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POPSDinosaurs Diversified Over Time, not Suddenly During this epoch of riotous biodiversity, flowering plants, social insects, butterflies, modern groups of lizards, mammals, and possibly birds, too, all emerged. Some experts have suggested that dinosaurs were also part of the show, as so many weird fossils, such as duckbilled hadrosaurs, horned ceratopsians, pachycephalosaurs and other wonders, date from this time. But a new study, published on Wednesday in a British journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, says that dinosaurs were less than a sideshow in the DNA spectacular. Researchers led by Graeme Lloyd of the University of Bristol, western England, devised a "supertree" of dinosaur evolution, patiently analyzing how more than 450 species -- about 70 percent of the known finds -- developed.
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POPSHard Core Heavy Rock Monk <<<At first glance, Cesare Bonizzi looks like the archetypal Capuchin monk - round-faced, stout, with twinkling eyes and a long flowing white beard. But beneath his robes beats a heart of metal. Brother Cesare is the lead singer in a heavy metal band which has just released its second album. A former missionary in the Ivory Coast, he lives in a small friary in the Milan hinterland.>>>
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POPSStunning B & W Animal Photographs Born and raised in London, Nick Brandt studied Film and Painting at St. Martins School of Art. He started photographing in December 2000 in East Africa, beginning the body of work that is his signature subject matter and style. He no longer directs, devoting himself full time to his fine art photography now. Brandt's first book of photographs, "On This Earth", was published in October 2005, by Chronicle Books, with forewords by Jane Goodall and Alice Sebold (author of "The Lovely Bones"). He has had numerous one-man exhibitions between 2004 and 2006, including London, Berlin, New York, Los Angeles, Hamburg, Santa Fe, Sydney, Melbourne and San Francisco.
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POPSPhotographs and Meditations on Death We are well used to reflections on individual mortality - it is the shaping force in the narrative of our existence. It emerges in childhood as a baffling fact, re-emerges possibly in adolescence as a tragic reality which all around us appear to be denying, then perhaps fades in busy middle life, to return, say, in a sudden premonitory bout of insomnia. One of the supreme secular meditations on death is Larkin's "Aubade": ... The sure extinction that we travel to And shall be lost in always. Not to be here, Not to be anywhere, And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true. We confront our mortality in private conversations, in the familiar consolations of religion - "That vast moth-eaten musical brocade," thought Larkin, "Created to pretend we never die."
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POPSA Gleam of Sufi Hope in the Darkness <<<Another belief he shares with Sufism is the idea that God, humanity and the natural world are all linked, and might even be part of a single entity, a sort of cosmic trinity. This idea has practical consequences. For example, it suggests that a believer will love and respect humanity and the natural world as they would God. It also means that no one should be seen as an outsider.>>> Who today represents a Christian counterpart?
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POPSThe Body Thinks One of the dangers of some current excitement about AI etc is that it sees the brain as a supercomputer with a bit of meat hanging from it. The last couple of decades in reality show far more research and philosophy into the body as a major, inseparable aspect of thinking, and more importantly feeling, the latter, it has been cogently argued, itself the foundation of reflective thinking.
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POPSNorth Pole without Ice I look forward to the comforting data from real scientists which will refute such alarmist liberal mischief that has even fooled the CIA. I suspect these silly rumours began oin a bunker in Berlin.
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