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You can predict how rabbits run by looking at their skulls (using this one weird trick!)
March 17, 2015
I have a new paper out today in PeerJ: "Ecological correlates to cranial morphology in leporids (Mammalia, Lagomorpha)", with coauthors Brian Kraatz, Emma Sherratt, and Nick Bumacod. Get it free here.
I know, I know, I have fallen from grace. First Aquilops, now rabbits. And, and…skulls! I know what you're thinking: that maybe I'm not just experimenting with the non-vertebrae of non-sauropods anymore – maybe I have an actual problem. But I don't. I can quit anytime! You'll see.
Actually rabbits are the freakiest of all mammals and their skulls are wicked cool. They have double incisors, with the second set right behind the first, hence the name Duplicidentata for rabbits and their close relatives. They have weird fenestrations in their maxillae (pretty much all taxa) and parietal and occipital bones (some more than others) – I'll come back to that in a bit. And, as we discuss in our new paper, you can tell something about how a rabbit runs by looking at its skull. I thought it would be fun to relate how we figured that out, and why.
A long time ago in a graduate seminar far, far away…
1950: DuBrul, Laskin, and Moss
I met Brian Kraatz at Berkeley, where he and I were part of the cohort of students that came into the Integrative Biology Department in the fall of 2001 (faithful readers may remember Brian from his work tracking oliphaunts from, gosh, three years ago already). We took a lot of classes together, including a seminar by Marvalee Wake on evolutionary morphology. I'm pretty sure that seminar was the first time I'd actually read DuBrul and Laskin (1961), "Preadaptive potentialities of the mammalian skull: an experiment in growth and form", or as I think of it, "How to turn a rat skull into a pika skull for fun and profit."
Pikas (Ochotonidae) are the sister group to rabbits (Leporidae) and together these groups make up crown Lagomorpha. If you're not familiar with pikas, Brian describes them as starting with bunny rabbits and then making them even cuter and cuddlier. Seriously, go do an image search for 'pika' and try not to die of cute overload.
Pikas are interesting because in many ways their skulls are intermediate between those of rodents, especially rats, and rabbits. This is maybe not surprising since rodents are the sister group to lagomorphs and are united with them in the clade Glires. E. Lloyd DuBrul was all over this rat-pika-rabbit thing back in the mid-twentieth century. Here's an illustration from DuBrul (1950: plate 2; labels added by me):
So DuBrul knew from pikas and in particular he had the idea that you could maybe just tweak a rat skull – say, by knocking out the basicranial sutures in a baby rat to limit the growth of the skull base – and produce a gently domed skull like that of a pika. That's what DuBrul and Laskin (1961) is all about. They did that experiment and here are their results (DuBrul and Laskin (1961: plate 3). Normal rat skull on the right, and dotted in the bottom diagram; experimental "pika-morph" rat skull on the left, and solidly outlined below.
What's going on here morphogenetically is that the facial skeleton is getting tilted down and away from the back end of the skull. DuBrul was hip to that, too – here's a relevant image from his 1950 paper (plate 4; labels added by me):
The common reference point against which these skulls are registered is the cranial base (the floor of the braincase just forward of the foramen magnum). Again, the pika is a pretty good intermediate between the rat and a 'normal' rabbit, and the dang-near-dog-sized Flemish Giant rabbit takes the lagomorph face-tilting thing to its extreme. ('Flemish Giant rabbit' is another entertaining image search that I will leave you as homework.)
Turns out there's another way you can get rat skulls with different geometries: you can cut off their legs and make them walk on two feet. In an experiment that you might have trouble getting past an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee today, Moss (1961) lopped off the forefeet or hindfeet in two experimental batches of rats, to see what effect this would have on their skulls. I'll let Moss speak for himself on this one (Moss, 1961: pp. 301-303, emphasis in the original):
Circumnatal amputation of the forelimbs has successfully produced what are in essence "bipedal rats," i.e., rats whose habitual mode of kinetic and static posture is permanently altered. […] The animals never became bipedal in the exact sense; that is, they never walked erect on two limbs at all times. […] Nevertheless, bipedal posture and motion were more frequently observed than in controls. […]
Animals whose hind limbs were removed represented another picture. They most certainly did not walk about on their intact forelimbs. Neither did they seem able to use their hind limb stumps as satisfactory substitutes. Their gait was not uniform and seemed to consist in a series of short pushes or hops. The most noticeable thing about them was, among other things, apparent accentuation of their cervical vertebral curvature. The sum of these changes was an upward rotation of the skull.
He wasn't kidding: when the two groups of bipedal rats grew up, their facial skeletons were tilted relative to the control group, but in different directions (Moss, 1961: fig 3; 'fore' and 'hind' refer to which limbs the animals had left to locomote with):
Brian and I read Moss back at Berkeley, too. In fact, we were minor Moss junkies. If you're interested in how living forms come into being, you owe it to yourself to read Moss (1968), "A theoretical analysis of the functional matrix".
The upshot of all of this is that although neither Brian nor I had done anything with our deep (and, okay, deeply weird) knowledge of how to experimentally jack up rat skulls by the time we graduated from Berkeley, we were also primed to be thinking about how skulls attain their shapes – especially the skulls of rodents and rabbits.
2009: American Museum of Natural History
I went to the AMNH in February, 2009, to visit Brian, who was on a postdoc there at the time, and to spend one day looking at sauropods with Mike, who was over from England for a conference. What Brian and I planned to work on was the fenestration of rabbit skulls, because I'm always interested in the strategic loss of bone from skeletal structures. We spent probably half a day talking about that, and I filled a whole page in my notebook with related noodlings:
But as the sketch on the right shows, it didn't take us long to figure out that there was something even more interesting to do with rabbit skulls. Brian had a whole shedload of rabbit skulls from different taxa sitting on his desk, and we noticed pretty quickly that one of the primary ways they varied was in the tilt of the facial skeleton relative to the back of the skull. Here's the very next page of my notes from that trip:
The skull up top belongs to Caprolagus, the Hispid hare, which I tend to think of as the "bulldozer hare". Seriously, it looks like a tank. It doesn't bound or even hop, it scrambles. Here, stare into the abyss:
That rabbit will cut you, man. And just look at how flat its skull is. Even in life Caprolagus looks more rodent-y than rabbit-y. Or, more precisely, more Ochotona-y.
At the the other extreme are taxa like Bunolagus and Pronolagus, which really push the "I'm going to cute you to death by dint of my incredible bunnosity" thing:
As Brian and I started going through skulls of as many extant rabbits as we could, we noticed that the flatter-skulled taxa, with less pronounced facial tilt, tended to be the stolid, foursquare scramblers like Caprolagus, whereas the speed demons tended to have more strongly tilted skulls. It also seemed like the latter group were achieving that pronounced facial tilt by changing the geometry of the occipital region of the skull. Look back up at the red quadrilaterals I drew on the Caprolagus and Bunolagus skulls in my notebook – those mark the basioccipital ventrally and the dorsal exposure of the supraoccipital. Perhaps unsurprisingly, supraoccipital length is not the whole story; it turns out that some face-tilters get that way by having longer or more strongly arched parietals, BUT it remains true that if you find a rabbit skull with a long dorsal exposure of the supraoccipital, it will also have pronounced facial tilt.
ANYWAY, by my last night in New York, Brian and I decided that the best way to attack this would be to go down to the basement and stay up most of the night drinking beer and measuring rabbit skulls. We then tried to correlate the various measurements and angles with information on the locomotor and burrowing habits of each species. That was a big job, and after a couple of years with little forward progress (to be fair, Brian was moving across the country and taking his first tenure-track job in this interval, and I was helping birth a sauropod) we brought in Brian's graduate student, Nick Bumacod, to do most of it. Later on the three of us were forced to acknowledge that we knew enough statistics to get ourselves into trouble but not enough to get back out. Brian had taken a geometric morphometrics course for which Emma Sherratt was a TA, and he started bugging her for help with the stats. Emma has been involved in writing new software packages for R, and we realized that the paper would be a lot stronger if we just brought her on as an author and gave her free rein with the data. Along the way Brian and Nick were giving presentations on the project everywhere from the local Western Area Vert Paleo meeting to the World Lagomorph Conference in Vienna. I got my name on four abstracts along the way, which I think is record abstract-to-paper ratio for me (especially considering that 90% of my effort on the paper was invested in a single evening in 2009 over a couple of six-packs).
But enough navel-gazing, what did we find?
2015: Rabbit skulls reveal their mode of locomotion
Our results, which you can read for free, support the hunch that Brian and I had back in 2009: slow-moving rabbits that locomote by scrambling or scampering instead of hopping tend to have less facial tilt, and faster-moving saltatorial (hopping) and cursorial (leaping and bounding) rabbits have more facial tilt. Interestingly, facial tilt does not distinguish the saltators from the cursors. So the break here is between scrambling and any kind of hopping or leaping, but not between hoppers and leapers.
Why would that be so? We don't know for sure yet, but our top hypothesis is that if you're moving fast, it pays to see the ground in front of you more clearly, and getting your nose down out of the way probably helps with that. This is pretty similar to the hypothesis that tyrannosaurs have pinched nasals for better binocular vision (Stevens, 2006). Rabbits are prey animals and probably can't afford to point their eyes forward, and they may need wide nasal airways as air intakes while they're sprinting. Tilting the nose down may be the next best thing.
Some circumstantial support for this comes from the Caviidae, the family of South American rodents that includes guinea pigs, cavies, maras, and capybaras. Here's another plate from DuBrul (1950: plate 6) contrasting the flatter skull of the guinea pig (Cavia porcellus, top) with the decidedly arched skull of the mara or Patagonian hare (Dolichotis magellanica, bottom). Compare the mara skull to the sectioned rabbit skull in the other DuBrul plate, above – there aren't a lot of obvious characters to separate the two (beyond the lack of double incisors in the mara).
Despite being commonly referred to as 'hares' and looking a lot like short-eared rabbits, maras are rodents that evolved their rabbit-like form independently. The acquisition of pronounced facial tilt in two separate lineages of small fast-moving herbivorous mammals is further evidence for the influence of locomotor mode on skull form. Irritatingly, I think we neglected to mention the guinea pig : mara :: pika : rabbit correspondence in the paper. Oh well, it wasn't our novel observation, and we did cite DuBrul (1950).
We found lots of other interesting things, too. The PCA plots we produced from our data separate the living rabbits in unexpected ways. The length of the diastema (the toothless portion of the upper jaw) and the diameter of the auditory bulla seem to be particularly important. Diastema length isn't too hard to figure out – most of the face-tilters have long diastemas, and the flat-heads tend to have short ones. We have no idea what bulla diameter means yet. I mean, obviously something to do with hearing, but we don't have any ecological variables in our analysis to address that because we didn't see it coming. So there's a chunk of new science waiting to be done there.
Speaking of new science, or at least a relatively new thing in science, we published the full peer-review history alongside the paper, just as Mike and I did back in 2013 and as Mike did with his stand-alone paper last December. More than 80% of PeerJ authors elect to publish the peer review histories for their papers. I can't wait until it's 100%. PeerJ reviews are citeable – each one gets a DOI and instructions on how to cite it – and I'm tired of having my effort as a peer reviewer used once and then thrown away forever.
If you've been reading this whole post with gritted teeth, wondering why we were using linear measurements instead of geometric morphometrics, chillax. Brian and Emma are on that. They've been CT scanning the skulls of as many extant rabbits as possible and plotting landmarks for 3D morphometrics – if you were at SVP last fall, you may have seen their talk (Kraatz and Sherratt, 2014). So stay tuned for what will soon be a new ongoing series, Rabbit Skulls: The Next Generation.
I probably won't be on that voyage. I've had fun getting acquainted with a completely different part of the tree of life, but there are an awful lot of shards of excellence – busted-up sauropod vertebrae, that is – crying out for my attention, and I need to stop neglecting them. I'm done with rabbit skulls, I promise. I'm going clean. (Wish me luck!)
- DuBrul, E. L. (1950). Posture, locomotion and the skull in Lagomorpha. American Journal of Anatomy, 87(2), 277-313.
- DuBrul, E. L., & Laskin, D. M. (1961). Preadaptive potentialities of the mammalian skull: an experiment in growth and form. American Journal of Anatomy, 109(2), 117-132.
- Kraatz, B., and Sherratt, E. (2014). Evolution, ecology, and modularity of the lagomorph skull. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 35(3, Supplement), 162A.
- Kraatz, B.P., Sherratt, E., Bumacod, N., and Wedel, M.J. 2015. Ecological correlates to cranial morphology in leporids (Mammalia, Lagomorpha). PeerJ, 3:e844. https://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.844
- Moss, M. L. (1961). Rotation of the otic capsule in bipedal rats. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 19(3), 301-307.
- Moss, M. L. (1968). A theoretical analysis of the functional matrix. Acta Biotheoretica, 18(1), 195-202.
- Stevens, K. A. (2006). Binocular vision in theropod dinosaurs. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 26(2), 321-330.
Aquilops wants to play
December 28, 2014
Here are three fun things to do with Aquilops, in descending order of how much gear they require.
1. Print your own Aquilops fossil.
Got access to a 3D printer? Download the 3D models of the holotype skull, OMNH 34557, that we published as supplementary info with the paper, and rock out. Here's a test print that the guys in our scientific visualization center made for me. I gotta tell you, after 18 and a half years of sauropods, it's very satisfying to have a holotype I can shove in my pocket. UPDATE a few weeks later: read Zach Miller's post about his 3D-printed Aquilops holotype, it's cool.
Want a bigger challenge? If you printed it in steel or titanium, it would probably make a decent bottle opener. Just sayin'.
2. Cut and fold your own Aquilops skull.
Got access to a regular printer? Download these files, print, cut, fold, and enjoy:
Aquilops cut-and-fold – 2 small skulls. Should print 2 skulls at about life size on regular 8.5 x 11 or A4 paper. Warning: they're small.
Aquilops cut-and-fold – 1 large skull. Warning: still not very big.
I found that regular printer paper is too flimsy to really hold the shape, so I built mine an endoskeleton (endoskull?) out of bits of cut up file folder. Just about anything would work. Teaching a course in which Aquilops could be relevant (which is all of them)? Have your students roll their own paper skulls, and use them as a springboard for talking about dinosaurs or evolution or anatomy or current events or whatever tickles your fancy.
Want a bigger challenge? My cut-and-fold skull is the epitome of laziness: I just mirror-image duplicated my lateral view and sandwiched the dorsal view in between. You could definitely make a better one, and with all of the free Aquilops data online, you have all the raw material you need. If you come up with something good, let me know in the comments and I'll feature it in a later post.
3. Play with the 3D models.
No access to a printer of any sort? Well, you can still have fun with Aquilops in your browser and on your hard drive. If you want to see the holotype specimen as it looks today, there are 3D PDFs in the paper's supplementary info. But if you haven't been to the OMNH Aquilops page to play with the model of the complete, uncrushed skull that Garrett Stowe made, go do that now. On the same page is a 3D life restoration of Aquilops, also by Garrett Stowe. Both models are awesome, and Garrett is still working on them so they'll be even better soon.
Want a bigger challenge? Surprise me. We made Aquilops freely available to the world, so you can take any and all of the stuff that we published – the figures from the paper, Brian Engh's artwork, the 3D models of the fossil – and make cool new things that we haven't thought of. C'mon, let's play.
My early Christmas present: a dead corn snake
December 18, 2014
A friend's daughter owned a pet corn snake, and a hamster. About a month ago, the former got into the latter's cage — and in a reversal of the usual course of such events, sustained some nasty injuries. As snakes often do, it struggled to recover, and the wound seems to have necrotised.
This morning I got an email from the friend saying that the snake had died, and asking whether I would like it. I managed to restrain my enthusiasm for long enough to express condolences to the daughter; and an hour later, the snake was delivered!
Here it is — as with all these images, click through for the full resolution. I've learned that it's difficult to measure the length of a snake — they don't lay out straight in the way that you'd like, even when they're dead — but as best I can make out, it's 120 cm long. It weighs 225 g, but don't tell Fiona I used the kitchen scales.
The hamster wound is very apparent, just behind the neck, on the left hand side. Here's the head and neck in close-up:
Ouch — very nasty. It can't have been pleasant watching a pet linger on with a wound like that.
He (or she? How do you sex a snake?) was a handsome beast, too. Here's the head. You can easily make out the individual large scales covering it, and make out some of the shape of the skull.
The skulls of snakes are beyond weird. Here is one from an unspecified non-venomous snake at Skulls Unlimited (i.e. probably not a corn snake):
Hopefully at some point I'll be able to show you my own snake's skull. In the mean time, this guy says he has a corn-snake skull, but the photography's not very good.
Finally, here is my snake, mouth open, showing the pterygoid teeth on the roof of the mouth:
What next? It seems clear that bugging is the only realistic way to free up the skeleton, and this may be the specimen that persuades me to invest in a proper colony of dermestids rather than just relying on whatever inverts happen to wander past.
It might be worth trying to skin and gut the snake first. Gutting will be easy; skinning might be very difficult. I think that removing the skin from the skull without damaging the very delicate bones might be impossible. Can dermestids cope with snake skin?
