The Association for the Advancement of Rights for Fairytales Creatures (AFC) is an organization for all fairytale creatures, ruled with an iron fist by The Witch/The Evil Stepmother. It was once a democratic organization but since the Witch became chairman, it is democratic in name only. There has been a lot of unhappy members lately, but the chairman has powerful friends. Supported by The Big Bad Wolf she has made allies using shameless favoritism, threats, and every other means she could possibly think of to hold the opposition down. For instance: changing the voting system from secret ballot to show of hands, has made some of the members vote to please the chairman.
It is time for the annual meeting, and this year someone decided to speak up. Is this the year the opposition dares to stand up? For a lot of the characters it is time to take a stand. Should the AFC help and support all of their members, or should the creatures take responsibility for their own lives? As in all organizations there are of course some trivial issues that need to be addressed. But the question remains: What is trivial to you? What battle should you choose to fight? Is it better just to sit back and let it happen?
The main theme of the larp is democracy put in a somewhat absurd setting. Each character is a fairytale creature from a popular story. Every time someone reads a fairytale, the individuals involved act out the story. It's their job. The difference between their private and professional lives is therefore limited. This leads to somewhat absurd situations in the characters' everyday lives. Cinderella is also a modern woman in the real modern world. The King is the father of the countless princesses, and every single time someone reads the story of Rapunzel she has to let that prince climb her hair. Every member is employed for life, so most of the characters have something on the agenda.


A North Austin nightlife hub has called it a day. The owners of bowling and game bar The Goodnight have decided to shutter their original Anderson Lane location in preparation for opening a new bar on West Sixth Street.
The closure appears to have been sudden. A Yelp user says that her large group — who she claims paid a deposit for a reservation — were not notified prior to driving into Austin and arrived to locked doors. A screenshot purported to be from owner David Goodnight says that refunds would be issued May 14.
Undoubtedly chief among those were the several bars and restaurants in the Domain and Domain Northside, including several located in the busy Rock Rose corridor and similar concept Punch Bowl Social.
The note says the team will be focusing their efforts on the new downtown location, set to open in the Blueprint building at 501 W. Sixth St. in the fall. The new bar will share the address with two new concepts: Japanese eatery TenTen and nightclub Mayfair. The new location promises to bring virtual reality and karaoke, as well as a revamped menu.
There they may still have to fight stiff competition. A second location of Punch Bowl is set to open on Congress Avenue, just blocks from West Sixth.


Brampton, ON - The Boys and Girls Club of Peel is happy to announce that it recently received a three-year, $659,900 from the Ontario Trillium Foundation (OTF). The Club is delighted at the news as it means that it will be able to expand its Family program which is focused on strengthening parents-child relationships, improves physical literacy and helps connect area residents to the community.
The program is focused on helping families and youth in two local, low-income neighbourhoods and now with the OTF funding, will be expanding into two more areas in Brampton and Mississauga.
The focus of this funding is to help improve the family dynamic in our program locations and strengthen the relationships between parents, children and the community. This will be achieved by providing educational workshops, physical literacy activities such as; exercise classes, support groups and social groups such as; gardening club, sewing club, family nights, parent lead initiative.
The grant will be used over the next three years to assist with staffing costs, workshops and child care, supplies and information materials for the various initiatives involved with the program, and some administrative costs as well.
"This is a fantastic day for the organization but more important, for the children, youth and families across the Region of Peel that we have the honour of working with every day. Thank you to the Ontario Trillium Foundation for seeing the value and impact our programs bring to the communities we serve and we look forward to working with you and others to grow and sustain the program across Peel while positively impacting the lives of so many." – Michael J Gyovai, Resource Development Manager, Boys and Girls Club of Peel.


Rotation updated , full random system in place.
Read first page to find out.
Freon is now running inside its own e+ Mod folder, just copy over your e+ configs into the new Freon folder.
You can now remove Freon pk3 from your original excessiveplus folder wile keeping everything Freon related inside Freon .
Rotation system redone , look on main post for info .
We had set autodownload in http mode , seems a lot of you have it blocked in firewall , so switched it back to http-tcp/upd protocol and now everyone have reported it to be working on their end , So you should be able to fully download the Freon folder when you connect to Freon .
About the e+ cfg not fully working on Freon folder I have no clue , min worked perfectly here and most of the players reported theirs to be working , I would suggest making sure your e+ cfg is named autoexec.cfg under Freon folder making sure all your extra cfg's possibly binded are there too .
Make sure to enable /cl_allowdownload 1 to get new Freon .pk3 updates , always keep new versions and remove old, new version right now is v11 , soon we will have v12 with more hq levelshots and some map updates.
q3dm14+ is now back in rotation , Insanekid fixed the issues we had on this map and also removed fog for dm13 , 14 and 15+ that was causing a bit of lag and visibility problems.
Find the updated rotation on first page.


A small vacation rental business with concierge services. We own and manage 4 rental homes on Cape Cod. We provide well equipped, clean, well located properties for the perfect family vacation.
Taught 5 years at Uxbridge High School in Uxbridge, MA; 7 years at Chatham High School, Chatham, MA and 2 years at Nauset Regional High School, Eastham, MA.
MBREA (The Massachusetts Board of Real Estate Appraisers) is located in Dedham, MA.
The Appraisal Institute classes were taken online and in Rhode Island.
Cape Cod is comprised of coastal communities with diverse environments. Homeowners are year round residents, seasonal residents, and investors. Values and influences on values are dynamic.
We are abreast of the many influences on the real estate market and can help you to maximize your Cape Cod home ownership.


As explained earlier, if exercise done is in line with body axis, chances of getting impingement are high. Always follow the scapular axis (refer Pic 2) to avoid impingement issues.
It usually occurs when the weight is heavier than a person's ability to lift (refer pic 3 & 4). It is a form of compensation to use more pectoral muscle to push the weight up. This can lead to back problems.
In an attempt to keep the arms straight, many times people rotate their shoulders excessively which causes undue stress on biceps tendon and rotator cuff muscle(refer pic 3 & 4).
At the end of the pushing movement, avoid clashing or crossing over of weights. This can lead to a jarring movement creating excessive or unwanted movement at the joints.
These points also need to be considered for other shoulder exercises such as side raises/military press/arnold shoulder press.


text:
Q: Devise user profile route in root of site I have user profiles set up using Devise. Currently the route is site.com/u/username, however I want the route to be site.com/username. Should I just change
match 'u/:username' => 'users#show', as: :user, via: :get

