Creationists to distribute Charles Darwin books for free. What’s the catch?

November 11, 2009 

 Evangelical Christians plan to distribute more than 100,000 free copies of Charles Darwin’s seminal work on the theory of evolution, “On the Origin of Species,” on college campuses this month. Are the evangelists affiliated with the religious organization Living Waters really spreading the word of Charles Darwin?

Yes — but.

“All we want to do is present the opposing and correct view,” says actor Kirk Cameron, a supporter, in a video on the website. That view, which both precedes and counters Darwin’s theory in the copies of the book they will distribute, has been penned by the organization’s leader, Ray Comfort. In a 50-page introduction, no less. An excerpt:

Keeping in mind that the most intelligent of human beings can’t create even a grain of sand from nothing, do you believe that the “something” that made everything was intelligent? It must have been, in order to make the flowers, the birds, the trees, the human eye, and the sun, the moon and the stars. If you believe that, then you believe there was an intelligent designer. You have just become an unscientific “knuckle-dragger” in the eyes of our learning institutions that embrace Darwinism. But you are not alone if you believe in God.

Which learning institutions may expect Living Waters representatives to show up on their campuses with boxes of the Comfort-introduction edition of “On the Origin of Species” hasn’t been announced, although Living Waters described the schools as “100 of America’s top universities” in an e-mail to the Los Angeles  Times. According to the website, Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort will pass out copies of the book together on Nov. 19, perhaps here in Southern California.

Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” was first published 150 years ago, on Nov. 24, 1859. It begins:

When on board H.M.S. Beagle, as naturalist, I was much struck with certain facts in the distribution of the inhabitants of South America, and in the geological relations of the present to the past inhabitants of that continent. These facts seemed to me to throw some light on the origin of species — that mystery of mysteries, as it has been called by one of our greatest philosophers.

The book, having been in the public domain for quite some time, is also available for free via Project Gutenberg. With no introduction but Darwin’s own.

— Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: A Galapagos giant turtle, one of the creatures Darwin studied during his expedition on the HMS Beagle. Credit: Pablo Cozzaglio / AFP / Getty Images

This might mean Americans will soon walk on all fours to keep growing in size as they have been, and eating their super-sized garbage on the daily.

Missing link dinosaur discovered

The dinosaur would have occasionally walked on all four legs

Researchers have discovered a fossil skeleton that appears to link the earliest dinosaurs with the large plant-eating sauropods.

This could help to bridge an evolutionary gap between the two-legged common ancestors of dinosaurs and the four-legged giants, such as diplodocus.

The remarkably complete skeleton shows that the creature was bipedal but occasionally walked on all four legs.

The team reports its discovery in the Royal Society journal Proceedings B.

“What we have is a big, short-footed, barrel-chested, long-necked, small-headed dinosaur,” explained Adam Yates, the scientist from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg who led the research.

“The earliest ancestral dinosaur – the great grand-daddy of all dinosaurs – walked on two legs. This [one] is intermediate between those bipedal forms and the true gigantic sauropods.”

The skeleton was discovered at a site in the Senekal district of South Africa.

Dr Yates explained that features of its feet and jaw, as well as its size, gave away its significance.

The dinosaur, Aardonyx celestae was a heavy, slow-moving animal.

“It had a lot of features we see on sauropods,” explained Dr Yates. “Short, broad feet and a big, broad gut, so it was clearly a plant-eater that was bulk-feeding.

“And the anatomy of the jaw shows it had a wide gape – to stuff more food in.”

It also had, he said, “sauropod-like front feet”.

“Its toe bones were very robust and solid, so its weight was being born on the inside of the foot. It was still bipedal, but it may have been going down on to all fours to browse.”

‘Living fossil’

The dinosaur dates from the early Jurassic period – about 200 million years ago.

“Although structurally it’s intermediate, it lived too late to be an actual ancestor, because true sauropods already existed [then].

“So, at the time, it was a living fossil – the transition must have happened much earlier.”

Dr Yates stressed that the site where the fossil was discovered provided an abundance of valuable knowledge about dinosaur evolution.