I'm taking advice!
bigsmall was Aquilops?
December 12, 2014
If you've been reading around about Aquilops, you've probably seen it compared in size to a raven, a rabbit, or a cat. Where'd those comparisons come from? You're about to find out.
Back in April I ran some numbers to get a rough idea of the size of Aquilops, both for my own interest and so we'd have some comparisons handy when the paper came out.
I started with the much more completely known Archaeoceratops. The measurements of Scott Hartman's skeletal recon (shown above and on Scott's website – thanks, Scott!) match the measurements of the Archaeo holotype given by Dodson and You (2003) almost perfectly. The total length of Archaeoceratops, including tail, is almost exactly one meter. Using graphic double integration, I got a volume of 8.88L total for a 1m Archaeoceratops. That would come down to 8.0L if the lungs occupied 10% of body volume, which is pretty standard for non-birds. So that's about 17-18 lbs.
Archaeoceratops has a rostrum-jugal length of 145mm, compared to 84mm in Aquilops. Making the conservative assumption that Aquilops = Archaeoceratops*0.58, I got a body length of 60cm (about two feet), and volumes of 1.73 and 1.56 liters with and without lungs, or about 3.5 lbs in life. The internet informed me that the common raven, Corvus corax, has an adult length of 56-78 cm and a body mass of 0.7-2 kg. So, based on this admittedly tall and teetering tower of assumptions, handwaving, and wild guesses, Aquilops (the holotype individual, anyway) was about the size of a raven, in both length and mass. But ravens, although certainly well-known, are maybe a bit remote from the experience of a lot of people, so we wanted a comparison animal that more people would be familiar with. The estimated length and mass of the holotype individual of Aquilops also nicely overlap the species averages (60 cm, 1.4-2.7 kg) for the black-tailed jackrabbit, Lepus californicus, and they're pretty close to lots of other rabbits as well, hence the comparison to bunnies.
Of course, ontogeny complicates things. Aquilops has some juvenile characters, like the big round orbit, but it doesn't look like a hatchling. Our best guess is that it is neither a baby nor fully grown, but probably an older juvenile or young subadult. A full-grown Aquilops might have been somewhat larger, but almost certainly no larger than Archaeoceratops, and probably a meter or less in total length. So, about the size of a big housecat. That's still pretty darned small for a non-avian dinosaur.
Although Aquilops represents everything I normally stand against – ornithischians, microvertebrates, heads – I confess that I have a sneaking affection for our wee beastie. Somebody's just gotta make a little plush Aquilops, right? When and if that happens, you know where to find me.
- Dodson, P., and You, H.L. 2003. Redescription of neoceratopsian dinosaur Archaeoceratops and early evolution of Neoceratopsia. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 48(2): 261-272.
- Farke, A.A., Maxwell, W.D., Cifelli, R.L., and Wedel, M.J. 2014. A ceratopsian dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous of Western North America, and the biogeography of Neoceratopsia. PLoS ONE 9(12): e112055. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0112055
Reconstructing the skull of Aquilops
December 11, 2014
As I mentioned in my first post on Aquilops, I drew the skull reconstructions that appear in figure 6 of the paper (Farke et al. 2014). I'm writing this post to explain that process.
We've blogged here before about the back-and-forth between paleontologists and artists when it comes to reconstructing and restoring extinct animals (example 1, example 2). Until now, I've always been the guy making suggestions about the art, and asking for changes. But for the Aquilops project, the shoe was on the other foot: Andy Farke was my 'client', and he had to coach me through drawing a basal ceratopsian skull – a subject that I was definitely not familiar with.
I started from the specimen, OMNH 34557, which is more complete than you might think at first glance. The skull is folded over about 2/3 of the way up the right orbit, so in lateral view it looks like the top of the orbit and the skull roof are missing. They're actually present, just bent at such a sharp angle that they're hard to see at the same time as the lateral side of the skull.
I also used a cast skull of Archaeoceratops as a reference – it's clear from what we have of Aquilops that the two animals were pretty similar.
I started with this pencil outline on a piece of tracing paper.
And then I went right ahead and stippled the whole thing, without showing it to Andy until I was done. Yes, that was dumb. Noe the lack of sutures in this version.
I added sutures and sent it off to Andy, who sent it back with these suggested changes. At this point I realized my error: I had already spent about a day and a half putting ink on the page, and I'd have to either start all over, or do a lot of editing in GIMP. I picked the latter course, since there were plenty of areas that were salvageable.
Next I did something that I'd never done before, which is to redraw parts of the image and then composite them with the original in GIMP. Here's are the redrawn bits.
With those bits composited in, and a few more tweaks to sutures, we got to this version, which was included in the submitted manuscript.
Then we brought Brian Engh in to do the life restorations. When Brian takes on a project, he does his homework. If you've seen his post on painting Aquilops, you know that all of the ferns in the Cloverly scene are based on actual fossils from the Cloverly Formation. Brian came to Claremont this summer and he and Andy and I spent most of a day at the Alf Museum looking at the specimen and talking about possible layouts for the full-body life restorations. He took a bunch of photos of the specimen while he was there, and a day or two later he sent us this diagram. He'd chopped up his photos of the skull to produce his own undistorted version to guide his painting, and in doing so he'd noticed that I had the line of the upper jaw a bit off.
That required another round of digital revisions to fix. It ended up being a lot more work than the earlier round of edits in GIMP, because so many features of the skull had to be adjusted. I ended up cutting my own skull recon into about 8 pieces and then stitching them back together one by one. Here's what the image looked like about halfway through that process. The back of the skull, orbit, and beak are all fixed here, but the snout, cheek, and maxilla don't yet fit together.
After a little more work, I got the whole thing back together, and this is the final version that appears in the paper. It is not perfect – the area in front of the orbit where the frontal, nasal, maxilla, and premaxilla come together is a bit dodgy, and I'm not totally happy with the postorbital. But eventually you have to stop revising and ship something, and this is what I shipped.
I did the dorsal view after the submitted version of the lateral view was finished. It went a lot faster, for several reasons:
- Most of the gross proportional issues were already sorted out from doing the lateral view first.
- The bilateral symmetry didn't cut down on the number of dots but it did cut the conceptual workload in half.
- I did all my roughs in pencil and didn't start inking until after we had almost all of the details hashed out.
I did have to revise the dorsal view after getting feedback from Brian about the lateral view, but that revision was pretty minor by comparison. I stretched the postorbital region and tinkered a bit with the face and the frill, and both of those steps required putting in some new dots, but it was still just one afternoon's worth of work. Here's the final dorsal recon:
In addition to the Life Lessons already noted in this post, I learned (or rather relearned) this important principle: if you do a big drawing and then shrink it down to column width, fine errors – a shaky line here, an ugly dot there – get pushed down below the threshold of perception. But there's a cost, too, which is that uneven stippling becomes more apparent. I was skipping back and forth a lot between 25% image scale to see where the problem areas were, and 200% to revise the lines and dots accordingly.
All in all, it was a fun project. It was my most ambitious technical illustration to date, I learned a ton about ceratopsian skulls, and it was nice to get to make at least one substantial contribution to the paper.
Now, here's the take-away: this is my reconstruction, and both of those words are important. "Reconstruction" because it has a lot of extrapolation, inference, and sheer guesswork included. "My" because you're getting just one possible take on this. You can download the 3D files for the cranium and play with them yourselves. I hope that other artists and scientists will use those tools to produce their own reconstructions, and I fully expect that those reconstructions will differ from mine. I look forward to seeing them, and learning from them.
For other posts about my stippled technical illustrations, see:
Farke, A.A., Maxwell, W.D., Cifelli, R.L., and Wedel, M.J. 2014. A ceratopsian dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous of Western North America, and the biogeography of Neoceratopsia. PLoS ONE 9(12): e112055. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0112055
Please welcome Aquilops americanus
December 10, 2014
Today sees the description of Aquilops americanus ("American eagle face"), a new basal neoceratopsian from the Cloverly Formation of Montana, by Andy Farke, Rich Cifelli, Des Maxwell, and myself, with life restorations by Brian Engh. The paper, which has just been published in PLOS ONE, is open access, so you can download it, read it, share it, repost it, remix it, and in general do any of the vast scope of activities allowed under a CC-BY license, as long as we're credited. Here's the link – have fun.
Obviously ceratopsians are much more Andy's bailiwick than mine, and you should go read his intro post here. In fact, you may well be wondering what the heck a guy who normally works on huge sauropod vertebrae is doing on a paper about a tiny ceratopsian skull. The short, short version is that I'm here because I know people.
The slightly longer version is that OMNH 34557, the holotype partial skull of Aquilops, was discovered by Scott Madsen back in 1999, on one of the joint Cloverly expeditions that Rich and Des had going on at the time (update: read Scott's account of the discovery here). That the OMNH had gotten a good ceratopsian skull out of Cloverly has been one of the worst-kept secrets in paleo. But for various complicated reasons, it was still unpublished when I got to Claremont in 2008. Meanwhile, Andy Farke was starting to really rock out on ceratopsians at around that time.
For the record, the light bulb did not immediately go off over my head. In fact, it took a little over a year for me to realize, "Hey, I know two people with a ceratopsian that needs describing, and I also know someone who would really like to head that up. I should put these folks together." So I proposed it to Rich, Des, and Andy in the spring of 2010, and here we are. My role on the paper was basically social glue and go-fer. And I drew the skull reconstruction – more on that in the next post.
Anyway, it's not my meager contribution that you should care about. I am fairly certain that, just as Brontomerus coasted to global fame on the strength of Paco Gasco's dynamite life restoration, whatever attention Aquilops gets will be due in large part to Brian Engh's detailed and thoughtful work in bringing it to life – Brian has a nice post about that here. I am very happy to report that the three pieces Brian did for us – the fleshed-out head that appears at the top of this post and as Figure 6C in the paper, the Cloverly environment scene with the marauding Gobiconodon, and the sketch of the woman holding an Aquilops – are also available to world under the CC-BY license. So have fun with those, too.
Finally, I need to thank a couple of people. Steve Henriksen, our Vice President for Research here at Western University of Health Sciences, provided funds to commission the art from Brian. And Gary Wisser in our scientific visualization center used his sweet optical scanner to generate the hi-res 3D model of the skull. That model is also freely available online, as supplementary information with the paper. So if you have access to a 3D printer, you can print your own Aquilops – for research, for teaching, or just for fun.
Next time: Aquilöps gets röck döts.
Farke, A.A., Maxwell, W.D., Cifelli, R.L., and Wedel, M.J. 2014. A ceratopsian dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous of Western North America, and the biogeography of Neoceratopsia. PLoS ONE 9(12): e112055. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0112055
How did the horrible Yale "Brontosaurus" skull come to be?
November 14, 2014
A while back, Ben Miller reminded me that when I posted about the old Yale "Brontosaurus" skull, I promised:
So how did the YPM come to make such a monstrosity? What was it based on? Tune in next time for the surprising details!
I told him at the time that I'd soon get around to writing a post. But before I did, he wrote a post on this himself: Bully for Camarasaurus. And it's excellent. Go and read it!
I don't have a lot to add to what Ben has written, except regarding this:
What Marsh had instead [when restoring the skull for his 1891 "Brontosaurus" reconstruction] were a few fragmentary bits of Camarasaurus cranial material, plus a snout and jaw (USNM 5730) now considered to be Brachiosaurus.
Here's what Marsh came up with:
But what of the supposed Brachiosaurus skull that he used as a reference? It was finally described 107 years later by Carpenter and Tidwell (1998), in a paper that helpfully also lays out the history behind it. Here's how it looks:
The skull was found by a crew under the supervision of M. P. Felch in the western part of his Quarry 1, Garden Park, Colorado. Felch reported it to O. C. Marsh in a letter of 8 September 1883. It was found by a meter-long cervical vertebra that probably belonged to Brachiosaurus "which was destroyed during attempts to collect it" (McIntosh and Berman 1975:196). [Of course, Felch and Marsh could hardly have been expected to identify this vertebra correctly, as Brachiosaurus would not be discovered and named for another twenty years (Riggs 1903), and the nature of its neck would not become apparent until Janensch (1914) described the related brachiosaurid Giraffatitan (= "Brachiosaurus") brancai.]
The Felch skull, along with other material from the quarry, was shipped to Marsh at Yale in October of that year, and was initially assigned the specimen number YPM 1986. At that time it was only partially prepared, hence the rather poor resemblance between the restored version above and Marsh's hypothetical "Brontosaurus" [= Apatosaurus] skull that was based on it.
It's notable that Holland (1915) was quite certain that this was not a skull of Brontosaurus, and that a Diplodocus-like skull found with the A. louisae holotype belonged to it. It's worth reading the skull section of his paper to see just how solid his reasoning was. And it's extraordinary to think that Osborn's power, all the way over in New York, was so great that he was able to successfully bully Holland, 370 miles away in Pittsburgh, into not putting the evidently correct skull on the Carnegie Museum's Apatosaurus mount. That mount remained sadly headless until after Holland's death.
Aaanyway, YPM 1986 was pretty much ignored after Marsh's abuse of it as a reference for the Brontosaurus reconstruction's skull. After Marsh's death in 1899, much of the material collected by Felch was transferred to the Smithsonian (US National Museum of Natural History). The skull was among these specimens, and so was re-catalogued as USNM 5730.
As so often, it was Jack McIntosh who rediscovered this skull and recognised its true affinities. Some time after his tentative identification of the skull as pertaining to Brachiosaurus (presumably on the basis of its resemblance to that of Giraffatitan), Carpenter borrowed the skull, had it more fully prepared, wrote the description, and had a restored model constructed from casts of the preserved elements and models of the missing ones.
Carpenter and Tidwell (1998:fig. 2) also handily showed the restored Felch quarry skull alongside those of other sauropods:
By re-ordering the top row, we can see what a neat intermediate it is between the skulls of Camarasaurus (left) and Giraffatitan (= "Brachiosaurus" of their usage):
I provisionally accepted USNM 5730 as belonging to Brachiosaurus in my re-evaluation of 2009, and included it in my reconstruction (Taylor 2009:fig. 7):
But as noted by Carpenter and Tidwell (1998:82), the lack of comparable parts between the Felch skull and the Brachiosaurus holotype (which remains the only definitive Brachiosaurus material) means that the assignment has to remain tentative.
What we really need is a more complete Brachiosaurus specimen: one with both a skull and good postcervical elements that let us refer it definitively to Brachiosaurus altithorax by comparison with the holotype. And heck, while we're at it, let's have a specimen with a good neck, too!
The real question remains: how did Marsh, using a brachiosaur skull as his basis, come up with this?
And stranger still, how someone at the Yale Peabody Museum — we don't know who — used it, or more likely Marsh's reconstruction, as a basis for this sculpture:
The Yale mount didn't go up until 1931 — the last of the Big Four Apatosaurus mounts after the AMNH, Carnegie and Field Museum, which is surprising as it was the first of those specimens to be found. So by the time the skull was sculpted, sauropod skulls were actually reasonably well known. It's not clear quite how anyone working from a decent reconstruction of, say, a Camarasaurus skull — the one in Osborn and Mook (1921:figure 30), say — could come up with this monster.
The last thing to say is this: it does credit to the YPM that they display this historically important sculpture rather than hiding it away and pretending it never happened. For me, part of the fascination of palaeontology is seeing not just how organisms evolved through prehistory but how ideas evolved through history. It's great that we can still see important mistakes, alongside their corrections (i.e. the new and lovely skull on the YPM Apatosaurus mount.)
- Carpenter, Kenneth, and Virginia Tidwell. 1998. Preliminary description of a Brachiosaurus skull from Felch Quarry 1, Garden Park, Colorado. Modern Geology 23:69-84.
- Holland, William J. 1915. Heads and tails: a few notes relating to the structure of the sauropod dinosaurs. Annals of the Carnegie Museum 9:273-278.
- Janensch, Werner. 1914. Ubersicht uber der Wirbeltierfauna der Tendaguru-Schichten nebst einer kurzen Charakterisierung der neu aufgefuhrten Arten von Sauropoden. Archiv fur Biontologie, Berlin III, 1(1):81-110.
- Marsh, O. C. 1891. Restoration of Triceratops (with plates XV and XVI). American Journal of Science, 3rd series 41(244):339-342.
- McIntosh, John S., and David, S. Berman. 1975. Description of the palate and lower jaw of the sauropod dinosaur Diplodocus (Reptilia: Saurischia) with remarks on the nature of the skull of Apatosaurus. Journal of Paleontology 49(1):187-199.
- Osborn, Henry Fairfield, and Charles C. Mook. 1921. Camarasaurus, Amphicoelias and other sauropods of Cope. Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History, n.s. 3:247-387, and plates LX-LXXXV.
- Riggs, Elmer S. 1903. Brachiosaurus altithorax, the largest known dinosaur. American Journal of Science 15(4):299-306.
- Taylor, Michael P. 2009. A re-evaluation of Brachiosaurus altithorax Riggs 1903 (Dinosauria, Sauropoda) and its generic separation from Giraffatitan brancai (Janensch 1914). Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 29(3):787-806.


