T. Rex - It's What's For Dinner

Fearsome dinosaur's closest relative found in barnyard.

Sequencing proteins from a 68 million-year-old leg bone from a T. rex, scientists have learned that what they were actually looking at — was a drumstick!

Comparing sequences of proteins with other animals it was discovered that the closest living relative to the T. rex was practically right under our noses all along, in the refrigerator aisle, and on dinner plates the world over, dressed in a variety of cunning disguises from coconut curry to cacciatore.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present the humble chicken.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

This revelation is amazing, amusing, and a little disappointing; rather like pulling back the curtain of the Great and Powerful Oz and finding a pudgy little man from Kansas. Still, this brings an answer to the great philosophical question;

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

It would be the egg, laid by an ancestor who was more reptilian than avian.

According to the UK Guardian, study of a 68 million-year-old leg bone of a T. rex, unearthed in 2003 in Montana by Dr. Mary Schweitzer, a paleontologist at North Carolina State University and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, revealed that it still had collagen fibers which could be analyzed. Collagen is a protein that allows bone to have flexibility and structure.

Scientists at Harvard University's Medical Center used advanced medical technology normally used for analyzing human cancers to study the T. rex bone collagen matrix. Seven different proteins were extracted, sequenced, and compared to other animals living today.

The scientists discovered that T. rex protein make-up is indistinguishable from a modern chicken's. Dr. Angela Milner, the associate keeper of paleontology at the Natural History Museum in London concurs, "This corroborates a huge body of evidence from the fossil records that demonstrates the birds are descended from meat-eating dinosaurs."

So, for all the veggies mad to defend the buttery chickens, think about this. If times were reversed, you would be running for your life from T. rex, who wouldn’t consider you anything but a tasty morsel it needed to survive – and it would dispense with the spicy Vindaloo.

And for those having visions of Jurassic Park, scientists assure that the recreation of living dinosaurs like T. rex remains thankfully in the realm of science fiction. As Dr. Angela Milner noted, "Cloning any organism needs its DNA which carries the instructions to make a copy. DNA is not a protein, it is not a very stable molecule and it has never been recovered from any organism more than 30,000 years old."

Protein sequencing and analysis ushers in a new and exciting chapter in palaeontology, rather than being limited to examining relative sizes and shapes of fossil bones. As computers, software, and medical technology advance, the ability to analyze and learn will increase. The book is far from closed on the mysteries of the past. There are surprises, theories to be overturned, and new things to be discovered.

Judging from another recent article, this one from the BBC, assuming you and T-rex had a confrontation, you wouldn’t have much of a chance escaping one either. In a computer modeled race amongst a predatory dinosaur, a human, an ostrich, and an emu, all bets were on the birds.

According to BBC News, the University of Manchester study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, shows T. rex had a top running speed of 18 mph. The fastest dinosaur was a small bipedal and carnivorous species. This animal, called Compsognathus, was about the size of a chicken, and could run at 40 mph. The only modern bird to equal this speed is the ostrich.

By comparison, an athlete in a 200 meter sprint can reach a top speed of 27 mph. T. rex’s speed is slightly quicker than the average professional soccer player. This would make the rest of us dinner.

As for the question of ‘What were they chasing after?’ Dr. Bill Sellers says, “We’re now doing some work on Hadrosaurus which is assumed to be one of the things that T. rex would prey upon because there have been fossils found with bite marks on their backs. What we find is that we’re getting really quite high speeds for these animals as well, which makes perfect sense. If you’re a fast predator, you’re probably chasing fast prey that you want to catch.”

The computer was fed information from fossil records concerning the sizes and shapes of different animals and rendered their movements accordingly, free from any preconceptions scientists might have had of how they might run and how fast. Using this data, the computer made decisions on muscle movements. The results were somewhat surprising to the scientists who noted that T. rex ran like neither a human, nor like an ostrich. As the technology used to render such information is still in its infancy, more information about these ancient animals will be revealed.

Computers do not currently have the capacity to explore what the scientists want to do with their data. Just making the dinosaurs model to learn to walk was a big feat. Their next goal is to be able to render full dinosaur movement in 3-D.

