family devotions: The Life of Abraham [I]

One of my ambitions for 'family devotions' this year is to work through the Book of Revelation; I also aim to work through the life of Abraham (and, if we have time, the lives of Isaac and Jacob up to Joseph and his technicolor dream coat). I'm planning on interspersing Abraham and Revelation throughout the year so as not to become burned out on one subject over another. This first installment of studies on the life of Abraham (or, rather, Abram, for we have yet to reach his infamous name change) looks at how Abram's calling in Genesis 12 connects backward with the Tower of Babel and forward to the cross and the advance of the kingdom through the world, and it begins a historical, verse-by-verse examination of Abraham's journeys in Canaan. This month we spent four weeks in Genesis 12, and it's been exciting (though I don't know if my fourteen-year-old daughter would agree; the eight-year-old loves the pictures though!). I've been doing bible studies on PowerPoint, which helps everyone follow along and keeps the little ones' interest up. Below are the subjects we covered this month:

The Calling of Abram and the Mission of God

Abram's Journey to Canaan: Genesis 12.1-5

Abram Enters Canaan: Genesis 12.6-9

Abram's Egyptian Sojourn: Genesis 12.10-20

the month in snapshots

 

the year in books [III]

This next installment of my 2021 Reading Queue is a series of books in Patrick O'Brian's fantastic Aubrey-Maturin Series. At the conclusion of this installment, there remain only two books in Aubrey-Maturin's series (The Hundred Days and Blue at the Mizzen) and two books in Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe Series (Sharpe's Waterloo and Sharpe's Devil). I'll be supplementing the last four books with another book by Cornwell, Gallows Thief, which is a stand-alone that takes place shortly after the Napoleonic Wars (and that's how I justify including it). In 2018 I decided to read through the O'Brian and Cornwell Napoleonic Series in chronological order, and three years later it'll be coming to a close. I'm not going to lie, that actually makes me sad. These were great series that lack an equal (but I'll be picking up some other naval adventure series in the hope that they can rekindle the joy these authors have brought me). 

the year in books [II]

This year I decided to tackle the first half of Stephen King's Dark Tower Series, with the second half scheduled for 2022. This series is pretty badass, though I honestly struggled to get through Wizard and Glass, which was basically a retelling of Roland's childhood adventures and how they connect with our heroes' journey to the Dark Tower where they aim to set the world(s) aright. 

Dino of the Week: Plateosaurus

A Plateosaurus threatens a duo of curious Liliensternus

Type Species: Plateosaurus engelhardti

Classification: Dinosauria - Saurischia - Sauropodomorpha - Prosauropoda

Time Period: Late Triassic

Location: Europe

Diet: herbivore

Plateosaurus lived in Late Triassic Europe and could reach up to 30 feet in length. This dinosaur seems to have had a penchant for fossilization, as paleontologists have studied over a hundred skeletons found in the Triassic sandstones of Germany, France, and Switzerland. Though this dinosaur is one of the most well-known prosauropods, to the point that essays and articles on prosauropods tend to use Plateosaurus as a template, Plateosaurus’ first steps in paleontology were both awkward and ill-received. Its remains were first discovered in 1834, and Plateosaurus became the fifth named dinosaur genus still considered legitimate. When Richard Owen formally named Dinosauria in 1842, he didn’t include Plateosaurus in his trilogy of dinosaur genera used to define the group (he used Megalosaurus, Iguanodon, and the oft-ignored Hylaeosaurus). Nevertheless, the wealth of specimens enjoyed by modern scientists has turned Plateosaurus into the king of its castle. As of 2001, two species of Plateosaurus have been named: the earliest, Plateosaurus gracilis (formerly known as Sellosaurus), maxed out at around 15 feet; Plateosaurus engelhardti, the type species, showed up later in the Triassic and reached anywhere between 15 to 30 feet. 

