Category: General

Telegraph => Ancient lizard used ribs to fly

I haven’t had anything about paleontology in a while and in keeping with Primeval’s total lack of dinosurs, here’s another “not a dinosaur”.

A Chinese team reports today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that this creature had a wing-like membrane spread between eight elongated ribs to the left and right of the lizard’s body, an unusual arrangement only seen today in the dragon lizards of southeast Asia.

The fossil specimen described by Xing Xu of the Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeonanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, and colleagues shows the complete skeleton, including the splayed ribs, and imprints from the skin of a lizard that lived in the Early Cretaceous period.

The six inch long skeleton of the insect eater was found in the Liaoning Province of northeastern China, and the species of lizard was named Xianglong zhaoi, after the Chinese for flying dragon and Zhao Dayu, one of the founders of the Liaoning Palaeontological Museum.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Dinosaur, Dinosaurs, Paleontology, Science

Series 1 comes to a close with a few new anomalies – in the script.
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If I do say so myself, my daughter is very smart.

Her language skills, in particular, are very advanced and even though she’s just in preschool, she’s capable of handling second grade material. (It doesn’t hurt that her mother is a teacher and that my mother, father and I were similarly advanced as children.)

In any case, she recently took her assessment testing and scored perfect scores on both language and math skills, so we decided to take her our for something fun as a reward.

We’ve been having a miserable early heat wave these last couple of weeks and the temperatures are already into the 90’s so we decided to take her somewhere indoors. We took her and James to Makutu’s Island, an indoor playground filled with giant versions of the climbing and sliding playgrounds you see at MacDonald’s.

What makes this place great is that it’s OK for the parents to go on the equipment, too. Since they didn’t have these kinds of playgrounds when I was a kid, I’ve been looking to this for a long time! This is why I had kids, just so I could play on the cool toys.

Michelle got off to a slow start, getting up the ladders and then getting frightened. Some of the playground equipment area easily 30-40 feet in the air and it’s easy to understand why she could get frightened. Once other kids started playing with her, she was climbing to the very top over and over with wild abandon. She really enjoyed herself.

James, on the other hand, showed no hesitation whatsoever, unfortunately, he’s a little too small to be allowed on all the equipment. That didn’t stop him, though, and he climbs like a spider monkey. Irene had a full-time job trying to keep up with him!

Afterwards, we finally managed to get to Churchill’s for Sunday lunch of Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding. It’s was a little too fatty, but it’s better than their fish & chips. To my knowledge, there isn’t any other place in Arizona that has Yorkshire Pudding.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Family, Kids

We had a big change of plans Saturday.

Our original plan was to leave the kids with grandpa and go out to dinner, but during the day, James had other plans.

During his afternoon nap, he climbed out of the crib and deposited himself on the floor. He wasn’t apparently hurt but this was the first real sign that he even tried to get out. We had to change our plans and buy him a bed.

Instead of a nice steak dinner, we trundled across town to Ikea and purchased an identical bed to the one Michelle has. (Hopefully, we’ve neatly avoided any kind of bed jealousy by having identical beds.)

I was building (with Michelle’s “help”) the bed until midnight, by which time both kids fell immediately asleep as soon as it was finished.

I think my wife was a little sad that we have no more babies in cribs.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Family, Kids

It was only yesterday when coming back from lunch that I was commenting on the sad state of affairs on TV.

“We need less TV detective teams working with DNA and psychologists and more proper TV heroes like Simon Templar, The Saint.”

And lo, minutes later I was greeted by the news that the cable network TNT was making a new series of the Saint. Despite being gun shy after that insipid Val Kilmer film, I’m optimistically looking forward to this – especially since today’s news is even better.

Today’s news is from Burl Barer, Brilliant Author => THE SAINT on TNT

The Roger Moore series that began in 1962 used the “glob trotting celebrity” character found in Charteris later short stories, and due to the restrictive TV codes of the time, Charteris lamented that the Saint on TV bore as much similarity to his creation as Winnie the Pooh did to Captain Blood.

Times have changed — restrictions have relaxed. Soooo…this version of The Saint will be the more dangerous and picaresque adventurer, having way too much fun as he takes on recalcitrant and contumacious oppressors while bedding the requisite bevy of beauties — including the mercurial and romantic Ms Patricia Holm. As all Saint fans know, Simon Templar parks his shoes in numerous international locales, but Holm is where he hangs his hat — or halo.

Bill Macdonald asked me to serve as “consultant” to the project, and has honestly taken my suggestions to heart (and page). The show should be really cool, faithful to the character, and won’t have Charteris getting what he termed Graveyard Torque from spinning in his metaphoric grave.

I just hope they don’t call him the “gay buccaneer” anymore… I think that may need be left as a legacy of the 1930’s…

Technorati Tags: Blog, The Saint, Television

KTAR => Appeals Court: No Fake Snow at Arizona Snowbowl

Operators of the Arizona Snowbowl can’t use treated wastewater to make snow, a federal appeals court ruled Monday in a decision that found the procedure would have violated the religious freedom of Navajos and a dozen other American Indian tribes.

The 777-acre resort north of Flagstaff wanted to add a fifth chair lift, spray man-made snow and clear about 100 acres of forest to extend the ski season on the western flank of the San Francisco Peaks that have spiritual and religious significance to 13 Southwest tribes.

It’s one thing to believe idiotic superstitions, it’s another altogether to waste one penny of taxpayer’s money on this nonsense…

In a 64-page decision, Judge William A. Fletcher of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the snowmaking scheme violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 and was akin to using wastewater in Christian baptisms.

And why not? It’s a waste of water any way you go about it. Might as well be treated.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Commentary, Superstition, Rant

Today is James’ second birthday.

That means it is the day we’d normally go out an take his picture with “his tree”. Unfortunately, since the deep freeze, there’s been no further sign of life in either his or Michelle’s tree.

I don’t think the tree will be there to photograph next year. Still, we have the pine trees in the back that we planted for their christmases.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Family, Kids

We stopped in a Baskin Robbins yesterday investigating the possibility of an ice cream cake for James’ birthday. The store was apparently run by an indo-pakistani family.

While we were enjoying our ice cream, the skin-head you see at the counter came in, said something to the older man working the counter, who, in turn, quite clearly said, “yes, sir.”

You can see from this cameraphone snap how far away I am from the counter. Some time passed and the skin-head said, “Don’t you speak English? Is that why you’re ignoring me?”

The counter man simply replied, “What can I get you?.”

Skin-head proceeded to point at a sign taped to the front of the counter (which is not visible to someone working behind the counter) and said, “What’s this?”

Counter man, “What, sir?”

Skin-head, shouting, “Can’t you f**king speak English?. Can we get someone at the counter who can f**king speak English?”

We left about this point, but I snapped this picture of the asshole and I hope someday it comes back to haunt him, cause he’s a shithead.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Commentary, Rant

I received a notice that someone had used one of my flickr photos in a mosaic, which is all right, but, of course, I had to go see it.

This wasn’t anything I was expecting. It’s a photo of various Cong You Bing (green onion pancakes). [Mine is center-left] Note that most of them are pan-fried, not deep-fried, which I think is the secret that makes the guy whose shop is just around the corner from my in-laws house so darned famous.

Still, now I want to visit and eat cong you bing.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Flickr, Food, Taiwan

Well, I don’t know how long this will last on YouTube, but obviously, someone else has spotted what could be called Torchwood’s rather obvious nature.

Gotta love Dead Ringers…

Technorati Tags: Blog, Television, Torchwood, UK, Video, YouTube