“If you want to study how the dinosaurs became giants,” he said. “You have to come to South Africa.”

The dinosaur had a wide gape “to stuff more food in”

Dr Paul Barrett – a palaeontologist from the Natural History Museum in London said that the discovery of Aardonyx helped “fill a marked gap in our knowledge of sauropod evolution”.

“[It shows] how a primarily two-legged animal could start to acquire the specific features necessary for a life spent on all fours.

“Evolution of this quadrapedal gait was key in allowing the late sauropods to adopt their enormous body sizes.”

Row, row, row your boat, Gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, Life is but a dream.

Man killed wife ‘during a dream’

The trial heard the couple were happily married with two grown-up daughters

The trial of a husband accused of murdering his wife as they slept in a camper van has heard he killed her while he dreamt she was an intruder.

Christine Thomas, 57, was killed in Aberporth, Ceredigion, in July 2008.

Swansea Crown Court heard Brian Thomas, 59, of Neath, accepts he killed her but says he has a sleep disorder which had been triggered by “boy racer activity”.

Jurors have been told they can reach a verdict of not guilty or of not guilty by reason of insanity.

Prosecuting barrister Paul Thomas QC, in his opening words to the jury on Tuesday morning, described the case as “highly unusual”.

He described how Mr Thomas killed his wife, his childhood sweetheart, because he had dreamt she was a man who had broken into their motor home.

The court was told Mr Thomas’s disorder meant he was not in control of his actions when he strangled his partner of 40 years.

After commissioning evidence from sleep experts, the prosecution agreed his actions were involuntary and he could not be held responsible.

Prosecuting, Mr Thomas said the defendant was charged with the murder of his wife, whose death he accepted causing.

Act strangely

But the barrister said the prosecution did not seek a murder or manslaughter conviction.

Instead, he said the prosecution would be arguing for the “special verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity”.

The alternative, the jury was told, would be “a simple verdict of not guilty”.

The jury was told that the couple, who have two grown-up daughters, enjoyed holidaying together in their camper van.

The daughters said their father had been prone to episodes of sleepwalking, during which he had been known sometimes to act strangely.

The court heard how Mr and Mrs Thomas had gone on holiday in their camper van in July 2008 and stayed the night at a vehicle park in Aberporth.

A group of younger people turned up at the car park after they had gone to bed, and the screeching of brakes and tyres – described in court as “boy racer activity” – disturbed the couple, who moved from the site’s lower to its higher car park.

‘Highly sceptical’

The prosecution said that at 0349 the next morning, Mr Thomas made a 999 call, which was later played to the court, in which he said he had killed his wife because he had mistaken her for an intruder in a dream.

He said he had dreamt he was fighting one of the boy racers.

The prosecution said the defendant had told the 999 operator: “I woke up fighting one of those boys but it wasn’t a boy, it was Christine.”

In police interviews, Mr Thomas repeated what he had told the 999 operator – that he had dreamt of a man crawling across the bed, putting him in a headlock, then waking to find his wife dead.

The prosecution told the jury that the police and CPS had been “highly sceptical” of his explanation and charged him with murder.

But because the defendant had raised the matter of his sleep disorder, both defence and prosecution commissioned experts to investigate it.

Tests were carried out on Mr Thomas as he slept and both sleep experts agreed he had killed his wife while affected by a sleep disorder, meaning his behaviour was “involuntary.”

Spoke through tears

The barrister told the court Mr Thomas’s behaviour was consistent with automatism, which meant at the time he killed his wife, his mind had no control over what his body was doing.

The jury was told that neither sleep expert would go into details about the condition because they did not want details of it made public in case of “copycat killings”.

Later, the court was played a 10-minute excerpt of the call Mr Thomas had made to emergency services.

As it was played, the defendant broke down in tears, sobbing loudly and burying his face in his hands.

In the recording, Mr Thomas spoke through tears in a panicked-sounding voice: “I think I killed my wife. I killed her. Oh my God.”

He explained he thought he had been fighting but then told the operator: “There was no boys, it was me. I must have been dreaming or something.”

Later he was heard saying: “I love her. What have I done? She’s my world.”