A Plateosaurus prowling the river's edge

Plateosaurus had a long, small, and narrow skull, though its skull remained stronger and deeper than the skulls of its prosauropod kin. It had a pear-shaped body made longer by its long neck and tail, with the tail making up half its total length. Its jaws were filled with small, coarsely-serrated, and leaf-shaped teeth; the low-slung hinge of its lower jaw gave its jaw muscles greater leverage to produce a powerful bite. Small ridges of bone around its mouth supported fleshy cheek pouches in life: the front teeth stripped the leaves, and the pouch kept vegetation from falling out of the mouth before it could chew and/or swallow, thus preventing needless waste (an animal of Plateosaurus’ size needed all the food it could get!). Its front legs were shorter than its hind-legs, and it may have been able to rear up on its hind legs not only to reach higher foliage but to run from predators: because of the length of the lower leg bones, some scientists speculate that it could have reached top speeds running on two legs. The hind limbs had slightly flexed knees and ankles, and its feet were digitigrade, meaning they walked on their toes like modern birds. Its eyes were directed to the sides, rather than to the front (like predators), providing all-round vision to keep a wary eye out for threats. Some Plateosaurus skulls have preserved sclerotic rings (rings of bony plates that protected the eyes); by comparing the scleral rings and orbit sizes of Plateosaurus and modern birds and reptiles, scientists have suggested that Plateosaurus was cathemeral, meaning that it was active at any time during the day or night, depending on circumstances. Recent studies estimate that Plateosaurs tended to live between 12-20 years, but their maximum age is unknown (though one specimen seems to have been around 27 years of age).

Recent studies on the Plateosaurus ribcage indicate that these dinosaurs may have had more in common with modern birds than previously thought. Mathematical calculations seem to imply that Plateosaurus had a respiratory system more in common with modern birds than its contemporaneous reptiles. Furthermore, indicators of air sacs in the lungs to reduce weight can be found on the fossilized remains of some specimens, and the rapid growth rates of Plateosaurus have more in common with birds than reptiles. These little clues have led some scientists to speculate that Plateosaurus was endothermic, or “warm-blooded.” The debate on dinosaur metabolism—“Were they cold-blooded, like reptiles, and thus dependent on the heat from their natural surroundings to regulate body temperature? Or were they warm-blooded, like mammals and birds, generating body heat internally?”—has raged for decades, and there remains no consensus on the issue. 

A family group of Plateosaurus meanders down a Late Triassic creek bed

The vast number of disarticulated and articulated skeletons found in bone-beds in both Germany and Switzerland imply, at first glance, gregarious behavior. The image of innumerable herds traveling through the Triassic desert landscapes of Europe, kicking up vast clouds of dust and dirt in their wakes, is a tantalizing image. But things aren’t quite so simple. It’s equally possible that Plateosaurus lived a solitary lifestyle, but these parts of the world were prone to flooding, and dead Plateosaurs from across the landscape were jumbled together in fast floods, creating mesozoic "burial grounds". At the same time, the fact that most of the fossils from these bone-beds belong to Plateosaurus with few exceptions (a few theropod teeth here, an ancient turtle shell there) indicates that these bone-beds might be snapshots of some cataclysmic event that entombed a whole herd of the dinosaurs. But again: things aren’t quite so simple. Further study has shown that at least some of these bone-beds were, back in the Triassic, covered by acres of mud, which could act like quicksand. Coming to feed on the hardy plants that lived in these bog-like conditions, the heavy prosauropods could quickly become trapped in the mire; and the more they struggled to get free, the deeper they would sink. Theropod dinosaurs of Plateosaurus’ day-and-age were, for the most part, lightly-built and with big feet, allowing them to roam these Triassic-era “tar pits” with ease and grab easy meals from mired prey. This scenario makes sense of at least one discovery: in Switzerland, the fossilized remains of a Plateosaurus’ leg bones were found standing vertically in river sandstone while the rest of the skeleton was found scattered around the area and mixed with the teeth of theropod dinosaurs and crocodile-like carnivores. Having become ensnared, the helpless Plateosaurus was set upon by carnivores, and these predators hewed the dinosaur bone-to-bone and enjoyed their takings in the quiet seclusion of the trees. This scenario also explains why the skeletons in these bone-beds consist mostly of adult specimens; because they would’ve been smaller, juvenile Plateosaurs could walk through the bogs without fear of getting stuck. Though debate on the nature of the bone-beds continues, gregariousness remains a safe bet with the accumulated evidence from the wider prosauropoda.