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Video Listings
December 5, 2014 Marcos Sariana of the MV Ever Radiant
With a new route planned for his ship, Marcos says folks at the International Maritime Center might not see him over the next four to six months; but since his contract lasts longer than that, there's a good chance this isn't the last we'll see ofMore...
November 21, 2014 Capt. Perry Jones of the MV Nathan Golding
Captain Jones started his career as a mariner working on shrimp boats with his dad in Honduras. Now he heads one of Golding Barge Lines' vessels and can offer some advice to folks looking to get started in the industry.More...
November 10, 2014 Jania Billups Final Interview
In November 2013, Jania Billups wrapped up a two-year internship affiliated with local Episcopal service group Newark ACTS at SCI's Port Newark Center.More...
October 31, 2014 Kurt Arnold of the MV Janis R. Brewer
Kurt is retired, but that hasn't stopped him from keeping his pilot's license active and joining up with a Crounse Corporation towboat when asked.More...
October 24, 2014 Freddie D. Salvatierra of the Ever Refine
Seafarers work long hours, so they need to relax during their off-duty time. On Freddie's ship, crew can watch movies and even play basketball on the deck—with a net to make sure no out-of-bounds balls go into the ocean.More...
October 10, 2014 John Stapleton of the MV Buckeye State
John has spent several years on the river, working his way up from deckhand to steersman.More...