The court also heard the couple had been sleeping together in the camper van in a change to their sleeping arrangements at home where they slept separately.

Mr Thomas said it was the prosecution’s case that the defendant had suffered insane automatism caused by an internal condition.

He said the defence would argue it was non-insane automatism caused by external factors, particularly the stress caused by the boy racers.

The case was adjourned until Wednesday.

Red Road

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Directed by   Andrea Arnold
Produced by   Carrie Comerford
Written by   Andrea Arnold
Starring  Kate Dickie, Tony Curran
Cinematography  Robbie Ryan
Editing by   Nicolas Chaudeurge
Distributed by   Tartan Films (USA)
Release date(s)   20 May 2006 (Cannes)
Running time  113 minutes
Country   United Kingdom
Language  English

Red Road is a 2006 British film directed by Andrea Arnold. It tells the story of a CCTV security operator who observes through her monitors a man from her past. It is named after, and partly set at, the Red Road flats in Barmulloch, Glasgow, Scotland which were the tallest residential buildings in Europe at the time they were built^[1]. It is shot largely in a Dogme 95 style, using handheld cameras and natural light.

Red Road is the first film in Advance Party, a projected trilogy following a set of rules dictating how the films will be written and directed. They will all be filmed and set in Scotland, using the same characters and cast. Each film will be made by a different first-time director.^[2]The Observer polled several filmmakers and film critics who voted it as one of the best British films in the last 25 years.^[3]

Plot

Jackie works as a CCTV operator for Glasgow City council. Daily she watches over a small part of the world, takes seriously her duties to protect the people moving about in her monitors. Then one day a man appears in her monitors, a man she thought she would never see again. Now the opportunity presents itself, she is compelled to confront him.

Cast

• Kate Dickie as Jackie Morrison
• Tony Curran as Clyde Henderson
• Martin Compston as Stevie
• Nathalie Press as April

Awards

• 2006 Cannes Jury Prize^[4]
• BAFTA Scotland 2006 – Best Screenplay
• BAFTA Scotland 2006 – Best Actress in a Scottish Film (Kate Dickie)
• BAFTA Scotland 2006 – Best Actor in a Scottish Film (Tony Curran)
• BAFTA Scotland 2006 – Best Director
• BAFTA Scotland 2006 – Best Film
• London Film Festival 2006, Sutherland Trophy awarded to “the director of the most original and imaginative first feature film” [2]

References

1. ^ Red Road Flats, Glasgow Digital Library
2. ^ [1]
3. ^ “The Observer Film Quarterly’s best British films of the last 25 years”. The Observer. August 30, 2009. http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/gallery/2009/aug/30/best-british-films-25-years?picture=352267356. Retrieved 2009-08-31. 
4. ^ “Festival de Cannes: Red Road”. festival-cannes.com. http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/archives/ficheFilm/id/4359479/year/2006.html. Retrieved 2009-12-13. 

External links

• Red Road at the Internet Movie Database
• Red Road at Allmovie
• British Films Catalogue
• Cannes director urges CCTV debate
• Sigma Films
• Verve Pictures
• Interview with Andrea Arnold and Kate Dickie, Filmmaker Magazine Web Exclusives
• Red Road at sundance.org

Dogme 95

Years active:  1995–2005
Country:  international, started in Denmark
Major figures:  Lars von Trier, Thomas Vinterberg, Kristian Levring, Søren Kragh-Jacobsen, Jean-Marc Barr
Influences:  Realism, French New Wave
Influenced:  Mumblecore, New Puritans

 

Dogme 95 is an avant-garde filmmaking movement started in 1995 by the Danish directors Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg with the signing of the Dogme 95 Manifesto and the “Vow of Chastity”.^[1] They were later joined by fellow Danish directors Kristian Levring and Søren Kragh-Jacobsen, to form a group sometimes known as the Dogme 95 Collective or the Dogme Brethren. Dogme is the Danish word for dogma.

