Filling in the Venn diagram

I also considered the title "stamp collecting" for this post, since I'm writing it from Cancun, where I've been for the last week attending a cosmology conference (meaning that I have completed the set of North American stamps in my passport. I wonder if I can send that away for a decoder ring, or at least 5 new armies at the start of my turn...). But the Venn diagram is much more exciting, because the circles "Things Sir David Attenborough has talked about" and "Things Scott has swum in" now has a point in it! On Wednesday, we took a conference field trip to some Mayan ruins (pictures forthcoming; seriously this time; I actually took these pictures, unlike the previously promised pictures of my office in Seoul) by way of a cenote. Cenotes are sinkholes that give access to the network of underground rivers that are the only source of fresh water on the Yucatan peninsula. They were one of the backbones (or, I guess, ribs, since you only have one backbone) of Mayan civilization. Sir David Attenborough mentioned them as such in the "Caves" episode of "Planet Earth" (which, if you haven't seen it, is a much more worthwhile expenditure of time than reading my blog). Granted, the one I swam in was hardly deserving of the name -- it was small and constructified with convenient boardwalks and changing room -- but that's probably why I didn't die (though some of the more intrepid attendees did find a barely human-sized tunnel which I am quite sure is stopped up at the far end with a wall of skulls wearing snorkel gear...) That same day ended with an audio visual performance of a project that Professor George Smoot (famous for winning the Nobel Prize and guest-starring in the same episode of "The Big Bang Theory" as Summer Glau) worked on with Mickey Hart (sp?) of the Grateful Dead, interpreting cosmology as music. I guess that's another odd intersection of circles that now has a blip in it.

In other news, I think the hotel (this is me preserving my pride; this place should actually be called a "resort") is haunted.
Two days ago, an attendee from Berkeley came to breakfast with a story about how his roommate sat up in the middle of the night, bent over his (the Berkeleyan's) ear and started howling, all while still asleep. Last night, I was jarred from sleep at 2am by someone banging as hard as she could (or, at least, as hard as I could have in her position) on my door and screaming "James, let me in right now!"* I hollered back "wrong door!" By the time I got to the peephole, she was gone. I went back to bed. 15 minutes later, someone/thing else (or maybe it was the same angry woman) banged on my door -- again, as hard as I could have -- three times, then sort of pattered on it desultorily. No one answered when I shouted "who are you?" and no one was there when I got to the peephole (I'll be damned if I was going to actually open that door).

Those of you who have seen the movie "Paranormal Activity" are probably huddled in a corner quivering right now. If that's not the case, let me remind you that the house I inhabited in Etna, NH was also haunted.

*It has been pointed out to me that, having been jarred from sleep, what I interpreted as "James, let me in right now!" could have actually been "ooh eeh ooh ah ah!" There are signs everywhere admonishing us not to feed the monkeys. I haven't actually seen a monkey, but I haven't been looking very hard. Something similar was also said about the baby footprint Chris found on our window in Etna, but we know the truth...