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Swedish Polar Research Secretariat
- Swedish Polar Research SecretariatVisual identity for a government authority
- The Swedish Polar Research Secretariat is in charge of coordinating all of Sweden's Polar research. They organize yearly expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic, and administer several research facilities, including Abisko Scientific Research Station in the far north of Sweden.
Role: Art direction/design
Agency: Bror Rudi Creative
Creative director: Lisa Lindgren
Project manager: Kalle Bohr
Production manager: Jonas Fläckerud
- The logotype is a stylized representation of the Aurora - an atmospheric phenomenon significant for the polar area - flaring in blue over an icy landscape. The symbol's coloration is distinctly swedish and stands out in comparison with competing international institutions. The logotype was intentionally kept strict, timeless and minimalistic in accordance with the subject matter, but adapts well to different applications and conditions - it's used on everything from the website to shipping containers in Antarctica.
- Yearbook 2010 & 2011
Each year the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat publishes a yearbook summarizing the research projects that have been conducted during the past 12 months. Used as an important communicative tool, its primary target groups are the global scientific community, government officials and anyone who is interested in the cutting edge of polar research.The 2011 yearbook was nominated in the Swedish Design Awards and the Swedish Publishing Prize in 2012.


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Nambé Twist Corkscrew
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- Elegant gift for hostesses, wine enthusiasts and free-spirited friends
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- Brings free-spirited flair to evening drinks
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Invite free-spirited flair to your cocktail hour or dinner party with the twist corkscrew, a sublimely sculptural creation by Neil Cohen. Fashioned from a modern mix of acrylic, metal, and wood, this is a piece you'll want front and center no matter what the occasion Nambé has been handcrafting, high-quality, functional designs for the modern lifestyle since 1951. Each exceptional museum-quality piece is designed by an esteemed artist and handcrafted from fine materials with usefulness in mind. Hence the company motto: Nambé is art designed for everyday living.
Nambé Twist Corkscrew
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WATERFRONT- Immaculately clean cottages located on Lake Pemigewasset, New Hampton NH. Great place to relax and enjoy the outdoors the lake offers excellent fishing. Each cottage has a kitchen, bathroom, living room, flat screen TVs with cable, deck with grills for BBQ. Cottage # 10 has a large dock for a boat.. Cottages also offer fire pit along with lawn furniture and large landscaped yard. These cottages are conveniently located close to Lake Winnipesaukee, Meredith, antique shops, shopping outlets and many other Lakes region attractions. Cottages can be rented separate or together for larger groups. Please send e-mail to make reservations. ...Read more
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Stevens Cottage Rentals is a small privately owned rental company. All of our properties are waterfront and in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire. Our cottages are located off of Route 104 east and west in the Lakes Region; east to Lake Winnipesaukee (15 minutes) and west to crystal-clear Newfound Lake (10 minutes) We are located on Pemigewasset Lake in New Hampton NH the lake is 256 acres and 1.7 miles long . New Hampton is a quiet town that values their historic and land preservation. Lake Pemigewasset is a haven for summer camps and campgrounds. The lake is excellent for swimming, fishing and boating. When you stay at our cottages, we want our patrons to feel at home by offering more than a bleak rental without character or décor. Each of our cottages will make you will feel as if you are staying at a friend's house with great taste and décor. We value our customers and want them to come back year after year. The cottages are picturesque and cozy and have a country vibe. They are located steps from the lake. They are complete with kitchen, bedroom with bunks and pull out sofa in living room. They also have cable TV, excellent views of the lake with mountains rising behind it; a fire pit for s'mores at night while star gazing. To complete the cottages we have acquired grills outside on the deck for BBQ and a large landscaped yard. The cottages can be rented as a single unit or double to accommodate larger groups. Sleeps 2- 4 ppl in single rental or double rental could sleep 8 ppl.
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American English: /ˈfaɪ(ə)rˌlaɪt/ British English: /ˈfʌɪəlʌɪt/
Translation of firelight in Spanish:
- luz (feminine) de la lumbre or del hogarExample sentences
- Sitting in the rosy glow of candle and firelight we thought it looked rather romantic.
- The flickering firelight lit them all in its tumbling glow.
- The whole city would be lit by firelight and fireworks instead of moonlight.
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Monique Paige joined Saddleback College in the Fall of 2005. Her teaching responsibilities include Psychology and Child Development courses. Frequently taught courses are: CD 107 (formerly Psyc 7) Child and Adolescent Development and CD 123 Infant and Toddler Development.
Prior to joining Saddleback College, Monique worked as a Preschool Director and before that as a preschool teacher, specializing in Infant / Toddler care.
In her spare time, Monique enjoys gardening and volunteering at her children's schools.
For information regarding the courses Monique teaches as well as textbook information please visit Monique's website. Students may also find additional links to helpful sites related to the student experience, academics and associations relevant to Child Development and Psychology.
M.S., California State University, Long Beach
B.A., Loyola Marymount University
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Apprenticeships further research development at West Point
August 16, 2012
By Rebecca Meese, West Point Network Science Center
WEST POINT, N.Y. (Aug. 16, 2012) -- The Network Science Center brings together service members, civilians and cadets to research and develop significant contributions in the study of network representations of physical, biological, and social phenomena leading to predictive models.
This summer, the Network Science Center at West Point facilitated several apprenticeships sponsored by the Army Research Office for both undergraduates and graduate students across many different fields of study.
The various backgrounds of the apprentices allowed them to be involved in several locations throughout the installation, all of which contributed to the development of knowledge of network science in support of the center's mission.
A group of three apprentices, Louis Boguchwal, Marc Johnson and Lauren Kewley, researched the involvement of key players and events in the nuclear program in Iran using a network "toolkit" approach for their project, similar to the Frontier Markets research being done in the NSC.
By taking a macro level view of Iran they can analyze how the laws, government, politics and market may explain the actions of and relationships among the key players in the network. They also assisted with data collection on Ethiopa's economic environment and using the network analysis program, ORA, to build a network.
Two cadets who traveled to Ethiopia for an Academic Individual Advanced Development couse in June used this information to gain an in-depth view of Ethiopa's economy and conduct further research related to the country's economy.
The three apprentices have math or engineering backgrounds and this networking analysis method has expanded their knowledge and interest in the material. The unique balance of undergraduates and graduates working toward the same mission has brought different strengths to the team, enhancing the research being done.
As an 92A-Automated Logistics specialist in the New York National Guard, Robert Rasmussen brings a unique view to the center, as he personifies the link between the civilian and the Army. Rasmussen returned to the NSC for his second summer and is continuing his study of ethno-cultural and interactive political networks while working with the Minerva program. With a master's in international relations, he is working with Makame Muhajir, Ph.D., on Tanzanian networks and provides analysis for developing nations in general.
Barb Autin is also working with the West Point Minerva Research Initiative. The skills Autin acquired while earning her MBA with a concentration in management, allow her to execute the research and complete a database of agent actions for individuals in the Abu Sayyak Group from 1991-2011. Linking together the ties of the group and compiling the data enhances her knowledge of network science and adapts her to the new field of study.
Aubrey Shoop is completing a second apprenticeship this summer in the Chemistry and Life Sciences labs. While working under the guidance of Michael Labare, Ph.D., a professor of microbiology, she is studying the effectiveness of short chain fatty-acids on inactivating various bacterial spores.
While building on work from last summer, she has advanced her technical skills beyond those in which she would learn from a classroom. The apprenticeship has provided the experience as well as the knowledge that will support her biology major when she returns to her junior year at Mount Holyoke College.
Fernando Maymi, another apprentice who studies math and physics at New York University, is also new to the field of network science. After completing the Advanced Network Analysis and Targeting course, taught by Maj. Anthony Johnson from the Department of Mathematical Sciences, Maymi used what he learned to create a network for his research project. He is linking together network feeds from followers using social media, mainly Twitter, throughout the course of the Arab Spring. The focus is on the internet activity during the people's uprising in Cairo. After producing a network of feeds and linking them by the followers, Maymi will track the spread of keywords and examine the key role they had in the rebellion.
Casey Elliot returned for her second summer in the NSC and is working on a project to link together the steps for obtaining various levels of security clearances. She has partnered with the security office on West Point and has gained insight into the process behind security clearances. This project will help her earn college credit and execute the skills she has learned when she returns to Oklahoma State University, where she studies marketing with a minor in international business.
Similar to Elliot, Sarah Money is entering her senior year at Erskine College and comes from a political science background. Money is applying skills learned in her many statistics classes as well as experimental methodologies studies to further her research. As part of their project they have both been introduced to the ORA network analysis program and have been able to use the program to develop a network. This summer the NSC was able to bring together the talents of a diverse set of young researchers from different disciplines to work together solving real world problems while applying what they have learned in the classroom. The ARO apprenticeship program has had a positive impact on research being done here this summer.
Each apprentice who was able to work with USMA faculty will be able to take a new problem solving approach with them back to school or into their professional lives.