All of this is quite a paradigm shift. Either you are going to start feeling quite superior to the bland chicken breasts in your refrigerator, or you're going to begin having nightmares of them chasing you. Your therapist should be amused.

Modern science is amazing. So, now we know the answer to that ancient question philosophers have scratched their domed heads about, and courtesans contemplated whilst staring at the ceiling. The dinosaur egg came first, from whence emerged the genetic permutation that became the barnyard chicken.

Now that we’ve put that old nut away, we can turn our minds to other mind-twisting philosophical questions that people have pondered for millennia, such as…

How many angels can fit on the head of a pin?

Move Over Metrosexuals, the Vegansexual Is Here!

...And if you ate meat, you ain't gettin' any.

It’s not enough to be a vegetarian these days; you have to be a vegan with all the attendant headaches of ‘cruelty free’ accouterments and baggage. Even this is not enough though, as in their moral pique, they often feel the need to convert innocent meat eaters who may cross their paths at dinner time.

This brings to mind a woman, the wife of an old school friend of mine, whose vegan zealotry over the years has been a something of a curiosity; sometimes amusing, sometimes infuriating, always astounding. A friend told a story of being button-holed by her at a restaurant gathering. People were free to order what they liked. This is a fellow who will eat from any cuisine in the world, as long as it is some variation on steak and potatoes. Steak and rice will do. He is a sweet, salt-of-the-earth kind of person, so he was taken by surprise. Staring him down with a basilisk eye, the rabid vegan hissed,

“Meat is murder!”

Since our mutual friend was strong-armed into converting to veganism as terms of his marriage, this friend of beneficent temperament sighed and ruminated that he would
prefer to remain a bachelor forever rather than marry such a food fascist. She later included a PETA flier in his Christmas card. He muttered to me he had been sorely tempted to return the favor with a recipe for beef bourguignon, but restrained himself.

There is a new dimension in eco-terror.

Enter the ‘Vegansexuals’. A recent article in the UK paper The Daily Mail described this new phenomenon where vegans claim an ethos and bio-ecosystem of such unspeakable purity that it would nauseate them to have sex with meat eaters. According to the Daily Mail, "The co-director of the New Zealand Center for Human and Animal Studies at Canterbury University, Annie Potts, said she coined the term after doing research on the lives of ‘cruelty-free consumers’."

“'Cruelty-Free Consumption in New Zealand: A National Report on the Perspectives and Experiences of Vegetarians and other Ethical Consumers’ asked 157 people nationwide about everything from battery chickens to sexual preferences."

Was that ‘buttery chickens’, you said? You’re making my mouth water.

"Many female respondents described being attracted to people who ate meat, but said they did not want to have sex with meat eaters because their bodies were made up of the animal carcasses… One vegan respondent said: 'I believe we are what we consume, so I really struggle with non-vegans when it comes to sexual contact.'"

I applaud your stoicism. That means more men for me, and my feline kind.

The Daily Mail continues, “Another vegan said she found non-vegans attractive, but would not want to be physically close to them.” Yet another opined, “I would not want to be intimate with someone whose body is literally made up of animals who have died for their sustenance.”

I can understand your feelings completely. Now, please step aside.

You want a man who is more like… a rutabaga? You are what you eat, you know. How enticing, how very nouveau… men who are made up of mulched soy protein and carrot shreds. Yum yum. As for me, I prefer my leather black, my men made of beef, and my meat bloody.

Red meat is healthy. It is rich in heme-iron, a form of iron that is not found in vegetable sources like lentils and spinach, which are more difficult to absorb anyway and not as biologically compatible. Heme is as in hemoglobin, as in blood. Yours and your dinner’s. Which bring up another gripe. If you are a vegan, and willing to traumatize a nice guy by telling him his body is made up of corpses so you would not consider him as a lover, then you should not keep a cat.

Be consistent here. A cat is a meat eating beasty, a predator; a carnivore. It has no qualms about eating meat, and no qualms about killing its meat. It actually thoroughly enjoys it. It will practice its meat killing moves for sheer joy, with whatever is at hand – including your hand.