The genre gained international appeal partly because of its accessibility. It sparked off an interest in unknown filmmakers by suggesting that one can make a recognised film without being dependent on commissions or huge Hollywood budgets, depending on European government subsidies and television stations instead. The movement has been criticised for being a disguised attempt to gain media attention. Dogme was initiated to cause a stir and to make filmmakers and audiences re-think the art, effect and essence of filmmaking.

History

The manifesto and its companion vows were drafted by friends and initial co-signators Von Trier and Vinterberg. Vinterberg holds that it took them 45 minutes to finish. ^[2] The manifesto initially mimics the wording of François Truffaut’s 1954 essay Une certaine tendance du cinéma français in Cahiers du cinéma.

The Dogme movement was announced on March 22, 1995 at Le cinéma vers son deuxième siècle conference in Paris, where the cinema world gathered to celebrate the first century of motion pictures and contemplate the uncertain future of commercial cinema. Lars von Trier was called upon to speak about the future of film but instead showered a bemused audience with red pamphlets announcing the Dogme 95 movement.

In response to criticism, Von Trier and Vinterberg have both stated that they just wanted to establish a new extreme. “In a business of extremely high budgets, we figured we should balance the dynamic as much as possible.”

The first of the Dogme films (Dogme #1) was Vinterberg’s 1998 film Festen (The Celebration), which was critically acclaimed and won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival that year. Lars von Trier’s Dogme film, Idioterne (The Idiots), also premiered at Cannes that year but was less successful. Since the two original films were released, other directors have participated in the creation of Dogme films. French-American actor and director Jean-Marc Barr was the first non-Dane to direct a Dogme film with 1999’s Lovers (Dogme #5), followed by the American Harmony Korine’s movie Julien Donkey-Boy (Dogme #6).

In 2004 the multi-awarded film Het Zuiden (South) directed by Martin Koolhoven thanked Dogme 95 in its credits. The movie (co-produced by Lars von Trier’s Zentropa) was originally planned to be shot as a Dogme 95 movie, but director Koolhoven decided against it.

Goals and rules

The goal of the Dogme collective is to purify filmmaking by refusing expensive and spectacular special effects, postproduction modifications and other gimmicks. The emphasis on purity forces the filmmakers to focus on the actual story and on the actors’ performances. The audience may also be more engaged as they do not have overproduction to alienate them from the narrative, themes, and mood. To this end, Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg produced ten rules to which any Dogme film must conform. These rules, referred to as the “Vow of Chastity,” are as follows: ^[1]

1. Filming must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in. If a particular prop is necessary for the story, a location must be chosen where this prop is to be found.
2. The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa. Music must not be used unless it occurs within the scene being filmed, i.e., diegetic.
3. The camera must be a hand-held camera. Any movement or immobility attainable in the hand is permitted. The film must not take place where the camera is standing; filming must take place where the action takes place.
4. The film must be in colour. Special lighting is not acceptable (if there is too little light for exposure the scene must be cut or a single lamp be attached to the camera).
5. Optical work and filters are forbidden.
6. The film must not contain superficial action (murders, weapons, etc. must not occur.)
7. Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden (that is to say that the film takes place here and now).
8. Genre movies are not acceptable.
9. The final picture must be transferred to the Academy 35mm film, with an aspect ratio of 4:3, that is, not widescreen. Originally, the requirement was that the film had to be filmed on Academy 35mm film, but the rule was relaxed to allow low-budget productions.
10. The director must not be credited.

Uses and abuses

The above rules have been both circumvented and broken, from the first Dogme film. For instance, Thomas Vinterberg “confessed” to having covered a window during the shooting of one scene in The Celebration (Festen), which is both bringing a prop onto the set and using special lighting. Lars Von Trier used background music (Le Cygne by Camille Saint-Saëns) in the film The Idiots (Idioterne).