to
match ':username' => 'users#show', as: :user, via: :get

or do I need to do something else?
Also, is there any way to ensure that no username conflicts with other routes? For example, if someone has the username about, how to I set a separate route for that user (/u/about)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Posts Tagged 'elephants'
Posted in Museums are Cool, Voyages, tagged anatomy, crocodile, dem bones, elephants, evolution, fossilicious, museum, pathology, Rhinos Matter, tetrapod on March 3, 2019| 5 Comments »
A Museum Evolves
Posted in Museums are Cool, tagged anatomy, dem bones, elephants, evolution, giraffe, hippo, museum, rhinos, skull on May 2, 2018| 14 Comments »
One of my favourite museums in the world, and certainly one of the best natural history museums in the UK, is Cambridge's Museum of Zoology, AKA "University Museum of Zoology at Cambridge" (UMZC). It is now nearing a lengthy completion of renovations; the old museum exhibits and collections were excellent but needed some big changes along with the re-fabbed "David Attenborough Building" that houses them. As a longtime fan of the exhibits and user of the collection (and microCT scanner), I hurried to see the new museum once it officially opened.
And that makes a great excuse to present a photo-shoot from my visit. This focuses on the "mammal floor" below the entrance- the upper floor(s?) are still being completed and will have the birds, non-avian tetrapods, fish, etc. But the UMZC is strong in mammals and so it is natural for them to feature them in this chock-full-o-specimens display. Less talk, more images. Here we go!
All images can be clicked to mu-zoom in on them.
Stomach-Churning Rating: 3/10; bones and taxidermy and innocuous jars.
The building. The whale skeleton that hung outside for years is now cleaned up and housed right inside; you walk under it as you enter.
Entrance.
First view past the entryway: lots of cool specimens.
View from the walkway down into the ground/basement level from the entry. As specimens-per-unit-volume goes, the UMZC still scores highly and that is GOOD!
Explanation of frog dissection image below.
Gorgeous old frog dissection illustration; such care taken here.
Leeuwenhoek's flea woodcut; I think from Arcana Naturae Detecta (1695). There is an impressive display of classic natural history books near the entryway.
Dürer/other rhino art image and info.
Darwin was famed for collecting beetles when he should have been studying theology at Cambridge as a youth, and here is some of his collection. Dang.
Darwin's finches!
Darwin kicked off some of his meticulous work with volumes on barnacles; specimens included here; which helped fuel insights into evolution (e.g. they are "retrograde" crustaceans, not mollusks).
Darwin's voyage: fish & other preserved specimens.
I think this is a solitaire weka (flightless island bird; see Comment below). I've never seen them displayed w/skeleton + taxidermy; it's effective here.
Eryops cast. More early tetrapods will surely be featured on the upper floor; this one was on the timeline-of-life-on-Earth display.
I LOVE dioramas and this seabird nesting ground display is very evocative, especially now that I've visited quite a few such islands.
Mammal introduction; phylogenetic context.
Monotreme glory.
UMZC is well endowed with thylacines and this one is lovely.
"TAZ FEEL NAKED!"
Narwhal above!
Rhinocerotoidea past, present, and fading glory. 😦
Ceratotherium white rhino. The horn is not real; sadly museums (and even zoos) across the world have to worry about theft of such things, given that some people think these horns are magic.
Ceratotherium staring match. You lose.
Ceratotherium stance.
Foot of a Sumatran rhino juxtaposed with a horse's for Perissodactyla didaction.
A tapir. As a kid, I used to wander around the house pretending to be a tapir but I did not know what noise they'd make so I'd say "tape tape tape!".
Big Southern Elephant Seal.
Squat little fur seal.
Hippopotamus for the lot of us. (baby included)
Hippo facedown.
Skull of a dwarf Madagascar hippo.
Cave bear and sabretooth cat make an impressive Ice Age demo.
It's a wombat.
Ain't no don like a Diprotodon! (also note its modern miniature cousin the wombat, below)
Diprotodon facial.
Diprotodon shoulder: big clavicles bracing that joint region.
Diprotodon knee: even in big marsupials, the "parafibula"/lateral sesamoid of the knee is still generally present. And why it is there/what it does deserves much more study.
Diprotodon hip. I just find this animal's anatomy fascinating head-to-tail.
Diprotodon front foot. Absolutely freakish.
Diprotodon hind foot. Even weirder.
Your view after having been trampled in a supine position by a Diprotodon. Not a good way to go.
Diprotodon got back.
Elephant seal's butt continues my series of photos of big animals' bottoms.
Asian elephant's butt view.
African elephant butt.
Sectioned elephant skull to show pneumatic resonating chambers.
Paenungulates: hyraxes, Sirenia, elephants & kin (evolutionary demo).
AND MY HYRAX!
Sorry. Had to.
Megatherium side view.
Megatherium. Yeah!
Megatherium hindlegs fascinate me. Well-heeled.
Tamandua duo.
Silky anteater; wonderful.
Armadillos.
Anteaters round out a fab display on Xenarthra.
The UMZC has everything from aardvarks to zebus. Here, conceptualized with other Afrotheria.
Golden moles: the more I read about them, the more they fascinate me.
We can all use some more solenodons in our lives!
Example of the phylogenetic context used throughout exhibits.
If you've got a good Okapi taxidermy, you'd better use it.
It's a giraffe. Did you guess right?
Gerenuk showing off its bipedal capacity.
Warthogs have an inner beauty.
Pangolin. Glad to see it back on exhibit.
Nice little brown bear.
Double-barrelled shot of hyenas.
Colugo!
Nice to see some Scandentia featured.
My brain says this is a springhare (Pedetes) so I am going with what my brain says and anyway I really like this display.
When I saw this I thought, "That's a nice… rodent thingy." And so "rodent thing" it shall be labelled here. Enjoy the rodent thingy. Some serious taxidermy-fu in action.
Moonrats– now there's something you seldom see a full display of. Well done!
That's part I of this sneak peek at the evolving exhibits- I will put up a part II once the upper floor exhibits open. I highly encourage a visit!
For Mike:
Jumbo Time
Posted in Frozen Mammals, Museums are Cool, When Anatomy Goes Bad, tagged anatomy, dem bones, elephants, funky feet, media, museum, pathology, sci comms on December 21, 2017| 2 Comments »
Back in November 2016 I got an exciting email from colleague Dr. Richard Thomas, who was building a team of experts for a proposed documentary on Jumbo the elephant; the famed proboscidean of the Victorian era (and arguably most famous elephant of all time, first international celebrity animal, etc.). I knew him from social media and from our mutual interests in chicken anatomy and evolution. And that exciting email, for once, worked out! Over coming months I chatted with the film producers and they could see a place for me in the programme, contributing my expertise in elephant (postcranial) anatomy, locomotion, health/welfare etc. Lo and behold, in May 2017 I met Sir David Attenborough at Heathrow and we flew out to New York City to film with the skeleton at the American Museum of Natural History. And to cap it off, I got to meet another childhood science communication hero: Professor David Suzuki of CBC's "The Nature of Things"– my adrenaline levels were sky high!
Brooklyn neighborhood by our hotel. Lots to do!
The show has aired in the UK and is coming very soon to Canada and the world (details below). Here's my part of the story.
Stomach-Churning Rating: 3/10– bad bones but no blood.
We filmed from 15-19 May 2017 at the AMNH's warehouse of mammalian skeletal remains, which is housed deep in the Brooklyn Army Terminal; a picturesque site in and of itself. And it is a site with a lot of history— WWI and II, Elvis and more.
It was a hectic week of the usual documentary stuff: repeat the same lines and motions again and again from different angles and with different paces and intonations (I cannot help in these cases but think about the Simpsons "Fallout Boy" episode), from ~9am-5pm, with plenty of downtime watching setup or other bits being filmed. I'm used to all that. But having the time to peer around the collection and chat to Richard and colleague Dr. Holly Miller (handling the tissue isotopes side of the story) about Jumbo's skeleton was a lot of fun during downtime and filming itself. Not to mention the utter joy of studying one of the most famous museum specimens ever, and an animal widely held to be one of the largest of its kind, with much mystery surrounding its history despite its fame. (Wikipedia does a fair job of summarizing some of this)
Here are some photos to tell the story:
Photo of the team, courtesy of Infield Fly Productions (CBC production, "Jumbo: The Life of An Elephant Superstar".
The Brooklyn Army Terminal, with a view of the harbour beyond.
Inside the terminal: old army staging area and an evocative wooden Liberty/tank artwork.
Army terminal cat. Shipping still comes through the terminal so I guess there are plenty of rats and handouts from cat-lovers to keep it going. I miss our cats when I travel so this moment was appreciated.
Whale skulls and other specimens inside the AMNH warehouse.
First view of Jumbo's remains.
Photo opp with Sir David.
Photo opp with Prof Suzuki.
That's the setup. I've done ~15 other documentary episodes/shows but this was like nothing else– simply an awesome experience.
Now the delivery: we set to studying those bones. We'd seen photos before, and Henry Fairfield Osborn had illustrated the specimen as his type of "Elephas africanus rothschildi" (Sudanese elephant; no longer valid but those were different times– it's now just a nicely preserved Loxodonta africana africana), so we knew some of what to expect.
Looking at Osborn's classic monograph. Oddly he didn't address the GLARING MASSIVE PROBLEMS WITH THE TEETH!
Skull with terrible tooth pathologies– and let's play spot Mumbo, my daughter's toy elephant! He might even appear in some TV footage!
We had noted some serious issues with some bones (pathologies). I won't spoil the message here but will show some images. I know some experts have voiced issues with how the tooth pathologies/growth were explained in some footage but I can't address that here; it's not my expertise. The important point to me is that the teeth are incredibly messed up and that can easily be linked to bad diet and other management/health issues, as the documentary explains.
Jumbo's torso in left side view. Glorious preservation.
Right forelimb, showing that the "growth plates" (epiphyses") were not all fused, consistent with Jumbo still growing– as expected for an African male elephant in his 20's.
Right elbow with some pathologies consistent with degenerative joint disease.
Surprisingly, Jumbo's feet were not in nasty condition in terms of pathologies. I'd expected to see that. They'd been painted and drilled for mounting, but were not riddled with arthritic changes that I could see.
Strange bony plaque on the left pelvis (hip) region; something I'd never seen before in any elephant (and I've seen many). Why? The programme offers a reasonable explanation.
Jumbo's right hip, with bad erosion of the bone and thus presumably the overlying cartilage. Ouch!
Strange extra prong on one right rib in Jumbo- we didn't figure that out. It could conceivably be natural variation.
So, poor Jumbo suffered some jumbo-sized problems, and in complex ways. That's just scratching the surface of what his skeleton tells us, and there's plenty more in the show plus plenty more we can say later– there's real science that came out of this programme! I was surprised to find how little had been stated anywhere in the scientific literature about Jumbo's pathologies.
Sad as Jumbo's skeletal story is, the broader story of his life and death is sadder still. For purposes of time I don't think any of the three versions of the show will get to delve into how Jumbo's mother may have been slashed to death by a broadsword, as the story below describes was the ancient practice:
I'd hate to be "so pestered by a popinjay", too.
Adding insult to injury, we can reflect on how Jumbo was taken from the Sudan to the east (across the Suez), then on boat to Italy and then overground to Paris, where he lived for a little while until the zoological garden sold him to London. Luckily Jumbo avoided becoming a meal to starving Parisians during the Prussian siege of 1870-1. So he did not become elephant consommé like some of his co-captives did. The more one learns about Jumbo's life and the life of elephants in captivity in the 1800s, the more harrowing the tale becomes.
Jumbo is THE celebrity elephant. His name has come to mean 'big' and 'bombastic', from applications to jumbo jets to hot dogs and other (darkly ironic) forms of consumption and extravagance. He has had a jumbo effect on Western culture, but also symbolizes the complex human-elephant relationship, such as the inspiration for "Dumbo's" own sad story. We love elephants but our fascination with them can also be their undoing, such as poaching for the ivory trade or mistreatment in captivity. Jumbo's story writ large is also the story of elephants, and our story to learn from. If anything comes out of my participation in the Jumbo documentary for the public's benefit, I hope it is increased empathy for how we interact with elephants. They are like us in many ways (maybe over-emphasized with anthropomorphism in many accounts), but also unlike us (maybe even unfathomable) in not only their size and anatomy but also in aspects of their prodigious intellect, emotions and social structure. Elephants aren't just jumbo spectacles. They are jumbo responsibilities for humans now that we dominate the planet so much.