No, to be perfectly vegan-aligned, one should own a chicken. Give it a castle, for Pete’s sake. Or a bunny. Yes, a rabbit’s the thing. It is very boring compared to a cat, I agree; not nearly so sassy and clever, but then rabbits are not meat eaters. They are pure eco- vegans, the moral pinnacle to be aspired to. They are not made up of dead carcasses as those gorgeous cats are. Nibbling on sprouts, carrot shreds, and pellets made of unmentionable vegetable hash are all in a day’s work for them.

I almost gagged when I saw one of the photos accompanying this article depicting an actress of recent memory, who is now best known for her adherence to and promotion of raw vegan-eco-dogma, wearing a T-shirt — with a leopard on it. Sheez Alicia! Way to get it wrong! Buy a vowel, gurl! A leopard eats meat! It kills animals and eats them.

It would have no moral qualms whatsoever about dropping down on you from above, biting into your jugular until you suffocated, dragging you with its muscles made of carcasses up into said tree and eating you. It would eat you with great gusto - meat, organs and marrow - and with less prejudice than these vegansexuals do tucking into someone’s entrails who eats a different diet from them. Why that leopard wouldn't even think of discriminating against you because you are made up of --

raw vegetables and pureed sunflower seeds.

So with that in mind, and considering that PETA has been telling women what to wear for years, leave the sporting of leopards and their spots to women more like them; women who enjoy a good piece of rare meat with ruby juices running, as well as men made up of beefsteak… not almond meal.

I would say that raw vegan food is ‘for the birds’, but I cannot. After lunching at one such LA mecca, and feeling distinctly ill-fed, I tried to toss some pieces of raw pressed seed bread to some sparrows that landed nearby. The little buggers pounced, picked it up in their mouths, masticated a bit with a curious look on their faces, and spat it out!

So I can attest raw food veganism being ‘not even for the birds’, at least not where I went. The poor kids in there are all eco-communists, seeing visions from lack of food (the stuff is prohibitively expensive) and lack of zinc which is known to cause effects experienced as 'spiritual visions' or 'heightened spirituality'; which is part of the reason the Catholic church figured out it was a great idea to make people fast during the lead-up to different holy days. Fasting and no meat leads to a loss of zinc. People see visions, their brains hallucinate, which interpreted as 'spiritual experience' vindicates a church's repression over rational thought of its people.

Red meat is also a source of saturated fats, especially if grass-fed beef, which are important for mood stability and fat stability in your body. Think butter here, not vegetable oil. Certainly not soy oil. Saturated fat protects the fats of your brain from rancidity. Polyunsaturated fats are not only good for creating free-radicals and turning rancid, they do this in your brain! Your brain is made up of fats.

The myelin sheaths of your nerves are made of fats protecting them as the plastic does on copper wires. Interestingly, vegetable oils consumed by most Americans in abundance, and by vegans exclusively, lead to inflammation and make it difficult for the brain to make use of the all-important mood fats Omega 3 fatty acids, which are rich in fish oils (flax oil does not compare) and is scarce in the diet without supplementation.

Of course fishes would have to die here, and a vegan would be opposed to that, which just goes to show that the vegan diet is terrible for your brain. Not only will one be heading toward mood disorders, but one obviously loses any sense one ever had to begin with.

Bodies made up of dead carcasses? Come on.

And while we’re on the subject of ‘cruelty free’, let us consider the importance of red meat, its high heme-iron, bio-available amino acids and zinc to humans. It is a food that is excellent for women, but also excellent, and I would say important, for men. Women tend to cook for and feed their men. What you feed them affects their health. Would you put your mad veganism ahead of your man’s health?

Obviously, many vegans would. Worse yet, they would discount a perfectly delectable specimen – because he was a meat eater? You lasses are lucky I am off the market. This would be too much fun. I would be snapping up disdained carnivorous dumplings left and right.

Man – chicken – Man – chicken – Man – Chicken... Chicken dies.

Early on, I wrote an article about the dangers of testosterone poisoning leading to imbalance and violence as in the case of athletes who abuse or even kill their women. There is a flip side to this story. Adequate testosterone is important for a man’s health. It is important in physiological amounts for a woman too, but it is important that men are not below healthy levels due to poor nutrition, especially nutrition driven by pathological eco-extremism.