Since 2002 and the 31st film (included) no more verification process through the original board is needed by a filmmaker to have his/her film certified as Dogme 95. The founding brothers have moved towards new experimental projects and showed themselves to be skeptical about the later frequent interpretation of the Manifesto as a brand or a genre. The movement eventually broke up in 2005.^[3] Today, filmmakers submit a form online and check a box which states they “truly believe that the film … has obeyed all Dogme95 rules as stated in the VOW OF CHASTITY.”^[4]

Criticism

Remodernist filmmaker Jesse Richards criticizes the movement in his Remodernist Film Manifesto, stating in Point 10, “Remodernist film is not Dogme ’95. We do not have a pretentious checklist that must be followed precisely. This manifesto should be viewed only as a collection of ideas and hints whose author may be mocked and insulted at will.”^[5] American film critic Armond White also criticized the movement stating that it is “the manifesto that brought filmmaking closer to amateur porn”, and that it will be rejected by film historians.^[6]

Notable Dogme films

Complete list is available from the Dogme95 web site (via Internet Archive).

• Dogme #1: The Celebration
• Dogme #2: The Idiots
• Dogme #3: Mifune’s Last Song
• Dogme #4: The King Is Alive
• Dogme #5: Lovers
• Dogme #6: Julien Donkey-Boy
• Dogme #7: Interview
• Dogme #8: Fuckland
• Dogme #9: Babylon
• Dogme #10: Chetzemoka’s Curse
• Dogme #11: Diapason
• Dogme #12: Italian for Beginners
• Dogme #13: Amerikana
• Dogme #14: Joy Ride
• Dogme #15: Camera
• Dogme #16: Bad Actors
• Dogme #17: Reunion
• Dogme #18: Et Rigtigt Menneske
• Dogme #19: Cabin Fever
• Dogme #20: Strass
• Dogme #21: Kira’s Reason: A Love Story
• Dogme #22: Era Outra Vez
• Dogme #23: Resin
• Dogme #24: Security, Colorado
• Dogme #25: Converging with Angels
• Dogme #26: The Sparkle Room
• Dogme #27: Come Now
• Dogme #28: Elsker Dig For Evigt
• Dogme #29: The Bread Basket
• Dogme #30: Dias de Voda
• Dogme #31: El Desenlace
• Dogme #32: Se til venstre, der er en Svensker
• Dogme #33: Residencia
• Dogme #34: Forbrydelser
• Dogme #35: Così x Caso
• Dogme #36: Amateur Dramatics
• Dogme #37: Gypo
• Dogme #38: Mere Players
• Dogme #39: El Ultimo Lector
• Dogme #40: Lazy Sunday Afternoons
• Dogme #51: A Cool Day in August
• Dogme #65: The Smokestack Wager

Notable figures

• Thomas Vinterberg
• Lars Von Trier
• Søren Kragh-Jacobsen
• Kristian Levring
• Jean-Marc Barr
• Anthony Dod Mantle
• Paprika Steen
• Fran Ilich
• Harmony Korine
• Susanne Bier

See also

Book:Dogme 95Books are collections of articles which can be downloaded or ordered in print.

• Category:Dogme 95 films
• Minimalism
• Realism (arts)
• Pluginmanifesto
• New Puritans
• Stuckism
• New Sincerity
• Remodernism
• Remodernist film
• Post-postmodernism

Notes and references

1. ^ ^{a b} Utterson, Andrew. Technology and Culture, the Film Reader. Routledge. ISBN 9780415319850. http://books.google.com/books?id=EsVYBL8ytLMC&pg=PA87&dq=Dogme+95&lr=&as_brr=3&client=firefox-a&sig=ACfU3U3QPeg05053E9LO6MefbvdGpXAFag#PPA88,M1. 
2. ^ Krause, Stefanie (2007). The Implementing of the ‘Vow of Chastity’ in Jan Dunn’s “Gypo”. Verlag. ISBN 9783638768115. http://books.google.com/books?id=phzgbBQcBmAC&pg=PA5&dq=Vinterberg+45+minutes&lr=&as_brr=3&client=firefox-a&sig=ACfU3U26DR6ODq1OT0iLtLSfcp9DE4gPQw. 
3. ^ Kristian Levring interview (via Internet Archive)
4. ^ Dogme 95 – Dogmefilms (via Internet Archive)
5. ^ “Remodernist Film Manifesto”, When The Trees Were Still Real, August 27, 2008 Retrieved September 1, 2008
6. ^ White, Armond (2004-03-09). “Digital Video Dogpatch: The king of false movement directs his ice queen”, New York Press. Retrieved on 2009-05-24.

