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Add comment February 25th, 2010
Posts filed under 'Dinosaur trivia'
Republican “Sarah Palin” roasts Democrat Allan Katz for Village Square fundraiser
Add comment December 10th, 2009
If you do this at your wedding, invite me.
Add comment July 25th, 2009
Like how quickly the world owes him something he knew existed like ten seconds ago
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Add comment February 27th, 2009
And 8 track tapes too…
There was something about this Obama coin ad that popped up right after the election that reminded me of a commercial for a 1970’s soul music LP**. My husband didn’t agree. Please someone help me remember what old ad campaign this reminds me of…
Do you ever wonder how these people do it, who seem to be poised to make money on the result of an election (one way or the other)? I wonder who narrated the McCain coin ad that must have been “in the can.” (Ed McMahon might have done the trick.) Another example of this capitalistic industriousness is “That One 08“, up online by the morning after John McCain referred to Barack Obama in a debate as “that one.”
**For you babies in the readership, that stands for “Long Play” – a record “album” that contains many songs, whereas a “45″ was smaller and contained only one song each side.
Add comment November 20th, 2008
Public acceptance of evolution low in U.S.
In researching our next topic “Faith in the Public Square”, I stumbled on a 2005 study by Jon D. Miller, Eugenie C. Scott and Shinji Okamoto entitled “Public Acceptance of Evolution.” Their study compared 34 industrialized countries on their public acceptance of evolution. The United States was next-to-last, right ahead of Turkey. This is distinctly bad news for mainstream scientists, but distinctly good news for Intelligent Design proponents.
A snip from the authors’ explanation of the results:
First, the structure and beliefs of American fundamentalism historically differ from those of mainstream Protestantism in both the United States and Europe. The biblical literalist focus of fundamentalism in the United States sees Genesis as a true and accurate account of the creation of human life that supersedes any scientific finding or interpretation. In contrast, mainstream Protestant faiths in Europe (and their U.S. counterparts) have viewed Genesis as metaphorical and—like the Catholic Church—have not seen a major contradiction between their faith and the work of Darwin and other scientists.
Add comment November 18th, 2008
Yes we can?
“We’re Americans… we’re the only country that can look at a sandwich made of ice cream and chocolate cookies covered with fudge and think… you think we could fry that?
Yes we can.”
–The G-rated portion of Bill Maher’s tribute to America
Add comment November 15th, 2008
Civility. Is. Dead.
Add comment November 12th, 2008
God Bless Her.
Add comment November 9th, 2008
Flying reptile mystery ’solved’
from BBC
You just don’t know how long I’ve been waiting to know the true answer to this issue…
UK scientists say they have solved the mystery of why prehistoric flying reptiles grew crests on their heads.
A rare skull specimen found in Brazil shows the crest appeared at puberty, suggesting it was used to attract attention from the opposite sex.
University of Portsmouth experts say pterosaurs, which ruled the air during the time of the dinosaurs, flaunted their headgear in sexual displays.
The findings are published in the journal Palaeontology.
Palaeobiologist Dr Darren Naish said the crest was a signal of sexual maturity; used like a peacock’s tail to attract a mate.
“It would have been like a gigantic cockerel’s comb, a brightly-coloured striking structure used in display,” he told the BBC News website.
“We don’t know this but we imagine they would have bobbed it around and used it to attract other pterosaurs.”
Rare specimen
The theory is based on the skull of a species of pterosaur known as Tupuxuara, which was unearthed recently in north-east Brazil.
Pterosaurs
Pterosaurs lived during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods
They were the first actively flying vertebrates and evolved many different forms
Pterosaurs are thought to belong to a group of reptiles known as archosaurs, which includes crocodiles, dinosaurs and birdsIt was a rare discovery; only a handful of fossil specimens exist in the world and all the others are the remains of adults.
Dr Naish and colleague Dr David Martill examined the skull and found that the crest was different in the juvenile.
Rather than forming one large triangular crest of bone extending from the snout to the back of the head, it was made up of two pieces.
One crest came from the back of the skull and the other from the front of the snout. The crest that sprouted from the front grew backwards, only fusing to form one large crest when the pterosaur reached puberty.
“This is a significant find as it links the growth of the crest to physical maturity and therefore presumably to sex,” said Dr Naish.
“The specimen was extremely rare and it is great to be able to piece together a little bit more details about pterosaurs.”
4 comments July 28th, 2006