Want to catch a version of the Jumbo show? I'll try to keep this list up to date:
BBC iplayer now: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b09jcxrj/attenborough-and-the-giant-elephant
BBC One: 5:05pm on January 31st
CBC: 8pm on January 7th– trailer is here:
http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1115035715562
And the international version is coming soon, plus the above versions surely will circulate globally in some ways.
Have a jumbo time (in a good way) in the rest of 2017 and onwards into 2018!
Better Know A Muscle: 2. Biceps brachii
Posted in Better Know A Muscle, tagged anatomy, cool cats, crocodile, elephants, giraffe, hippo, muscle, tetrapod on February 11, 2017| Leave a Comment »
GIF of the human biceps (above) and its antagonist triceps (below) in action- By "Niwadare" – own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38718790
Last year on Darwin Day I debuted "Better Know A Muscle" (BKAM), which was intended to be a series of posts focusing on one cool muscle at a time, and its anatomical, functional and evolutionary diversity and history. A year later, it's another post on another muscle! Several dozen more muscles to go, so I've got my work cut out for me… But today: get ready to FLEX your myology knowledge! Our subject is Musculus biceps brachii; the "biceps" ("two-headed muscle of the arm"). Beloved of Arnie and anatomists alike, the biceps brachii is. Let's get pumped up!
Stomach-Churning Rating: 7/10. Lots of meaty elbow flexion!
While the previous BKAM's topic was a hindlimb muscle with a somewhat complex history (and some uncertainties), the biceps brachii is a forelimb muscle with a simpler, clearer history. Fish lack a biceps, just having simple fin ab/adductor muscles with little differentiation. Between fish and tetrapods (limb-bearing vertebrates), there was an explosion in the number of muscles; part of transforming fins into limbs; and the biceps is thenceforth evident in all known tetrapods in a readily identifiable anatomical form. In salamanders and their amphibian kin, there is a muscle usually called "humeroantebrachialis" that seems to be an undivided mass corresponding to the biceps brachii plus the brachialis (shorter humerus-to-elbow) muscle:
Most of the humerobrachialis muscle (purplish colour), in dorsal (top) view of the right forelimb of the fire salamander Salamandra salamandra (draft from unpublished work by my team).
In all other tetrapods; the amniote group (reptiles, mammals, etc.); there is a separate biceps and brachialis, so these muscles split up from the ancestrally single "humeroantebrachialis" muscle sometime after the amphibian lineage diverged from the amniotes. And not much changed after then– the biceps is a relatively conservative muscle, in an evolutionary (not political!) sense. In amniote tetrapods that have a biceps, it develops as part of the ventral mass of the embryonic forelimb along with other muscles such as the shorter, humerus-originating brachialis, from which it diverges late in development (reinforcing that these two muscles are more recent evolutionary divergences, too).
Biceps brachialis or humerobrachialis, the "biceps group" tends to originate just in front of the shoulder (from the scapula/coracoid/pectoral girdle), running in front of (parallel to) the humerus. It usually forms of two closely linked heads (hence the "two heads" name), most obviously in mammals; one head is longer and comes from higher/deeper on the pectoral girdle, whereas the other is closer to the shoulder joint and thus is shorter. The two heads fuse as they cross the shoulder joint and we can then refer to them collectively as "the biceps". It can be harder to see the longer vs. shorter heads of the biceps in non-mammals such as crocodiles, or they may be more or less fused/undifferentiated, but that's just details of relatively minor evolutionary variation.
The biceps muscle then crosses in front of the elbow to insert mainly onto the radius (bone that connects your elbow to your wrist/thumb region) and somewhat to the ulna ("funny bone") via various extra tendons, fascia and/or aponeuroses. The origin from the shoulder region tends to have a strong mark or bony process that identifies it, such as the coracoid process in most mammals (I know this well as I had my coracoid process surgically moved!). The insertion onto the radius tends to have a marked muscle scar (the radial tuberosity or a similar name), shared with the brachialis to some degree. A nice thing about the biceps is that, because it may leave clear tendinous marks on the skeleton, we sometimes can reconstruct how its attachments and path evolved (and any obvious specializations; even perhaps changes of functions if/when they happened).
Here are some biceps examples from the world of crocodiles:
Crocodile's right forelimb showing the huge pectoralis, and the biceps underlying it; on the bottom right ("BB"- click to embiceps it).
Crocodile left forelimb with biceps visible ("BB") on the left.
Crocodile biceps muscle cut off, showing the proximal (to right) and distal (to left) tendons (and long parallel muscle fibres) for a typical amniote vertebrate.
What does the biceps muscle do? It flexes (draws forward) the shoulder joint/humerus, and does the same for the elbow/forearm while supinating it (i.e. rotating the radius around the ulna so that the palm faces upwards, in animals like us who can rotate those two bones around each other). In humans, which have had their biceps muscles studied by far the most extensively, we know for example that the biceps is most effective at flexing the elbow (e.g. lifting a dumbbell weight) when the elbow is moderately straight. These same general functions (shoulder and elbow flexion; with some supination) prevail across the biceps muscle of [almost; I am sure there are exceptions] all tetrapods, because the attachments and path of the biceps brachii are so conservative.
And this flexor function of the biceps brachii stands in contrast to our first BKAM muscle, the caudofemoralis (longus): that muscle acts mainly during weight support (stance phase) as an antigravity/extensor muscle, whereas the flexor action of biceps makes it more useful as a limb protractor or "swing phase" muscle used to collapse the limb and draw it forwards during weight support. However, mammals add some complexity to that non-supportive function of the biceps…
Hey mammals! Show us your biceps!
Jaguar forelimb with biceps peeking out from the other superficial muscles, and its cousin brachialis nicely visible, running along the front of the forearm for a bit.
Elephant's left forelimb with the biceps labelled.
Longitudinal slice thru the biceps of an elephant, showing the internal tendon that helps identify where the two bellies of the biceps fuse.
In certain mammals; the phylogenetic distribution of which is still not clear; the biceps brachii forms a key part of a passive "stay apparatus" that helps keep the forelimb upright against gravity while standing (even sleeping). The classic example is in horses but plenty of other quadrupedal mammals, especially ungulate herbivores, show evidence of similar traits:
Giraffe biceps cut away proximally to show the "stay apparatus" around the shoulder joint (upper right).
Zooming in on the "stay apparatus"; now in proximal view, with the biceps tendon on the left and the humeral head (showing some arthritic damage) on the right, with the groove for the biceps in between.
Hippo's humerus (upper left) and biceps muscle cut away proximally, displaying the same sort of "stay apparatus" as in the giraffe. Again, note the stout proximal and distal tendons of the biceps. The proximal tendon fits into the groove of the humerus on the far left side of the image; becoming constrained into a narrow circular "tunnel" there. It's neat to dissect that region because of its fascinating relationships between bone and soft tissues.
The biceps brachii, in those mammals with a stay apparatus, seems to me to have a larger tendon overall, especially around the shoulder, and that helps brace the shoulder joint from extending (retracting) too far backward, whilst also transmitting passive tension down the arm to the forearm, and bracing the elbow (as well as distal joints via other muscles and ligaments). It's a neat adaptation whose evolution still needs to be further inspected.
Otherwise, I shouldn't say this but the biceps is sort of boring, anatomically. Whether you're a lizard, croc, bird or mammal, a biceps is a biceps is a biceps; more or less-ceps. But the biceps still has a clear evolutionary history and Darwin would gladly flex his biceps to raise a pint in toast to it.
So now we know a muscle better. That's two muscles now. And that is good; be you predator or prey. Let's shake on it!
PREDATOR HANDSHAKE!!!!!
Digging Into Dinosaurs
Posted in Exalting Archosauria, tagged anatomy, dinosaur, dissection, elephants, media, museum, reconstruction, sci comms on January 24, 2016| 13 Comments »
Tonight is the debut of the ballyhooed BBC1 programme "Attenborough and the Giant Dinosaur", featuring Sir David and The Titanosaur-With-No-Name, at 6:30pm. Furthermore, this week I presided over a showing of "T. rex Autopsy" to our RVC undergrad Zoological Society, with a very enjoyable Q&A afterwards. So it seemed timely for me to do a post about a theme that links these two documentaries that I helped with, my own research, and science communication and palaeontological research more generally. But first let's get this out of the way:
It was great. I could gush more but that's not what this post is about.
Stomach-Churning Rating: ~7/10; mainly the elephant leg dissection that's not far below, which is a bit messy.
For the titanosaur documentary with Sir David, and the incomparable Ben Garrod as well, we had an old elephant "friend" of mine (subject of many biomechanics studies we'd done) walk across a pressure pad to demonstrate how the elephant locomotion works and some of the basic similarities with how a giant sauropod dinosaur might walk:
A broader feature of that documentary, which elephants are linked into, is how we can use the skeleton to reconstruct some general aspects of the soft tissue anatomy, and thereby the physiology or even behaviour, of a giant titanosaur. Which brings me to this post's subject: We dig up dinosaurs all the time, but what about digging into dinosaurs and using what's preserved to reconstruct what isn't?
Some of the "G-suit" compressive stocking that the fascia wrapped around elephant, and other large mammals, creates, and the underlying, interwoven muscles and tendons (hindlimb of a young Asian elephant that sadly died in captivity). Did some larger dinosaurs have something like this? I'd expect so.
Another view, more superficially, of that G-suit/stocking under the thick, tight skin of an elephant's leg. You'll hear more about this in the Attenborough show…
Once the documentary airs, I may be able to share some more images from it showing what they did for the titanosaur, but this BBC photo gives a good idea. Here, blood vessels and other tissues surrounding the skeleton. How would a titanosaur pump blood around its body? A good question.
I've covered the science behind these reconstructions before, along with the art (in numerous posts, actually). Here I want to inspect how it's communicated through the media: what are good (and not so good?) ways to cover it, especially now that displaying raw anatomy is more tolerable on TV and other media? I'm not writing about Thanksgiving dinner dinosaur dissections; not really; or in technical terms how we build a dinosaur to dissect/depict internally (digitally or physically).
I wanted to focus more on the end product; the imagery or even physical object; and how it conveys what we think we know about dinosaur anatomy. I'll do that via examples, using photos of dinosaur anatomy that I've collected over the years from museums or other media. There won't be any profound points or long musings; it's mainly a photo blog:
What your (inner?) child most needs is a dinosaur to dissect yourself! Why not a T. rex toy like this?
For the price (~$30 in USA), the 4D Vision dinosaurs deliver a pretty good bargain, and the anatomy is satisfactory. I've been collecting this series. I could quibble, but hey: it's a dinosaur you get to build/dissect yourself, and with many major organs in reasonable positions! Not so easy to put/keep together, but it's fine. I would not pay a ton for it, though.
Poster of Velociraptor's anatomy I've had since grad school, adorning my office. For ~1996 (no feathers; "zombie hands"), it's damn good, mostly… Closer views below (sorry, photo quality is crap– taking photos of wall poster turned out to be harder than I expected! Bad lighting.) :
Closeup of the leg muscles- hey, not bad! Pretty much the right muscles in the right places more or less, and plausible proportions. No air sacs in the torso, but again, this is mid-1990's science shown. BUT…
I was happy with this poster until I got it home from the western-USA museum I bought it at and read this final bit of text… Oh, America! You silly place. (And unfortunately, these dinosaurs are not from the very end of the Cretaceous anyway, so "global catastrophe" is not implicated.)
Ornithomimid in Barcelona natural history museum. This was unexpected and got me excited when I first saw it.
Looking down onto the opened torso of the Barcelona ornithomimid. Strikingly realistic! Breastbone, heart, liver, intestines; not unreasonable positions and sizes. No feathers, but again hey– this was made in the earlier days.
Albertosaurus from the Drexel Academy of Sciences. I forget where I got this pic but I like the display– this is an impressive full-scale physical model. The transition from skeleton-only on the left to skinned in the middle to fully-fleshed and popping out atcha on the right is clever.