Dino of the Week: Gojisaurus

Type Species: Gojirasaurus quayi

Classification: Dinosauria - Saurischia - Theropoda - Coelophysoidea

Time Period: Late Triassic

Location: New Mexico

Diet: Carnivore

Gojirasaurus’ name means ‘Godzilla lizard’ and is named after (unsurprisingly) the infamous Japanese monster (Gojira is the Japanese name for Godzilla). One might think, then, that it was discovered in Asia, but its remains were actually uncovered in New Mexico. Why, then, the Japanese connection? The answer is two-fold: first, this predatory theropod was a monster for its time – a ‘Godzilla’, if you will. Second, a theropod dinosaur with the name Godzillasaurus exists in the Heisei era of Godzilla films, and in that continuity is explained to be the un-mutated form of Godzilla; thus the naming of this creature Gojirasaurus is, in essence, a play on Japanese film: “Here is the creature from which Godzilla mutated!” This is why, when searching for images of Gojirasaurus, you’ll come across a lot that have Godzilla’s spinal decorations. Alas, these additions are callbacks to Japanese cinematography rather than deciphered from the fossil record.

a rendition of Gojirasaurus that is heavy on the Godzilla connection

Gojirasaurus lived in the Norian stage of the Late Triassic around 228 to 208 mya. It was one of the largest meat-eating dinosaurs of its time (if not the largest): it dwarfed Liliensternus and grew just shy of the length enjoyed by the early Jurassic Dilophosaurus. Scientists estimate it grew up to eighteen feet long and weighed between 330-440 pounds. Features of the pelvis and ankle suggest to some that the fossil specimen we have is from a juvenile; if that’s the case, an adult Gojirasaurus would’ve grown much larger, perhaps dwarfing even Dilophosaurus and its kin. For this reason it might be considered the ‘Allosaurus’ of its time.

Dino of the Week: Mussaurus

Type Species: Mussaurus patagonicus

Classification: Dinosauria - Saurischia - Sauropodomorpha - Prosauropoda

Time Period: Early Jurassic

Location: South America

Diet: Herbivore

Jose Bonaparte made a hell of a discovery in the 1960s with Riojasaurus, and he made another in the 1970s: “the Mouse Lizard”. Mussaurus gets its name from its incredibly small size: the largest skeleton was only eight inches long! These Lower Jurassic herbivores had large heads, big eyes, and short necks. These bug-eyed critters were so small they could fit in the palm of your hand. Their skeletons evoked images of mice, and the media (and science) introduced the world to “the mouse lizard.” Hailed as the “Smallest Dinosaur Ever Found!” at a mere ¾ of a foot long, Mussaurus showed up (rather ironically, if you ask me) on all the Big 10 lists. Even notable science fiction author Michael Crichton included the mouse-sized Mussaurus in his sequel to Jurassic Park. 

But in all the excitement, a critical component of the Mussaurus dig site didn’t receive the attention it deserved: these eight-inch long dinosaurs were found amidst what turned out to be fragmented eggshells. Before being trampled, the eggs would’ve been about one inch long. As for Mussaurus, the bones speak for themselves: tall skulls with short snouts and big eyes are common features of vertebrate infants. This wasn’t the Smallest Dinosaur Ever; it was just a baby. It became clear that Bonaparte had stumbled across a newly-hatched nest forever frozen in time. The adults, however, were conspicuously absent—at least for a while. 

Later digs revealed adult specimens in the same rock formations as the infant Mussaurus. That discovery opened a treasure trove of specimens that we didn’t know we had: it turns out that the remains of several adult Mussaurus had already been found; they had just been “mislabeled” as variants on Plateosaurus. The adults reached up to ten feet in length (still fairly small for the prosauropods we’ve seen, but a titan compared to the eight-inch infants), and it had the look and feel of your basic prosauropod: a long neck and long tail, a small head with an elongated snout, and large, five-fingered hands sporting large thumb claws. Mussaurus was bipedal, but it may have been able to run on all four legs if the need arose. 

Mussaurus may not have been as small as a mouse, but more discoveries have shed further light not just on this dinosaur, but on its society as well. The paternal care (or lack thereof) among dinosaurs is a subject that remains, in some ways at least, hotly debated; and within this cacophony, Mussaurus has a booming voice. First, the fact that the babies remained at their nests after hatching—rather than scurrying fast and hard for the undergrowth, as vulnerable infants instinctively do—implies that someone was looking after them. Second, the anatomical proportions of an infant Mussaurus are reminiscent not only of infant vertebrates but, more poignantly, to species that exhibit parental care over their young while they’re vulnerable. Third, a further discovery of an intact nest with seven juvenile specimens—neither babies nor adults—crowded around it implies that, for a significant amount of time, the animals stayed around the nest. Without parental care, hovering around the nest would be tantamount to infanticide. Someone would find out about it at some point, and it’d be a bloodbath. Fourth, and finally, the first adult specimens of Mussaurus have been recognized as recently as 2013, and these specimens were found near the nests. These South American bone-beds give us a snapshot of a (rather unfortunate) day-in-the-life of a prosauropod nesting site—and at 215 million years old, it’s the oldest known nesting site in the geological record.

