Archive for the ‘Science’ Category

Dinosaurs Rule

Posted on in Dinosaurs, Games, RPGs.

I promised you some dinosaurs, so here we go. For quite a long time my Dinosaurs in Miniature page has contained the line Rules (coming soon) so I figure why not do something about that? As this blogging every day thing is very taxing, I’m presenting a skeleton list here and asking you good people to help me flesh it out. What am I missing? What have I got wrong? I’m only after more or less professionally published rules here.

Wargames focussed mainly on prehistorics

Wargames that feature prehistorics

RPGs focussed mainly on prehistorics

RPGs that feature prehistorics

  • Over the years various Monster Manuals for various games have included all sorts of dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasts.
  • Volume III of Marcus Rowland’s3 Forgotten Futures concentrates on Arthur Conan Doyle’s Professor Challenger novels including The Lost World.
  • One of the best known scenarios of all time, The Isle of Dread for D&D featured prehistoric creatures heavily.
  • Blackdirge Publishing produce a series of D20 system PDFs under the banner Animal Archives: Prehistoric Animals
  • Phoenix Command – the favourite game of gun crazy maths nerds features stats for Dinosaurs in its Phoenix Command Expansion expansion.
  • Dark Continent – a few cryptids like the Nandi Bear make an appearance and there may be something much bigger lurking as well…

[1][2][3] Tooth & Claw is a miniatures from Chris Peers, a prehistoric RPG from Memento Mori Theatricks and a dragon based RPG from Marcus Rowland.

And look what I picked up on eBay a little while ago. It was advertised as being from HLBS and by a process of elimination (i.e. what I don’t already own) must be their Utahraptor figure.

HLBS Utahraptor

Popular Science Book Meme

Posted on in Books, Memes, Science.

From Cocktail Party Physics, via Pharyngula comes another book meme, this one about popular science books. The rules are:

  1. Highlight those you’ve read in full
  2. Asterisk those you intend to read
  3. Add any additional popular science books you think belong on the list
  4. Link back to the great pop-sci book project

  1. Micrographia, Robert Hooke
  2. The Origin of the Species, Charles Darwin
  3. Never at Rest, Richard Westfall
  4. Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman, Richard Feynman
  5. Tesla: Man Out of Time, Margaret Cheney
  6. The Devil’s Doctor, Philip Ball
  7. The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Richard Rhodes
  8. Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos, Dennis Overbye
  9. Physics for Entertainment, Yakov Perelman
  10. 1-2-3 Infinity, George Gamow
  11. The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene
  12. Warmth Disperses, Time Passes, Hans Christian von Bayer
  13. Alice in Quantumland, Robert Gilmore
  14. Where Does the Weirdness Go? David Lindley
  15. A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
  16. A Force of Nature, Richard Rhodes
  17. Black Holes and Time Warps, Kip Thorne
  18. A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking
  19. Universal Foam, Sidney Perkowitz
  20. Vermeer’s Camera, Philip Steadman
  21. The Code Book, Simon Singh
  22. The Elements of Murder, John Emsley
  23. Soul Made Flesh, Carl Zimmer
  24. Time’s Arrow, Martin Amis
  25. The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments, George Johnson
  26. Einstein’s Dreams, Alan Lightman
  27. Godel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter
  28. The Curious Life of Robert Hooke, Lisa Jardine
  29. A Matter of Degrees, Gino Segre
  30. The Physics of Star Trek, Lawrence Krauss
  31. E=mc², David Bodanis
  32. Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea, Charles Seife
  33. Absolute Zero: The Conquest of Cold, Tom Shachtman
  34. A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines, Janna Levin
  35. Warped Passages, Lisa Randall
  36. Apollo’s Fire, Michael Sims
  37. Flatland, Edward Abbott
  38. Fermat’s Last Theorem, Amir Aczel
  39. Stiff, Mary Roach
  40. Astroturf, M.G. Lord
  41. The Periodic Table, Primo Levi
  42. Longitude, Dava Sobel
  43. The First Three Minutes, Steven Weinberg
  44. The Mummy Congress, Heather Pringle
  45. The Accelerating Universe, Mario Livio
  46. Math and the Mona Lisa, Bulent Atalay
  47. This is Your Brain on Music, Daniel Levitin
  48. The Executioner’s Current, Richard Moran
  49. Krakatoa, Simon Winchester
  50. Pythagorus’ Trousers, Margaret Wertheim
  51. Neuromancer, William Gibson
  52. The Physics of Superheroes, James Kakalios
  53. The Strange Case of the Broad Street Pump, Sandra Hempel
  54. Another Day in the Frontal Lobe, Katrina Firlik
  55. Einstein’s Clocks and Poincare’s Maps, Peter Galison
  56. The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Sagan
  57. The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins
  58. The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker
  59. An Instance of the Fingerpost, Iain Pears
  60. Consilience, E.O. Wilson
  61. Wonderful Life, Stephen J. Gould
  62. Teaching a Stone to Talk, Annie Dillard
  63. Fire in the Brain, Ronald K. Siegel
  64. The Life of a Cell, Lewis Thomas
  65. Coming of Age in the Milky Way, Timothy Ferris
  66. Storm World, Chris Mooney
  67. The Carbon Age, Eric Roston
  68. The Black Hole Wars, Leonard Susskind
  69. Copenhagen, Michael Frayn
  70. From the Earth to the Moon, Jules Verne
  71. Gut Symmetries, Jeanette Winterson
  72. Chaos, James Gleick
  73. Innumeracy, John Allen Paulos
  74. The Physics of NASCAR, Diandra Leslie-Pelecky
  75. Subtle is the Lord, Abraham Pais