?T. rex? leg, photo that I took ages ago as a PhD student, if memory serves. Can anyone remind me where this was? California Academy of Sciences? I am embarrassed that I cannot recall. I remember geeking out about it. It has a toy-ish look, but I reckon they had to build this to withstand kids touching it.
Perhaps the best dino-dissection example I've seen in a museum: the AMNH's sauropod Mamenchisaurus with internal organs and their functions projected onto it, in the "World's Largest Dinosaurs" exhibit. Bravo! I stood and watched it for quite a while.
This is far from comprehensive– just several kinds of imagery that I mostly like. There's the tension between showing too much realism, which science simply can't back up, and being too cartoonish, losing the viewer's immersion in the time-travelling fantasy. I do, however, like other kinds of more abstract, schematic depictions of dinosaur anatomy that simplify the details to focus on the basics of what organs should have been where and how they may have worked, such as this depiction from T. rex Autopsy, which also took the other extreme favouring ultra-realism (but with physical models, not so much with the CGI):
Air flow through a T. rex: simplified but clear. CGI used to explain, not abused. The real air sac anatomy would be too complex to show. You may see something similar with the titanosaur show.
That's enough for now. I've stuck with relatively recent examples; of course in my particular field I also think back to Romer's wonderful 1920's drawings, which I covered in this post.
So, blog readers, help me out here: what examples of dinosaur internal, squishy anatomy from museums, documentaries or other not-entirely-done-by-nitpicky-scientists venues do you like, or not like so much? What works for you, or at least is memorable in some way?
Elephant Feet. What Did You Expect?
Posted in Frozen Mammals, When Anatomy Goes Bad, tagged anatomy, elephants, funky feet, media, pathology, sci comms on September 23, 2015| 3 Comments »
I was recently featured on Daily Planet, a great Canadian science show on TV that lamentably is not broadcast more globally. It is always high quality science communication, aided by the superb hosts Ziya Tong and Dan Riskin (and a talented crew!). What were we doing? Dissecting an elephant's foot, of course!
Stomach-Churning Rating: 9/10; no-holds-barred dismantling of elephant feet, from the video onwards, and this post is heavy on moist, goopy photos afterwards, with some nasty pathologies. Not nice at all. I'll give you a chance to turn around while contemplating the cart that we use to carry elephant feet around campus (each foot is 20-30kg; up to 70lbs; so we need the help!), before the video.
Here is a snippet of the full segment from Daily Planet:
And here is more of some of my recent dissections. I'll walk you through two dissections, via photos. This goes back to the roots of this blog: unflinching, gritty examinations of real anatomy! Of course, no elephants were harmed for this work. They died at EU zoos/parks and were sent to me for postmortem examination and research, so we hope that this benefits the future care of elephants. We're currently finishing up a grand overview paper that describes all of the odd pathologies we've observed in elephant feet, for the benefit of zoo keepers and vets who are trying to detect, diagnose and monitor any foot problems.
As the post's title alludes, elephant feet (and more proximal parts of the limbs) are no stranger to this blog. If you've forgotten or are unfamiliar, here are some of my past proboscidean-posts: on elephant foot pathologies (a close sister post to this one), our "six-toed" elephants paper, how to make a computer simulation of an elephant's limb (umm, paper yet to come!), how we boil and bleach bones to clean them up, and a few others. Last but not least, there was the post that went viral in the early #JohnsFreezer/WIJF days: dissecting an elephant with the "Inside Nature's Giants" show.
There are two feet in this post, both front right feet (manus is the technical term; singular and plural). The first one is the messier (unhealthy and bloodier, less fresh and clean) one, from the show/video. It is an Asian elephant (Elephas maximus). I kick off with photos I took after the filming, so the foot is already deconstructed:
Skinned foot, oblique front/inside view. The wrist is on the right side of the photo; the toes on the left.
Sole ("slipper"), with a hole on the fourth toe showing where the abscess is that let infection in/pus drain out. The slipper here is upside-down.
Top-down view of the sole of the foot, once the slipper is removed; flipped over and rotated 90 degrees clockwise from the above photo. Some of the fat pad of the foot is on the right side of the image; it's very hard to separate from the keratinous sole of the foot.
Looking down into the fourth toe's (ring finger) abscess on the other side of the above view.
Looking down into the second toe (index finger), same view as above. Some redness and greyness where this toe had some of its own pathological issues like infection and a smaller abscess.
Looking up from the slipper (removed) at the fat pad and toes of the foot, where they interface with the sole/slipper. The fat pad is toward the bottom and left side; the five toes are on the upper/right side (knobby subcircular regions on the perimeter of the foot). The very bad infection on the fourth toe is visible on the bottom right.
The sproingy fat pad is worth a video!
And one good wiggle deserves another!
A view down onto the wrist joint. The carpal (wrist) bones are visible at the bottom of the image, whereas the flexor (palmar) tendons and muscles on the back of the "hand" are at the top. There is a LOT of musculotendinous tissue on the back side of an elephant's foot. As you will see in my dissection of the second foot, further below!
Looking down onto the medial (inner/"thumb") border of the foot, where I've exposed the prepollex, or false "sixth finger", by removing the first metacarpal (knuckle) bone.
I've removed the prepollex from the foot. The white oval structure (bottom right) is the top of the conical prepollex, where it connected to the rest of the foot. White is cartilage, whereas the red "islands" are blood vessels that have invaded the cartilage and are starting to turn it into patches of bone. So this prepollex is at a very early stage of bone formation, still almost entirely cartilaginous, whereas some older elephants have the prepollex largely formed of bone. The fleshy pink tissue adhering to the surface of the prepollex here is a remnant of "abductor" muscle that connects it to the thumb and thus could allow some active control of the prepollex's mobility.
Well, that was one very pathological elephant's foot; one of the worst I have ever seen. Every foot I dissect is different and tells me a unique story about that animal's development, history and health. This one told a very sad tale. What does a somewhat normal elephant's foot look like? I thawed one out for comparison, and to thin out my overstuffed freezer stock. This one starts off from an intact (if severed) foot so you can witness the stages of dissection:
Whole foot. African elephant (Loxodonta africana). You may spot in later photos that the second and fourth toes' nails are cracked longitudinally. This happens sometimes in elephants without any obvious health problems such as infection, but if it lasts long enough and conditions are bad enough (e.g. unsanitary conditions getting bacteria into the crack; spreading the crack to let them into the foot tissue), it could worsen.
Nice clean sole. No abscesses or other problems. You can faintly see the cracked toenails here.
Gorgeous white cartilage surfaces of the wrist joints. Nice and healthy-looking. A young animal, in this case.
Removing the skin; nice soft whitish connective tissue underneath.
Skinned foot; rear view. The yellowish fat pad is wonderfully visible through the connective tissue sheath.
Skinned foot; front view. The thin, broad extensor tendons that would draw the fingers forward in life are visible here as longitudinal lines along the foot's surface, running to the toes.
Ahh, my favourite thing! I've cut around the prepollex and am pointing at it. It's almost impossible otherwise to see through all the fatty tissue of the fat pad that surrounds it.
Removing the prepollex. It's tiny and enmeshed in connective tissue; harder to see than in the first elephant (photos above).
There is the prepollex! Maybe 12cm long. A little bit of cartilage (white) visible where it connected to the foot. These "sesamoid bones" vary tremendously in elephants I've inspected. I am still getting my head around that, after >10 years of staring at them in >75 feet!
Gap left by removal of the prepollex, on the median border of the foot; thumb region. Imagine having a little extra thumb growing off the base of your thumb and sticking toward your palm. That's what elephants have.
Here, removing the slipper/sole of the foot, from the back side forwards. Hard work!
The slipper. Compare with the image above (same orientation). Nothing wrong here that I could see.
Front view of the toes, where they connect to the toenails. This specimen was so fresh that they were surprisingly easy to cut through and remove the foot from the sole.
Looking up at the palm. You can see the bulbous fat pad (yellower tissue) bulging out in the centre of the palm, and segments of it extending between each finger, separated by fibrous tracts. I love this anatomy. I can stare at it for hours and still be fascinated after all these years. So complex!
Looking down onto the inside of the toenails, toes 3 and 4. Healthy, relatively intact tissue; no swelling or bleeding or other pathology.
Skinned foot, oblique front/inside view again, as above.
Fat pad removed, looking up through where it was at the palm of the "hands", where the tendons and ligaments connect to the five toes. Each arc-like structure is a toe; the "thumb" (first toe) is on the upper left.
Elephant's-eye-view looking down onto the fat pad, where the palm of the foot in the image below would be placed in life (i.e. the limb would be coming down vertically, perpendicular to the plane of the image). The fat pad of the foot is visibly thicker toward the back of the foot (bottom of the image), as you'd expect, because the toes occupy most of the front parts.
Palmar tendons and muscles; the common digital extensor muscle group, which clenches the toes. Not a small muscle, either!
Tendons of the digital flexor muscle exposed.
I removed the digital flexor muscle so the three major tendons can be seen (the two short side branches to the first and fifth toes have been cut off).
Forefoot with flexor tendons removed, revealing the channels that they coursed through.
Closeup of the glistening channels for the flexor tendons. They are lined with lubricative tissue to help the tendons glide through them. And the tendons do need to be able to glide- although elephant feet look very solid from the outside, and are to an extent, but we've done studies showing that they do move if you apply even a moderate load to them in a cadaver, and thus would move in life, too.
Let's finish off with some osteology, shall we? First the unhealthy Asian elephant, then the healthy African elephant; same front right feet, just the bones (from my CT scans):
Ouch, indeed!
Much better. And that's the end!
Wow, that was an elephantine post! I wanted to take yet another opportunity to share the amazing anatomy of elephant feet with you. You're all now qualified experts if you made it this far!
Chilling Out With "Mammoths: Ice Age Giants"
Posted in Frozen Mammals, Museums are Cool, tagged anatomy, elephants, evolution, fossilicious, museum on June 30, 2014| 11 Comments »
This is the mammoth image I remember, from a 1971 book, with no artist credited. It's actually not as good as I remember, by modern standards at least.
Mammoths and I go way back, not quite to the Ice Age but at least to the late 1970s with my family's visits to the University of Wisconsin Geology Museum, and Milwaukee Public Museum, to name two prominent places that inspired me. And one of my favourite science books had a colourful mammoth painting on the cover (above), an image that has stayed with me as awesomely evocative.
Stomach-Churning Rating: 3/10. But there's a butt below, but that's too late for you now. And there's poo and other scatological (attempts at) humour. Otherwise, bones and a baby mammothsicle.
Fast forward to the 2000's and I'm studying mammoths, along with their other kin amongst the Proboscidea (elephants and relatives). I even bumped into a frozen mammoth in Sapporo, Japan, nine years ago–
Yep. That's what it looks like. Nope, not the front end. That dark orifice is not the mouth. This is a mammoth that was found on Bolshoi Lyakhovsky island, in the east Siberian arctic (New Siberian Islands archipelago), in 2003. Just think of finding this and being all excited then realizing, "Jackpot! Wait… Oh man, I just found the ass. I've discovered a mammoth bunghole, dammit." Still, it's pretty damn amazing, as frozen Ice Age buttocks go. I'd love to find one. I would not be bummed.
found on Bolshoi Lyakhovskiy island in 2003
What I know now that I didn't realize as a kid, is that a mammoth is an elephant in all but name. Mammoths are more closely related to Asian elephants than either is to African elephants, and all of these elephants are members of the group Elephantidae. If we saw a smallish Columbian mammoth, we'd probably mostly look upon it as similar to a slightly hairy Asian elephant (but a scientist would be able to spot the distinctive traits that each has). Only woolly mammoths adopted the uber-hirsute state that we tend to think of as a "mammoth" trait. Think about it: a big animal would benefit most from a thick hairy insulation in an extremely cold habitat, and Columbian mammoths ranged further south than Woolly ones. No mammoths were radically different from living elephants, unless you count the dwarf ones. But as a kid, like most people do, I saw them as something else: an exotic monster of the past, eerily unlike anything today, and bigger too. And mammoths have the added mystique of the extinct.
