surprise

i actually surprised myself at work today.
there's this guy at the pool who is a landscape artist for the rich.
like fuckers over in medina.
but he's an anthro/geology buff on the side.

we've talked before and he knows about the shit that i'm interested in.
so he brought up an article in this month's smithsonian (which i can't seem to find online) that tells about the theories that native americans came from more than just the bering strait but also europe.

i threw out some site names.
he thought they sounded familiar.

he said how they give linguistic and genetic data that prove their existence.
i told him how languages can't be easily followed over time and mtDNA doesn't have a known mutation rate.

i told him all the shit i know about special cases of ancient people in america that doesn't match up to what scientists think should be.
i told him what interests me the most and if i had the ability, what i'd like to do to further our knowledge of the subject.

i could tell he was in over his head.
he started talking about the yucatan meteorite crash and how it affected the flora and fauna, including people... ok. maybe not.
possibly he got confused with a volcanic explosion in indonesia from 78,000 years ago vs. that 65 million-year-old crash? maybe not...

but what i did realize is that i do have some knowledge in my field. it's just unfortunate that, as of yet, i can only add to this base knowledge and not really utilize any of it.
right now, i'm forced to sit back and watch people swim while i daydream about what it would be like to be useful.