#5 James Monroe (1817-1825)

The fifth president of the United States of America.  He was the last of the founding fathers to become president, and the author of the doctrine that bears his name.

ABC Velvet Worm

As a bit of a break from reading statistics text books I thought it would be fun to do a quick drawing of a velvet worm in the style of the ABC book that I made for my niece for Christmas.

Who knows, maybe I'll make an ABC of invertebrates next.

I've been a bit derailed from the presidential caricature series by other work that came up, but I plan on getting back into that this weekend.

#4 James Madison (1809-1817)

The fourth president of the United States - James Madison.  The original nerd president.  He was considered the "Father of the Constitution", and author of the Bill of Rights.

#3 Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809)

The third president of the United States - Thomas Jefferson.

Jefferson is among my top three favorite presidents.  I was listening to a biography about him earlier this year, and it was pretty inspiring.  It's a shame that people didn't heed his advice a bit more (e.g. abolishing slavery, limited supreme court terms, etc.).

It annoys me to no end that the tea-baggers have recently tried to claim Jefferson as one of their own.  I keep seeing misquotes attributed to Jefferson, as well as quotes taken out of context plastered all over the internet.  Something tells me that the man who wrote, "I cannot live without books," would find little in common with this fellow here.

Peripatus News

This week has been a bit crazy!  On Tuesday I had my fifteen minutes fame, appearing in a local newspaper for my peripatus research, as well as doing an interview on national radio ... live. Live on national radio.  My hands were shaking like leaves.

If anyone is interested, the newspaper article can be found here.

And you can hear the interview below-



Just ignore the bit in the middle where I can't calculate fractions - 400 million divided by 200,000 = 10-20!?  So embarrassing.

Things aren't looking to get much calmer in the near future either.  Next week I have a final exam, and I start a new job.

If you click on the peripatus picture above, you can see his tiny little eye.  So tiny.

#2 John Adams (1797-1801)

The second president of the United States: John Adams.

Sometimes I feel a bit bad for John Adams.  He has been so overshadowed in history by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.  He was the second president of the US, but he doesn't even have a famous memorial or his face on any currency (let alone on Mount Rushmore).  Even Andrew Jackson has his face on currency, and that guy was a bit of a tyrant!

#1 George Washington (1789-1797)

For the last week or so I've been doing quick doodles of the United States presidents just to relax a bit.  Yesterday I was looking at the calender and realized it's only 22 weeks until the election, and there have been 44 presidents.  I'm going to try to draw two presidents ever week, so hopefully I'll have drawn them all by November 6th.  (And hopefully that's all I'll have to draw for another four years).  I am going to post them chronologically in order of presidency.

This is going to be a bit of a learning experience for me as well.  I'm sadly rusty when it comes to presidential history.  I know 1-7, 16, and 37-44, but everything in between is very fuzzy.

Lets get this thing started! - #1 - President George Washington.

Cookiecutter Shark

This is a bit of an oldie that I forgot to post earlier this year.  I think I originally drew this in April, and then promptly forgot about it.  

Cookiecutter Sharks have to be one of the strangest looking fish in the world.  Apparently what they do is swim up to large prey, scoop a large round bite out of their side, and quickly swim away.  They have even attacked humans in that manner.  Big ouch!

Evil!

Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil.

Anna and I each came up with our own versions of the three wise monkeys, and this was my concept.  Hopefully she'll draw up her idea soon too!