Now I see mammoths as neither exotic nor that far in the past. Giant ground sloths, now those are still alien and exotic to me. I don't get them. I know elephants pretty well, and I can understand mammoths in their light and in light of mammoth fossils. Various mammoth species persisted as late as maybe 10,000 (for the Woolly and Columbian species; the latter seeming to vanish earlier) to <4000 (for isolated Siberian forms) years ago, into quasi-historic times. And only some mammoths got larger than African elephants (Loxodonta) do, such as Columbian mammoths (~10,000 kg or more maximal body mass; Loxodonta is closer to 7-10 tonnes at best).
Lately, coincidence has brought me new knowledge of – and even greater interest in – mammoths.
First, a fortunate last-minute visit to Waco, Texas's "Mammoth Site" (see my Flickr photo tour here) two weeks ago during a short visit to give a talk in that fine central Texan city.
Second, the subject of today's post: the Natural History Museum's new special exhibit "Mammoths: Ice Age Giants", which is open until 7 September. The exhibit was created by the Field Museum in Chicago, but the NHM has given it a special upgrade under the expert guidance of mammoth guru Prof. Adrian Lister of the NHM, who was very kind to give me a tour of the exhibit.
What follows is primarily a photo-blog post and review of the exhibit, but with some thoughts and facts and anecdotes woven through it. Dark setting, glass cases, caffeination, crowds, and mobile phone camera rather than nice SLR in hand means that the quality isn't great in my images– but all the more reason to go see the exhibit yourself! All images can be clicked to em-mammoth them.
On entry, one views a mammoth skeleton with a timelapse video backdrop that shows how the landscape (somewhere in USA) has changed since ~10,000 BCE.
The first part of the exhibit does a nice job of introducing key species of Proboscidea (elephants and their closest extinct relatives), with a phylogeny and timescale to put them into context, starting with the earliest forms:
from species like the tapir-sized Moeritherium…
Skull of Moeritherium, reconstructed. Not that different from an early sirenian (seacow) in some ways, and general shape, whereas still quite a long way from a modern elephant in form– but the hints of tusks and trunk are already there.
…To the early elephantiform Phiomia, here shown as a smallish animal but I'm told it actually got quite large. And continuing with giant terrestrial taxa…
I was awed by this reconstruction of the huge early elephantiform-relative Deinotherium, with the short, swollen trunk and downturned tusks– so bizarre!
Looking down onto the roof of the mouth of an NHM specimen of Deinotherium. Big, sharper-edged, almost rhino-like teeth; far from the single mega-molars of modern elephants.
The lower jaw (top) and fairly straight tusk (bottom) of the widespread, early elephantiform Gomphotherium.
The big "shovel-tusked" elephantiform Amebelodon. This was one of the earliest stem elephants I learned of as a kid; the odd tusks still stir wonder in me.
Amebelodon lower jaw, sans shovel tusks. Extended chin looks like some sort of childrens' fun-slide. To me, anyway.
Next, there are some fun interactive displays of elephant biomechanics!
How would a mammoth hold up its head? This lever demonstration shows how a nuchal ligament helps. Tension on the nuchal ligament is a force that acts with a large lever (represented by the big neural spines on the vertebrae around the shoulders, forming the mammoths' "hump" there), creating a large moment (i.e. torque; rotational force) that holds the head aloft.
I love this robotic elephant trunk demonstration. It captures some of the weirdness of having a muscular hydrostat attached to your lip and nostrils. Not so easy for a human to control!
But forget the myths about elephants having 40,000 to 150,000 muscles in their trunk. They have three muscle layers: a circumferential one, an oblique one and a longitudinal one. Like any muscles, especially ones this large, the layers each consist of many muscle fibres. That's where the 40-150k myth comes from, but muscle fibres (cells) are at a more microscopic level than whole muscles (organs). Elephants do have excellent control of their trunks, but it's not magical. It's just different.
Then we come to the centrepiece of the exhibit, the ~42,000 year old Woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) baby "Lyuba", which the NHM added to the original exhibit in this new version, as a star attraction — and a big win. Adrian Lister related to me how he'd never seen Lyuba in person before (access to it was tightly guarded for years). So when the NHM received the crate and held a press event to open it and reveal Lyuba, a journalist asked Adrian to act excited, to which he responded something like, "I don't need to act! I'm very excited!" I would be, too! Full story on Lyuba's arrival, by NHM site here. A key paper on Lyuba by Fisher et al. is here.
Studies of tooth growth in Lyuba reveal her gestation period (like living elephants, ~22 months), season of birth (early spring), and age at death (~1 month), among other information.
Here we can see the right ear, which was gnawed off along with the tail by dogs of the reindeer herders that found and retrieved Lyuba in 2006. Regardless, there's loads of anatomy preserved!
A hump of juvenile "brown fat" sits atop the head and neck of Lyuba. This probably was metabolized during growth to warm the baby; brown fat is packed with mitochondria and thereby conducts what is called "non-shivering thermogenesis". Furthermore, Lyuba has very strange flanges on the trunk (also visible in 1 other frozen mammoth specimen, but here preserved very clearly! What were they used for?). More details are visible postcranially…
The body was naturally "freeze-dried", with the addition of later rounds of soaking in formalin and ethanol, leaving the body dessicated and stiff, permanently stuck in a lifelike pose as seen below:
Whole view from an exhibit panel (you cannot photograph the specimen but these are fair game!). Here we see hair on the right forearm and remnant of the ear, and the labia and nipples showing it is a female mammoth are also preserved. The head-hump is lost during growth, and the shoulder changes to change the Asian elephant-like convex curvature of the back into the characteristic humped-shoulder form of a mammoth. But ontogeny still reveals the evolutionary connection of Elephas and Mammuthus.
Lyuba and scientists studying her, which also shows how rigid the carcass is; one can almost stand it up. Inside the digestive tract, researchers found chewed up plant material that was probably dung eaten by the baby to gain vital bacterial digestive flora, and Lyuba had plenty of body fat and ingested milk, indicating that she did not starve to death. Rather, vivianite in the respiratory tract indicates drowning as the cause of her demise. Perfusion of the body by these vivianites may have helped to preserve the body.
Answering a question the public may be wondering about: is the hype about cloning a mammoth very soon true? Nope. Well addressed, including what to me is the urgent question: would cloning a mammoth be ethical?
The fourth part of the exhibit takes on a largely North American focus to first illustrate what mammoths were like biologically, and second to wow the visitor with some huge beasts in full body, full scale glory, as we shall see!
Mammoth hair! These samples and recent molecular studies show that mammoths were not ginger-coloured as we long thought, but rather the ginger color comes as the dark grey-brown-black colour fades postmortem, as a preservational artefact (story here). I didn't know that; cool.
Mammoth chow! I liked this addition to the exhibit. This brought mammoth ecology closer to home for me.
Mammoth poop!
After the biology explanations, let there be megafauna!
Mammoth skull! A nice one, too.
Top predators of Ice Age North America: Arctodus (short-faced bear– does the short face mean they were happy, unlike a long face? Sorry but they never are shown as very happy, unless it is the joy of whupass) and Homotherium (the other sabre-toothed cat; not the longer-toothed Smilodon).
Skulls of North American (mega)fauna: left to right, top to bottom: horse, short-faced bear, giant ground sloth, then camel, sabretooth cat, rabbit, direwolf (viva Ned Stark!), and pronghorn antelope.
Mastodon (Mammut americanum) skeleton!
Mammoths (and perhaps mastodons, etc.) seem to have been wiped out by a combination of climate change and habitat fragmentation, combined with what this item symbolizes: human hunting. This beautiful piece is the main part of an atlatl, or javelin-hurling lever. It would have given Ice Age hunters the extra power they'd need to penetrate mammoth hide and cause mortal injuries. It is also a great tie-in to my recent post on the British Museum's odd-animals-in-art.
Finally, the exhibit surveys the kinds of mammoths that existed- there is a huge reconstruction of a Columbian mammoth near the mastodon (above), then smaller kinds and discussions of dwarfism, which is another strength of NHM mammoth research:
Woolly mammoth lower jaw (right) and its likely descendant, the pygmy mammoth of the Californian coastline, Mammuthus exilis.
The world's smallest mammoth (left), molar tooth compared with that of its much larger ancestor Palaeoloxodon. The status of Mammuthus creticus as a dwarf mammoth from Crete was cemented by Victoria Herridge and colleagues, including Adrian Lister at the NHM.
Pygmy mammoth reconstruction. Shorter than me. I want one!
In the end, from all that glorious proboscidean diversity we were left with just 2 or 3 species of elephantids today (depending on your species concepts; it's probably worth calling the African forest elephant its own species, Loxodonta cyclotis). The exhibit closes with a consideration of their conservation and fate. Ironically, this elephant skull could not be mounted with its tusks on display, because that would be commercializing ivory usage– even though the whole point of the exhibit's denouement is to explain why elephants need protection!
Reactions to the exhibit: the photos tell the tale. It's undeniably great, in terms of showing off the coolness of mammoths, other proboscideans and Ice Age beasties, to the general public. I felt like the factual content and learning potential was good. It didn't feel at all like pandering to the lowest common denominator like some other exhibits I've seen (cough, Dino Jaws, cough). I loved the reconstructions, which were top quality in my opinion. I could have done with some more real skeletons, yet more realistically the exhibit hall was already large and full of cool stuff. But give me a break: Lyuba. This trumps everything. Going to see a real friggin' frozen mammoth baby buries the needle of the awesomeness meter on the far right. That's pretty much all I need to say. The spectacle was a spectacle.
This exhibit shows a lot of work, a lot of thought, and a personalized NHM touch that reflects the actual research (even very recent work!) that NHM staff like Prof. Lister are doing with collaborators around the globe. What more could we want, a herd of cloned mammoth babies frolicking around and tickling guests with their flanged trunks? Don't hold your breath.
You've got just over 2 months to see the exhibit. Don't come complaining on September 8 "BBBBBbbbut I didn't know, I didn't think it would be that cool! I just thought there'd be a guy in a Snuffleupagus suit signing autographs!" You have a duty as a Freezerino to go bask in the frozen glory of these Ice Age critters. There may be an exam at the end. 🙂
Is the exhibit kid-friendly? More or less. The text is more targeted at teenager-level or so, but the visual impact is powerful without it. I'd warn a sensitive child about the withered baby mammoth body before showing it to them, so they aren't caught off guard and scarred by the experience. I saw plenty of kids in the exhibit and they all seemed happy. Parents may want to linger longer and absorb all the interesting information, whereas kids may blitz through or goof around, so plan accordingly if you're inbound with sprogs.
You know what I was eyeing up in the gift shop…
Aside: The frozen mammoths get me wondering- what else does the Siberian (or extreme northern Canadian/Scandinavian) permafrost conceal? There are a lot of awesome Ice Age megafauna I'd cut my left XXXXX off to study quasi-intact… think about how amazing it would be to find a giant ground sloth (not bloody likely), sabretooth cat, or other species. There's a lot of north up north. A lot of space and ice. A lot could happen. And climate change will make discoveries like this more likely, while the melting (and humanity) lasts…
Wool we ever find the Lyuba of woolly rhinos (Coelodonta)? Cast of a mummified woolly rhino from the NHM's entry hall. More of these finds are likely, I'd say.
Clean water matters. Another conservation/environmental policy success story. from old.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comm… https://t.co/1PESBo5eKD 28 minutes ago
RT @GeneticCuckoo: I'm currently traveling to a cattle conference and this diagram made me laugh do hard. Seriously, who is thinking about… 51 minutes ago
RT @BlythAJ: Alas poor echidnas. Victims of western scientific ignorance and really bad nose jobs. 53 minutes ago
Biomechanists included! twitter.com/andieward/stat… 6 hours ago
RT @SavannahSciArt: I'm 3D printing some bat skulls for an exhibit for @SESantanaM and the @burkemuseum, and I think they just found the ug… 1 day ago
Follow @johnrhutchinson