Dino of the Week: Eodromaeus

Type Species: Eodromaeus murphi

Classification: Dinosauria - Saurischia - Theropoda

Time Period: Late Triassic

Location: Argentina

Diet: Carnivore

Eodromaeus name means ‘dawn runner,’ and it’s apt: though for years the Triassic theropod Eoraptor was considered one of the earliest dinosaurs, Eodromaeus appears as to be a better candidate (hence it finds its place at the ‘dawn’ of the dinosaur age; in the words of paleontologist Paul Sereno, it may very well be the ‘Eve’ of the dinosaurs, a common ancestor to all other dinosaurs). As far as running goes, it was a swift runner that could likely clock speeds up to twenty miles per hour, giving Eoraptor – once again! – a run for its money.

Eodromaeus lived in Argentina during the Carnian stage of the Late Triassic around 232-229 mya. When its remains were first discovered, it was thought to belong to a new species of Eoraptor; closer examination showed they belonged to a different creature altogether. Eodromaeus was small, reaching just under four feet head-to-tail, and weighed only about eleven pounds. It was long and slender and able to run on two legs (its hind-limbs were much longer than its front limbs). It had sabre-shaped teeth and sharp-clawed five-fingered hands (though two of its digits were greatly reduced), and it likely preyed upon small or juvenile reptiles. 

potent quotables: David Horowitz

the following quotes are from Horowitz' Dark Agenda

On 'Social Justice'

When Soviet Communism collapsed in 1991, progressives didn’t give up their illusions. Instead they changed the name of their utopian dream. Today they no longer call their earthly redemption “Communism.” They call it “social justice.” Like Communism, social justice is an impossible future in which the inequalities and oppressions that have afflicted human beings for millennia will miraculously vanish and social harmony will rule... [But] injustice is not caused by an abstraction called “society,” as we on the left had maintained. Nor was injustice caused by oppressive races and genders, or solely by our political enemies. Injustice is the result of human selfishness, deceitfulness, malice, envy, greed, and lust. Injustice is the inevitable consequence of our free will as human beings. “Society” is not the cause of injustice. Society is merely a reflection of who we are... In contrast to the progressive mission of saving “society,” the goal of Christian belief is saving individual souls. Christians see the imperfections and sufferings of the world as the results of acts by individuals who have failed to do good or have chosen to do evil. The social redeemers, on the other hand, do not see individuals as agents of their own destinies. They see them as products of “social forces,” as objects of class, race, gender, and religious oppressions. Progressives focus on alleged injustices that do not depend on the willful acts of racist or sexist individuals, but on mythical factors like “institutional bias” and “systemic discrimination.” Through the progressive lens, individuals and their choices disappear. That is why progressives do not hesitate to impose their solutions on others by force, including the people they propose to save.

On Progressivism's Academic Advance

Since the seventies, the radical movement had been establishing a political base in the universities, purging conservative faculty and texts, and transforming scholarly disciplines into political training programs. These leftist indoctrination programs are referred to as “oppression studies,” “social justice studies,” “feminist studies,” “whiteness studies,” and the like. So advanced has this transformation become that Andrew Sullivan, a principled liberal and prominent gay activist, felt impelled to sound an alarm. He pointed out that this radical movement posed an existential threat to the American order of pluralism and individual freedom: 

When elite universities shift their entire worldview away from liberal education, as we have long known it, toward the imperatives of an identity-based “social justice” movement, the broader culture is in danger of drifting away from liberal democracy as well. If elites believe that the core truth of our society is a system of interlocking and oppressive power structures based around immutable characteristics like race or sex or sexual orientation, then sooner rather than later, this will be reflected in our culture at large. What matters most of all in these colleges—your membership in a group that is embedded in a hierarchy of oppression—will soon enough be what matters in the society as a whole.