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The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is performing detailed coastal engineering analysis and mapping of the Pacific coast of California in accordance with FEMA's February 2005 Pacific guidelines for new coastal studies which are included in Appendix D of the Guidelines and Specifications for Flood Hazard Mapping Partners. Results from the OPC Study will be used to remap the coastal flood risk and wave hazards for the following fifteen California counties:
FEMA's coastal mapping efforts benefit from new technologies and coastal data contributed by a consortium of Federal and State agencies, academic institutions, and private sector consultants. The OPC Study will be based on new high-resolution bathymetric and topographic data for the entire California coast acquired from the California Ocean Protection Council and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
A series of kick-off meetings were conducted in all fifteen coastal counties to initiate the Discovery process. The goal of the Discovery process is to work closely with communities to better understand the local flood risk and mitigation efforts, and to encourage and support actions taken to increase resilience to flooding. The final kick-off meeting took place in Orange County in January 2012, with a web-based meeting held on January 26, 2012 for community stakeholders who were not able to participate in person. Another webinar was held on June 6, 2012 to introduce the OPC Study to interested Federal, state, regional, and local entities, as well as non-profit and private sector organizations.
To stay up the date with the OPC Study, sign up for our quarterly bulletin, Coastal Beat that will include schedule updates, technical articles and facts of interest, as well as relevant information as the study progresses.
To download the OPC brochure, click here.
To download the OPC Frequently Asked Questions, click here.
To download the CCAMP Townhall presentation from the 2012 Floodplain Management Association, click here.
To download the Outreach for Coastal Communities webinar presentation from November 2012, click here.
To download the Open Pacific Coast Study Coastal Analysis Update webinar presentation from February 2013, click here.
To download the Advantages for Coastal Communities Participating in FEMA's CRS Program webinar presentation from October 2013, click here.
To download the Coastal Analysis Results to Mapping webinar presentation from July 2015, click here.
Beach nourishment is one the most common forms of shore protection, and is favored because it has a relatively low impact on the surrounding areas and directly addresses the need to replenish a beach's sand volume. There are numerous effective beach nourishment strategies, and to address those options, FEMA developed guidelines on assessing projects for their ability to provide flood protection measures. In order to be considered in the flood mapping study, the nourishment project must be large enough to affect the base flood hazard and the community must be able to show a commitment to funding the ongoing maintenance needs of the project. This article specifically examines the role of beach nourishment in coastal flood protection and its consideration in the California Coastal Analysis and Mapping Project Open Pacific Coast (CCAMP OPC) Study.
At the request of several San Francisco Bay Area communities, FEMA is providing access to draft Flood Insurance Rate Maps (FIRM) (a.k.a. work maps) through the FEMA online GeoPlatform. FEMA's GeoPlatform is an ArcGIS online mapping application that makes it easy to share data seamlessly across the internet. After the Flood Risk Review meeting, the draft floodplain maps are uploaded to the GeoPlatform where communities can continue to access the draft work map data, and use it as "best available information" until the Preliminary Flood Insurance Rate Maps are officially released.
The 20th century legacy of severe Pacific winter storms that caused coastal damages throughout the century, including beach/bluff erosion, seawall damages, and flooding from wave overtopping have been well-documented in reports of the National Research Council (1984), Gary Griggs (et al. 2005), and others. This coastal storm history is too often forgotten when facing new threats. When that history should serve as a stark reminder that extreme coastal flood events are a fact of life along the southern California coast. This article discusses storm damages during the 1982-83 and 1997-98 El Niño winters in San Diego County, and provides a reminder of the high damage risk that the oceanfront built environments can expect to experience in any given year.
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iHerb カスタマーレビュー
商品 1 - 5 の合計 5
So far it works very well.
1 人が次のレビューが役に立ったと感じています
Reviewer1582777により Dec 09, 2010 に掲載
I used this together with Nature's Answer oil of oregano when I was coming down with what felt like the flu (aching joints, feverish). I took about 3 doses of both through the day, had a good sleep and woke up fine and flu-free. I'll use it again.
1 人が次のレビューが役に立ったと感じています
Reviewer1110463により May 13, 2009 に掲載
I haven't had any contra-indications after using it once every 2 days thus far. Thanks!
Simply the best!
Reviewer2156188により Oct 15, 2010 に掲載
At the first sign of a cold or sore throat, I take 2 pipette-fuls 3-4 times in one day, and by the next day the infection has all but disappeared. Nothing else has worked so well.
great stuff!
Reviewer2264343により Aug 04, 2011 に掲載
Not only do we use this as directed, a drop, full strength, directly on a mouth or throat sore heals it right up! This stuff is amazing.
Reviewer1610160により Oct 24, 2009 に掲載
商品 1 - 5 の合計 5


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4-Alarm Fire Destroys Two Buildings in Waltham Overnight
Crews worked overnight to put out a heavy four-alarm fire that broke out at a construction site on Charles Street in Waltham.
WCVB reported that the fire started in an unoccupied building that was under construction and eventually spread to a neighboring building with people inside. Everyone made it out safely, but other buildings also had to be evacuated. The report added that several cars, including a police vehicle, were damaged.
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According to a report from NECN, all that remains of one of the buildings is a burnt out frame.
WBZ-TV reported that two firefighters were treated for minor injuries.


