Introductions

[Jessica Safron]

I'll let Jessica speak for herself. That is, if she can ever pull herself away from drawing for long enough to post on here.

Haha it's quite clear that you do all the writing and she's drawing all the time..

Hah, yeah, kind of. Don't get me wrong, I looove writing, but I'm notoriously awful when it comes to written correspondence because I take forever to write. I have a tendency to overthink everything I say, mulling over exactly how to word everything, which is actually fun for me, but it gets so time consuming that I end up putting off responses until I feel like I have enough time to spare, which is often kind of a long time.

I've actually been wanting to write blog posts for the site, and I still plan to at some point. I do have some of my writing sprinkled throughout the comic itself, so Adam doesn't do all the writing. I can be really slow and meticulous when it comes to drawing, too, and doing SN8X (I don't think I've ever referred to it as that before; wonder if that'll stick) has made me noticeably faster, and my art speed has steadily been increasing.

In reference to your post on July 26:

Man, seems like it would be so frustrating to put all that work into your studies with such little yield. It's frustrating enough for me trying to scour the Internet for answers to frivolous science questions and coming up with really vague answers, on a platform full of information compiled by people who have done all the real work. "What the hell, scientists? Hurry up and figure out what bats evolved from for me." I hope there are a lot of other sources of satisfaction for you along the way, if findings are so rare. But yeah, at least you have some context and aren't just stabbing around in the dark.

I didn't know about the tree thing, or at least forgot that factoid. That's crazy, or at least sounds crazy, having no idea what those genes govern. Adam and I just watched a He-Man episode last night where He-Man and Tila had to murder the oldest tree in Eternia and give him to a dragon as a present in order to rescue Man at Arms. He-Man almost did it, but decided it was too fucked up. I think the lesson of the episode was that trees have a right to life. He-Man probably knew the factoid. God, He-Man, you're so fucking wise. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQs0G8MgkhQ

[aett]

Maybe when your art speed reaches a certain level, you'll be able to save time by posting sketches instead of meticulously-planned written responses!

[Jessica Safron]

So you've reached your ultimate form, so to speak.

I wouldn't pronounce Dravean any different, but Dravian does look more like an existing name. Is Safron a peusonym too?

Safron is a pseudo-pseudonym. It's my middle name. My father's father's mother's birth name was Safronski or Szafranski or Safronowski, or something like that. I've been meaning to ask my grandpa about that, because I've been interested in genealogy lately. Anyway, either she or her parents legally shortened it to Safron. My parents thought it was neat and made it my middle name. I also think it's neat and made it my professional name, except I still need to get a DBA.

You think "ij" is funky? Try the "eu" in my surname, there's a sound that doesn't exist in English and my name hasn't ever been pronounced correctly here in Glasgow. I've given up on correcting people as they generally don't even hear the difference.. 

My father's mother's mother's maiden name was Van Deusen. That name entered the US from the Netherlands in the 1600s, before the US was the US. I think my family has genealogical records dating back to at least the 1300s on that lineage. It looks like the name used to be Van Deursen, and before that, Van Doorsen and Van Doersen. I've always heard Van Deusen pronounced væn'duzɛn, with the "deu" sounding like the "doo" in doodle. My mother's mother's mother's maiden name was Van Husen, and I wonder if that name had ever been spelled with an eu.

Looking at the Wikipedia article on Dutch orthography, eu would be pronounced like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close-mid_front_rounded_vowel Sooo... it's like a rounded /e/ sound, I guess? Also, you and Google Translate told me the same pronunciation for rijst, but now that I'm looking at this article, WP says ij would be pronounced ɛi or ə, making rijst rhyme with taste, or rhyme with the "dust" in industry. What's the deal?

[Jessica Safron]

Maybe when your art speed reaches a certain level, you'll be able to save time by posting sketches instead of meticulously-planned written responses!

Yes, hah, I'd love to do that.

...Holy cow, I've spent way too long writing these responses today. Sooo much more wordy information than anyone ever needed to hear. I need to get back to drawing!!

[Rijst]

Safron is a pseudo-pseudonym. It's my middle name. My father's father's mother's birth name was Safronski or Szafranski or Safronowski, or something like that. I've been meaning to ask my grandpa about that, because I've been interested in genealogy lately. Anyway, either she or her parents legally shortened it to Safron. My parents thought it was neat and made it my middle name. I also think it's neat and made it my professional name, except I still need to get a DBA.

Cool! I don't really know about my geneaology to be honest, and I don't know what a DBA is either..

My father's mother's mother's maiden name was Van Deusen. That name entered the US from the Netherlands in the 1600s, before the US was the US. I think my family has genealogical records dating back to at least the 1300s on that lineage. It looks like the name used to be Van Deursen, and before that, Van Doorsen and Van Doersen. I've always heard Van Deusen pronounced væn'duzɛn, with the "deu" sounding like the "doo" in doodle. My mother's mother's mother's maiden name was Van Husen, and I wonder if that name had ever been spelled with an eu.

Looking at the Wikipedia article on Dutch orthography, eu would be pronounced like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close-mid_front_rounded_vowel Sooo... it's like a rounded /e/ sound, I guess? Also, you and Google Translate told me the same pronunciation for rijst, but now that I'm looking at this article, WP says ij would be pronounced ɛi or ə, making rijst rhyme with taste, or rhyme with the "dust" in industry. What's the deal?

Ugh that wikipedia one is way too nasal, perhaps that's how Scandinavians pronounce it.. :p

ij would be pronounced more like ei in feisty, but make the sound further to the front of the mouth. For the r you should roll your tongue the way Scottish people do it.

To pronounce eu, try saying a while mildly pouting your lips (duck face). That results in the right sound with me, more or less. It's kinda hard to explain like this really, in this video somebody is pronouncing a collection of Dutch words with different vowel combinations. Amazing what people spend their time on isn't it? ij is covered from 5:40 onwards and eu comes right after that.

Most of the stuff you have in common with trees is pretty standard and essential to all life; genes encoding enzymes of intracellular chemistry (central carbon metabolism, biosynthesis), DNA copying and maintenance mechanisms, structural proteins, etc. It's not exactly the same but very similar, like a book written in different dialects of the same language would be very similar (but with addition and omissions, no analogy is ever complete). After all, there are only so many ways of converting sugar A into sugar B that make sense. Many of the 'older systems' have been more or less optimised during evolution, 'older' meaning the time when animals and plants started diverging, or vertebrates from invertebrates, which is quite a while ago.

The fun thing about nature is that everything is always trying to eat other things or prevent being eaten by them, including humans and He-Man. Basically, everyone has to fight for their right to party..