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One of the cool things you occasionally see in Taiwan, is the Mitsubishi Jet Towel.

It’s a air hand dryer that actually works. You shove your hands into a trough and high pressure air jets push the water right off them. It’s rather like the way they simulate high-G acceleration in movies, where they air jet the actors’ cheeks.

Anyway, at last they’re available in the USA. My I recommend to any company that has those worthless air blowers to replace them with these jet towels.

I’ve never understood how anyone could think that the air blowers are viable. They take 30-40 seconds, if you’re lucky, to dry your hands. There’s usually one, maybe two in a restroom, which may have 5 or 6 sinks. Do the math, there’s going to be people who skip washing because they know they can’t dry their hands.

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…and people wonder why I don’t like for my daughter to just play with any kids you see on the playground.

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We were returning home this evening around 10:00PM, driving down Thomas, near 3rd Avenue, when I spied a person in the middle of the road.

He crouching down along the center line, about 10 feet from the intersection, facing our direction. He was an older man, wearing a levi jacket and baseball cap.

He was hoping around the road in a squatty, dance-like way, a little like that gremlin in the classic Twilight Zone episode with William Shatner. He was also making aggressive moves towards the cars passing him and swinging a chain.

He didn’t hit anybody and as we passed, I could see in the rearview mirror that he decided to leave the road.

There’s something you don’t see everyday.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Loonies

The Biggest Carnivore: Dinosaur History Rewritten

This is an interesting little report from livescience.com on the Spinosaurus.

The history of the paleontology of the Spinosaurus is s fascinating story. Spinosaurus, a large theropod dinosaur was discovered in Egypt around the turn of the 20th century by the German paleontologist, Ernst Stromer.

Stromer’s collection went to a museum in Munich (if I recall correctly) which was bombed out of existence by allied attacks in the 1944. The specimen were completely destroyed. The was a documentary on one of the Discovery channels recently about a group who recently went back to Stomer’s dig sites and brought back more Spinosaurus fossils.

This new report is now estimating that Spinosaurus was the largest yet discovered meat-eating dinosaur, at 55′ long from head to tail.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Paleontology, Science

My friend John is doing the second-wedding ceremony thing in Thailand.

Don’t you think these figurines on his wedding cake are an amazing likeness?

Incidentally, you can look at more of his Thailand photos on his flickr page.

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This has been a big week for James!

He said “beep” the other day (but not repeated the feat) and today he decided he wanted to walk.

Grandpa was over and he just started walking. he’s been trying for weeks, but he’s only managed 2 “steps” before collapsing.

Today he just started with 3 steps at a time and worked his way up to crossing the living room.

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Jurassic beaver swims into view - Large early mammal was first to get furry. From nature.com

Ever see the cliché ending to virtually every program on the extinction of the dinosaurs where the Tyrannosaurus Rex skull lies in the sand with the mouse-like mammal crawling out its eye socket?

Until now, the fossil record has only yielded small, shrew-like mammals living during the Mesozoic Era (Triassic, Jurassic & Cretaceous periods). The assumption has been that dinosaurs so completely dominated that era mammals were unable to thrive until the following Cenozoic era.

This new find out of China is an amazingly advanced beaver from Jurassic period China.

While this certainly means a re-think of when mammals began their advance towards world-dominance this doesn’t seem as surprising to me. Prior to the Mesozoic, during the Paleozoic, the earth was dominated by creatures known as the Mammal-like reptiles (Therapsids). These were displaced during the Triassic by dinosaurs and apparently gone by the Jurassic, but they are the direct ancestors of mammals. It doesn’t seem that impossible that mammals had more of a head start than previously thought.

The process of fossilization requires being at the right place at the right time, and some places (rivers, seas, oceans) are more conducive than others. Further, those places now have to be exposed. There are certainly far more creatures that did exist than we could ever possibly expect to find.

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Many Dino Fossils Could Have Soft Tissue Inside from the National Geographic Society

This is a fascinating report concerning the “fossilized” soft tissue discovered last year.

The traditional view of the fossilization process should result in no soft tissue remaining.

In a nutshell, when a creature dies, it’s soft tissue rots (or is eaten) away, leaving the bones and hard parts, which then get covered and slowly mineral-laden water erodes them replacing them with rock in, essentially, and exact replica so exact that you can see the original growth rings, etc.

Only on the rarest of occasions does soft tissue or skin imprints get fossilized, but they, too, are converted to mineral in the process.

The discovery last year yielded what appears to be un-mineralized soft tissue. After a year’s research, the team has discovered this may not be as rare as previously thought, and if so, the whole process of fossilization may have to be re-thought.

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Proud parental moment today:

We were eating a Wendy’s, and we’d been there for about 30 minutes.

There was an elderly couple who had been there since before we arrived. As they got up to leave, the gentleman came over to our table and said, “Excuse me. I just wanted to tell you that you have two of the cutest children I’ve ever seen.”

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When did they start making 8-pack sodas?

Is this so they can catch bigger sea otters?

It’s just all wrong, it doesn’t fit naturally in the hand like the 6-pack does. Should you spread your fingers uncomfortably wide and hold using the two outer gaps, or use two adjoining ones and have the whole thing be lop-sided?

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