Blair Fix

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Exciting news, friends! I’ve joined Patreon! What’s Patreon, you ask? Patreon is a crowdfunding site that gives  creators a way to earn money. Here’s how it works. If you think my research is worth supporting, you can become a ‘patron’ of Economics from the Top Down. As a patron, you’ll donate a small amount monthly.

I&#8217;ve Joined Patreon

University of Bristol

Mike Taylor

It's a bit shocking to find that SV-POW! is going on for twelve years
old. ([Our very first post](https://svpow.com/2007/10/01/hello-world/)
was on 1st October 2007, so we're about fifty days short of that
anniversary.)

It's cost us almost nothing to run the blog in that time --- in
financial terms, at least. We pay \$18 a year for the domain svpow.com
(as opposed to svpow.wordpress.com), and that's it. We've been happy to
pay out of our own pockets, because not taking any money from anyone
means we don't owe anyone anything and we can write what we like, on
whatever subject we like, as often or as infrequently as we like. It's a
great way to do things.

But there are a couple more things we'd like to do.

One is to get rid of the adverts that infest the site. I wasn't aware of
them until recently, when I looked at the site on a new phone. They're
pretty intrusive, and I remember reading somewhere that they've got a
lot worse recently. We can do that for \$7 a month, which comes to \$84
per year. That's enough that I can't just shrug like I do with the \$18
and say "Ah, that's the price of a round of drinks, just pay it."

But more excitingly, Matt and I would like to get together more often
for scientific trips like [the 2016
Sauropocalypse](http://svpow.com/2016/05/18/thank-you-to-all-our-sauropocalypse-hosts/)
and [this year's visit to the Carnegie
museum](http://svpow.com/2019/03/17/how-our-week-at-the-carnegie-museum-went/).
These trips are amazingly productive and generate a ton of
[observations](http://svpow.com/2019/03/13/mounted-sauropods-in-dorsal-view/),
[photos](http://svpow.com/2019/03/13/four-huge-beasts/) and
[videos](http://svpow.com/2019/03/22/walking-around-the-mounted-skeleton-of-apatosaurus-louisae/),
which we're then able to [turn into
science](https://svpow.com/supersaurus-and-co-in-2019/), which in turn
becomes
[papers](https://svpow.com/papers-by-sv-powsketeers/wedel-and-taylor-2013b-on-caudal-pneumaticity/).
But because Matt and I are inconveniently located 5,000 miles and eight
timezones apart, it's logistically difficult and expensive for us to get
together. That's why we had a three-year gap between the Utah and
Carnegie trips, and we'd like --- if we can --- to do something like
this every year.

::: {#attachment_15866 .wp-caption .alignnone shortcode="caption" style="width: 490px"}
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image-title="Mike documenting CM 555 c6" image-description=""
image-caption="<p>Here I am, in the collections room of the Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh, earlier this year. I’m documenting the re-articulated centrum, neural arch and cervical ribs of C6 of the sub-adult apatosaurine CM 555.</p>
"
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Here I am, in the collections of the Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh,
earlier this year. I'm documenting the re-articulated centrum, neural
arch and cervical ribs of C6 of the sub-adult apatosaurine CM 555,
probably *Brontosaurus parvus*.
:::

Why are these trips important to do? Because we've found that when both
of us look at bones together, we see much more than twice as much as
either of us would see alone. There seems to be a subtle alchemy at play
here, like the way Lennon and McCartney achieved so much more when they
were working together than they did after the Beatles split(\*).
Somehow, there is a sparking that happens, as each of us amplifies and
re-interprets the other's observations. (Probably the same thing happens
for any two palaeontologists looking at bones together, but Matt and I
have got into the habit of working together.)

To do more of this, we need more money: Matt's travel funds are limited;
mine are literally non-existent, and I have to fund all my own work out
of money that I earn by the sweat of my brow (and burn up precious
vacation days from my real job).

That's why we've finally created [a Patreon
page](https://www.patreon.com/svpow) where anyone who wants to can sign
up to support the work we do here. We have no idea whether this will
work out, but whatever money might accumulate, we will spend first on
the basic running costs of the site (\$18 + \$84 = \$102 per year), and
then on research trips. The big-ticket items are travel (including a
transatlantic flight for one of us) and accomodation. After that, it's
just food and drink, which we pay for ourselves since we'd be eating and
drinking anyway.

What do you get in return for your money? **Absolutely nothing.** This
is really important. It goes back to what I said earlier about how
valuable it's been to us that we are free to write what we want, when we
want. We're not going to sacrifice that freedom for money, and in fact
the value of that freedom is exactly why we've never solicited any kind
of donation before. We want to be 100% clear that basic-level
subscribers get nothing for their money. No early access, no extra
content, no physical rewards. Just the knowledge that you're supporting
a blog that you like and helping to make sauropod science happen. It
will only take nine of you to subscribe at the base \$1-per-month level
to pay our WordPress fees.

But for anyone who chooses to support the SV-POW! research trips at the
level of \$5 per month or higher, there is one small reward: we'll then
consider you as a research funder, and will formally mention you as such
in the acknowledgements of the first paper that comes out of the first
research trip we do after you sign up. That's a place --- admittedly a
small one --- in the permanent scientific record. Plus of course you get
our gratitude!

**UPDATE Feb. 2020:** We added a \$10/month tier, with a small
additional reward.

For those who don't sign up, absolutely nothing will change. We'll
continue our usual erratic schedule of posting whatever happens to occur
to us, when it occurs to us. You'll still get immediate access to
everything we write for the blog, just like those who do sign up.

So: if you would like to help finance the scientific mission of SV-POW!,
get yourself over to <https://www.patreon.com/svpow>

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sizes="(max-width: 217px) 100vw, 217px"}](https://www.patreon.com/svpow)

------------------------------------------------------------------------

# Note

(\*) "But Mike", you say, "After the first few years, the
Lennon-McCartney partnership was in name only, and they hardly
contributed to each other's songs". And you're right: while *We Can Work
It Out* was a true 50-50 collaboration, lots of the later songs were
essentially solo compositions. But here's the thing: even then, the mere
*presence* of the other partner pushed them to up their game. John
Lennon may have made no concrete contribution to *Hey Jude* (beyond
telling Paul that he should keep his placeholder lyric "The movement you
need is on your shoulder"), but McCartney only landed that song as
perfectly as he did because Lennon was around. If you want proof, look
at his post-Beatles songwriting output. There are plenty of *good*
songs, but almost no great ones: *Maybe I'm Amazed* would be the
strongest contender, and it turns out (I just this moment [looked it up
on Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maybe_I%27m_Amazed)) that he
wrote that before the Beatles broke up. In a similar way, I wrote all
but a couple of paragraphs of the actual prose in [our in-progress
vertebral orientation
manuscript](https://github.com/MikeTaylor/palaeo-vo/blob/master/vo-manuscript.md),
but it all emerged from discussion between us, and could never have
happened without Matt. He's my John Lennon. But he lives on a different
continent. Dammit.


It’s a bit shocking to find that SV-POW! is going on for twelve years old. (Our very first post was on 1st October 2007, so we’re about fifty days short of that anniversary.)  It’s cost us almost nothing to run the blog in that time — in financial terms, at least.

Publicaciones de Rogue Scholar

I’ve Joined Patreon

Would you like to give SV-POW! your money? Seriously? Well, OK then.