shall discuss the Trilobite. The Trilobite was a creature that lived from the Early Cambrian to the Late Permian Period. Trilobite means “three lobes.” The reason for this is not due to 3 body segments, but instead due to an axial lobe and left and right pleural lobes. “Pleural” means side or rib, not a grammatical number which dictates how nouns change if there is more than one of that noun. Some trilobites lived on the ocean floor and were predators, scavengers, or filter feeders. Others lived out in the open ocean and fed on plankton. Trilobite is not as specific a grouping as the Pterygotus, because “Pterygotus” identifies 4 known species while “Trilobite” identifies over 20,000. Trilobites, like other arthropods, have exoskeletons made out of chitin. They also, like other arthropods, are divided into segments. Trilobites are divided into the cephalon, a segmented thorax, and a pygidium. The Pygidium is a tail peace. I’m guessing you know what a thorax is, and as for the cephalon, try and use the prefix to find out. The Cephalon contains the eyes, antennae, mouth, and a few pairs of legs. The Thorax contains legs and gills under each segment. The segments also allow a trilobite to roll into a protective ball. The Pygidium is ade up of fused segments, unlike the thorax, where you can see more divisions. The Pygidium varies in size among trilobite species. The four general sizes are micropygous, much smaller than the cephalon, subisopygous, smaller than isopygous, but still similar size, isopygous, the same size as the cephalon, and macropygous, larger than the cephalon. The Trilobites were one of the first animals with compound eyes, although there are some that are eyeless. The two major types of eyes trilobites have. One is the holochroal, compound eyes with no division between individual lenses, somewhat like the eyes of most insects you see. The other is the schizochroal, which has circular segments instead of hexagonal and are divided by sclera, cuticular exoskeleton material, which is somewhat lower than the lenses. As you may have guessed, I like trilobites, but I am not the expert about information relating to them. Most of the information here was from http://www.trilobites.info/trilobite.htm. If you find any incorrect information, please comment on it. For those who play Pokemon, Kabuto is like a trilobite, but with a smoother shell, fewer legs, and no place where you can identify segmentation. Apparently, Kabutops is supposed to resemble a eurypterid, but I only partially see the resemblance. You can look at the Pterygotus picture yourself and decide if it looks like a Kabutops. Now, my discussion of Paleozoic life is over. My favorite animals from the prehistoric Cenozoic Era will be discussed next. One Dinosaur will be discussed, but not yet.

Pterygotus

This blog is named after something rather obscure, but I like it. The Pterygotus is a eurypterid, which comes from the Greek words eury, meaning "wide," and pteron, meaning "wing." The Eurypterids are also known as sea scorpions and are predators. "Pterygotus" is actually a genus currently encompassing three other euryptids, but usually refers to Pterygotus Anglicus. It is the second largest eurypterid, but Jaekelopterus is larger. It can be up to 7 feet long. It looks like a lobster with large compound eyes and also had some smaller eyes. It has pincers, 4 small legs on each side, and another pair of legs that act like flippers. I have chosen to place a picture of it at the top of the blog. Luckily for people who are afraid of 7 foot arthropods, it , as well as all other eurypterids, is extinct and lived during the Silurian Era, while other eurypterids ranged from the Ordovician to the Permain period. They used to live in shallow waters, like crustaceans. Some Eurypterids lived in salt water; these tended to be the earlier ones, but eventually went to brackish and fresh water. Brackish water is water that is in between fresh and salt water. This is estimated to have happened during the Pennsylvanian era, so I'm guessing that Pterygotus lived in salt water. For the convenience of people who do not have knowledge of the different time periods which ancient creatures are said to have lived in, I will list these and say what time they occurred. The first period is the Cambrian, 542 - 488.3 mya, which is when an "explosion" of sea life happened, I say the sea because sea life was mostly the only life that existed in this time. Next came Ordovician, 488.3 - 443.7 mya, and then Silurian, 443.7 - 416 mya, sea life was still the most important at this time, but many of the Cambrian species went extinct during this time. The Devonian Era, 416 - 359.2 mya, was when life started forming on the land. The Carboniferous Era, 359.2 - 299 mya, which was also divided into the Mississippian Era and the Pennsylvanian Era, came next. Then in the Permian Period, 299 - 251 mya, brought about the extinction of more life. This was the Paleozoic Era. The Mesozoic had Dinosaurs in it, and then comes the Cenozoic Era. I will discuss some things in the Cenozoic Era, but I will not divide this further. In case you are wondering, this blog will not be entirely about prehistoric creatures, but it will be a topic for a while.