|From the Dinosaur Mailing List:|
David W.E. Hone, Kebai Wang, Corwin Sullivan, Xijin Zhao, Shuqing Chen, Dunjin Li, Shuan Ji, Qiang Ji and Xing Xu (2011) A new tyrannosaurine theropod, Zhuchengtyrannus magnus is named based on a maxilla and dentary. Cretaceous Research (advance online publication) doi:10.1016/j.cretres.2011.03.005
Tyrannosaurids are primarily gigantic, predatory theropod dinosaurs of the Cretaceous. Here we report a new member of the tyrannosaurid clade Tyrannosaurinae from the Upper Cretaceous Wangshi Group of Zhucheng, Shandong Province, China, based on a maxilla and associated dentary. The discovery of this animal, here named Zhuchengtyrannus magnus gen. et sp.nov., adds to the known diversity of tyrannosaurids in Asia. Z. magnus can be identified by a horizontal shelf on the lateral surface of the base of the ascending process, and a rounded notch in the anterior margin of the maxillary fenestra. Several additional features contribute to a unique combination of character states that serves to further distinguish Z.magnus from other taxa. Comparisons with other tyrannosaurids suggest that Zhuchengtyrannus was a very large theropod, comparable in size to both Tarbosaurus and Tyrannosaurus.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Monday, March 28, 2011
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Despite paid agenda driven bloviations of "Climate-driven food insecurity", even environmental media king The Guardian sees the real reasons behind it, and it isn’t global warming aka “climate change”. Instead, blame gets squarely placed on weather, a new virulent strain of wheat rust, the U.N.’s policies related to GM regulation, shifting economies, and biofuels.
The whole post here.
Friday, March 25, 2011
|From you know who.|
But with the government and the green movement increasing their efforts to slime and smear those who point to the actual science, like this, as akin to the Luddites motivated by fear and anger, it is important for people to step back and consider just how incomplete our understanding of how the climate works is, and just how great the uncertainties are.
This ultimately relates to the now infamous Hockey Stick, which purported to show a thousand years of relatively constant climate before the middle of the 19th Century.
So you can see why they fiddled with the graph to remove the "inconvenient" data.
The still best explanation of the scientific fraud lying behind the Hockey Stick and how it was, against the will and active interference of much of the climate science establishment, exposed is this.
|So, maybe we're are now entering the endgame of the decades long experiment in the middle-class white fantasy that separatism was a viable strategy for aboriginal people in Australia.|
This fantasy, that "spiritual" native people could viably return to and maintain a stone age culture and lifestyle in modern Australia was always doomed to failure.
This fantasy of well meaning members of the white elite, whose own children were sent to the best private schools money could buy to prepare them for stellar careers in the law and medicine, has doomed generations of aboriginal children to lives of squalor and degradation as they sit out in the middle of nowhere, with nothing to do, other than to go mad.
The traditional life basically ended many years ago. It was never going to be revived. So people sat down and waited for their sit-down money, bored out of their minds.
And some people are surprised this ended in a social catastrophe?
Gary Johns, a special minister of state in the Keating Labor government, has written a book that is hopefully the death knell of this nightmare of good intentions gone horribly wrong - Aboriginal Self-Determination: The Whiteman's Dream by Gary Johns (Connor Court Publishing, $29.95).
The Weekend Australian, (yes, you can almost hear certain minds slamming shut while telling themselves they are so clever with their talk of the LOLstralian), has the first of several edited extracts from the book today.
Here's a taste:
Truly a case of read and weep.
Weep for the lives of so many children destroyed before they ever had a chance to turn whatever their dreams may have been, to be a doctor or have a nice house, whatever, into reality.
For kids - and it is happening right now out in the remote communities (and sadly in not so remote ones too) - being subjected to a level of degradation and abuse almost beyond imagining.
For desperate women, on the receiving end of often savage beatings from their menfolk, still trying to protect their young children being used as disposable sexual commodities. In some areas they do everything they can to prevent men from taking young boys out into the desert for "initiation" ceremonies, knowing exactly what will really initiated into.
Some of us more conservative people have recently been derided, in another context, for being "angry."
Well, too-right I'm angry. I'm seething with anger at yet another avoidable policy cluster-fuck. One that was predictable, predicted and vindicated.
But I can't even summon a hint of schadenfreude here. Being proved right still means a story of human misery and lost opportunity too sad to crow over.
But some great aerial footage of two Tornadoes from the Royal Air Force en route to Libya, including refuelling from a soon to disappear VC-10 tanker.
You can see what a versatile aircraft this supposed "Cold-War relic" has become, with its mixed warload of Litening III advanced targetting pod, Paveway IV bombs (relatively small guided munitions designed to minimise collateral damage), and duel-seeker mode Brimstone anti-armor missiles.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Saturday, March 19, 2011
|@Dan_J_Thorpe Tax cuts to counter a tax that is supposed to make things more expensive.|
From the Twitters.
But life has been dealing with constant exposure to radiation since it began over 3 billion years ago.
As there is no such thing as a toxic substance, only a toxic dose, so to with radiation.