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


A 2-minute walk to Patong Beach, Break Point Hotel offers cheap & comfortable accommodation right in the heart of Patong beach with air conditioning, hot shower, free Wi-Fi throughout the property. Break Point Hotel is a great base from which to explore this vibrant city. From here, guests can enjoy easy access to all that the lively city has to offer.
Only a 5-minute walk the vibrant nightlife of popular Bangla Road and various entertainment options. Jungceylon Shopping Mall is a 15-minute walk away. Phuket International Airport can be reached within a 45-minute drive from the residence.
Our hotel comprising of 11 clean, comfortable and well equipped rooms in an excellent location. Simply furnished rooms have an air conditioning , balcony/terrace, a cable TV, a wardrobe, a fridge, a desk, and a safety box. En suite bathrooms are fitted with hot shower facilities. Free Wi-Fi in all rooms, Wi-Fi in public areas, car park, & daily room cleaning service. We offer low cost hotel rooms as well as a reasonable pricing restaurant with original Thai and Western cuisines.
Therefore, Break Point Hotel is an ideal place to stay for budget travelers seeking reasonable price, convenint, right in the heart of Patong beach.
Cheapest beers in Patong !
opens 12:00 p.m. - 22:00 p.m. everyday.


BEST BARGAIN IN VILLAGE WALK! CLEAN AND READY TO MOVE In!! Fantastic opportunity to live the Florida lifestyle in this North Naples gated community of Village Walk. DiVosta's popular "Capri" floor plan has 2 bedrooms, open den area, 2 bathrooms, attached 2 car garage and open floor plan. Home has a den area off the screened patio with built in shelves providing extra interior space. Main living areas have tile. Roof is brand new! Community offers 2 community pools, tennis, bocce ball, fitness gym, library, community room, and restaurant. Location in North Naples can't be beat - close to Vanderbilt Beach, Mercato shopping and dining destination, and easy drive to airport. Call today for your private showing!


At the Bluefin Event from Toy Fair 2017, we got our first in-hand look at the newest upcoming WWE S.H. Figuarts. Those include Kane and The Undertaker. We've previously seen The Rock, Stone Cold and Triple H.
At Tamashii Nations 2016, two new S.H. Figuarts WWE Figures were revealed. Tamashii Nations unveiled their upcoming 1990's Attitude Era versions of The Undertaker and Vince McMahon. No details are available at this time. We'll update when more photos and info becomes available.
The images come courtesy of Hobby Maniax and Dengeki Hobby. Check them out after the jump.
Also on display by McFarlane at Toy Fair 2014 was their previously announced WWE Undertaker Resin Statue. They also had a card their announcign their next three statues. They will be Randy "Macho Man' Savage, Stone Cold Steve Austin and Triple H.


If Obama has been so heavy-handed in dealing with Israel up until now, while Israel still ostensibly maintains the ability to cripple Iran's nuclear development, just imagine the concessions he'll demand from Israel as the price of American action when he alone holds Israel's security in his hands.
Speculation simmers as to how and when Israel may launch a preemptive attack against Iran's nuclear-genocide facilities. But as Iran races toward nuclear capability, a couple of things are becoming clear: first, whatever else Israel may have up its resourceful sleeve, the window in which Israel by itself is capable of inflicting serious damage in conventional air strikes is closing fast; and second, once that window closes, relying on a second-term Obama administration to take out Iranian nukes would be a grave mistake for Israel.
President Obama's administration strongly opposes an Israeli strike, expressing more alarm at the prospect of Israeli military action than at the prospect of nuclear jihad. To help persuade Israel to hold back, Obama has stated that he will not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons (though nuclear capability in the hands of terror-supporting ayatollahs seems OK with him), that he "has Israel's back," and that "no options are off the table," suggesting that the U.S. will handle the situation militarily when the time comes.
Israel should feel no reassurance form such vague promises.
Impressed? Consider that those statements were from 2009. Even when, with great fanfare, Obama finally imposed some economic sanctions, he simultaneously watered them down by dispensing waivers to Iran's major trading partners. In fact, U.S. government data shows that American exports to Iran increased by 33% this year.
Obama has no problem making repeated threats; it's the carrying out of the threats that eludes him. And it's only the perceived willingness to carry out a threat that gives any threat credibility. There is something very wrong when Iranian threats to "wipe Israel off the map" are more credible than the threats of an American president to eliminate that possibility.
Iranian centrifuges still spin, unhindered by Obama's words. The time for "dire consequences" and "crippling actions" never comes.
Second, when it comes to foreign policy, Obama never takes on anything hard. He might pull the rug out from under allies like the Czechs and Poles, and ostentatiously create "daylight" between America and embattled Israel, yet he caves before America's adversaries, marching to every one of Vladimir Putin's orders to reduce American forces or not build missile defenses — and is caught over an open microphone secretly promising the Russians more post-election concessions. He is paralyzed in the face of Chinese regional belligerence; he stands by as the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda, and Iranian proxies seize power and wreak havoc all over the Middle East.
Is there another recent administration that could have championed "leading from behind"? That would be following the Europeans — the Europeans! — in sanctioning Iran? That after a year of massacres by Syrian "reformer" Bashar al-Assad, would still not have any semblance of a policy? That, as the Mideast boils, would still be voting "present"?
Sure, Obama can take charge — but only against imagined "enemies." He blames recent Mideast embassy sieges on some unseen video, chastising American voices of intolerance — but not condemning the role of radical Islam. He publicly scolds Israel for building homes in its own capital but is silent in the face of Palestinian rockets, terror, and incitement. He mocks his domestic political opponents but won't dare offend America's opponents.
Obama recoils from real confrontation. Rather than facing threats directly, he prefers political spin to explain away the need to act — note the shifting excuses for the Benghazi fiasco. Whatever he means by "having Israel's back," what are the chances that he would actually pre-emptively attack Iran, risking all kinds of retaliatory attacks against American targets?
Third, if Obama has been so heavy-handed in dealing with Israel up until now, while Israel still ostensibly maintains the ability to cripple Iran's nuclear development, what will he demand as the price of American action when he alone holds Israel's security in his hands?
We've seen how this administration is capable of pressuring Israel. PM Netanyahu didn't just wake up one day in 2009 and decide to freeze settlements, or suddenly come to believe in creating a new Palestinian state he had forever opposed. We don't know precisely what Obama held over his head to make Netanyahu take positions contrary to all he previously advocated and threaten his ability to maintain a governing coalition, but we have a pretty good idea what might have been included. Did Obama threaten to cut back Israel's access to security and intelligence information, or to share sensitive information about Israel with other countries? To curtail arms sales to Israel, or allow more advanced weaponry into the hands of Israel's enemies? To reduce America's diplomatic protection of Israel in forums such as the U.N. Security Council, or allow international boycotts of Israel to proceed?
Might his new demands include wish-list items like Israeli retreat to the suicidal pre-1967 borders? Israel's signing the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, revealing its nuclear secrets and allowing international inspections? Re-dividing Jerusalem, thereby placing Judaism's holiest places under Muslim custody?
Why not? What's to stop him? Whatever Obama demands, Israel will be in no position to resist. If the alternative is the possible nuclear annihilation of the State of Israel, what option would any Israeli government have but to succumb?
Israel will wait a long time, and pay an extraordinary price, before President Obama ever rides to the rescue.
This entry was posted in 2012 U.S. Presidential election, American Foreign Policy, American Middle East Policy, Israeli Politics and tagged 1967, Barack Obama, Bashar al-Assad, Iran, Israel, Middle East, Obama, Robin Williams, Settlement freeze, United States, Vladimir Putin. Bookmark the permalink.


text:
Carbios SA (COOSF) was Downgraded to a Hold Rating at Kepler Capital
Christine Brown- September 15, 2020, 11:07 PM EDT
Kepler Capital analyst Christian Faitz downgraded Carbios SA (COOSF) to Hold on September 14 and set a price target of EUR22.00. The company's shares closed last Tuesday at $36.62.
According to TipRanks.com, Faitz is a 1-star analyst with an average return of -2.8% and a 40.6% success rate. Faitz covers the Basic Materials sector, focusing on stocks such as Wacker Chemie AG, Clariant AG, and LANXESS.
Carbios SA has an analyst consensus of Hold, with a price target consensus of $26.05.
See today's analyst top recommended stocks >>
The company has a one-year high of $50.00 and a one-year low of $7.66. Currently, Carbios SA has an average volume of 2,888.
TipRanks has tracked 36,000 company insiders and found that a few of them are better than others when it comes to timing their transactions. See which 3 stocks are most likely to make moves following their insider activities.
Carbios SA specializes in developing industrial bio-process for the recycling of plastic waste and the production of the biopolymer. The company creates a new generation of fully biodegradable plastics with a controlled lifespan, a process enabling infinite biorecycling of plastic waste (PET) and a new biological pathway to produce biosourced polymers. It uses Biodegradation; Biorecycling and Bioproduction techniques.


