Breaking Waves (08-30-09)

The List of Soulstorm Trilogy characters by stat ratings and growth costs over at Ezrian Wiki has been updated.

Work on the Morrison Dinosaurs project continues- I’ll link to it soon!

Breaking Waves (08-29-09)

I pretty much dedicated myself 100% to my Morrison Dinosaurs project.

Ezrian Thoughts (08-28-09)

I was considering renaming Carolus Vivec to Daculta before. Now I’m considering Daculter as the new name. Whaddya think?

Breaking Waves (08-28-09)

My deviantART gallery has been updated with about 11 new fractals.

Ezrian Wiki has received a lot of updates.

Not a lot of productivity, but a lot of napping.

Mariana Musings (08-28-09)

It’s ridiculous to ascribe any extra moral significance to sex than to other forms of physical contact because the only difference between sex and something like a handshake is which two organs are rubbing together.

Breaking Waves (08-27-09)

Updated Dryosaurus with info from Jurassic West

Converted Dryosauridae from a redirect to a stub.

My Morrison Dinosaurs project continues.

Breaking Waves (08-26-09)

My deviantART gallery has been updated with about 11 new fractals.

Ezrian Wiki has been updated.

My Morrison Dinosaurs project continues.

Mariana Musings (08-26-09)

I was watching TV and saw that “How the Earth was Made” was on the History Channel. I wanted to see what the episode was about, so I visited the guide. It described the episode like this: “Scientists search for clues about the formation of the Great Lakes.”

Maybe it’s paranoia, but I sense a touch of anti-intellectualism in there. For one, haven’t scientists already had a good idea as to how the Great Lakes formed for quite a while now? The blurb makes it sound like they don’t know anything. They’re not “gathering additional evidence” or “refining popular theories” they’re only at the initial “search for clues” stage.

So not only does it minimize what science actually knows, it implies that the scientific investigation is a new thing. I guess it’s now wonder that Americans don’t have a lot of faith in science when it’s constantly implied that scientists know much less than they do and wait forever to probe even obvious questions about the world around them.

Breaking Waves (08-25-09)

I created Camptonotus, which previously had just been a redirect to Camptosaurus

Thanked an IP address for fixing a spelling error of mine.

Greeted a new member with an interest in paleontology.

Overall, not very productive, but I slept most of the day, so that would be why.

Breaking Waves (08-24-09)

Camptosaurus received some information from Jurassic West

The List of dinosaurs was vandalized by someone who doesn’t like Scrotum very much.

Created Stegopodus.

Mild tweak to Hammerhead shark.

Added information about trace fossils to Stegosauria.

And work continues on my Morrison Dinosaurs project.

Tidepool Reflections (08-24-09)

You know who doesn’t suck too bad? Daniel Najib. I sent a request to the DML for a PDF of…

“Carpenter, K. and Wilson, Y. 2008. A new species of Camptosaurus (Ornithopoda: Dinosauria) from the Morrison Formation (Upper Jurassic) of Dinosaur National Monument, Utah, and a biomechanical analysis of its forelimb. Annals of the Carnegie Museum 76:227-263″

…and in less than 10 minutes this bastard’s already sent me a copy! Yay! I’ve been after this thing for a little while now, but the link to the paper on Wikipedia has always errored on me. Anyway, I’ll put the thing to good use as I continue my Dinosaurs of the Morrison Formation project. Thanks Dan! <3333

Mariana Musings (08-22-09)

The idea of a mind existing without a brain is as ridiculous as a pulse existing without a heart.

Mariana Musings (08-18-09)

I was skimming through a scientific paper the other day and the authors were talking about trace fossils of termite burrows or tree roots or something, which they described as being “spherical in cross-section.” Am I missing something here?

Isn’t a “sphere” by definition three dimensional, and a “cross-section” by definition two dimensional? If that really is an error in the paper, that means that apparently both authors and every single reviewer missed it before publication. Ouch. That’s gotta be embarrassing.

Mariana Musings (08-17-09)

I’m at work and looking out the window. The sun is setting and dozens of swallows are swooping after insects. There are some dragonflies here, too, prowling about twelve feet off the ground. It really is a spectacular sight. I love Nature, but I never really was the outdoorsy type. Our love was always a long-distance, somewhat academic, romance. Despite never wanting to be physically in the wild, I can’t comprehend how anyone could not cherish our natural heritage beyond words.

It’s so beautiful, so precious, so rare. I’ve always believed that life was “common” in the universe, but so far as we know right now, the phenomenon we call “life” exists only as a thin green skin covering a single planet out of billions in the Milky Way, which is only one in a hundred billions galaxies itself.

While mankind could never truly obliterate life from planet earth even if we made a concentrated effort to do so, we are still engaged in the nearly systematic destruction of the planet’s “higher” life forms. We are literally obliterating the most complex phenomena in the universe without mercy, without hesitation, without even the slightest bit of reflection on the implications of our actions.

When a species goes extinct, that’s it, folks; it’s gone for good. There are no second chances and no amount of regret will retrieve what was lost. And we can’t look to space for a replacement biosphere. Whatever complex life exists out there is at best many light-years away, far beyond our technological reach for the forseeable future. Our great great great great grandchildren may be able to see nature undespoiled in some extraterrestrial ecosystem, but wouldn’t it be nice if our regular grandchildren had something to look at through windows besides asphalt and metal?

Mariana Musings (08-16-09)

I said recently that I though that by the time humanity achieves near-light speed travel that we’ll have mostly or completely eliminated poverty from human society. I justify this belief on the grounds that once manufacturing is done mostly by solar-powered nanobots even luxury goods will be very inexpensive. Imagine being able to produce things like cars and computers at next to no cost. The factories will have no human employees, so there will be no expense from wages, accidents, errors, or benefits.

These factories will be powered by free, sustainable energy, so there will be no utility bills. The manufacturing nanobots will be dirt cheap because they will also be manufactured by nanobots powered by free sustainable energy. Raw materials will be the biggest expense, but they will probably be very cheap as well, being mined by freely-powered robots themselves.

I don’t believe humanity will ever achieve Star Trek style replicators, but let’s just say that I anticipate that their will be major changes to our very concept of “economics” in the next 500 years due to advances in free-sustainable energy, nanotechnology, and robotics. I believe these advances will occur long before we have spaceships with which we can blast poor people away from Sol at relativistic speeds.