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The story about mammals – little shrew-like creatures scuttling about under the feet of the dinosaurs until the Cretaceous extinction gave them (us) their chance – looks like it needs some revision:

A pair of “Mesozoic dogs” that hunted small dinosaurs 130 million years ago has been discovered in China, overturning standard theories about the earliest mammals.
The smaller of the two dog-sized fossils still has the remains of its last meal — a juvenile dinosaur — in its stomach area, while the larger is the biggest mammal ever found from its age.

Together, they prove for the first time that some primitive warm-blooded mammals were predatory carnivores that fed on other vertebrates, including small dinosaurs.

nother picture of a field, would interrupt the normal flow of castles, or chateaux, or people sitting at cafes, or coming out of the sea laughing. I’d struggle for an answer, because what was revealed were indeed pictures of undeniable dullness: fields like thousands of others, with some trees in the distance, and maybe a cow. What to say? At the time I was trying to capture a moment of transcendent beauty, with the setting sun caressing the upper branches of the beeches, the clouds tinged golden-red, the stillness and peacefulness of it all…

Clearly I’d failed, totally. Maybe I’m just a lousy photographer, but frankly who wants to bother with all that “Amateur Photographer” stuff – “Reader’s photo of the month is from Mr. G Crump of Northampton. His picture “Flying Swans at Dawn” was shot with a Nikon 376B SLR with Zeiss A32 Reflex Zoom lens, Kodachrome 400 XTR film and a Ektoplant TRA filter, F32 at 1/5000.”

Maybe no photo could capture it: I’d have needed to be an artist. Which I’m not. But for those moments when I was taking the photograph, I was, you know, seeing. Which is maybe as good as it gets.

So what’s the answer? If the end results don’t matter, should I just wander round with a pretend camera? That would be, well….silly. Just forget the camera altogether? We’re heading into deep philosophical waters here. For the moment loads of dusty photo albums – or from now on chunks of memory on my hard drive – are a small price to pay for the chance to really look at the world every now and then.

I’ve now managed to download that first set of digital pictures on to my PC. The whole process is so straightforward: I’m amazed at the wonders of modern technology. If I’m honest, though, the pictures are a bit, well, disappointing. But I had a great time taking them.

Strange: Dhimmi Watch has a post about an article in the Washington Times, supposedly today. It’s by Clive Davis, and features Melanie Phillips on Israel and anti-semitism – only the url suggests it’s from 2003. Nevermind: it’s still relevant:

At the Guardian, where she later served as news editor, she found herself increasingly at odds with the conventional wisdom. “I used to have this argument at the Guardian, which amazed and horrified me. I used to say, ‘Why do we make a front page splash when the Israelis kill five Palestinians, when the murder of thousands of Muslims by Muslims is a nib on page seven? It’s a double standard.’ And they would say, ‘Of course it’s a double standard because we hold Jews to account by Western standards. We can’t judge the Third World by our standards.’ When I first heard this argument I was gobsmacked [stunned], because to me it was racist. It’s moral and cultural relativism.”

he Muslim world.”

A progressive figure moving in the correct direction? What exactly is progressive about Al-Qaradawi? His views on the acceptability of wife-beating? On suicide bombers and Jews?

At IslamOnline, they’re taking it a stage further (via lgf):

London Mayor Ken Livingstone Tuesday, January 11, called on British media to apologize for sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi over the hostile campaign that sought to blemish his reputation during his visit to London in July.

Speaking at a press conference, Livingstone further urged those who took for granted false reports circulated by the Israeli intelligence services Mossad to admit that they were plainly wrong, Al-Jazeera satellite channel said.

He further revealed that he would submit a report to the Press Complaint Commission to keep it posted on the problems of the British media, which often promulgate stereotypes about Islam and its respected leaders.

“When you get a progressive figure who is moving that religion in the correct direction you engage and you develop it,” the BBC News Online quoted Livingstone as saying.

He said engaging with Qaradawi would help enhance relations between the West and Islam.

“Here is the force that we need to engage with if we are to actually get a dialogue between the west and the Muslim world.”

Livingstone further revealed at his press conference that the campaign against Qaradawi was driven by the Washington-based Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), who is led by a former Israeli intelligence officer, Al-Jazeera added.

He urged the institute to offer an apology for Al-Qaradawi, criticizing it for depending on unauthentic reports released by the Mossad.

The Mayor said that the institute was exploited by Mossad and the extremist right-wing in Britain to propagate untrue allegations about Islam and Muslim figures.

Hmm. Ken is digging himself in deeper here, but he’s surely not so foolish as to talk of “false reports circulated by the Israeli intelligence services Mossad”, as IslamOnline suggest.