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In the action-comedy "Tropic Thunder," Ben Stiller plays pampered action superstar Tugg Speedman, who is cast in the biggest, most expensive war movie ever produced. He sets out to Southeast Asia with a "Who's Who" of celebrity co-stars. They include Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.), an intense, three-time Oscar-winning actor; Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black), star of the popular gross-out comedy franchise "The Fatties"; multi-platinum hiphop-star-turned-entrepreneur-turned-actor Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson); and first-timer Kevin Sandusky (Jay Baruchel). Soon after the production begins the actors are thrown into a real-life situation and are forced to become the fighting unit they're portraying, in order to find a way out of the jungle in one piece.
Barreling down a deserted Hollywood boulevard at the pitch-black hour of 4:12 am this morning, I noticed one lone man standing at the corner of Highland Avenue holding a sign. He trembled in the moderately cool air, bare-chested and wearing a latex Batman mask he'd pilfered from one of the local viral events that transpired over the summer. His hand-painted piece of cardboard read, "Wish me well." While stopped at the light in front of the Hollywood and Highland complex, this seemingly older man noticed my Academy Award credentials and winked. He knew I was headed to the award nomination announcements and needed my encouragement. I waved, wishing I could have snapped a picture.
The man's wish came true, as Academy Award winning actor Forest Whitaker and Academy President Sid Ganis read the nominations aloud this morning. The Dark Knight was nominated in 8 different categories including best supporting actor for Heath Ledger, art direction, cinematography, film editing, and visual effects. None of which really come as a surprise at all. Probably the two biggest surprises of the morning came with the announcements for Best Actor and Actress. While some people had predicted Richard Jenkins as a longshot for his performance in The Visitor, no one imagined that Melissa Leo would slide into the Best Actress category for her work in the hardly noticed Frozen River. Gasps where audible as Whitaker announced her name to the packed house.Read More
Best Romance: All in all, this was a pretty lean year for both the romantic drama and the romantic comedy. Maybe that's why the best romance of the year came courtesy of a girl with a pig snout. In Penelope, Christina Ricci played a cursed socialite with a horrifyingly deformed nose. It took Wanted's James McAvoy to warm her cold heart, and a scooter trip with Reese Witherspoon for her to learn how to love herself. In the process, she gave us one of the most unique love stories of the year. Sure, Never Back Down flirted with the idea of a teenage love affair, but it was mostly about breaking bones and defining punches. The relationship held between Maggie Gyllenhaal and Aaron Eckhart in The Dark Knight was heartbreaking, but again, there was too much movie going on to really look at their sad state of affairs. Forgetting Sarah Marshall was sweet, but relied a little too much on its own gross-out humor to be a winning romance. Which only leaves Sex and the City: The Movie and the Richard Gere/Diane Lane weep fest Nights in Rodanthe as worthy successors to Penelope's plight in life. One film was age affirming and socially gratifying for woman over the age of thirty, and they other was a heart breaker that offered hope only to crush those dreams in its last few fleeting moments of screen time. All three are great romance films, yes. But they faced little to no competition and were released far enough apart that they didn't need to compete for their audiences.
Comeback of the Year: There were so many. 2008 was definitely the Year of the Comeback. Sylvester Stallone revamped Rambo. Tom Cruise won back audience members with his cameo in Tropic Thunder. Vern Troyer gave two winning performances with both Postal and The Love Guru, and Audrey II the outer space houseplant was back terrifying people in The Ruins. But it was really Mickey Rourke and Robert Downey Jr. that made the most noise. These two master magicians fell off the map due to their own personal demons in life. And in 2008, they reemerged as the most talked about performers of the past year. Both put in excellent work, but it was Downey that truly came out on top. Where Rourke had the acclaimed The Wrestler, Downey came with four great films that included Iron Man, Charlie Bartlett, Tropic Thunder, and the withheld drama The Soloist. There's no doubt about it. 2008 was the year of Robert Downey Jr., and he didn't disappoint at all. Let's hope he keeps up this golden boy run in 2009.Read More
1) Tropic Thunder $14.3
Next week continues the end of summer film drought with Nicolas Cage in Bangkok Dangerous and Matthew McConaughey in Surfer, Dude.Read More
DreamWorks Pictures has made the original documentary Rain of Madness available for free download exclusively at the iTunes Store.
CLICK HERE to go to the iTunes Store.Read More
Next week will mark the end of the summer movie going season, and the box office revenue will be down even further than it was this weekend. On the horizon we have Don Cheadle in Traitor, which opens on Wednesday. Then, on Friday, you have the weird mix of Vin Diesel in Babylon A.D., the spoof Disaster Movie, the teen comedy College, and the very weird Asian Western Sukiyaki Western Django directed by cult icon Takashi Miike and starring Quentin Tarantino. Which one will come out on top? If I had to make a guess, I'd say Disaster Movie is going to be our number flick of next week.
Tropic Thunder was released August 13th, 2008.Read More


text: Quick View save 60% Simpsons Mighty Wallet by Dynomighty $15.00 $6.00 Available in select stores Super-strong and eco-friendly, this cool wallet is tear-resistant, water-resistant and can go anywhere you want to take it. Made from a single thin sheet of Tyvek®—a thin paper spun with interlocking fibers for super strength—it expands to a custom fit. The inside is finished with six pockets and… See Details was


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"(O)nce war is forced upon us, there is no other alternative than to apply every available means to bring it to a swift end.
"War's very object is victory, not prolonged indecision.
"In war there is no substitute for victory."
Familiar to every graduate of West Point, the words are from the farewell address of Gen. MacArthur, to Congress on April 19, 1951, after he was relieved of command in Korea by Harry Truman.
Two years later, however, Dwight David Eisenhower, a general as famous as MacArthur, would agree to a truce that restored the status quo ante in Korea.
For the first time since the War of 1812, the United States was not decisively victorious. We had preserved the independence of war-ravaged South Korea. But the North remained the domain of Stalinist strongman Kim Il-Sung for 41 years.
After Korea came Vietnam. The United States did not lose a major battle and departed in early 1973 with every provincial capital in South Vietnamese hands. But the war was lost in April of 1975, when Saigon, its military aid slashed by Congress, fell to an invasion from across the DMZ.
Vietnam introduced us to what no generation of Americans save Southerners had ever known: an American strategic defeat.
Now we are about to enter our eighth year in Afghanistan and our sixth year in Iraq. In neither is victory, in the MacArthurian sense, assured. Indeed, "victory" may be unattainable, says America's most successful general, David Petraeus, who asserts he will never use the word in speaking of Iraq. "This is not the sort of struggle where you take a hill, plant the flag and go home to a victory parade."
Why will Operation Iraqi Freedom not end like Gulf War I, where Gen. Schwarzkopf led the victorious army up Constitution Avenue? Because, whenever a truce is achieved through power-sharing, it often proves to be the prelude to a new war, when the power shifts.
In Iraq, the Shia-Sunni struggle remains unresolved. The Maliki regime wants the Americans gone so it can settle accounts with the Awakening Councils and Sons of Iraq we armed to eradicate Al-Qaida. The Kurds are moving to cement control of oil-rich Kirkuk and expand into Iraqi Arab provinces.
Of that other war over which he has assumed command, Gen. Petraeus says: "Obviously the trends in Afghanistan have been in the wrong direction. ... You cannot kill or capture your way out of an insurgency that is as significant as the one in Iraq, nor, I believe, as large as the one that has developed in Afghanistan."
"We can't kill our way to victory," adds Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the joint chiefs. We are "running out of time."
Mullen earlier said he's "not convinced we're winning it in Afghanistan."
Rush Limbaugh defends Rubio's debate answer: He's absolutely right that Obama knows what he's doing | Allahpundit
Time for Team Hillary to break out the gender card for young liberal women who prefer Sanders | Allahpundit


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|Format: Paperback
Vendor: Warner Press
Publication Date: 2013
Dimensions: 8.40 X 5.30 (inches)
Availability: In Stock
Ages: 10-14
Series: Amarias Adventures
headed. When Silas, Rae and Parvel go missing, Jesse is faced with finding them with the help of Owen, a member of another squad. They finally discover their friends in the land occupied by giants, but before they can mount a rescue, Jesse and Owen are captured by the giants and put under the watch of a gentle giant named Castor.


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Apr 30th, 2015
Category: CDR CommunityRead More
Friday – 5/1/2015
Reebok CrossFit Games Regionals We couldn't be more excited to announce that Jacob Heighes & Ryan Starling are headed to the Reebok CrossFit Games NorCal/ SoCal Regionals this month!! This will be Jacob's 5th year competing at Regionals, however his 1st as an Individual Athlete! We can't wait to cheer for our Coach!!! Jacob finished this years […]


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This week, Hermione has a startling realization and is beside herself, when just seconds ago she was tasked with concentrating on the cutting of Harry's hair. What was her revelation, and was Harry's hair a casualty of shock? You tell us! You write the caption!
Simply head over to the MuggleNet Caption Contest main page and click "CC Entry Form" to submit your caption for this week. While there, you can also view last week's winners, AND any past caption from 300+ weeks of the caption contest's history via the archive. Happy captioning!