I live in California where I get to see vegan men first hand. I can tell them at a glance; skinny and under-muscled, with backsides so paltry from lack of healthy muscle mass from inadequate intake of amino acids that their pants look like they are empty. These are a vegan girl’s dream, these men with too many estrogens from processed soy, and not enough testosterone from red meats, with temperaments that are often whiny, cranky, and generally neurasthenic. They remind me of older men in andropause, who are also dipping in physiological levels of testosterone. So, when one talks about ‘cruelty free’, ask yourself, "Cruelty free to whom?"

The article in The Daily Mail also featured a photo of the actress Gwyneth Paltrow and her husband Chris. They are held up as gold-standard examples of eco-ethos-vegans, eschewing meat, dairy, and fish completely. While Gwynnie looked coolly elegant and thin, God bless her; her husband struck me as ….

Needing a good steak.

Catfight! Hemingway's Beloved Cats in Peril

A home without a cat, and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered cat, may be a perfect house, but how can it prove its title? — Mark Twain

Ernest Hemingway was a fine writer. He was an even finer man. How do I know this? He appreciated cats. More than this, he really adored them. They inspired him and made him laugh. Cats are the ideal companions for a writer. They lounge about attractively and do not demand to be taken for walks. Even better, they can use the bathroom without dragging you out to share the experience.

To say that you love cats is to declare yourself to possess a capacity and amusement for eccentricity and individuality; that you appreciate something just for "being", rather than what it "does". This recalls a philosophical spat I had years ago with a big Swede who argued rudely that cats were useless, but his dog - oh, his dog had function and purpose. This really flummoxed me until I went home that night and was distracted by the preternatural beauty of my Siamese cat, and an epiphany hit me. She didn't have to "do" anything.

Her "being" was enough to justify her existence. She brought joy and magic to my life that haunts me to this day. Beauty is its own excuse for being, and cats are beauty and grace incarnate. They are primal and unfathomable. We can only aspire to be as cool as cats, which is why people either love them or are helplessly envious of them and profess to hate them, or work to undermine their freedom.

It was Hemingway’s will to leave his home as a museum to the public and to ensure the domestic tranquility of cats at this latter day temple of Bast for ever more. Now I like Hemingway well enough as a writer and I wouldn’t mind touring his estate, but the lure of communing with 47 cats who essentially own the place and are its living soul and sense of humor would make his home an irresistible tourist haven if I ever visited Key West. They’d have to kick me out at closing time.

It must have been an unnaturally overcast day, or perhaps the eye of newt porridge did not sit well, when two socialist activists, former members of the Florida Keys Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals became haunted by phantasms that made their gallbladders sick. Before their eyes were elegant creatures, dilettantes in fur yawning, meditating, slinking through the grass or reveling in the refrigerator cool of the master bathroom tiles of a great American writer… Doing. Nothing.

It made the blood boil.

Here they were, God/dess’s aristocrats, muses since the days men and women first lay eyes upon their ancient predecessors slinking through the reeds of the Nile until they deigned to grace humanity’s homes and granaries with their timeless mystery and allure. In their sensuous beauty and lives of ease, these modern day temple cats embodied everything that makes a socialist get a bad case of the fits. But these were just cats they assured themselves, just animals. "We can do something about them. We can make ourselves feel better and more in control - by enforcing control over them - by mobilizing the iron wheels of government bureaucracy!"

"Those cats have seen their day! No more will they taunt us with their nonchalance and aristocratic demeanor. They will bow to the iron will of the collective’s commissar; be humbled, yoked and forced to be called ‘performing animals’, proper ‘working animals’ - or they should not be there at all!"

And with that they hopped on their brooms and reported the Hemingway museum to the USDA and those charged with applying the 1996 Animal Welfare Act. The fur has been flying ever since.

This is a travesty. Legislating against the freedom of domestic cats? Against the stated will of a lion of American literature? In disregard of people who have lovingly tended them and the estate for years? In disregard for the many thousands of people who travel to see this historic landmark partly because of the living spirit and wit of an artist embodied in the keeping of these cats? This must not be.

