trexmaster

Tomorrow, the Sci Fi channel is going to show one of the most bizarre dinosaur movies I have ever heard of: Aztec Rex. Now, I have nothing against the concept of Aztecs and conquistidors fighting dinosaurs, but I still don't have high expectations for this movie; it's probably going to be yet another cheezy monster movie with lots of paleontological inaccuracies and pathetic CGI. Still, I intend to watch it as soon as possible, just for shits and giggles.

12. Wooly mammoth



I feel a perverse affection for big, fat things like whales, rhinos, hippos, and elephants. They make me want to hug them. Anyway, of all these animals, I chose the wooly mammoth, because they look just plain majestic, with curving tusks, thick dark brown to blond hair, and their prehensile trunks. I truly enjoy imagining a herd of these animals roaming the subarctic, snowswept tundra, scraping the snow away in search of grass, and fighting the Neanderthals, Native Americans, and saber-toothed cats that preyed on them.

11. Spotted hyena



Spotted hyenas are perhaps the most underrated and undeservedly maligned of all of Africa's main predators. Contrary to popular misconception, they are not moronic obligate scavengers, but are actually much more aggressive hunters than their overrated nemesis, the lion (which steals from hyenas no less than the reverse). Why have both Western and African cultures hated on them so much throughout history? My guess is that it's an old grudge inherited from the days when huge packs of hyenas chased our homininan ancestors across the savannah.

10. Nile Crocodile



I wasn't sure whether to select this or the Saltwater crocodile as the choice croc. In the end, I went out with the Nile, because even though the saltie is much larger, the Nile takes much larger game. Fully grown Nile crocs will take almost any large animal that stays too long at the waterhole---they've even been observed attacking lions and humans. Makes you wonder who the real king of the African beasts is...

9. Quetzalcoatlus



Although Quetzalcoatlus isn't nearly as popular as the pointy-crested Pteranodon, it is arguably even more spectacular, because it's arguably one of the most fucking humongous pterosaur ever unearthed (the only rival I know of is the earlier Ornithocheirus). I wonder what it would be like to ride one of these guys, to feel the wind pound against my shirt and gaze at the jungle from twenty feet above the canopy.

8. Gorilla



Partly it's because of the "big fat thing" mentioned earlier, but what makes me feel particularly fond for gorillas compared to other fat things is their similarity to humans. Not only are they highly sociable like us, but there's also evidence that they can communicate quite fluently in sign language and paint images without training. They are almost like people; pudgy, hairy, and foliovorous people.

(BTW, that gorilla doesn't really mean that gesture. According to the web page from whence I got it, she has a tendon issue that forces her middle finger to stick out like that. Despite its unfortunateness, it still looks really cute).

7. Ankylosaurus (from now on, it's going to be all dinosaurs)


Ankylosaurus and its kin were possibly the toughest herbivores ever to walk the Earth. Even tyrannosaurids would have reconsidered attacking this spiky behemoth that could lethally cripple with one knock from the mace attached to its tail.

6. Stegosaurus



This one's a tried-but-true classic. Like Ankylosaurus, Stegosaurus was an offshoot of the Thyreophora, the "shield-bearing" dinosaurs. I really like those nifty pentagon-shaped plates; I imagine that were brightly colored in life either to attract mates or to scare off theropods like Allosaurus.

5. Allosaurus


Speaking of Allosaurus, I'm giving him #5 on this list.  Apex predator of the Jurassic plains, Allosaurus probably hunted everything from ornithopods to stegosaurs to even the mighty diplocids and brachiosaurids. Scientists think that its bite was like a hatchet; it threw down its skull and ripped off flesh from the sides of its victims. And check out those foreclaws!

4. Utahraptor



By far the largest known member of the dromeosaurid family, Utahraptor probably comes closest to the archetypical image of the raptor. Growing up to 6 feet tall and 20 feet long, Utahraptor was big enough in my opinion to not need the feathery covering that smaller dromeosaurids had (not absolutely against feathers on raptors, I just miss the scaly ones that were extremely popular during my childhood). Utahraptor most likely used its infamous hindclaws not to disembowel prey, as was formerly thought, but to stab and anchor into it while the beast tore at them with its jagged teeth and formidable foreclaws. Pity its name doesn't slide off the tongue as beautifully as Velociraptor, for it is my conviction that Utahraptor is way, way cooler and more fearsome.

3. Apatosaurus



It is a terrible shame that we can't call this guy "Brontosaurus" anymore. That name ("thunder lizard") was much more poetic and descriptive of this 30-ton diplocid than its current name, which means "deceptive lizard". Whatever you call it, Apatosaurus must have been a most awesome beast when it lived back in the Jurassic, with its gracile tail that could snap like a bullwhip. The sonic boom produced would have sounded almost like thunder!

2. Triceratops



Another classic dinosaur, Triceratops was the last and most massive of the ceratopsians. Contemporary of Tyrannosaurus rex, Triceratops would have been a formidable adversary for the giant coelurosaur. Evidence that the two titans really clashed includes Triceratops frill fragments encrusted in T. rex droppings, and T. rex toothmarks (some showing signs of healing) on Triceratops skulls. One peculiar characteristic of Triceratops is its frill; while most ceratopsians had a pair of large fenestrae (holes) in their frills, Triceratops's frill was solid, making it stronger and more effective at protecting the neck from carnivore attacks.

And now, we come to numero uno...