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south of sausalito by hermikWatch
©2003-2016 hermik
south of sausalito
the Golden Gate Bridge vanishing in fog. My 5th wallpaper.
Comments are highly welcome!
the Golden Gate Bridge vanishing in fog. My 5th wallpaper.
Comments are highly welcome!
A truly wonderful job.
Really like this.
Really like this.
Beautiful. I would love to see this available in higher resolutions. <3 San Francisco.
best wall ever
Pretty cool
Is this vector art?
Is this vector art?
It's close to vector. It looks like vector, but in fact it's made of pixel shapes with an ancient painting program.
+fav, need i say more?
Great job on the bridge.
simple, clean and beautiful. I love it.
it's ME! this is really really really great. even if i didn't favorite every single golden gate bridge i saw, i would still automatically favorite this.
this is just awesome! GREAT work and thanks for taking the time on all your projects!
I do;nt know what to say. I;m stunned. I love this one. Fav +
how do you do this stuff, seriously?
Its has an awesome 3D perspective .
Its has an awesome 3D perspective .
admire this one! great indeed!
You have krazy vector skills. Excellent work here, only the minimal detail to portray the subject (love it!)
This one's great too, love your vector style.
holy shit, this is mad good !!!
i know its vector, bt it looks like a kinda messed up 3d render... put some more detail in there or somethin
wow, that's definately one of the best vector pictures i've seen lately. simply neat. love the clean look - great!
Great lightning, and great shadows! Luv it!


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What's Needed For Effective Natural Gas Legislation?
Hydraulic Fracturing technologies combined with horizontal drilling techniques have generated access to an unprecedented volume of natural gas throughout the US. In many of these locations, energy exploration is an entirely new industry and state legislators, regulators and governors are examining ways in which they can harvest the enormous bounty of fuel, while still protecting the environment and the public from the potentially negative impacts of exploration.
Similarly, states that have a history of exploration are adapting their regulations to respond to growing concerns around the use of hydraulic fracturing or "fracking".
Former Colorado Governor Bill Ritter is seen as one of the first architects of this new regulatory regime. In 2007, he reformed the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, expanding membership, stakeholder involvement and removed a statutory requirement that industry make up a majority of the seats on the regulatory commission. Following that restructuring, the commission went about developing rules to increase transparency and oversight as well as respond to pubic concerns relating to oil and gas exploration.
Recently, those rules were further amended to increase set back requirements and put in place baseline water measurements for effective quantification of the impacts of drilling on water quality.
Advanced Energy Economy has launched a new Energy Policy Podcast, which presents critical policy components for advanced energy legislation in states around the country. The first of the twice/month podcasts interviews Governor Ritter in a discussion around natural gas regulations and policy development.
When he left office, Governor Ritter started the Center for the New Energy Economy at Colorado State University. He is frequently invited to participate in strategic discussions, deliver testimony and consult to states as they consider establishing responsible oil and gas exploration guidelines and regulations.
In the interview with Governor Ritter, he articulated a few key components states should consider when developing a regulatory structure:
A Social License to Operate
- Work with local community to mitigate the nuisance activity that can be a part of the industrial process
- Setback rules
- Disclosure requirements for fracturing fluids
Methane capture, fugitive methane and the emissions from traffic and rigs
- Industry needs to be at the table to jointly develop rules
- Establish limits on fugitive methane emissions
- Ability to recycle water helps if there's a shortage of water
- What do you do with the waste water?
- States with deep well injection need to address potential seismic activity
- Baseline monitoring to determine what is naturally occurring and what can be attributed to drilling activity
- Real-time monitoring can bring additional parties to the table and relieve concerns around green washing of results
- Transparency of monitoring results is essential
Jurisdiction Issues
- Comprehensive drilling plan requirement – demonstrate that the drilling activity can coexist with local community
- Require input by the local community
- State may retain jurisdiction, but require a finding that the plan is addressing local concerns
- Contractual obligations to mitigate impacts
Taxation and Fees
- Severance Taxes to address local impacts
- Activity can pay for mitigation of impacts
Creating Regulatory Commissions
- Broad stakeholder participation on commission
- Representation of state interests – natural resources, division of wildlife, state EPA, etc…
- Local Government Representatives
- Give directions to the new commission to establish rules through a public process that is nimble enough to revise when necessary.
- Rules are only as good as their level of enforcement
- Fees can be used through permit process to hire inspectors
- Strict set of rules that are clear, predictable and understandable by industry
The full podcast can be heard at www.policypodcast.com - or listeners can subscribe to the twice/month podcast at the iTunes store. The website also contains links to relevant legislation, studies and rules that states can consider when building a responsible regulatory regime.
Image: Red Tape via Shutterstock
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Authored by:
Tom Plant
Tom served in the Colorado House of Representatives from 1999-2007. In 2007, he was tapped to lead the state's energy office by Governor Bill Ritter. After four years ushering in Ritter's signature "New Energy Economy", Plant joined Ritter at the Center for the New Energy Economy within Colorado State University.
Tom spent three years directing the non-profit Center for ReSource Conservation ...
Other Posts by Tom Plant
|More coming soon...
Scott Edward Anderson is a consultant, blogger, and media commentator who blogs at The Green Skeptic. More »
Christine Hertzog is a consultant, author, and a professional explainer focused on Smart Grid. More »
Elias Hinckley is a strategic advisor on energy finance and energy policy to investors, energy companies and governments More »
Gary Hunt Gary is an Executive-in-Residence at Deloitte Investments with extensive experience in the energy & utility industries. More »
Jesse Jenkins is a graduate student and researcher at MIT with expertise in energy technology, policy, and innovation. More »
Kelly Klima is a Research Scientist at the Department of Engineering and Public Policy of Carnegie Mellon University. More »
Jim Pierobon helps trade associations/NGOs, government agencies and companies communicate about cleaner energy solutions. More »
Geoffrey Styles is Managing Director of GSW Strategy Group, LLC and an award-winning blogger. More »
The Energy Collective
- Rod Adams
- Scott Edward Anderson
- Charles Barton
- Barry Brook
- Steven Cohen
- Dick DeBlasio
- Senator Pete Domenici
- Simon Donner
- Big Gav
- Michael Giberson
- Kirsty Gogan
- James Greenberger
- Lou Grinzo
- Jesse Grossman
- Tyler Hamilton
- Christine Hertzog
- David Hone
- Gary Hunt
- Jesse Jenkins
- Sonita Lontoh
- Rebecca Lutzy
- Jesse Parent
- Jim Pierobon
- Vicky Portwain
- Willem Post
- Tom Raftery
- Joseph Romm
- Robert Stavins
- Robert Stowe
- Geoffrey Styles
- Alex Trembath
- Gernot Wagner
- Dan Yurman


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Issue #747074: Allow other modules to unset/remove default codecs implements a hook to unset/remove and an UI for it is left for another issue (never created, until now).
This issue is to request a UI for enable/disable a codec.
Comment #2Chris Burge CreditAttribution: Chris Burge commented
This patch tests successfully for me.
It would be useful if the instructions provided by the WYSIWYG plugin were modified to reflect enabled codecs. Instructions for all codecs are still presented to end users regardless of which ones are enabled.
Comment #4Chris Burge CreditAttribution: Chris Burge commented
Patch #3 works as described. Thanks for circling back around on this issue. It's too bad that WYSIWYG plugins aren't aware of the active text format. The functionality provided by #3 will probably meet the majority of use cases.
Comment #5DamienMcKenna CreditAttribution: DamienMcKenna commented
A minor update that slightly improves the "not all codecs available" disclaimer in the popup, and tightens up the code a little.
Comment #6DamienMcKenna CreditAttribution: DamienMcKenna commented
I was going to set this as RTBC, but then I tweaked the patch. This is good to go, adding it to the proposed issues list for 3.2.


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We want YOU to be the difference
Open Days are now over for another year. Dates for 2016 events will appear here soon. Open Day is your chance to explore what's on offer at your choice of University, meet staff and current students, and more importantly, ask questions. If you missed Open Day or you still have questions please get in touch with us.