It is downright un-American, which last time I checked was about freedom and the spirit of independence, not socialism or any form of totalitarian imposition on these values by bitter pills. At least it shouldn’t be. If it is, people need to wake up and vote with their dollars and at the ballet box.

But let us return for a moment to the idea of domestic cats as "performing animals." Hemingway himself might have laughed at this, before going after those bat-winged harpies with a harpoon. I stand here humbly in his stead, with a lampoon.

When I was about six or seven years old I had the idea to hold a circus our backyard and charge admission, of course. In between gymnastic feats performed by myself and neighborhood friends, I would amaze and delight the audiences with lion-taming stunts starring our beautiful, saintly cat Tiger, a marbled tabby with dark auburn markings contrasting with bright white fur and huge green eyes.

He really preferred the calmer company of adults, but as his karma had it, he landed amongst a slew of children who absolutely adored him, but subjected him to the occasional indignities of modeling doll clothes in baby carriages… and performing in circuses.

I stripped down the leaves from a branch of a willow wand, long and flexible, and ran with it through the summer grass as Tiger flew after it, leaping gracefully over gardening buckets I had set up. I think we had one performance. We made enough money for chocolate all around, which was pretty good.

Still, this was not a "performing animal". This was a domestic Bodhisattva.

According to a recent article in the Los Angeles Times, “In October 2003, a USDA inspector posing as a tourist surveyed the grounds and later ordered the museum staff to get a license or face $10,000 in daily fines.” $10,000 a day adds up to a lot of cat food and veterinary maintenance from the Hemingway museum’s funds, or filet mignon and entertainment for politicians, depending on how you look at it.

“Since then, a veterinarian from the USDA has made repeated inspections of the property, recommending increasingly restrictive measures each time,” said the museum’s chief executive, Michael Morawski. The Times continues, “Angled screens have been installed atop the wall to prevent the cats’ jumping over. A misting system is intended to dissuade any critters from loitering close to the exits."

"But he and the cats’ caregivers balked at government requirements that the museum prevent all escapes by installing an electrified wire atop the wall and 12- to 15 foot high mesh back stopping, like that used along driving ranges and ball fields.” This is bizarre. People aren’t forced to do this with man-mauling bull mastiffs!

“Our National Historical Site designation precludes us from doing anything like that.” Morawski said. “It became contentious to the point where they said, if you can’t do these things, you’ll have to round them up and put them in cages.’” In cages? Are we dealing with lions or cattle here?

These people claim to have the cats’ best interest at heart... and if you believe that, there will be no new taxes. Ever. According to the article in the Times, “Suspiciously, the only known off-site fatality involved a cat run over after being lured out by the activists.” Oh.

This news is not only sad, it is patently disturbing, though not surprising. For socialists, truth is a relative squishy thing, a matter of semantics. Language is a tool to obscure and twist rather than reveal the truth, and the ends always justify the means. Think about that little cat lured and deceived and crushed beneath the wheels of a car, for a ‘greater cause’. Think about it at election time when a socialist tries to lure and deceive you in order to part you from what they perceive as the ‘pampered lair you don’t deserve’.

One should be wary of people who would restrain the freedom of domestic cats in their own abode on a protected site in the name of the common good, or the good of these creatures whose freedom and happiness they would destroy; for such people would legislate against your freedoms and leisure as well if it piqued them. And I assure you it will. With such people, it always does.

Socialism in all forms is a hydra with many heads that reflect its immortal one, ‘the politics of envy’. We should protect these cats the way a mother cat protects her kittens and stalk useless politicians who prey on domestic cats, like the worthless grouses they are. For in a way, those cats are us. Don’t let anyone take their freedom away.

I hope that other people will come to the defense of these modern cats where Ernest Hemingway cannot; for if he were alive today, be assured that you would hear a mighty roar and then it would be open season on these malcontents and their ilk. The gentle sanctity of those cats’ existence would not be in question. It would be like safari time out on the Savannah, with ‘Papa’ Hemingway staring down the scope of his hunting rifle. If you so choose, you can join the many who have signed online petitions to the USDA, and save the Hemingway Cats.

