Singing Ice: A Star Wars Story

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How Jurassic World Should Have Ended

zookeepers recreating Jurassic World dinosaur training

After literally the biggest opening weekend ever, Jurassic World fever has taken over, well, the world. Everyone wishes they could hop on a motorcycle and hang out with some dinosaurs, right? Sadly, we can’t grab a frosty beverage and enjoy watching pterodactyls flapping around an atrium quite yet. I know, we’re sad about it too. But, we have uncovered some real life Chris Pratts working hard and joining in on the Jurassic World hype.

Keepers and trainers at aquariums and zoos all over are announcing their membership in Pratt’s raptor squad. Starting on Twitter, keepers have been posting photos recreating the famous shot of Pratt’s character Owen Grady taming the velociraptors. I love a good meme, and these photos are amazing. What better way to spread the word about zoos and aquariums?

Jurassic World: What do the paleontologists think?

Explaining the concept of this review is like explaining a dream. "I went to go see 'Jurassic World' before the film was in theaters, but instead of my friends, I brought two top paleontologists."

Based on a small sample size, the "Jurassic Park" film franchise has a special place in the heart of paleontologists. This is probably why I was able to convince the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History Director Kirk Johnson and Curator of Dinosauria Matthew Carrano, both paleontologists, to come to a screening of "Jurassic World."

The tl;dr of their reaction? "Jurassic World" is super entertaining — but it could have used more herbivores.

Here is the paleontologists' review, in the form of a condensed and edited conversation. There are, as you would imagine, mild — but not devastating — spoilers.

KJ: I did enjoy the addition of the Pterosaurs and the Mesosaur.

MC: Right, a few non-dinosaurs. That's true, having more than just peripheral role.

KJ: They definitely supercharged the Mesosaur and made the Pterosaurs way stronger than they would have been in real life.

MC: Yeah. Pterosours could do you damage, but it's hard to believe a Pterosaur could lift a person. They're not that strong. Their bones are like paper. It's hard to imagine not being able to get away from a Pterosaur. You could crush one, probably.

KJ: And their claws aren't like that.

MC: They're not eagles. That's the other thing, too. They're not actually animals that run around and grab things with their claws the way raptors do today. They're mouth predators. If they can't pick you up with their mouth, they're not going to eatyou. And a lot of Pterosaurs, their neck bones are not thick. They probably can't pick up a person. Their feet are not — I wouldn't imagine it to be the equivalent of an eagle. They basically are flat footed.

KJ: They're fishing.

MC: Bug eating. The average Pterosaur is much smaller. It's the same thing as the Velociraptor. And the Mesosaur is substantially larger than most Mesosaurs.

KJ: Twice-ish.

MC: Nice to see some marine things. Although I'd love to know how you get [a Mesosaur] out of a mosquito. How do you get the blood out of a sea creature out of a mosquito?

What's changed in dinosaur science between "Jurassic Park" and "Jurassic World"?

KJ: The number of dinosaurs we know has just, like, skyrocketed.

MC: Every six or seven weeks, you get a new dinosaur. And that pace has been going up for 20 years.

KJ: If you drive a direct connection between places putting value in dinosaurs and hiring dinosaur scientists, and then dinosaur science finding new dinosaurs, there's almost something like a direct cause and effect between something like "Jurassic Park" and this incredible number of new dinosaurs.

The new Jurassic World dinosaur is 'a little shy', apparently

Of all those newly discovered dinosaurs since the last installment of the series, which one should have been in "Jurassic World"?

KJ: Deinocheirus. A gigantic clawed duck thing. A lot of the cool weird ones are herbivores.

MC: Every single kind of carnivore is in there, right? With the herbivores, it's "we've got our horns one, we have our armor one, we have our longneck one, and we don't really care how many."

We've probably discovered about 4 percent of all the dinosaurs that ever existed. They should be just making these dinosaurs like "holy cow, what's that?" And they would all be dinosaurs you've never heard of. They could say, "Well it's kind of like a stegosaurus, but it's got all this other junk on it. I guess it's a ... " And they could just start naming new dinosaurs.

On the Indominus Rex, the made-up hybrid villain "dinosaur."

KJ: It basically looks like a supercharged Allosaurus. But it had bird raptor claws. Did you notice that? Those are eagle claws, they weren't dinosaur claws.

MC: And then it had sort of like a Bellusaur head with all these knobs on it.

KJ: It looks like a dinosaur, basically. It looked like you could easily find that.

MC: In the technical details no, but there are giant long-armed predatory dinosaurs. So you don't even need to get that weird about it. Interestingly, the color changing, that was in the book, the first book. There's a dinosaur in the first book called Carnotaurus. Which of course we don't know what color it was. But in the first "Jurassic Park" book, it was a color-changing dinosaur, which they only found out after they made it. It just turned out to be a camouflaged dinosaur. They got rid of it in the first movie originally, but they brought the concept back now.

On the film's choice to explain away the accuracy of "Jurassic World's" dinosaurs by saying that none of the park's creatures are "natural."