2016 california building standards code... address adoption of international building code, 2015 international building codes free, International building code 2015 pdf, 2015 international existing building code, 2015 existing building code online, International fire code 2015 free, Ibc 2009 building code pdf, Ibc 2012 pdf free download, Ibc code book 2012 pdf, Af imt 624, Af form 642, …... As building code, accessibility, and ADA consultants, the Safranek Group provides consulting services in the areas of building code and accessibility compliance. Our expertise includes over 29 years of professional experience and numerous affiliated certifications from respected, nationally recognized organizations.
Property Maintenance Code (the "2015 IPMC"), the International Existing Building Code (the "2015 IEBC"), this publication (the "2016 Supplement"), and other standards referenced in 19 NYCRR Parts 1219 through 1227. shooting an elephant george orwell pdf That features time-examined safety concepts and the very latest business necessities in supplies design, the 2012 INTERNATIONAL BUILDING CODE® SOFT COVER mannequin supplies up-to-date, full notion into the legal guidelines surrounding the design and arrange of setting up methods.
IBC is run by the industry, for the industry. Six leading international bodies own IBC, representing both exhibitors and visitors. Their insights ensure that the annual convention is always relevant, comprehensive and timely. It is with their support that IBC remains the leading international forum for everyone involved in content creation, management and delivery. free file converter from doc to pdf architect 2 That features time-examined safety concepts and the very latest business necessities in supplies design, the 2012 INTERNATIONAL BUILDING CODE® SOFT COVER mannequin supplies up-to-date, full notion into the legal guidelines surrounding the design and arrange of setting up methods.
That features time-examined safety concepts and the very latest business necessities in supplies design, the 2012 INTERNATIONAL BUILDING CODE® SOFT COVER mannequin supplies up-to-date, full notion into the legal guidelines surrounding the design and arrange of setting up methods.


Is My Estate Plan Outdated?
Are you worried about being sued? Well, you should be. There are 18 million lawsuits in the United States each year. But that isn't the whole story. Have you heard of the "deep pocket" syndrome? The deep pocket syndrome is where the person who claims to have been harmed files suit against anyone who is even marginally connected with the incident. The list includes the shopper who spills the milk on the supermarket floor; the employee who fails to clean it up quickly; the supermarket that hires the employee; the designer of the "defective" shelf that holds the milk, and the manufacturer of the "defective" milk carton. This kind of lawsuit is brought on to ensure that the person with the money, or "deep pockets," is covered by the claim for damages. As you can see, this domino effect could lead to as many as 50 or 60 million people being sued each year. What can you do about it? Create what many consider to be the premiere asset protection entity, the Limited Liability Company, or LLC.
An LLC is one of the most popular estate tax and asset protection planning devices. An LLC is a form of business/investment entity not unlike the limited partnership (similar to the real estate or business operating limited partnerships) with which many are familiar. However, there is one important difference – all owners of an LLC, called members, are protected from liability caused by the LLC's business/investment activities. With a limited partnership, however, the general partner(s) are liable for partnership liabilities.
How Is an LLC Formed?
Managing Member Interest – You receive a managing member interest. Generally, you only receive 2% of the total LLC interests in the form of a managing member interest. That means you control all of the decision-making for the LLC's activities. We find that control is very important to our clients.
Member Interest – You receive the remaining 98% of the LLC in the form of a member interest. Member interests do not give the non-managing member any rights in LLC income or activities. While the managing members may not treat a non-managing member unfairly, a non-managing member essentially has no control or rights.
You are now the proud owner of your very own LLC. You are the 2% managing member and control the LLC. Now what happens? You will give your children some of your LLC interests. That means that the LLC has members other than yourself.
If you are successfully sued, the creditor receives a charging order. A charging order is a judgment against the member telling the LLC that any distributions of profit that would otherwise be made to the debtor member must instead be paid to the creditor. The creditor has no power to interfere in LLC matters. The charging order is a very hollow victory. Because the managing members decide if profit is to be distributed to the members, the managing members can withhold distributions from all members and the creditor receives nothing.
What Action Does the Creditor Take?
Obviously, the creditor does not just disappear, but because the charging order provides so little leverage, creditors frequently settle the claim for less than face value. Those who might consider filing an unjustified lawsuit may change their minds when they realize all they will receive is a hollow charging order.
What Happens to the Money in The LLC?
As managing member, you have complete control and access to the assets and income of the LLC. If you give your children 10% of the LLC, they are entitled to 10% of any distributions that you decide to make, but they cannot force you to make any distributions.
A properly designed and operated LLC is a formidable deterrent to unjustified lawsuits, and a significant negotiating advantage against a successful creditor. While an LLC should never be formed to defeat the interests of an existing creditor, the sooner you create your own LLC, the safer your family is from "deep pocket" syndrome.


The Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) released the Federal Government's 2016 Immigration Levels Plan on March 8, 2016.
The 2016 Plan is a 7.4% increase over the 2015 level plan for immigration. It emphasizes family reunification and humanitarian and compassionate processing over foreign workers. Canada is also aiming to reduce application processing times.
The Government of Canada has announced that it will undertake a coast-to-coast review of the Foreign Worker Program.
I am disappointed that the Government has not made more of an effort to include economic immigrants and foreign workers in the 2016 plan. In many ways the new policies are the same "old" ones. This current government is canceling what the previous government implemented just recently and reinstated many of the original rules.
A small bright spot is that the Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) will be revisited and hopefully redesigned to be more responsive to true business needs. Immigration Minister McCallum has acknowledged that the Foreign Worker Program (FWP) has swung from one end of the extreme (too lax) to the other (too stringent) as a knee jerk reaction to high profile scrutiny.
The LMIA review is a good sign that we have some action oriented leadership in Canadian immigration today. It's important to fix and readjust what isn't working in a program instead of taking the easy way out by eliminating it. The FWP has had its problems but it isn't beyond repair. If they do employer consultations, perhaps this will provide a reality check for any redesign considerations.
The Canadian economy doesn't operate as a completely closed employment bubble. Foreign workers provide flexibility, ingenuity and potential to meet Canada's needs now and into the future. In an ideal world, Canadian employers could rely exclusively on its own citizens to meet its labour needs. However, that isn't possible or realistic. Foreign workers will always exist and in Canada's case, this is often the first step onto the permanent resident pathway.
Temporary work permits facilitate what could be a mutual probationary period for potential immigrants to Canada. Both parties have a practical way to see how things work out before firming up the relationship – this is better than a money back guarantee.
This IRCC infographic provides a good snapshot of the Immigration Plan.


