What Pangaea said. I remember someone commented a while back in a conversation on (IIRC) another forum, saying that they had actually talked to Horner... and they basically said that, though Horner still supports his theory, he doesn't really seem to believe it anymore. Interesting if true.

A lot of Horner's arguments never made sense to me, anyways... the "plodding giant" argument is silly because that's how I'd describe most of T. rex's prey, too. A balance of power has to be maintained in order for the foodchain to remain stable, so something would actually be wrong with the "big picture" if T. rex looked capable of taking down everything in its environment and then some. Look how often lions' hunts fail, for instance... no confirmed predator that we can observe today has a 1/1 or even 1/2 success ratio, it usually boils down to something like 1/20, even for obligate carnivores like the big cats. Lions (rexes) get outrun by zebras (hadrosaurs), may be charged and/or gored by buffalo (ceratopsains), and are nowhere near capable of taking down gazelles (ostrich-dinos) or elephants (sauropods). They still manage, though.

They have found evidence of T. rex eating the more "undesirable" parts of carcasses, eg. that Triceratops pelvis, but that's also kind of silly to use as evidence that it wasn't a hunter. Gray wolves will eat every part of a deer carcass, down to the hooves, not because they're "desperate scavengers" but because they're just very, very efficient at processing carcasses, including the ones they brought down themselves. It's just a matter of anatomy; other predators, like big cats, aren't equipped with the right "tools". T. rex was.

I have no doubt that T. rex scavenged whenever possible. Any smart animal will, if it has the stomach for it--it's a free source of nutrients with no risk that the owner is going to gore you, stab you with pointy hooves, etc. Heck, even giraffes, sheep, cows and deer have been known to munch on bones, roadkill, and even live birds (like grouse and poultry) when they can get them.

I also have no doubt that T. rex hunted sick and injured prey whenever possible. I don't even see why that would be a question, or would be read into as making T. rex a "weak" hunter, since this is extremely common and logical behavior in many modern predators (eg. lions, wolves)... and we do not think of them as "weak" hunters at all.

"Tongues" I think can be interpeted either as languages, or as people (individuals who have tongues and are speaking)... I couldn't tell you the exact etymology, but effectively it means confused languages, or people who are speaking nonsense/can't be mutually understood.

A Google search for me also brings up a lot of Bible-related results, but I'm not aware of any translation that contains that exact phrase; I think it's mostly used for its poetic value, and the fact that it calls the story of Babel to mind.

I only fell in live with them after much angsting, wheedling, and guilt-tripping of parents.

I think The Flintstones was my first introduction per se--but I was too young (four or five) and they were too cartoony for me to really understand what I was looking at. I started paying more attention after seeing a commercial for Jurassic Park, and their dinosaurs looked a lot better than the Flintstones ones! I asked my parents "what are dinosaurs?" and got two totally different replies--my dad's knee-jerk reaction was to tell me that they were made up and never really existed, and my mom immediately told me that they had. But she had never been a dinosaur buff, so she couldn't tell me much else.

I have no idea why my dad didn't want me to know about them, but it made things hard because my mom was reluctant to help me learn about them while my dad was so strongly against the idea. And she was afraid that kids' books about dinosaurs were full of crap. Which was a fair concern--there were basically no good books that we could find.

It got a little better right before I turned six. Some friends brought the VHS version of Jurassic Park over to watch. I whined, wheedled, guilt tripped, and cried unashamedly until even my dad finally caved, and they let me watch it with them. Yeah, a 5 and 3/4-year-old watching a PG-13 movie... but you have to admit, it was unashamedly cruel refusing to tell me anything about dinosaurs, and then bringing home a cool movie about them. I would've had to sit in my room the whole time in order to not watch it... like a time-out practically... since the rest of our house was all open.

The good news was, my dad finally relented after that, and I was able to convince my mom to finally start buying me dinosaur toys. My first one was a Triceratops that looked like this (far left); I still have it in storage, as a memento.

Years later, some friends gave us their old junk to sell at our garage sale, including some old kids' books from the 80's. Two were about dinosaurs. They were out of date and didn't even agree with each other--but they were filled with Gregory Paul's wonderful oil paintings. After even more wheedling (dad didn't want us to keep the books!) I was allowed to keep them. Finally!

I have no idea why my dad argued so hard against my having dinosaur-related stuff. Just a year after that, he completely flipflopped and not only didn't mind, he actively helped me look for newer books at the library. Our library's books were even more outdated than the ones I had at home, so my mom ended up helping me do research on the internet instead, just to try to get some decent information.

So I'm a butt when it comes to cross-researching and checking references today, because that was how I first started learning about dinosaurs.  I don't think it hurt too much for me to have to learn to take things with a grain of salt--or to start learning how to do research as early as I did. But it's gotten a lot easier since I became old enough to use search engines for myself, and the quality of dinosaur books--even for kids--has gotten a lot better!

Ahh... I used to play Civ II, when I still had a computer that could run it. Loved the throne room decorating aspect. But I always had to cheat, because I've never had the "multitasking" abilities necessary to play well, and the AI was always so psycho. They'd start out with "hey, we like you, let's be bestest friends!" Then two minutes later, when I hadn't even done anything, "we've had enough of your insults! You're going to die!"  