MC: I loved that, right? It was the "scientist, shut up" moment. B.D. Wong's character says something like: "You always wanted more teeth and more this, if we did it the way they were supposed to be they would look completely different." So the idea is, they don't have feathers on purpose. At least he provides an answer, right?

On the portrayal of scientists in the film.

KJ: This was the first one with no paleontologists in it?

MC: Yeah.

KJ: In the first (movie), there's the famous line, "I need the opinion of a paleobotanist." Which is the first and only time the word "paleobotany" has ever been uttered in a movie. As a paleobotanist I was —

MC: It was a high-water mark.

KJ: This one, there was, like, the tough guy who was the dinosaur trainer.

MC: But he was like an ex-Navy dude.

KJ: So that might be the big thing, is that they've matured past needing us.

What about the Jurassic plants?

KJ : My big pet peeve is of course, everybody short-shrifts the vegetation in the landscape. Everybody puts dinosaurs in modern landscapes. It's even worse if you call it "Jurassic World." All the implications are that you're going to build this entire world. But really it's not; it's Hawaii with dinosaurs. Dinosaurs didn't really live in the rain forest, because there weren't really rain forests to live in when dinosaurs were around.

MC: And actually if you had an island like that, if you assume that the dinosaurs could have adjusted to eating these things they've never eaten before, etc. It would have take no time at all for those dinosaurs to totally have remade that landscape, like elephants today. Elephants hate trees; they just start pulling them down. Elephants are engineering the landscape, and the big dinosaurs certainly would have done that. It wouldn't have been a dense rain forest for very long. They would have trashed the place.

What did you think about Chris Pratt's trained Velociraptors?

MC: Deeply unlikely, for a whole bunch of reasons. A lot of dinosaurs live in groups, it seems like. I'm sure there are ways of communicating, crocodiles do that today. But the raptors are engaging in wolf-like behavior. Even in mammals that stuff shows up late. It's a pretty new thing.

We want our predators to be as dramatic as possible, right? That whole notion actually came out of science, that they were pack hunters. That's not a movie invention. And it's based on the fact that the very first examples of these raptors that were found, there were several of them that were found together, and a plant eater that was much bigger. The idea was that it was a pack scenario. But that has not really held up in later years for a variety of reasons. But it's been a very catchy thing. The more likely thing is that they were running around eating lizards.

Copyright: Washington Post 

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/jurassic-world-what-do-the-paleontologists-think-10316292.html

ET is a jedi

How Marijuana Highjacks Your Brain To Give You The Munchies

Shortly after toking up, a lot of marijuana users find that there's one burning question on their minds: "Why am I so hungry?" Researchers have been probing different parts of the brain looking for the root cause of the marijuana munchies for years. Now, a team of neuroscientists report that they have stumbled onto a major clue buried in a cluster of neurons they thought was responsible for making you feel full.

This cluster, called the POMC neurons, is in the hypothalamus, a region of the brain that scientists typically associate with base instincts like sexual arousal, alertness and feeding. Tamas Horvath, a neuroscientist at the Yale School of Medicine and the team's leader, says that the POMC neurons normally work by sending out a chemical signal telling the brain, you're sated, stop eating.

In the past, when neuroscientists shut down POMC neurons in mice, all the mice became morbidly obese. Horvath figured that in order for the drug in marijuana — compounds called cannabinoids — to spawn that undeniable impulse to feed, it would have to bind the activity of these neurons and make them fire less. Paradoxically, Horvath says, "We found the exact opposite."

The team discovered that when they injected cannabinoids into mice, the drug was turning off adjacent cells that normally command the POMC neurons to slow down. As a result, the POMC neurons' activity leapt up. At the same time, the cannabinoids activate a receptor inside the POMC neuron that causes the cell to switch from making a chemical signal telling the brain you're full to making endorphins, a neurotransmitter that's known to increase appetite. npr

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Kenneth Turan's Top 54 Films

MOVIES IN KENNETH TURAN’S NEW BOOK:

“Not to be Missed: Fifty

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Four Favorites from a Lifetime of Film”

1920s

Fantomas

Sherlock, Jr.

Pass the Gravy

1930s

I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang

Bombshell

The Dybbuk

Make Way for Tomorrow

Love Affair

1940s

Pride and Prejudice

The Shop Around the Corner

To Be or Not to Be

The Lady Eve

Strawberry Blonde

Casablanca

Random Harvest

Children of Paradise

Great Expectations

Bicycle Thieves

The Third Man

1950s

All About Eve

The Asphalt Jungle

Sunset Boulevard

Casque d’Or

The Importance of Being Earnest

Singin’ in the Rain

The Earrings of Madame De

Seven Samurai

Kiss Me Deadly

Seven Men from Now

Sweet Smell of Success

Vertigo

1960s

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence

The Gospel According to St. Matthew

Point Blank

Le Samourai

Kes

1970s

The Godfather

Chinatown

1980s

The Day After Trinity

First Contact

Distant Voices, Still Lives

1990s

Howards End

Leolo

Unforgiven

2000s

Spirited Away

The Best of Youth

The Five Obstructions

Stranded

Senna

A Prophet

Of Gods and Men

Footnote

3D glasses

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