External links

• http://uffilmanalysisfour.pbworks.com/List-of-Dogme-Films
• To the Rescue of Cinema: Dogme 95 at BrokenProjector.com
• GreenCine primer on Dogme95
• The Dogpile95 movement’s website
• Interview with The Dogme Doctor Mogens Rukov
• Official Nimbus Film website
• Lars From 1-10, a ten-minute film in which Lars von Trier reflects on Dogme 95.

Essays

• ‘DOGME 95’, John Roberts, New Left Review I/238, November-December 1999

 

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Science of Social Networking

http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/media/2009-2010/mp3/qq-2009-10-17_04.mp3

From CBC – Quirks & Quarks
Connected – the Science of Social Networking

You might think Social Networks are those things we play with on the Internet, but in fact, they’re just a pale electronic imitation of the social networks that really affect our lives. In a new book, Connected: The Surprising Power of our Social Ne…tworks and How They Shape our Lives, Dr. Nicholas Christakis, a physician and professor at Harvard University, and his co-author Dr. James Fowler, explore the ties that bind us to our friends and our communities, and how they affect our health, our wealth and our welfare. Among the surprising revelations is the fact that it’s not just your friends that influence you, but the indirect influence of their friends, and their friends’ friends. These influences have a significant effect on your tendency to obesity, to whether you smoke or not, and on your politics and your prosperity. In fact, Christakis and Fowler suggest that we have a genetic predisposition to be part of these webs of influence, acting in some ways like herd animals or social insects, as our behaviour is regulated by the actions of all those around us.

The link is the show on mp3

Warm-Blooded Dinosaurs Worked Up A Sweat

Schematic diagram to show how the mechanical advantage and active muscle volume in the dinosaur hind limb were reconstructed. (Credit: Pontzer H, Allen V, Hutchinson JR. Biomechanics of Running Indicates Endothermy in Bipedal Dinosaurs. PLoS ONE, 2009; 4 (11): e7783 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0007783)

ScienceDaily (Nov. 11, 2009) — Were dinosaurs “warm-blooded” like present-day mammals and birds, or “cold-blooded” like present day lizards? The implications of this simple-sounding question go beyond deciding whether or not you’d snuggle up to a dinosaur on a cold winter’s evening.

In a study published this week in the journal PLoS ONE, a team of researchers, including Herman Pontzer, Ph.D., assistant professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences, has found strong evidence that many dinosaur species were probably warm-blooded.

If dinosaurs were endothermic (warm-blooded) they would have had the potential for athletic abilities rivalling those of present day birds and mammals, and possibly similar quick thinking and complicated behaviours as well¬. Their internal furnace would have enabled them to live in colder habitats that would kill ectotherms (cold-blooded animals), such as high mountain ranges and the polar regions, allowing them to cover the entire Mesozoic landscape. These advantages would have come at a cost, however; endothermic animals require much more food than their ectothermic counterparts because their rapid metabolisms fatally malfunction if they cool down too much, and so a constant supply of fuel is required.

Pontzer worked with colleagues John R. Hutchinson and Vivian Allen from the Structure and Motion Laboratory at the Royal Veterinary College, UK, to bring a combination of simple measurements, rigorous computer modeling techniques and their knowledge of physiology in present-day animals to bear in a new study on this hot topic. Using their combined experience, the authors set out to determine whether a variety of dinosaurs and closely related extinct animals were endothermic or ectothermic, and when, where and how often in the dinosaur family tree this important trait may have evolved.

“It’s exciting to apply our studies of living animals back to the fossil record to test different evolutionary scenarios,” Pontzer said. “I work on the evolution of human locomotion, using studies of living humans and other animals to figure out the gait and efficiency of our earliest fossil ancestors. When I realized this approach could be applied to the dinosaur record, I contacted John Hutchinson, an expert on dinosaur locomotion, and suggested we collaborate on this project. Our results provide strong evidence that many dinosaur species were probably warm-blooded. The debate on this issue will no doubt continue, but we hope our study will add a useful new line of evidence.”

