Top Ten (and more!) discoveries since the last time the Cubs won the World Series

As a Chicagoan, you can bet I was quite proud of the Cubs winning the baseball World Series after 108 years. 108 years can be quite significant, especially in the 20^th century’s many, many, events. The 20^th century has seen atrocities, wars, tragedies, and hate, but it’s seen technological and social progress, scientific revolutions, and discoveries about ourselves and our world.

Paleofest 2015 report

For the first time in my life, I was able to attend Paleofest on the weekend of March 14. Paleofest is an annual celebration and gathering of paleontology fans and experts at the Burpee Museum in Rockford, Illinois. Paleontologists gather from all over the world to give talks, while children engage in interactive, educational play with museum docents and visiting scientists. I had been aware of this event for three years and especially wanted to go to last year’s event on the Cenozoic. This year it was all about the Triassic, a period of reptile diversity and evolution, and the emergence of the first mammals and dinosaurs as the ecosystems of the world revived from the Permian extinction.

The talks took place downstairs, in the main classroom of the museum below all the other exhibits. There was a substantial crowd, and I wasn’t the only representative from the Field Museum’s volunteers to attend. Only visitors wearing the event badges were allowed in, and I paid $85 for the full weekend.  The talks were attended by people of all ages, and both genders were well-represented. It was genuinely inspiring to see how diverse the appeal of paleontology is.

Movie Review: Monster On the Campus (1958)

Well, it’s another Friday, and thanks to problems in my personal life, I haven’t had a chance to do any blogs this week. However, I’m working on that, and I’m breaking my week-long hiatus.  The good news is that Fridays are movie days. The bad news is that every other one is going to be a bad movie. This week’s bad movie has no dinosaurs per se, but some prehistoric “monsters” and some typically terrible science. Today, we’re looking at 1958’s Monster on the Campus, directed by Jack Arnold and starring Arthur Franz in his last major film role.  It’s a fairly obscure film, neither revered classic like Arnold’s It Came from Outer Space or Creature from the Black Lagoon, nor a cheesy disaster like King Dinosaur or The Beginning of the End.