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By Katie Kish, March 19, 2008 12:07 am

So 4 of my friends sent me this exact same story today… which is totally cute. I love my friends for knowing my soft spot for dinosaurs So I guess I should just let everyone know that I am indeed SUPER excited that they found a mummified dinosaur, and thank you all for sending me the story!

“This is not the usual disjointed sentence or fragment of a word that the fossil records offer up as evidence of past life. This is a full chapter.”

Animal tissue typically decomposes quickly after death. Researchers say Dakota must have been buried rapidly and in just the right environment for the texture of the skin to be preserved.

“The process of decay was overtaken by that of fossilization, preserving many of the soft-tissue structures,” Manning said.

Woo!

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By Katie Kish, March 5, 2008 12:39 pm

You already know this is going to be good.

Alright, so I was perusing around the interwebs today and came across this really entertaining site called Answers in Genesis. I had seen it before, but just passed by it because I wasn’t interested in filling my head with goop. But today, I decided since its my day off and I needed giggle, I’d venture in… and boy oh boy did I find some fantastic stuff about dinosaurs. I won’t bother posting the content of it – because its the same old “dinos lived with humans” bullshit, but the illustrations are AWESOME.

Sweet. 

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By Katie Kish, January 10, 2008 12:10 am

He doesn’t really look like it here, but the psittacosaurus is usually compared to a modern day pig… that walks on it’s hind legs. Fossils have suggested that it was probably a much fatter animal that what he looks like in this picture.

A new rare soft tissue find has shed some more light on what dinosaurs actually looked like, felt like and what they were made up of. The clawed 100 million year old remains of a psittacosaurus show that the animal had extremely think skin underneath either scales or feathers.

It doesn’t really help with the whole “feathers-or-scales” debate at all, but at least we know what was underneath it all? Honestly – I think a T-Rex covered in feathers is just a little ridiculous. But really, with their close connection to birds, I see no reason why the smaller ones wouldn’t look something like this:

It’s actually kinda cute! A little bit… …Actually it looks like an animal from the Labyrinth. (I still answer the phone “shawa fwend” when my sister sarah calls just to sound like the big hairy guy from the Labyrinth.) No! What it actually reminds me of is the creature from The Dark Crystal, not the cute one – the scary one. Anyway… carrying on…

The skin that they found on the fossil is being compared to shark or dolphin skin. It would have been ideal for protection against predators. Woo!

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By Katie Kish, August 1, 2007 12:25 am

I’ve found a few things on Prof Moran’s blog tonight that I’m absolutely in love with. Hopefully I get to meet him one day soon, my new executive position at the Center for Inquiry Ontario should eventually lead to our paths crossing one day, I’m just not sure when.

The first thing that he has on his site is a link to …quite possibly the most entertaining thing I’ve looked at online for a long time. Virtual City. You can go anywhere in the city and see pictures of the street. I found Allen’s house, my brother’s apartment, my friend Adam’s condo and my friend Phil’s building. I found pictures of all my favorite stores, bars and parks to sleep in. I even found CFI. (Click to enlarge and take a look. ITS SO COOL!)

Maybe it’s just the geographer in me, but I find that to be one of the coolest things I’ve seen … since google earth. Google earth is awesome too. But it doesn’t have pictures of CFI!!

Also on Moran’s blog is a segment about this:

It is supposedly the new symbol for atheism. It’s part of Dawkins new “thing” called The OUT Campaign. It’s a campaign for atheists to start wearing this “A”, putting the “A” on their blogs, and generally just “coming out”. Moran makes a good point – we should be uniting in positivity, not negativity. But more than that – if you’re going to “come out” wear something that actually identifies you with that particular group! You don’t see gays walking around with big “G”s on their shirts… Sure, they have a rainbow, but the rainbow is a long used symbol… we can’t just have 500 people wearing “A”s because no one will know wtf you’re wearing an “A” for. Wear a shirt that says “Atheist” for crying out loud. NO ONE is going to understand this goddamn “A”!

I’m an atheist, because I don’t believe in a god. What I do believe in is secularism, and promoting secularist groups who have common goals of building communities and developing social networks and nets. Not putting “A”s on all our chests because some big wig atheist who is a total jerk ass to religions told us to so that we can “come out”. Sure, be proud of your atheism, but if you want to draw attention to it – this fucking “A” won’t be your answer.

Finally on Moran’s blog… this coin is soooooo coooooool.

WOOOO! DINOSAUR!!!!!… and this $4 coin is apx $40.

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By Katie Kish, July 2, 2007 10:53 am

If you haven’t checked this site out, you probably should now.

Also, if you’ve never used the love calculator to ease your mind…. or give you a reason to break up – I highly suggest you go take a gander at it too. (I realize it holds no validity, please, no lectures.)

This is my …long ignored… Monday Love session. Not because I don’t love anymore – but because I’ve been busy But now I’m not. To start with, I got tagged by the 8 things meme again, this time by Webs, so I’m going to do 8 things I love… okay? Okay.

1. My bubble tub. Probably the only reason I haven’t moved out of this house yet.

2. Smart atheist boys with social skills and wit. Surprisingly hard to come by.

3. My mom:

4. Movies that end on a sad and realistic note. I can’t stand it when everything just “happens” to work out. That’s not how life works. Not everything works out just perfectly. We don’t run around New York looking for someone that we’ve only met one time and run past them 8 times before “voila!” running into them in the exact same spot that we met the first time! *swoon* *sigh* *gasp* Disgusting! It just doesn’t work that way, and these endings and silly plots are just giving us all an idealistic sense of life, and then we wonder why we’re all depressed. Stupid media.

5. Good beer, with good friends having good conversations. Eg: Thursday night I went out with4 or 5 people and we drank some Keith’s Red and yapped about intelligent things, life and love. Eg: Saturday a friend and I sat out with some strongbow on a patio and talked about philosophy. Around this time I finally realized how much truth there is in the statement: “‘remember when’ is the lowest form of conversations.”

6. Some people. Here… I’ll list 8: i) My brother ii) My sister iii) My aunt [im cheating - using one slot for aunt mel, aunt el, aunt jodi...etc.] iv) Allen v) CFI folks vi) My first year Biodiversity prof vii) My grade 9 geography teacher viii) my cute cousins… because they’re all cute in their own way [even alex, the jerk.]

7. The environment and people who are looking out for it. This picture just warms my heart:

For more small, cute and enviornmentally sustainable houses, check out this post over at inhabitat. Via: Eco Geek.

8. Reading.

As for loving link – you just get uno because I am already sick of staring at this computer screen. I just don’t have the gusto in my anymore to sit on my ass all day reading blogs and news… but anyway…

HUGE dinosaur find. Yeah. You may not love it. BUT I do. SO COOOL. Alberta is good for something.