O. J. Simpson is Dead

 

I had been thinking about making my next blog post about another item of paleontological art, but then O. J. Simpson died.  And, as one of the few people left alive who is old enough to remember the Nineties, I felt obligated to comment.  (And then, of course, it took me a few weeks to actually do it.)

As I noted before, the O. J. trial gave Saturday Night Live its greatest Weekend Update moment ever.

Perhaps my most significant personal O. J. memory is that, during the trial, I had no idea that Simpson had been regarded as one of the best professional football players of all time.  I have never been a sports fan at all, and during his football career I was too young to be aware of popular culture in general.  Thus, though I had some vague knowledge that he had played football, I knew him mostly as an actor and rental car spokesman.  And I really didn’t understand why everyone was making such a big deal about a guy who was in The Naked Gun.  (If Leslie Nielsen had been accused of murdering two people, would that have been the Trial of the Century?)

And then there was a Hertz commercial that aired a few years before the murders, in which a line toward the end proved rather prescient:

“Brutal, Juice, brutal.”

Paleontological Illustrations—Megalancosaurus

As I’ve discussed before, I don’t usually blog about paleontology, even though that’s the field in which I work ( . . . kind of . . . sort of . . . somewhat . . . ).  But recently I’ve been noticing illustrations in scientific papers that might provide good blogging material, without requiring much effort on my part.

The illustration under consideration today is from the cover of the July 2023 issue of the journal Rivista Italiana di Paleontologia e Stratigrafia.  (You can read the relevant paper here.)  It depicts Megalancosaurus endennae, a drepanosauromorph reptile from the Triassic of Italy.  Megalancosaurus was not very big (as one can see from the fact that it is perched on the end of a tree limb), and is generally assumed to have been similar to a chameleon (in terms of its arboreal and insectivorous lifestyle, though not necessarily in terms of changing color). 

What strikes me about the picture is how evil Megalancosaurus is made to appear.  It has an absolutely crazed expression on its face, and its claws are poised to grab someone or something.

It definitely looks to be up to no good.  

I Read Somewhere that Blog Posts About the Super Bowl Get Lots of Views

  If the Kansas City Chiefs win the Super Bowl, will they pour Gatorade on Taylor Swift?

A Procrastinated Halloween Picture

 

I don’t normally take pictures of people, and I definitely don’t post pictures of people on this blog, because I don’t want to have to deal with indignant people who don’t want their pictures taken. 

But I have to assume that this guy wanted to have his picture taken.

  He was playing heavy metal guitar while wearing a Ghostface mask in a park by the Potomac in Old Town on the Saturday before Halloween. 

  Of course, his vibe is somewhat undercut by the fact that his guitar is pink . . . 

. . . and (for those who know about metal) by the fact that it’s a Strat.   

Fetch

 

In honor of the new Mean Girls movie, my browser apparently tried to make fetch happen. 

And, of course, my browser failed.  

(I have to admit that I never saw the original Mean Girls, and thus I am not 100% sure of what “fetch” is, or what would be required to make it happen.)

(I also have to admit that I don’t know very much about computers, as not only do I not understand what a “backend fetch” is, but I also have no idea why the error message involves “guru meditation” and “varnish”.)