Studies of present-day animals have shown that endothermic animals are able to sustain much higher rates of energy use (that is, they have a higher “VO2max”) than ectothermic animals can. Following this observation, the researches reasoned that if the energy cost of walking and running could be estimated in dinosaurs, the results might show whether these extinct species were warm- or cold-blooded. If walking and running burned more energy than a cold-blooded physiology can supply, these dinosaurs were probably warm-blooded.

But metabolism and energy use are complex biological processes, and all that remains of extinct dinosaurs are their bones. So, the authors made use of a recent work by Pontzer showing that the energy cost of walking and running is strongly associated with leg length — so much so that hip height (the distance from the hip joint to the ground) can predict the observed cost of locomotion with 98% accuracy for a wide variety of land animals. As hip height can be simply estimated from the length of fossilized leg bones, Pontzer and colleagues were able to use this to obtain simple but reliable estimates of locomotor cost for dinosaurs.

To back up these estimates, the authors used a more complex method based on estimating the actual volume of leg muscle dinosaurs would have had to activate in order to move, using methods Hutchinson and Pontzer had previously developed. Activating more muscle leads to greater energy demands, which may in turn require an endothermic metabolism to fuel. Estimating active muscle volume in an extinct animal is a great deal more complicated than measuring the length of the legs, however, and so the authors went back to basic principles of locomotion.

First, how large would the forces required from the legs have to be to move the animal? In present-day animals, this is mainly determined by how much the animal weighs and what sort of leg posture it uses — straight-legged like a human or bent-legged like a bird, for example. Second, how much muscle would be needed to supply these forces? Experiments in biological mechanics have shown that this depends mainly on the limb muscles’ mechanical advantage, which in turn depends strongly on the size of the bony levers they are attached to.

To apply these principles to extinct dinosaurs, Pontzer and colleagues examined recent anatomical models of 13 extinct dinosaur species, using detailed measurements of the fossilized bony levers that limb muscles attached to. From this, the authors were able to reconstruct the mechanical advantage of the limb muscles and calculate the active muscle volume required for each dinosaur to walk or run at different speeds. The cost of activating this muscle was then compared to similar costs in present-day endothermic and ectothermic animals.

The results of both the simple and complex method were in very close agreement: based on the energy they consumed when moving, many dinosaurs were probably endothermic, athletic animals because their energy requirements during walking and running were too high for cold-blooded animals to produce. Interestingly, when the results for each dinosaur were arranged into an evolutionary family tree, the authors found that endothermy might be the ancestral condition for all dinosaurs. This pushes the evolution of endothermy further back into the ancient past than many researchers expected, suggesting that dinosaurs were athletic, endothermic animals throughout the Mesozoic era. This early adoption of high metabolic rates may be one of the key factors in the massive evolutionary success that dinosaurs enjoyed during the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, and continue to enjoy now in feathery, flying form.

Their methods add to the many lines of evidence, from bone histology to lung ventilation and insulatory “protofeathers,” that are all beginning to support the fundamental conclusion that dinosaurs were generally endothermic. Ironically, indirect anatomical evidence for active locomotion in dinosaurs was originally some of the first evidence used by researchers John Ostrom and Robert Bakker in the 1960s to infer that dinosaurs were endothermic.

Pontzer and his colleagues provide a new perspective on dinosaur anatomy, linking limb design to energetics and metabolic strategies. The debate over dinosaur physiology will no doubt continue to evolve, and while the physiology of long-extinct species will always remain a bit speculative, the authors hope the methods developed in this study provide a new tool for researchers in the field.

Spanish Outraged by Teen Masturbation Workshops

Monday, Nov. 16, 2009

By Lisa Abend / Madrid

The government of Extremadura in southwestern Spain has launched a sexual-education campaign for teens that includes workshops on masturbation

Between gay marriage, decriminalized abortion and all that pornography on TV, you’d think that the Spanish would be impossible to shock. After all, theirs is a country that in the past couple of decades has not merely evolved from its conservative, Catholic past but has rushed dramatically away from it. But teen masturbation workshops funded with public money? Turns out some Spaniards may not be quite ready for that.