Al-Jazeera is reporting rumours of the capture of Al-Zarqawi:

Abu Mus’ab Al Zarqawi, on whom the U.S. put a bounty of US$10 million, has been arrested in the Iraqi city of Baakuba, the Emirate newspaper al-Bayane reported on Tuesday citing Kurdish media.

According to Al-Bayane’s correspondent in Iraq, the report on Al Zarqawi’s arrest was also reported by the Kurdish media, the first to announce Saddam’s seizure.

However, no official report on arresting Al Zarqawi, declared by the U.S. occupation authorities as its “target number one” in Iraq has yet emerged.

Bob Dylan – “Well, you have to understand that I’m not a melodist. My songs are either based on old Protestant hymns or Carter family songs or variations of the blues form.”

From an April interview with Robert Hilburn of the LA Times: one of Jason Gross’s “Best Music Scribing Awards, 2004“. (Via ArtsJournal)

The good news:

Sudan’s government and the country’s main rebel leader signed a comprehensive peace agreement to end Africa’s longest-running conflict yesterday, concluding an eight-year process to stop a civil war that has cost more than 2 million lives since 1983.

In a lavish ceremony in neighbouring Kenya – where the talks were based – Sudanese vice-president Ali Osman Mohammed Taha and John Garang, chairman of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, signed the peace agreement.

The north-south war has pitted Sudan’s Islamic-dominated government against rebels seeking greater autonomy and a greater share of the country’s wealth for the largely animist south. The conflict is blamed for more than 2 million deaths, primarily from war-induced famine and disease.

The bad news:

Rebels in western Sudan have accused the government of redeploying soldiers not needed after the peace deal with the south to the civil war in Darfur. Justice and Equality Movement rebel leader Colonel Omar Adam told the BBC “the government is preparing for war”.

He said he had seen both heavy and light weaponry arriving.

The UN has warned that intense violence could break out if swift action is not taken over the security situation in Darfur.

The three largest stars known to science have just been identified:

If they were located in the same place as our own Sun – at the centre of the Solar System – the stars would stretch out further than the orbit of Jupiter.

The red “supergiant” stars are more than 1.5 billion km across, pushing the previous record holder, Herschel’s “Garnet Star”, into fourth place.

The new research was presented on Monday at the American Astronomical Society meeting in San Diego, US.

The three enormous stars from the study are KW Sagitarii (9,800 light-years away), V354 Cephei (9,000 light-years away), and KY Cygni (5,200 light-years away).

Josef Joffe looks at the growth of the “root-cause” theory – that all the problems of the Middle East stem from the existence of Israel – and concludes that, on the contrary, a common enmity toward Israel is the only thing that prevents Arab modernizers and traditionalists from tearing their societies apart (via ALDaily):

Can anybody proclaim in good conscience that [the] dysfunctionalities of the Arab world would vanish along with Israel? Two U.N. “Arab Human Development Reports,” written by Arab authors, say no. The calamities are homemade. Stagnation and hopelessness have three root causes. The first is lack of freedom. The United Nations cites the persistence of absolute autocracies, bogus elections, judiciaries beholden to executives, and constraints on civil society. Freedom of expression and association are also sharply limited. The second root cause is lack of knowledge: Sixty-five million adults are illiterate, and some 10 million children have no schooling at all. As such, the Arab world is dropping ever further behind in scientific research and the development of information technology. Third, female participation in political and economic life is the lowest in the world. Economic growth will continue to lag as long as the potential of half the population remains largely untapped.

Will all of this right itself when that Judeo-Western insult to Arab pride finally vanishes? Will the millions of unemployed and bored young men, cannon fodder for the terrorists, vanish as well—along with one-party rule, corruption, and closed economies? This notion makes sense only if one cherishes single-cause explanations or, worse, harbors a particular animus against the Jewish state and its refusal to behave like Sweden.

North Korea has launched an assault on ideologically incorrect haircuts, as part of a campaign to encourage tidy attire, which “is important in repelling the enemies’ manoeuvres to infiltrate corrupt capitalist ideas and lifestyle and establishing the socialist lifestyle of the military-first era.”

Pyongyang television started the campaign last autumn with a five-part series in its regular TV Common Sense programme.
Stressing hygiene and health, it showed various state-approved short hairstyles including the “flat-top crew cut,” “middle hairstyle,” “low hairstyle,” and “high hairstyle” – variations from one to five centimetres in length.

The programme allowed men aged over 50 seven centimetres of upper hair to cover balding.

It stressed the “negative effects” of long hair on “human intelligence development”, noting that long hair “consumes a great deal of nutrition” and could thus rob the brain of energy.

Men should get a haircut every 15 days, it recommended.

(Via NK Zone)