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"[T]his warning, alas! is no mere guesswork of credulous and speculative minds, such as in these latitudes certain of our would-be weather prophets love to put forth at hazard, to furnish the topic of a day's gossip to the millions, or happy to win for themselves a summer day's reputation with the uninstructed, in the event of a successful [prediction]. Certainly, indeed there is not and cannot be till science shall have extended its domain far beyond its present limits."
Even today, we are far from having predictive capabilities, and even computer-generated threats of sea level rise do not match reality.
Tide gauge data collected over the past 20 years reveal that mean sea level rise averages only 1.3 mm per year along India's coastline. By contrast, Environment and Forests Ministry computer models projected that India's coastal sea level might rise by three times that amount: 4mm per year or 0.4 meters (1.3 feet) per century.
Two distinguished sea level experts from the University of Durham in Britain and University of Pennsylvania, USA analyzed past sea level studies based on dating coral, marine shells, beach ridges and coastal sedimentary sequences from the Northern Indian Ocean along India's east coast and the coast of Sri Lanka. They found at least four periods, each one lasting 1000 to 1800 years, during the mid-Holocene period (7500 to 1500 years ago), when seas were one to three meters above current levels.
Another study by Peter Ramsay of Durban, South Africa produced a 9000-year record along the southern African coastline. It shows a 2500-year-long sea level rise of up to 3.5 meters (11.6 feet) during the early to mid Holocene, before sea level fell to current levels.
This evidence suggests that the Middle Holocene was warmer than today – and that "scary" CO2-induced sea level rises projected in the ministry's 2030 Climate report are less than natural cycles of high and low seas that our ancestors faced in India and elsewhere.
Yet another study examined coastal erosion. Scientists from the Directorate of Water Management in Orissa found that 88% of stations along India's tropical river basins had measured reduced sediment levels for the last three decades. But this had nothing to do with CO2 emissions. The actual cause was significant diversion and storage of runoff to meet increasing water demands for agriculture and industry – and the false cure of cutting emissions would not improve this situation.
The news media and environmental organizations repeatedly tell the "uninstructed" public that current global warming is unprecedented and threatens humankind and all life on Earth. However, past temperature and sea level changes were certainly more extreme than what scientists have observed in India during the past two centuries. More importantly, even the exaggerated computer model future for India in 2030 would not be extraordinary or unprecedented, and there is no evidence that human CO2 emissions caused recent or current (natural and cyclical) temperature and sea level fluctuations.
We survived those past global warming and cooling periods. With our scientific and technological advances, we will survive future changes, too – if we do not shackle our energy and economic development, thereby keeping billions of people poor and deprived of the ability to adapt. The ministry's November 2010 climate change report says India's average annual temperature could increase a minimum of 1degree to a maximum of 4 degrees C (1.8 to 7.2 F) by the 2030s. We seriously doubt that these higher temperatures are based on reality, but wonder if they might save lives, like those lost during Punjab's cold spells in December 2010.
The report also says warmer temperatures will prevail during the nighttime over the south peninsula and central and northern India, whereas daytime warming is will occur in central and northern India. However, such diurnal warming patterns might simply be related to the distance from the sea, rather than to any CO2 global warming effects.
Like Henry Blanford, we believe India, the USA and the rest of the world need more paleoclimatology and field monitoring work, before anyone makes speculative predictions based entirely on CO2-driven computer climate model "scenarios" of the future. For countries to implement restrictive, punitive energy policies – based on such speculation – would be crazy and suicidal.
Selvaraj Kandaswamy is a paleoclimatologist working at the Research Center for Environmental Changes, Academia Sinica, in Taiwan.
Rush Limbaugh defends Rubio's debate answer: He's absolutely right that Obama knows what he's doing | Allahpundit
Time for Team Hillary to break out the gender card for young liberal women who prefer Sanders | Allahpundit


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The DFID office in Mozambique is quiet now, with many people already on leave. However, we still have a couple of important meetings before the end of the year, discussing financial management and planning for the annual review of the health sector early in 2010, so I am back and forth between the DFID office and the Ministry of Health, which is just a 10 minute ride away.
The DFID team has already had its end of year party, which was held at our Head of Office, Keith Mackiggan's house. We all had to either mime or give a short description of a colleague, who would then receive a gift if they were correctly identified. It was an amusing and revealing game, and I think we are a stronger team as a result of the laughter! We are now all primed and anxious to begin what we hope will be a productive and peaceful new year doing our best to make things happen for development in Mozambique.
I couldn't resist sharing these three festive season cards that DFID has selected as e-CARDS to send out this year...see below.
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Part of DFID's efforts to become a greener organisation and support action on climate change include doing away with traditional cards and sending out our seasons greetings as e-cards.
The pictures for this year's cards were selected by Secretary of State Douglas Alexander from designs produced by children as part of the Global School Partnership Programme.
The winning card, a fantastic picture of peace doves, was designed by Hammad Rasheed, aged 15, from Faisalabad, Pakistan. The two runners up, with equally lovely winter scene designs were Fathima Faruza Aswer, aged 10 from Kandy in Sri Lanka and Lucy Pobjoy, aged 5 from Gloucestershire in England.
I wish you all the best for 2010.


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Respond to Review of King Liew
by Britt87
Review: After the disappointment that was Patong (do not stay here if you want vegetarian food), we decided to stay in Phuket Town. After reading a favourable review on HappyCow, we decided to check out King Liew, and were not disappointed! The restaurant had a homely atmosphere, and the staff were ultra friendly (they even rescued a turtle, which they are now raising). The menu was extensive (although half was completely in Thai with no English translation - lucky we were helped by friendly regulars). The food in the English part of the menu is delicious enough though. We ordered a delicious pepper mushroom & rice dish, spring rolls, corn, chilli & vegi fritters and a faux meat dish - all were excellent - and Ultra cheap! (it was the most/best food we ate in this region of Thailand, and the cheapest). It's a shame we did not stay in Phuket Town for longer, just so we could try more of the menu. Highly Recommended!
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What do you get when you add-up the respective jersey numbers of Pau Gasol (16), Andrew Bynum (17), and Adam Morrison (6)? That's right — 39. Yes, the same number that the Lakers lost to the Boston Celtics by in the 2008 NBA Finals. It's also the same number, that when separated into single digits and multiplied (3 x 9), and then reduced by the first digit of the initial number (27-3), equals 24. Yes, the same number of points that the Lakers led the Celtics by in Game 4 of the 2008 NBA Finals, only to give it all away and lose to them by 6 in the end.
Now, did any of those numbers make any sense to anyone at all? Nope. And they make even less sense to die-hard Laker fans all around the world.
Here we are, two years removed from that devastating debacle in Boston, and those numbers still confound and haunt the hell out of all of us here in Los Angeles — from the 39-point pounding in Game 6 to the 24-point lead the Lakers let slip away in Game 4 in Staples Center. While winning the Championship last year against the Orlando Magic was monumental in its own right (with Phil winning his 10th, Kobe winning without Shaq, and Adam Morrison and Sun Yue surpassing Lebron James in rings), it still didn't provide us with the ultimate sense of freedom from the evil green cloud that continued to hang directly above our heads.


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August 15, 2014 § Leave a comment
In the beginning the blog was without form, and void
There are many thoughts that pass between a person's ears, which are not readily shared in the moment they exist, due to isolation, appropriateness, or preoccupation. This does not make the idea any less valid, any less deserving of consideration.
Ideas are fascinating in that they have a limited shelf life. If left unrecorded, they will eventually be lost to the ether. If left unshared, the idea's potential is at best slowed, at worst starved.
To this end, I write. To record the ideas and thoughts that might otherwise be lost. To expose those ideas to the light of day that they should be spread, or stifled, on their merits. This will likely be boring to most. For that, I make no apologies.


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Clapham Common
|Venue name:
|Clapham Common
Windmill Drive
|Tube: Clapham South/Clapham Common
|Do you own this business?
Pick a dateto
Things to do
Where's Wally Fun Run
Signing up for any fun run involves a bit of looking like a wally, but for this one you'll really have to get used to it. Walk, jog or run the 5km or 10km course which in 2016 relocates to Clapham Common, dressed as Martin Handford's cheerfully elusive...Sport events Sunday March 20 2016Read more
South West Four
The mighty SW4 – Clapham Common's bank holiday dance music explosion – returns for another weekend of big drops, club anthems and arms in the air. If you're longing for big beats but can't afford Ibiza and are loath to spend the last days of summer in...Dance and electronic Saturday August 27 2016 - Sunday August 28 2016Read more
Average User Rating
4.8 / 5
Rating Breakdown
- 5 star:4
- 4 star:1
- 3 star:0
- 2 star:0
- 1 star:0
Big green space, a perfect antidote to the concrete crazy city.
the heart and soul of clapham. Beautiful in every season and most importantly, it is in constant use by everyone. Taken for granted but it is the most valuable thing from fitness, to music to food festivals to your daily jog.
Classic green area for a lazy sunday in the park with friends. Also there are loads of dogs you can buddy up with for the afternoon.
It really is a good park to visit if you like green outdoor spaces. I rated other nearby parks in this article: www.weekendnotes.co.uk/parks-and-green-spaces-in-richmond/
Beautiful Clapham Common is South London's 2nd largest Common after Wimbledon Common and one of the city's largest open spaces. Excellent for lazy summer days, picnics and dog walking and lots of fun areas for children. The ponds and lake have been revamped for wild life and its bandstand is one of the oldest in the UK. There are festivals on the Common all through the summer including London Calling and SW Four in June and August respectively. The Common can be accessed from the Tube on the Northern Line at Clapham Common or at Clapham South. There are pubs, bars and restaurants aplenty in Clapham itself however the Windmill quite sensibly is the only pub on the Common. Clapham was the original Ground Zero or epicentre of South London's gentrification but has matured of late as property prices have gone through the roof and made it a less affordable place to live for young professionals and graduates who have found succor in nearby Brixton and Peckham, Nevertheless Clapham Common is still a magnet for young sun worshippers and fitness fanatics from far and wide.


text: recipe Spiced Chocolate Bread Puddings These individual desserts can be made in ovenproof ramekins, mugs, or cups. The recipe also works in a nine-inch round cake pan, although you will need to increase the baking time to 35 minutes. Bread that has sat out at room temperature for two days works best, but you can also use fresh bread that has been cubed and lightly toasted on a baking sheet in a 350-degree oven. sharePinterestFacebookTwitterGoogle+ Email


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STAMPING Journal®November/December 2011
STAMPING Journal® is the only industrial publication dedicated solely to serving the needs of the metal stamping market. In 1987 the American Metal Stamping Association broadened its horizons and renamed itself and its publication, known then as Metal Stamping. Print subscriptions are free to qualified stamping professionals in North America.
More Info Subscribe Free
November 7, 2011
Proper heat treatment is essential to optimize tool steel properties. This entails not only selecting the appropriate time and temperature parameters for the grade involved, but also equipment fully capable of doing the job at hand. Toolmakers should talk with their heat treat facilities to ensure that when it comes to heat treating requirements, everyone is on the same page.
November 7, 2011
Various factors must work in harmony to create a safety-conscious stamping environment. The press must be used and maintained properly, as should its safety systems. You should know how to use personal protective equipment (PPE), undergo safety training, and know how to identify hazards. Ignoring...
November 7, 2011
A recycling strategy shouldn't be implemented in isolation but instead be part of a broader lubrication strategy. Shop managers should first determine what lubricant their stamped parts require; how and where this lubricant needs to be applied; and how part geometry affects lubricant usage and reclamation practices.