Friday, March 18, 2011
In economics, it's called the law of diminishing marginal utility. The first glass of water you drink will help a lot to quench your thirst. The second will help a little less and so on. By the 10th glass you will be feeling unpleasantly full or even sick. That's the worst aspect: some major environmental policies aren't just ineffective -- they are counterproductive.
"You're not allowed to do this in science." Must see video explaining the deception behind "hide the decline"
|Berkeley professor of physics Richard Muller expresses his disgust at what, (in my view), can only be described as the scientific fraud behind the signature image of global warming alarmism, the Hockey Stick.|
For the record, Professor Muller in not a "climate denier," (and has there ever been a more egregious example of dishonest smearing of opponents than this absurd and idiotic term?).
As do we all, he accepts that carbon dioxide is indeed a greenhouse gas and that human beings increasing the amount of that gas in the atmosphere must have some effect.
Not that that is the question at issue, (though you wouldn't think so going by the hysterical carry-on of the alarmists). The question is simply this - what will be the effect of a doubling of CO2 over pre-industrial levels, ie what is the 'climate sensitivity' of CO2?
The answer is that we really don't know, but that there is precious little (if any) evidence to justify the irrational panic that has become associated with climate change.
Watch and make up your own minds, but I'll ask you this: after watching it, will you ever trust the core group of climate scientists associated with the Climategate scandal again?
For me, the answer to that question has to be no.
Friday, March 11, 2011
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Sunday, March 6, 2011
GREEN is, like, so hot right now, thanks to Miranda Kerr...whether at her plush New York pad or her luxurious LA digs…
|The disconnect between fantasy and reality here is bizarre.|
But yes, the WWF has made Miranda Kerr, who has a carbon footprint the rest of us could only dream about, their global Earth Hour Ambassador.
The reaction from the Fairfax Press to this absurd hypocrisy?
Just as an aside, the Quadrant article referred to at the end, The Intelligent Voter's Guide to Global Warming, is not behind the magazine's pay wall and is available free on the interwebs.
Laurie Oakes warns Wayne Swan "I've rarely seen an issue that has inflamed anger to the extent that this one has"
|Apparently the tax that Julia Gillard says is a tax is, according to Wayne Swan now, not a tax at all!|
In roughly the same way that the goods and services tax isn't a tax either.
|All up, P Z Myers (who in my opinion is very clever but, when it comes to politics and the like, can be a very nasty and petty piece of work), is quite right in the general points he makes about this latest episode of a gullible and scientifically illiterate media falling for a press release put out by an attention seeking scientist.|
And the media generally has fallen for the recycled claims about supposed microfossils found in a meteorite; claims that came in the form of a press release little different to one issued by the same person back in 2004.
But in amongst this is the way Myers displays the typical liberal obsession with Fox News, an obsession that you'd have to start thinking is evidence of a psychological condition verging on the pathological.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
|Yet another example of bad science (amongst other things) leading to bad policy.|
From Watts Up With That?:
|From The Wall Street Journal:|
Friday, March 4, 2011
"F...ing c..., here's a stunt. Kick him 'til he's dead." Where were our delicate flowers of civility then?
|I'd tweeted about this on Wednesday after reading it in the Oz's Australian Literary Review, but have just come across the article online.|
It's interesting that, speaking the day after the Japanese attack on the American Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbour, Curtin did not just say as is so often repeated, (in the context of declaring that we were now at war with Japan), that Australia would be a place where civilisation would persist.
He also declared that Australia would be "a citadel for the British-speaking race."
Great read for anyone interested in Australian history and identity.
I see that James Curran also has a book on this subject out at the moment, which I saw at Boffins the other day.
I think I'll be buying this one and helping to support a fantastic independent book seller at the same time.
Clive James on Dorothea Mackellar's "sunburnt country" and understanding that for Australia, extreme is normal
|Strange times we live in when one of our most accomplished men of letters can see the blindingly obvious that professional scientific alarmists can't (or wont).|
James may not be a scientist, but he is one of the smartest men ever to be produced by this country, and it shows.
Do yourself a favour and read it all.
And to labour a point, because the idea that the recent rains in Queensland and elsewhere were somehow "unprecedented" is still being peddled by the ignorant, it's worth remembering that so-called one-in-a-hundred-year floods like the one that hit Brisbane last month occurred six times between 1840 and 1900.
Two of these happened within just a fortnight of each other, while three were bigger than the most recent one.
Similarly, for all the hand-wringing about the drought being the worst in a thousand years (as the premier of South Australia so foolishly claimed), it is still arguable as to whether or not it was worse that the Federation Drought of the 1890s.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
The Australian Conservation Foundation's tricky maths concerning "subsidies" for the fossil fuel industry
It's interesting that even Possum from Crikey clearly thought the claims were absurd.
Though none of the ACF's dishonest trickery matches those leftoids that have seriously suggested that the Iraq war was a subsidy to the fossil fuel industry. (I kid you not.)
Appeared on Monday I believe.
chriskkennylook at me, here's a promise, now it's a tax, look at my levy, back at me, another tax, look it's gay marriage, I'm on a horse.
If you're on the Twitters, Mr Kenny is worth a follow.