Action Figure Daniel

Author: Daniel

  • The Epic of Gilgamesh

    I was recently watching some old Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes and watched a highly acclaimed (though not particularly liked by me) episode called “Darmok”. In this episode, Darmok (the alien) is trying to teach Picard how to converse. Darmok’s people use stories to communicate everything which makes it very difficult for Picard to understand because the stories mean nothing to him. To overcome this, they tell each other cultural stories:

    I used to hate this episode… then Picard mentioned Gilgamesh. Then I read several versions of The Epic of Gilgamesh. Then I decided that this episode was alright.

  • Thoughts on dinosaurs

    Do you remember that part in Jurassic Park when the little boy is teasing Dr. Grant about his book not being very thick? Then the doctor’s wife chimes in, “Yours was fully illustrated.” I love illustrated books (mostly anyway, some things should just be left to the imagination). Especially if they are about something really cool like dinosaurs.

    I guess I am still on a dinosaur kick. I have two more thoughts on the subject.

    One should always catch on dinosaur reading before trying to answer questions about them. A lot has changed in the past decade alone. Things that used to be considered “wild speculation” about them are now taught as fact. Brontosaur and apatosaurus are the same thing… Birds are dinosaurs… Dinosaurs were killed by a meteor… We know some of their colors…

    Second, I am still not sure which is more terrifying:
    The giant velociraptors that Jurassic Park wrongly depicts (Based of the size, I think they were actually showing deinonychus:

    4-5 foot tall deinonychus
    2-3 foot tall velociraptor

    but who I am to question Steven Spielberg. Graphics from Wikipedia.org)

    Or… that velociraptors were covered in feathers, vastly improving their jumping capabilities.

  • “The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs” by Dougal Dixon

    Dixon’s book is a very tastefully illustrated and fairly modern book about dinosaurs.

    Interesting tidbit: T-Rex had long arms compared to many of its cousins.

  • “The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs” by Gregory S Paul

    Dinosauria is such a fascinating subject. This book opens with a rather in-depth overview of what we know (and what we are guessing) about dinosaurs and attempts to catalog most of the better know dinosaurs.

    Interesting tidbit: We have actual preserved impressions of dinosaur skin (in “mummified” samples). In some case, we even know what colors it was.

  • Erez Lieberman Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel: What we learned from 5 million books (TED)

    Aiden and Michel used data made available from the Google Books project to explore the changes in our published books and thus our culture over time.

    What we learned from 5 million books (TED)