Week 1: Fill 'er up!

Hello Friends and Supporters of Cetacean Science,

We've been busy here at Cetacean-Science-Central, so pardon the delay in thanking the latest cohort of Rocket-Fuelers.

Special "Muchas Gacias" goes out to Dorota Paczesniak of Switzerland. Dorota wins the prize for the most international fueler in the first week!! Ms. Paczesnaik and I met at the Workshop on Molecular Evolution this summer. In addition to learning Bayesian Phylogenetics, Coalescent Theory and Skyline Plotting, Dorota was a very fast learner in the "Okie two-step", as part of my International Okie-Outreach champaign. Thanks for the support Dorota, and keep on dance'n!!

The other two fuelers this week were Ms. Kate Luthy and Ms. Holly Lincoln. Kate and Holly have been great friends of mine since the early pleistocene, back with the Oklahoma plain was infested with giant ground sloths. These two ladies deserve great honor for putting up with levels of harrasment from my group of friends that boarder on inhumane. Somehow they laugh it off and keep coming back for more. In fact, Kate is a great inspiration to many. Although she didn't say it as eliquently as Teddy Roosevelt:

"Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat."

...the sentiment was the same when she would say, "Come on guys... it'll be fun". This was usually followed by a trip to the hosital (just joking). Holly on the other hand, is the rock of the group, the pragmatist (mostly). She's the one that would be driving to the hospital...

Thanks guys! Much appreciation from me and the wet guys with wierd fins waiting to be understood! Keep sending the rockethub link to your facebook friends, your twitter contacts and your blogging buddies! Lets fund this thing!!!

PS> Turns out that Teddy Roosevelt and Giant Ground Sloths are intimately connected through my former employer the American Museum. From Wikipedia: The American Museum of Natural History in New York City has a sample of dung with a note attached to it that reads "deposited by Theodore Roosevelt". HA!!! I love it!!