text:
Pray for our President and leaders. Pray for America .
American Minute with Bill Federer
"THE GREATEST REVOLUTION that has ever taken place IN THE WORLD'S HISTORY" -Reagan
38-year-old King George III ruled the largest empire that planet earth had ever seen.
The Declaration of Independence, approved JULY 4, 1776, listed the reasons why Americans declared their independence from the King:
"He has made judges dependent on his will alone…
He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies…
To subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution…
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us…
For imposing taxes on us without our consent…
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of trial by jury…
For…establishing…an arbitrary government…
For…altering fundamentally the forms of our governments…
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny…
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions…"
33-year-old Thomas Jefferson's original rough draft of the Declaration contained a line condemning slavery:
"He has waged cruel war against human nature itself…in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither…
suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce determining to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold."
A few delegates objected, and since the Declaration needed to pass unanimously and time was running short with the British invading New York, the line condemning slavery was unfortunately omitted.
John Hancock, the 39-year-old President of the Continental Congress, signed the Declaration first, reportedly saying "the price on my head has just doubled."
Next to sign was Secretary, Charles Thomson, age 47.
70-year-old Benjamin Franklin said:
"We must hang together or most assuredly we shall hang separately.
The Declaration referred to God:
"Laws of Nature and of NATURE'S GOD…
All Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their CREATOR with certain unalienable Rights…
Appealing to the SUPREME JUDGE OF THE WORLD for the rectitude of our intentions…"
Get the book America's God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotations
Many of the 56 signers sacrificed their prosperity for their posterity.
Of the Signers:
11 had their homes destroyed;
5 were hunted and captured;
17 served in the military; and
9 died during the war.
27-year-old George Walton signed, and at the Battle of Savannah was wounded and captured.
Signers Edward Rutledge, age 27, Thomas Heyward, Jr., age 30, and Arthur Middleton, age 34, were made prisoners at the Siege of Charleston.
38-year-old signer Thomas Nelson had his home used as British headquarters during the siege of Yorktown. Nelson reportedly offered five guineas to the first man to hit his house.
Signer Carter Braxton, age 40, lost his fortune during the war.
42-year-old signer Thomas McKean wrote that he was "hunted like a fox by the enemy, compelled to remove my family five times in three month."
46-year-old Richard Stockton signed and was dragged from his bed at night and jailed.
50-year-old signer Lewis Morris had his home taken and used as a barracks.
50-year-old signer Abraham Clark had two sons tortured and imprisoned on the British starving ship Jersey.
More Americans died on British starving ships than died in battle during the Revolution.
53-year-old signer John Witherspoon's son, James, was killed in the Battle of Germantown.
60-year-old signer Philip Livingston lost several properties to British occupation and died before the war ended.
63-year-old signer Francis Lewis had his wife imprisoned and treated so harshly, she died shortly after her release.
65-year-old signer John Hart had his home looted and had to remain in hiding, dying before the war ended.
41-year-old John Adams wrote to his wife of the Declaration:
"I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding generations, as the great anniversary Festival.
It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by SOLEMN ACTS OF DEVOTION TO GOD ALMIGHTY.
It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shews, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this time forward forever more."
Gustave de Beaumont, a contemporary of Alexis de Tocqueville, wrote in Marie ou L'Esclavage aux E'tas-Unis, 1835:
"I have seen a meeting of the Senate in Washington open with a prayer, and the anniversary festival of the Declaration of Independence consists, in the United States, of an entirely religious ceremony."
John Adams continued in his letter to his wife:
"You will think me transported with enthusiasm but I am not.
I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure, that it will cost us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States.
Yet through all the gloom I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory. I can see that the end is more than worth all the means.
And that Posterity will triumph in that Days Transaction, even although we should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not."
When 54-year-old Samuel Adams signed the Declaration, he said:
"We have this day restored THE SOVEREIGN to whom all men ought to be obedient. He reigns in heaven and from the rising to the setting of the sun, let His kingdom come."
34-year-old James Wilson signed the Declaration. He later signed the Constitution and was appointed to Supreme Court by George Washington. James Wilson stated in 1787:
"After a period of 6,000 years since creation, the United States exhibit to the world THE FIRST INSTANCE of a nation…assembling voluntarily…and deciding…that system of government under which they and their posterity should live."
Senator Daniel Webster stated in 1802:
"Miracles do not cluster, and what has HAPPENED ONCE IN 6,000 YEARS, may not happen again. Hold on to the Constitution, for if the American Constitution should fail, there will be anarchy throughout the world."
John Jay was President of the Continental Congress, 1778-1779, and later nominated by George Washington to be the First Chief Justice of Supreme Court. John Jay wrote in 1777:
"The Americans are THE FIRST PEOPLE whom Heaven has favored with an opportunity of…choosing the forms of government under which they should live. All other constitutions have derived their existence from violence or accidental circumstances."
America's God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotations
Yale President Ezra Stiles, 1788:
"All the forms of civil polity have been tried by mankind, except one: and that seems to have been reserved in Providence to be realized in America."
At the time of the Revolutionary War, nearly every other country on Earth was ruled by a king.
Dr. Pat Robertson wrote in America's Dates with Destiny, 1986:
"On September 17, 1787, the day our Constitution was signed, the absolute monarch Ch'ien Lung, emperor of the Manchu (or Ch'ing) Dynasty, reigned supreme over the people of China…Revolts were put down by ruthless military force.
In Japan the shogun (warriors) of the corrupt Tokugawa chamberlain Tanuma Okitsugu exercised corrupt and totalitarian authority over the Japanese.
In India, Warren Hastings, the British Governor of Bengal, had successfully defeated the influence of the fragmented Mogul dynasties that ruled India since 1600.
Catherine II was the enlightened despot of all the Russias.
Joseph II was the emperor of Austria, Bohemia and Hungary.
For almost half a century, Frederick the Great had ruled Prussia.
Louis XVI sat uneasily on his throne in France just years away from revolution, a bloody experiment in democracy, and the new tyranny of Napoleon Bonaparte.
A kind of a constitutional government had been created in the Netherlands in 1579 by the Protestant Union of Utrecht, but that constitution was really a loose federation of the northern provinces for a defense against Catholic Spain…
What was happening in America had no real precedent, even as far back as the city-states of Greece.
The only real precedent was established thousands of years before by the tribes of Israel in the covenant with God and with each other."
President Theodore Roosevelt stated in 1903:
"In NO other place and at NO other time has the experiment of government of the PEOPLE, by the PEOPLE, for the PEOPLE, been tried on so vast a scale as here in our own country."
President Calvin Coolidge stated in 1924:
"The history of government on this earth has been almost entirely…rule of force held in the HANDS OF A FEW. Under our Constitution, America committed itself to power in the HANDS OF THE PEOPLE."
America is a republic where THE PEOPLE get to rule themselves. If an American disrespects the flag, what that person is in effect saying is that they no longer want to be king. They want someone else to rule their life – which is the definition of slavery.
Ronald Reagan opened the Ashbrook Center, Ashland, Ohio, May 9, 1983:
"From their own harsh experience with intrusive, overbearing government, the Founding Fathers made a great breakthrough in political understanding:
They understood that it is the excesses of government, the will to power of one man over another, that has been a principle source of injustice and human suffering through the ages.
The Founding Fathers understood that only by MAKING GOVERNMENT THE SERVANT, not the master, only by positing SOVEREIGNTY in THE PEOPLE and not the state can we hope to protect freedom and see the political commonwealth prosper.
In 1776 the source of government excess was the crown's abuse of power and its attempt to suffocate the colonists with its overbearing demands. In our own day, the danger of too much state power has taken a subtler but no less dangerous form."
John Adams wrote in his notes on A Dissertation on Canon & Feudal Law, 1765:
"I always consider the settlement of America…as the opening of a grand scene and design in Providence for…the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth."
Franklin Roosevelt stated in 1939:
"Rulers…increase their power over the common men. The seamen they sent to find gold found instead the way of escape for the common man from those rulers…
What they found over the Western horizon was not the silk and jewels of Cathay…but MANKIND'S SECOND CHANCE – a chance to create a new world after he had almost spoiled an old one…
The Almighty seems purposefully to have withheld that SECOND CHANCE until the time when men would most need and appreciate liberty."
Ronald Reagan stated 1961:
"In this country of ours took place THE GREATEST REVOLUTION that has ever taken place IN THE WORLD'S HISTORY – Every other revolution simply exchanged one set of rulers for another…
Here for THE FIRST TIME in all the THOUSANDS OF YEARS of man's relation to man…the founding fathers established the idea that you and I had within ourselves the GOD-GIVEN RIGHT AND ABILITY to DETERMINE OUR OWN DESTINY."
British Edwardian writer G.K. Chesterton stated in "What is America":
"America is the ONLY NATION IN THE WORLD that is founded on creed. That creed is set forth…in the Declaration of Independence..
that all men are equal in their claim to justice, that governments exist to give them that justice…
It certainly does condemn…atheism, since it clearly names the CREATOR as the ultimate authority from whom these equal rights are derived."
Calvin Coolidge stated July 5, 1926:
"THE PRINCIPLES…which went into the Declaration of Independence… are found in… THE SERMONS… of the early colonial clergy…
They preached equality because they believed in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. They justified freedom by the text that we are all created in the Divine image."
Henry Cabot Lodge, who filled the role of the first Senate Majority Leader, warned the U.S. Senate in 1919:
"The United States is the world's best hope… Beware how you trifle with your marvelous inheritance… for if we stumble and fall, freedom and civilization everywhere will go down in ruin."
America's God and Country
Search AMERICAN MINUTE archives
Watch past FAITH IN HISTORY episodes for FREE
Bill Federer www.AmericanMinute.com
News from AmericanMinute.com
Invite Bill Federer to speak – large or small groups – email wjfederer@gmail.com or call 314-502-8924
Visit the American Minute archive
Click here to shop AMERICAN MINUTE store
Daily Reading at:
http://www.biblegateway.com/reading-plans/old-new-testament/today?version=NKJV
Receive American Minute on your Facebook wall, Twitter feed, or RSS reader.
Click here to make a donation. Thank you!
Invite Bill Federer to speak
wjfederer@gmail.com 314-502-8924
American Minute is a registered trademark. Permission is granted to forward. reprint or duplicate with acknowledgement to vwww.AmericanMinute.com
July 4, 2015 Education


Christmas season is here and everyone is busy planning how to spend an unforgettable holiday with their loved ones. The shopping frenzy has already begun and seems to always come earlier each year than before. The winter weather too is here and that means you will have to celebrate your Christmas indoors clad in warm, red clothes. Doesn't sound too exciting? Then try something new this season. Surprise your loved ones with tickets to visit scenic places in the world and give them the ultimate Christmas gift they will remember for the rest of their lives. If thinking of taking your family for a holiday, there is no better place to be in than Dubai.
Dubai is one of the seven emirates that make up the United Arabs Emirates. Known for its lucrative business ventures, Dubai is reliant on its oil deposits for income; at least that was the case a few years back. Now the port of Dubai is embracing tourism as its main source of income. With breathe taking architectural designs and a vast Arab culture, Dubai has made it in number seven among the world's most visited places. There are lots of places to see and things to do while in Dubai. This article looks at the top five places you must visit for the ultimate Dubai experience.
Dubai shopping festival is one of the must attend festival while in Dubai. The vast number of shopping malls and open air bazaar offer discounted prices on items that range from artefacts to ornaments and any other thing you could think of. Tourists flock the festivals to shop for items that serve as a reminder of the greatest place they ever visited in their life time.
Another must visit place, when on holidays in Dubai, is the Palm Jumeira Islands. These are manmade islands build in the shape of a palm, hence their name. The palm island project was the trending topic on the media with everyone wondering if it could be done. Well, Dubai is never short of surprises. Visit the Palm islands and experience first-hand the ingenuity of its people.
The wild Wadi parks and the Dubai Museum are a must visit places this Christmas holiday. Come close to the people's rich cultural heritage and fineness in art in the Dubai museum and later take a wild boat ride if you are a fan of water games at the Wild Wadi parks.
A photo shoot at the Dubai fountain can go a long way in keeping your Dubai memories alive. Also known as the choreography, this magnificent site lies on a 30 acres piece of land and was designed by the wet designs.
Finally, the ultimate experience in Dubai can never be complete without a visit to the Burj Khalifa. Opened in 2010, the Burj Khalifa is the tallest building in the entire world. The contraction began in 2004 and opened its doors to the public in 2010.
Mentioned above are just but a few of the scenic places Dubai has to offer. Its diverse rich culture and amazing people will definitely make your Christmas the best ever Christmas you ever had.
great information ʏou hаve right here on tthis post.
Ӏ am reeturning tο yyour blog fօr mlre ѕoon.
What is size of 81 Owen Daniels Jersey may have?