In late October, the regional government of Extremadura in southwestern Spain launched a new sexual-education campaign designed to facilitate the “development of healthy habits, self-esteem and safety.” Although the publicly funded campaign includes the publication of pamphlets and an online magazine, the highlight is a series of workshops for 14-to-17-year-olds aimed at educating participants on anatomy, body image, safe-sex practices, gender equality and, in the mildly celebratory words of an early press release (since redacted), “sexual self-exploration and erotic self-knowledge.” Or, in other words, masturbation. (See a TIME cover story on sex.)

It was this last element that attracted attention across the country. “Masturbation Workshops for Adolescents,” ran the headline in Que!, a free daily in Madrid. “Extremadura Promotes Masturbation,” cried the centrist national paper El Mundo. Criticizing the spending as frivolous, especially during a recession, the Catalan paper La Vanguardia sniped, “Extremadura’s youth may have the highest rates of unemployment, but they’ll be the best masturbators.”

The media weren’t the only ones complaining. In fact, to judge by the outraged response among Spaniards, it was as if government officials themselves were giving hands-on lessons. Luis Alfonso Hernández Carrón, spokesman for the opposition Popular Party in Extremadura, said the classes were “an attack on the intelligence of young people” and lamented that the region was becoming “the laughingstock of Spain.” (See pictures of Spain’s Madcap Tomato Festival.)

For Mercedes Coloma, president of the Madrid-based Confederation of Parents of Students, the problem lies less with the content than with who is distributing it. “This is a clear usurpation of parents’ rights,” she says. “In their publicity, [the government] talks about creating a space for exchange and dialogue about sex. But that space already exists: it’s the family.”

But proponents of the program defend it as a much-needed means of promoting healthy sexuality and egalitarian relationships among teenagers. Laura Garrido, president of the Extremadura Youth Council and one of the officials behind the campaign, is surprised and disappointed by the outcry. “What we’re talking about is whether we teach them to have healthy relationships or not, whether they have self-esteem or not, whether they know how to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ at a given time,” she says. (Read “The Truth About Teen Girls.”)

Admittedly, Garrido and the other organizers bear more than a little responsibility for the response. They’re the ones, after all, who chose the instructors to lead the workshops: two women who, in addition to running sex-education workshops, co-own a shop in Madrid called Lola’s Pleasures, which specializes in erotic devices. The instructors, who have given adult sex-education classes sponsored by municipal governments in other regions of the country, didn’t help matters by bringing a selection of sex toys to the first teen workshop in late October in order “to dispel myths,” Garrido says.

And then there is the campaign’s name. Intended to encourage young people to be in control of their sexuality, it instead suggested a more, um, singular purpose: Pleasure Is in Your Hands. “The title might have been a mistake,” says Raquel Traba, one of the instructors. “But I think it also has to do with politics. It’s a way of attacking progressive attitudes. There’s still a lot of backward thinking about sex in this country.” (Read “Biology: The Chemistry of Desire.”)

In fact, Spain is among the minority of European Union member states that do not require sexual education in schools. And in comparison to what gets taught in other Western European nations, the material in the Extremadura program hardly seems radical. In the Netherlands, for instance, teachers at public schools lead discussions in which they ask girls ages 12 to 15 what they would do if their boyfriends refused to wear a condom. In Finland, basic sex education begins in kindergarten, and the curriculum for ninth-graders includes lessons on abortion and masturbation. In Germany, where sex education is mandatory, public school teachers have been known to discuss oral sex and different sexual positions. And in Britain, the National Health Service responded to the country’s burgeoning rates of teen pregnancy this past summer by launching an awareness campaign called “One Orgasm a Day” that sought to steer young people away from intercourse and toward masturbation. (Admittedly, that one got a lot of attention.)

The controversy sparked by the Extremadura program is a vivid reminder of how new all this sexual openness is in Spain. Which may be why, when asked at a news conference on Nov. 12 why sex toys were included in the lesson, Garrido sounded a little shell-shocked as she replied, “I thought we were in the 21st century.”