Santa Monica Topiary Dinosaurs, proudly guarding the Promenade.

Yes, even Los Angeles has dinosaurs. Of course, they are made out of shrubs and shoot water from their mouths while people casually eat frozen yogurt and shop at an outdoor mall. This is one of the many highlights of last weekend’s trip.

Another highlight of the trip was visiting the Museum of Jurassic Technology. I’m sure many of you have heard of it by now. It’s a museum that is really more of a conceptual art project. While it projects the trappings of an “official” museum, you never quite know whether the things on display are real or not. You also never really know why they are on display, as much of what’s in the museum looks either obscure, insignificant or both. Long story short, I can’t describe it well enough to do it justice. If you are passing through Culver City, give yourself at least an hour and a half to see the displays and more than that if you want to read everything (actually you would need a whole day for that).

One of the displays featured this glass case with a dog’s head inside. Through a series of prisms, the image of a man fidgeting in a chair and barking is projected into space so that when you look into the case, he appears to be in the dog’s head. Then he starts barking. It’s priceless, and this one exhibit is worth the price of admission alone.

Cheesosaurus, originally uploaded by mark.hogan.

My birthday is still slightly more than a month away, but my friend went to Wisconsin this week and couldn’t pass up this dinosaur-shaped cheese souvenir. The real question is, will I be able to slice it so that the cheese that comes out is still shaped like a dinosaur?

We all know (unless you are a creationist, and my apologizes to you for letting the cat out of the bag) that modern birds are the descendants of the dinosaurs, but did you know that even T. Rex had a wishbone? Livescience.com has a post about it today. The wishbone, or furcula, is one of the strong evolutionary links that ties your turkey to the dinosaurs.

While we’re on the subject of turkey, have you thought about making a tofu turkey instead? Spare one of our feathered friends this Thanksgiving with this great recipe.

My tofu turkey (in the front on the plate) from Thanksgiving 2005, with a variety of delicious side dishes

One of the largest dinosaurs yet has been discovered in Argentina! If you want to know about Blog Action Day, keep reading for my previous entry below…

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I haven’t posted about dinosaurs in a while, but this is too hard to resist. My friend Chad sent me an article about a very robust type of duckbill dinosaur that lived in North America about 75 million years ago. This translates to 4,000 years ago if you are a creationist. Read on for the details.

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excerpt from “There Go the Dinosaurs”

My friend Mark Miller pointed me to this fascinating cartoon that offers a thorough explanation of how creationists explain dinosaurs. I’ve heard a lot of this before, but never so succinctly! This cartoon comes courtesy of Chick Publications, “publishers of Gospel publications for over 40 years” (according to their website).

Jack Chick, the publisher, has an interesting take on other religions. He states on his site that Roman Catholicism is not Christian, and that Allah was worshipped as a pagan moon god long before Mohammed came on the scene. Clearly there are no contradictions within his own personal vision of Christianity.

He also states on his website “God in His Singular providential care has KEPT HIS WORD all through the ages, right down to the present day as found in the King James Version. We consider this version our final and absolute authority, above and beyond all other authorities on earth.” Now, whether you are religious or not, this seems a bit unlikely to me considering how the book was pieced together over a huge amount of time and translated from a variety of languages. I guess this explains dinosaurs though.

To read more, visit the original cartoon here.

Plastic Dinosaur Flower Planter, Derby NY

I’m going to be out of town for the next few days, so I won’t be posting much. I am visiting my family in Buffalo. I’ve been to two different Frank Lloyd Wright houses in the last two days which I’ll post about when I get back.

Here are some photos of the Graycliff Estate in Derby, NY which Wright designed in 1928. I’ll post photos of the Martin House in Buffalo soon.

Front of the Graycliff House

Waterfront side of the Graycliff house

Mouth of the 18 Mile Creek at Lake Erie, near Graycliff

This is the Friday Dinosaur Update. An amateur paleontologist in Switzerland may have unearthed Europe’s largest dinosaur mass grave after he dug up the remains of two Plateosaurus. Read more at Reuters…

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I couldn’t resist the title of this article.

In birds, which are essentially living dinosaurs, sex begins only after peak adult size. On the other hand, in people as well as crocodiles, alligators, lizards and snakes, sexual maturity can begin after the juvenile growth spurt but well before peak adult size.

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I need to point you to a link to another blog that chronicles the worst museum dinosaur exhibit of all time. Of course, it is at the Creation Museum, which I have mentioned in earlier posts. I hate to even link to it, but you might want to see Ken Ham’s own site (part of the answersingenesis.com monstrosity) to learn even more about Dinosaur Independence Day.