PZ Meyers felt there wasn’t enough biology and so added these:

  1. Basin and Range, John McPhee
  2. Beak of the Finch, Jonathan Weiner
  3. Chance and Necessity, Jacques Monod
  4. Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation, Olivia Judson
  5. Endless Forms Most Beautiful, Sean Carroll
  6. Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea, Carl Zimmer
  7. Genome, Matt Ridley
  8. Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond
  9. It Ain’t Necessarily So, Richard Lewontin
  10. On Growth and Form, D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson
  11. Phantoms in the Brain, VS Ramachandran
  12. The Ancestor’s Tale, Richard Dawkins
  13. The Case of the Female Orgasm: Bias in the Science of Evolution, Elisabeth Lloyd
  14. The Eighth Day of Creation, Horace Freeland Judson
  15. The Great Devonian Controversy, Martin Rudwick
  16. The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, Oliver Sacks
  17. The Mismeasure of Man, Stephen Jay Gould
  18. The Triple Helix: Gene, Organism, and Environment, Richard Lewontin
  19. Time, Love, Memory, Jonathan Weiner
  20. Voyaging and The Power of Place, Janet Browne
  21. Woman: An Intimate Geography, Natalie Angier

And I’ll chuck in a few suggestions of my own to bring it to a round one hundred.

  1. Cosmos, Carl Sagan
  2. Life: An Unauthorized Biography, Richard Fortey
  3. The Dinosaur Heresies, Robert T. Bakker

There's goes next month's games budget

Posted on in Dinosaurs, Miniatures.
HLBS Pachycephalosaurus

HLBS have released some new additions to their dinosaur range – mostly smaller critters this time, some (Velociraptor, Ornithomimus, Compsognathus) are replacements for the now OOP older range, others (like the boneheaded chap above) never before done in this scale.

Meanwhile the confusingly similarly named RLBPS (who also stock HLBS in the USA) have added some more figures to their Dazed Miniatures range. Wow, they’ve added pictures between me checking their page this morning and writing this post. Anyway, you can now get a miniature Dodo.

Both sets of releases have been added to the index of 25/28mm Dinosaurs and other prehistoric miniatures and I’ve also created a 20mm Dinosaurs and other prehistoric miniatures index, so far just housing David Krentz’s stunning Antediluvia Collection.

Dazed Miniatures Dodo

Mini Dino Updates

Posted on in Dinosaurs, Miniatures.

Richard Deasey of HLBS/DZ/DeeZee fame has sculpted a new range for RLBPS in the States: Dazed Miniatures.

Dazed Mammoth Family

On the other side of the world, Gary Hunt has some very nice looking feathered raptor greens.

Back in Blighty, Magister Militum have posted some new pics showing painted examples of their DinoMight range.

And finally, Jeff Valent Studios are offering their T. Rex at 33% off.

Oink! Grrr!

Posted on in Dinosaurs, Miniatures.

Dinosaurs in Miniature has been updated with all the latest releases: Some cavegirls from Reaper, some running dinos from Hasslefree and a Megatherium and Smilodon from Rattrap.

And at long last someone, Amazon Miniatures as it happens, has made the killer pig itself, an Entelodont:

Amazon Miniatures Entelodont
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Venice

Posted on in Dinosaurs, My Life.
The Campanile in the Piazza San Marco

Venice was simply amazing. Lovely weather, great food (especially the seafood), amazing sights.

We stayed at the Hotel Rivamare on the Lido, which meant we took a boat across the lagoon into Venice proper everyday. In the city itself we saw all the big names: the Palazzo Ducale or Doge’s Palace, the Basilica di San Marco, the Piazza, the Bridge of Sighs, Rialto Bridge, the Grand Canal.

Things that appealed more directly to me included the Museum of Natural History was only partially open but we did get to see the excellent Ouranosaurus and Sarchosuchus; The Museo Storico Navale or Naval History Museum which only costs €1.55 and is packed full of relics from Venice’s and Italy’s seafaring history; The Rome and the Barbarians exhibition in the Palazzo Grassi was a ten times more expensive (and I really wanted the exhibition book but at €48 it was too much) but much more extensive than I’d expect for a temporary exhibit.