The ancient Egyptians, writers, artists, philosophers, culture vultures of all stripes… the admirers of cats are legion. I leave you with a thought from the photography book, Vavra’s Cats. A beautiful tabby cat gazes into the darkness, her jewel eyes ringed with cobalt blue make-up that matches the jewels which drape her head and neck.

She spoke of Egypt, and a white temple… against night she smiled with clicking teeth and said, that the dead were never dead; said old emperors hung like bats… but empresses come back as cats. — William Rose Benét

To learn more, visit the official website of the Hemingway Home and Museum.

The Man With The Golden Gun: When The World Wasn't Enough For Billionaire Businessman

I have been chuckling over this article I ran across in the New York Times recently, not only the article, but the priceless expressions on three billionaires’ faces caught for such antics as: running a gay sex club out of his Manhattan penthouse with furnishings borrowed from the Spanish Inquisition; having underage girls come to the mansion to give special massages; and my personal favorite, building a multi-million dollar sex grotto on the same property where his unsuspecting wife probably threw fund raising teas and tended her begonias.

To quote the New York Times:

The latest in a long line of lurid Lotharios is said to be computer chip mogul Henry T. Nicholas III, who allegedly built a $30 million underground grotto, complete with hidden doors and secret levers, at his equestrian estate in Laguna Hills, California. According to court documents unearthed by the Los Angeles Times, Nicholas is said to have planned a "secret and convenient lair" where he could indulge his "manic obsession with prostitutes" and "addiction to cocaine and ecstasy."

The article goes on to explain that the 47-year-old Nicholas (a billionaire who co-founded Broadcom Corp) used his private jet to transport prostitutes from other cities like Las Vegas to his hideout, nicknamed "The Pond," where he provided his guests with drugs, according to the complaint. The Times continues:

In addition, the complaint dug up by the Times alleges that Nicholas used the lair as his “personal brothel” until his wife caught him in the act with a prostitute, according to the paper. [Pwned!] His wife Stacy Nicholas has since filed for divorce.

Nicholas’s attorney Steven A. Silverstein told the Times that “all of the allegations are denied.” In 2000, Nicholas told the paper that the underground facility was a “pump house” to handle runoff from his horse trails...”

Nobody ever suggested it wasn’t a “pump house” Mr. Nicholas.

But it is suggested you are a “horse’s ass” of mammoth proportions.

It is unclear whether these fellows fancy themselves to be James Bond, Auric Goldfinger, or a mind-bending combination of both. Meanwhile, having contemplated A View to A Kill, our girl Stacy (who will probably need years of therapy now – retail and otherwise) is singing "Diamonds Are Forever" in her best Shirley Bassey rendition.

She will need this therapy for taking a wrong turn in the garden one day, possibly stepping on a hidden lever and seeing a door open before her like some fairy mound. Stepping into the darkness, she may have followed light and murky sounds, words whispered, "This is For Your Eyes Only" … until the unthinkable horror revealed itself. It was pussy galore!

In one instant, Stacy’s reality splintered as she confronted the sight of her husband in flagrante delecto with Miss Goodthighs, having finished with Xenia Onatopp and with Bambi and Thumper waiting nearby. They were flown in from Casino Royale in Las Vegas.

“Henry!” she may have shrieked, her voice echoing through the Pond, but then we can only imagine. Who knows what thoughts went through Stacy’s mind at that moment, but I’ll wager she wanted to knock The Living Daylights out of the lot of them. In the end, she relented and decided to Live And Let Die.

"You Only Live Twice!” Henry may have blathered pathetically, his breath choking from the weight of Miss Goodthighs energetically playing horsey on top of him. “It’s not what it seems, my dear! They’re only here for the odd job!”

Stacy probably considered offing Henry on the spot, but considered he could Die Another Day.

And so the curtain closes on our lurid little drama of early 21st century extravagant peccadillo hyped up on drugs and fueled by bottomless cisterns of money. For the divorce lawyers, Tomorrow Never Dies.

Never Say Never Again.