Sullivan went on to describe how this notion constituted an assault on the fundamental American principle of the freedom and equality of individuals: The whole concept of an individual who exists apart from group identity is slipping from the discourse. The idea of individual merit—as opposed to various forms of unearned “privilege”—is increasingly suspect. The Enlightenment principles that formed the bedrock of the American experiment—untrammeled free speech, due process, individual (rather than group) rights—are now routinely understood as mere masks for “white male” power, code words for the oppression of women and nonwhites. Any differences in outcome for various groups must always be a function of “hate,” rather than a function of nature or choice or freedom or individual agency. And anyone who questions these assertions is obviously a white supremacist himself. 

On Progressivism's Attitude Towards Christians

The left’s attacks on religious freedom, and general hatred for those who don’t agree with them, are driven by “identity politics.” Identity politics is an anti-American ideology and a sanitized name for cultural Marxism. Marx viewed market societies as divided into capitalists and workers, to which he ascribed moral attributes: oppressors and oppressed. Society was the site of continual warfare between these classes. Cultural Marxists have extended this picture of class warfare to races, genders, and sexual orientations, attributing all inequality and injustice to the institutions and actions of the oppressor groups: whites, males, heterosexuals, and religious “reactionaries”—in particular Christians—whose views allegedly serve the interests of the oppressors. This is a prescription for true oppression, as the government steps in to create “social justice” by depriving those who have earned it, the fruits of their labor, and distributing them to those who have not. It is a prescription for irreconcilable conflict and division, not the compromise and coexistence that the American founders worked so hard to achieve. The success of the cultural Marxists in reshaping our institutions is why America now appears to be two nations instead of one. If the source of inequality is not circumstance, individual talent, and choice, but is imposed by an oppressor group, it can only be overcome by suppressing that group. It is therefore morally wrong to extend sympathy to an oppressor group or to respect its American rights—rights once afforded to all. To respect oppressors’ rights is to support the injustices they commit. If social justice is to be achieved, one must suppress the perpetrators of injustice by depriving them of their rights. That is why progressives—cultural Marxists—are so intolerant and seek to suppress the free speech of those who oppose them. In identity politics only collective rights matter—not individual rights. What matters is one’s membership in a “victim” group or an “oppressor” group. Membership is based on characteristics the individual cannot change. Identity politics is a politics of hate, and a prescription for war. The liberal but anti-left writer Andrew Sullivan has eloquently summed up the consequences of this view of the world: 

What matters [to the left] is that nonwhites fight and defeat white supremacy, that women unite and defeat oppressive masculinity, and that the trans [gendered] supplant and redefine the cis [people whose sense of their own identity corresponds to their birth sex]. What matters is equality of outcome, and it cannot be delayed. All the ideas that might complicate this—meritocracy, for example, or a color-blind vision of justice, or equality of opportunity rather than outcome—are to be mocked until they are dismantled. And the political goal is not a post-racial fusion, a unity of the red and the blue, but the rallying of the victims against the victimizers, animated by the core belief that a non-“white” and non-male majority will at some point come, after which the new hierarchies can be imposed by fiat.

In other words, by a totalitarian state.

Dino of the Week: Melanorosaurus

Type Species: Melanorosaurus readi

Classification: Dinosauria - Saurischia - Sauropodomorpha - Prosauropoda

Time Period: Late Triassic

Location: Africa

Diet: Herbivore

The “Black Mountain Lizard” roamed the conifer forests of Upper Triassic South Africa, where it may have rubbed shoulders with Riojasaurus and Euskelosaurus. Melanorosaurus’ body is, in a lot of respects, morphologically similar to those of the later sauropods: its large body, sturdy limbs, and ponderous, fully quadrupedal gait have inspired numbers of scientists over the years to wonder if Melanorosaurus, like Riojasaurus, has eerily close family ties to the sauropods. Melanorosaurus had a pointed, tapering nose not unlike a bird’s beak; the skull was about nine inches long—definitely small for a head-to-tail length up to fifty feet!—and looked triangular when seen from above or below. The long tail tapered towards its end and had a good degree of flexibility; the neck, while long, is stubbier than those of the sauropods. 

The presence of sclerotic rings—rings of bony plates that protected the eyes—in Melanorosaurus allowed it to function during both the day and night; when comparing the sclerotic rings and orbit sizes of prosauropods and modern birds and reptiles, scientists have suggested that prosauropods were cathemeral, meaning that they could see best at dusk and dawn. Perhaps Melanorosaurus—along with many of its prosauropod blood-fellows—was most active in the morning and evening, avoiding the sweltering heat of the Triassic afternoons by basking in the shadows of Pangaean cliffs or under the shade offered by towering conifers.