We also visited some of the other lagoon islands: Murano for the glassmaking; Burano for the lace making and painted houses; and Torcello for the eleventh century cathedral.

For one day we got the train to Verona, passing castles and vineyards on the way. There we visited the Arena and the Castle and had another fantastic lunch. One day wasn’t enough and we plan to go back sometime.

Venice photos and Verona photos.

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Mammoth tosh

Posted on in Dinosaurs, Doctor Who, Films, Science.

Went to see 10,000 BC this afternoon. Oh boy, history, biology, geography, astronomy – they all get a hammering in this film. I can’t be bothered to even start listing everything that was goofy here.

It was one of the most by-the-numbers renditions of (the easy to understand bits of) Joseph Campbell’s monomyth that I’d seen in a while. I smiled at the bemusement when hunter-gatherers first came across the evidence of agriculture, but of course in Campbell’s scheme there has to be a ‘boon’ to take back home at the end (sorry, that was a spoiler). There were also bits lifted from the Bible, Stargate, Conan and 300, just in case the mention of Campbell misled you into thinking there were highbrow sources being used.

The action and CGI were very good, the actors managed to keep straight face. It’s not a bad movie in the sense that it’s exciting and visual, but it’s certainly one to watch with the brain switched off.

Oh, by the way, the Doctor Who and Star Trek trailers look amazing on the big screen.

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Collecting Little Things

Posted on in Dinosaurs, Doctor Who, Miniatures.

Tooth and Claw By Chris PeersI’ve just updated the Dinosaurs in Miniature pages with the latest releases and re-releases.

Wargames Illustrated have finished re-releasing the DZ Miniatures prehistoric mammals. They’re also selling a set of rules called Tooth and Claw to tie in with this range. Written by Chris “every other set of rules out there” Peers who has pedigree on this area with Saurian Safari. My copy is in the post, so with luck I’ll be able to post a review soon.

There are also new rules out from Magister Militum called DinoMight and MM continue to expand their range of 10mm figures, now including some non-dinosaurs.

Finally on the pre-historic front Reaper have released a “Jungle Girl with Sabre Tooth Tiger” which is okay-ish except for the huge mold line in the photo and the fact that it’s an idea that’s been done several times before. Very nice cat though.

Reaper Miniatures Jungle Girl with Sabre Tooth Tiger

Meanwhile… It was only a matter of time… Pre-painted, collectible (i.e. random sealed boxes) miniatures for Doctor Who (via Forbidden Planet). They’re by Character Options which is a good sign (they make the very nice DW action figures) and the price is the same as for the Star Wars minis. On the downside (apart from the collectible nature) is the scale, 35mm, and the lack of anything from the classic series. Will I be buying them? They’re Doctor Who miniatures!

Preview of Doctor Who collectible miniatures

Top 5…

Posted on in Dinosaurs, Memes.

…Dinosaurs

As tagged by . Post a comment with “top ten” or “top five” and I’ll give you a subject to base your list around.

  1. Stegosaurus

    Maybe because we start our names with the same three letters but I’ve always liked Steggy. One of the classic dinos that all the kids know, and one of the most fantastically strange looking creatures to ever walk on land.

    Stegosaurus

  2. Allosaurus

    A big mean predator, not as unbalanced to look at as T.rex but still big enough and toothy enough to give you nightmares.

  3. Brachiosaurus

    Of Lofty as we call him round our way. Not only is it one of the biggest dinos but it’s also unusual in having longer legs at the front than at the back (hence the name).

  4. Anklyosaurus

    Walking tank. My default user icon.

  5. Deinonychus

    Velociraptor : Deinonychus = Hobbit : Human

Bug Hunt

Posted on in Dinosaurs, Science, TV.

When I saw the trailers for yesterday’s episode of Primeval I wondered whether they were going to give any explanation of how the giant arthropods could survive in our atmosphere, and pleasantly they did – oxygen rich air leaking through the rift anomaly from the Carboniferous.

Then they go and spoil it by having the good looking bloke use a blowtorch right in front of the rift anomaly with no side effects what so ever. If the oxygen levels were high enough to affect the soldiers then wouldn’t any flames also be affected?

Oh, and they doubled the size of Arthropleura. There could be a larger species that simply hasn’t been found in the fossil record yet…

Science aside, it’s fun tea time nonsense, but the geek is very annoying and only Douglas Henshaw shows any signs of actually being able to act.

One last thing. We’ve all been conned. On the ITV web site for the series there’s a list of creatures. Have a look and see if you spot whats missing:

  • Coelurosauravus
  • Scutosaurus
  • Gorgonopsid
  • Giant Spiders
  • Arthropleura
  • Mosasaur
  • Hesperonis
  • Dodo
  • Parasite
  • Pteranodon
  • Agnurognathus
  • Predator

Not one of those is a dinosaur. No dinosaurs. Weren’t we promised dinosaurs? But all we get is arthropods, synapsids, and birds (I know birds are dinosaurs). Give us some proper dinos!

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