1. Tyrannosaurus rex



This one's been my favorite for almost my entire fucking life. Although T. rex is no longer considered the largest theropod, having lost that title to the piscivore Spinosaurus, it was still the deadliest. Faster and more powerful than any other predatory dinosaur longer than forty feet, T. rex could charge up to 18-25 mph and chomp at a force of 50,000 lbs, much more than any other land animal. T. rex was also equipped with forward-facing eyes that gave it stereoscopic vision and small but heavily muscled arms that it would have used as meathooks to hold onto its prey. Plus, it has the most beautiful name, which translates to "tyrant lizard king".

T. REX WILL ALWAYS BE THE KING OF BEASTS!

I'm horribly sick of all this "Wright could hurt Obama's campaign" bullshit. So Obama's (obviously senile) pastor happens to have said some controversial things in one sermon. So fucking what? Obama himself has made it clear in a speech several weeks ago that he strongly disagreed with many of Wright's more batshit crazy assertions, so no one with a fully functioning brain should assume that this should reflect poorly on Obama. Besides, how fucking likely is it that a guy with a white mother is going to be the sort of black supremacist Wright is said to be? Just forget about Wright already!

Fucking Republican ad hominen smear tactics.

Oluchi Onweagba (check out her page at Sports Illustrated):

Jessica White

Sung Hi Lee

Lee Hyori

Gabrielle Union

Beyonce Knowles

Nicole Scherzinger (the lead singer for the Pussycat Dolls; I highly recommend checking out their "Don't Cha" vid on Youtube)

Miwa Oshiro


That's all for the moment...but I'll be back!

Turok 2008: I'm probably gonna need an new video card for this one (my current card, an nVidia 6600, though good enough to play most pre-2007 games with a decent fps, could barely manage Crysis, so I know I've got to up it soon), but who doesn't want to fight dinosaurs in the jungle? I must admit, though, that I don't really care for the decision to move the setting to an alien planet and make Turok an ordinary marine. I prefer the Lost Land of Turok: Evolution and its predecessors, with its syncretic mixture of prehistoric, futuristic, and fantasy (ancient ruins, castles, etc.) elements, and while I don't mind Turok using hi-tech fusion cannons, it was also fun to fight with Neolithic arrows and war clubs.

Spore: Even though it most likely will consume an ungodly fuckload of hard disk space, I am allured by the idea of creating your own species of animal, guiding its evolution, and then making it sentient and forming tribes. I already have in mind what kind of race I want to design---it's probably going to be a reptilian, dinosaur-like race of carnivores, sort of like the Quintaglios in Robert Sawyer's Quintaglio Ascension trilogy (well, not exactly, I do have some imagination after all).

Civilization Revolution: Although the graphics as shown in the screenshots look a bit too cartoonish and the terrain too squarish, I would like to see what kind of new gameplay mechanics Sid has added here. The Civilization games seem to grow in depth with every installment.

Grand Theft Auto IV: If I had a decent console (my PS2's been busted for 2-3 years now). BTW, what is it with the dumbshits who whine about "violent video games" like GTA? It. Is. A. Fucking. Game. The victims of the violence are nothing more than a bunch of pixels whose sentience is limited to the instructions from the game's programming. It isn't real. Why do people continue to fail at distinguishing fantasy from reality? I bet 90% of the people who play these things would never shoot, run over, or mug real, breathing humans beings---and the remaining 10% have probably been horrifically fucked up in the head anyway.

Any of the God of War games: Given how popular these have been, and how commonly other games have ripped off them, it's weird that I have never shown any interest in them. I must have missed a really awesome experience.

Tyrannosaurus rex vs. Veggie Tales, courtesy of Stephen J. Greene. And yes, creationists actually think T. rexes and other non-avian theropods were herbivores. I ain't shitting you.

In case you haven't already heard, the creationists have recently shoved into theaters Ben Stein's infamous "documentary" Expelled. Among the documentary's major allegations is that 1) creationists* are victims of persecution by a conspiracy of "Darwinist" scientists and 2) Darwinism led to the Holocaust. Both claims are demonstrably false; the "creation scientists" claimed in the documentary to have been "expelled" for their views really weren't, and far from espousing Darwinian views on biology, the Nazis actually included books advocating Darwinian evolution on their "banned books" lists.

Expelled is the latest effort in the large and well-funded creationist movement's jihad against science. The creationists have established several large organizations (Answers in Genesis, Discovery Institute, etc.) and cranked out dozens of books, tracts, websites, TV shows, and even a few museums slinging mud not only at modern evolutionary biology, but also geology, chemistry, physics, and anything else that contradicts their religious beliefs. To be bluntly honest, I find these people quite fucking repulsive. They arrogantly reject tons of modern scientific evidence in favor of the mythology of some Bronze Age Arabian tribe, and they frequently resort to dishonest tactics (quote-mining, mischaracterization, outright lying, etc.) to propagate their bullshit. Their promotion of ignorance is not only obnoxious, it's dangerous to the education of the public.

That said, creationists can also be fucking hilarious. Their faith in obsolete, 3,000-year-old religious texts, their futile efforts to reconcile their dogma with modern science, their ignorance about science in general, and their stupidity just earn smirks from more informed individuals. If you want to observe for yourself just how bone-headed creationists frequently are, I recommend you start off with the excellent "Why do people laugh at creationists" series on Youtube.

One of the paradoxes of our species is that we can be both the most intelligent and the most abysmally stupid of all primates.

* No, I won't, and never will, refer to them as "intelligent design proponents", because let's face it, that amounts to nothing more than a politically correct euphemism.