I did try Civ III after that, but mostly just play without opponents so I don't end up getting creamed. The later sequels look really interesting, but... I doubt I'd be any better at playing them.  

I do think that people are affected by what they see, and that violent games can get into a person's head, especially if they're still very young and impressionable. But I suspect that in cases where violence has been linked to games, at least as often (if not more often) it's the other way around. If you have someone who already has violent tendencies, they will want to indulge themselves in that somehow... they will gravitate toward things that allow them to act out violence. Video games fit the glove very well because (at least in our culture) not a lot of people take notice when a teenager or young adult spends a lot of time playing video games. It's pretty common.

IMO the fact that a killer may have played these games a lot is just one smaller symptom before their fixation reared its ugly head in a more noticeable way. I think it's pretty well-known by now that people who abuse other people as adults, often abused animals when they were younger... but there isn't really a way to play a violent video game "non-violently", so it's easy for people to just gloss over the person's motives for playing and blame the game itself.

The Orcas of Seaworld are being take care of, and they do not get stressed or sick.

If that were true, I'd be happy and fine with places like SeaWorld having them. But like I mentioned... we can already see that that isn't quite the case. Problems like the "folded fin" are usually overlooked, but it's pretty well known that the tanks aren't big enough for them. And, again, they suffer greatly shortened lifespans. We can't go up to an orca and say "hey, do you feel stressed out?" but it is obviously impacting an animal's health when it doesn't even live half as long as it could expect to in a wild environment. Even without dredging up specific incidents, IMO that's more than enough reason to take notice.

I'm sure the SeaWorld folks are being honest when they say that they do their best to keep the animals healthy and happy. The problem is that "their best" simply may not be enough--and if it isn't enough, they should take other steps to make sure that they are not holding orcas in an inadequate environment, or stop showing orcas until they can. That's basically what we expect from folks who keep domestic pets.

Yipes, my other grandma sent us something and it just arrived late. Huge box full of food.  
Beef jerky, smoked salmon (yay!), pepperoni sticks, blackberry jam, crackers, and some cheese. And two oven mitts. 0.o

I don't think we'll be buying snack foods until next Christmas.

I found it entirely worth watching.

The thing is, The Hobbit isn't LOTR. The books are not even remotely the same, the structure and themes and feel of the two are way different... so really, what do you expect? The Hobbit is essentially a fantasy tale Tolkien developed for older children, and very different from the dry seriousness and angsty grimdark of the Trilogy. The Hobbit film can't be exactly the same as the book and also be exactly the same as LOTR simultaneously, because the two are different enough that it just isn't possible. But at the same time, if they just made it identical to the Hobbit book, it would be difficult to advertise as being related to LOTR... a lot of LOTR fans would probably get pretty angry, because they really aren't that similar.

So no, they aren't trying to "ruin" anything, they're just trying to compromise for LOTR fans and Hobbit fans alike... not just give either group exactly what they want at the cost of the other (which is what a lot of the LOTR fans I've seen floating around seemed to have expected).

If you're a diehard LOTR fan and the thought of a movie that isn't as grimdark as LOTR leaves a bad taste in your mouth... then yeah, maybe you won't enjoy it. But if you appreciated reading The Hobbit, or think you could potentially appreciate something based on a book that's a bit lighter and less serious than the Trilogy, then there's still a good chance that you'll enjoy it.

Ah, got him finally... he couldn't guess Kiron (Joust). Tried to guess like five times. And it turns out that Kiron IS in his database, even.  :

Quote from: WeirdRaptor,Nov 24 2012 on  09:06 PM

And I did check out Adventure Time. The one thing I can describe it as is "cute". It's simple with some gags that go waaaaaaay over the target audience's heads. Lady Ranicorn only speaks Korean and according to some of the translations, there are definitely implications that she was intimate with Jake more than once. Oh man, the things they've got away with . But other than that..."cute". Oh, and the Ice King's little "issues".[/color]

I think you may be underestimating what the target audience actually is, though... it wasn't meant for little kids, hence why it airs around 7-8 PM, along with Regular Show (which has even more blatant innuendo than AT). I love it to death, but it's definitely not something I'd let a second-grader watch, if I had kids. I'd rank it close to Invader Zim (one of my other favorites) in terms of general audience... maybe not quite that high, but roughly in that range.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars is my other current favorite (although I might not consider that a "cartoon" per se). Those are two of the three reasons I turn the TV on these days--the other being for video games.

I used to watch SatAM all the time... practically all my best friend and I ever talked about was Sonic (that and Dinotopia). It's a bit cheesier than I remember, though, now that I have a few DVDs and can watch them again. For some reason when they used to get aired on TV, they cut out any of the parts with Sonic singing. Erm...?

I loved Rugrats, and still watch it occasionally if I can find the original series... that and Batman: The Animated Series. Hey Arnold was a great show, too. I especially liked how they had their own urban legends and such, those always seemed like the funnest episodes. Code Lyoko was also awesome, as were Teen Titans.


Other than that I haven't watched cartoons much, since I was maybe six or seven? Not a lot of shows can hold my interest for a full half-hour.