Today I didn't get completed nearly as much as I would have liked. That's always the case, but this evening it's particularly true. The main reason for my lack of productivity is because the cat that I'm now fostering, a polydactyl named Little Foot, decided to walk on the keyboard and rip out the E, R, and T keys when I got up to get some reheated pork-fried rice from the microwave. Try as I might, I couldn't get them back on, and it served to remind me that I need to purchase a new computer (but can't afford one). For now I'll just work with the buttons under the keys and try to see if I can fix it sometime during the week.
Most of my work this evening has been on the chapter about the evolution of birds, specifically Heilmann's ideas in his famous book and the beginnings of the "Dinosaur Renaissance." I also purchased a flash drive today to save all my current sections on in case something goes horribly awry.
And one more thing: the chapter titles here aren't the ones I'm actually going to use. I had to call each section something so I just picked out whatever cliches or puns came most immediately to mind, but they aren't going to stay.
Introduction
Huxley's rejoinder to Wilberforce at Oxford - Darrow puts Bryan in the hot seat - Behe's astrological mishap - One long argument - Flickering candles in the dark - Monstrous myths - Evolutionary archetypes -
A Whale of a Tale
Koch's Missourium - The king of the seas flees to Europe - Maybe Basilosaurus, maybe not - Huxley's overlooked insight - Fast & furious fossil finds -
On a Wing and a Prayer
Noah's ravens vacation in New England - Hitchcock's Jurassic birds - A little fossil birdie told me about evolution - A misplaced feather - From London to Berlin - Megalosaurus = an ossified, fossilized, underdeveloped chick - Ornithosuchus or theropods? - The case of the missing clavicles - 75 years of pseudoscuhian narrative - Barnum Brown's forgotten Daptosaurus - Ostrom's "terrible claw" - "Tetrapteryx" and Microraptor
The more I learn about the evolution of debate surrounding the origin of birds, the more it seems that I'm going to be in danger of exploding a chapter into the length of a book. There is so much juicy material that it's difficult to pick and choose, but I'm hoping to present in one package a much more complete story that only exists in bits and pieces in my library. Hopefully the reconstruction will be supported on my framework and will not collapse.
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Keyboards are cheap (at least, the PC variety -- don't know about Macs) and come with USB interfaces so you can use them with laptops. They can also be waved threateningly at the cat. :-)
Heilmann sure was an interesting character. I mean, he started out a doctor, left that and became a very good paleoartist, and produced a work that was central to the study of bird evolution for almost a century after!
The summaries look good, but I sincerely hope you're not going to keep those chapter titles. Extremely tired puns are one of the most annoying things a book can do.