Entries this day: A_list_of_things_to_bring Kyou_snow Mammoth

A list of things to bring

8:36am JST Tuesday 22 January 2008 (day 13817)

Just jotting down some things I want to remember to take to Kagoshima:

1. blank F0 canvas

2. markers

3. Francois

4. camera with charged battery and/or battery charger

1:01pm JST Thursday 24 January 2008 (day 13819)

Funny: I couldn't find this list this morning... I hadn't saved the file! Fortunately, I believed I had everything I need, and now I'm happy to see I did bring everything on the list above.

Kyou snow

10:19am JST Wednesday 23 January 2008 (day 13818)

It's snowing today here in Tokyo. Just enough to stick to non-concrete surfaces. But it's not all that cold; I still wore my sandals.

1:17pm JST

Aw dang.. I had thought of several puns on this, but not an obvious one that Doug has as his status:

Snow-kyo

(for the record, this entry is "Kyou snow," where "Kyou" is for 今日, or today, but Snow-kyo is better.)

Mammoth

2:05am JST Thursday 24 January 2008 (day 13819)

Ami and I went to see Lyuba today. Definitely smaller than I had expected, but so was the price (only 800 yen). The line was only a couple minutes long.

Most people just breezed by the mammoth, which was displayed laying on its side at about a 45 degree angle in a freezer at -18C and visible behind two panes of glass, the inner of which featured a sprinkling of dust. The lighting was dim and a bit wonky; I had to block the light coming up from the bottom of the tank so I could see vaguely properly.

But none of that is why I'm writing.

None of the staff could explain why there was a slice of skin flapping off the bottom of the mammoth's back left foot. The staff girl at first was like, "oh, it's not cut," and then when I had Ami spell it out, the girl was all, "oh it must be from an animal back in the day," and then I was like, "no way" because

1. the wound looks white on the inside
2. the cut is perfectly smooth
3. the skin woulda been chewed off just like the ear and tail

And then the girl was like, "oh, it must have been an accident when they were transporting it."

And I was thinking, "have you seen wtf I am talking about???"

An accident while transporting would be to break the trunk off. Not to accidently get out a pen knife and slice open the bottom of the foot!

In the articles I've read, I've seen a reference to a specimen of the mammoth being tested for DNA clonability, so maybe it's from that.

I'm pretty anti-impressed that the girl wouldn't even come look to see what I was talking about.

And dammit but we weren't allowed to take pictures, or I'd *definitely* have a picture up by now, by golly.