Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs

Clever title.  Making reference to either Gibbon or Shirer, either one, is always a good idea.

Sadly, the title (well, and the Todd Marshall pencil sketches inside) were the best parts of this book.  I remember being keenly disappointed when I was a young college student.  As I was approaching graduation with my Bachelors, I had a few elective requirements to fulfill, so I'd go and look for upper level classes in subjects I was interested in, like dinosaur paleontology or anthropology.  And I remember thinking that taking an upper level class would mean I'd find some fascinating things out, but that we literally didn't learn anything that I didn't already know; in fact, often the curriculum would be dumbed down from what I already knew about the subject.

Steve Brusatte, who I had higher hopes for after seeing, among other things, his definitive tyrannosaur cladograms, is guilty of (among other flaws) doing the same thing in this book.  It really doesn't say much of anything that isn't already well known to anyone who has even a passing interest in dinosaurs, with the possible exception of a couple of pages of his discussion about the Triassic and the fact that it took another extinction event at end-Triassic to open up opportunities for dinosaurs that were otherwise occupied by pseudosuchians.

The other two flaws were, if anything, even more annoying, though.  I can forgive a book that doesn't tell me much that I don't already know—it'll be forgettable, sure, but I'll just chalk it up to the challenge of finding new information in the era where I've both taught myself how to read the technical literature, but I can follow developments in real time (or close to) because of the magic of the internet.  But when he spends an inordinate amount of time smugly, and even snarkily virtue-signaling, that's offensive.  When he spends an inordinate amount of time name-dropping and referring to at least two dozen people as "his really good friend" one has to imagine that cringy, insecure, social-status signaling is more important to him than the actual subject of the book.

I not only can't recommend this book, I can actively recommend that you avoid it.  Sadly.  I had high hopes for it.  However, not only did I get a few pages of Triassic discussion, a subject which is sadly untouched in the popular literature (although I've been following it on blogs like Chinleana for years) I did hear about a discovery that I had missed, the bizarre, bat-winged dinosaur Yi qi.  Sadly, a terrible name.  And how do you even pronounce it?  Yee chee? Yee kee? Or do you just say Yee?  But that wasn't even worth the price—which in my case was a few cents for gas and my time for me to go to the library and pick it up for free.

So, let me add something totally different to this post, just to make it a little more meaty too.  While toy sales is not something that I care about for its own sake, it's a great surrogate for Star Wars' place in fandom and the public consciousness.  Sure, sure—we all know what the Rotten Tomatoes score is for The Last Jedi and Solo (although, we all also know that it's been manipulated by lying SJWs who falsely claim that "alt.right trolls" are gaming the rankings; so based on this flimsy bald assertion, they've gone and ... gamed the rankings.)  And sure, sure—we all know what the ticket sales are.

But there's more going on than just that.  And the merchandising is an important part of the story.

So, watch this video.  It's fascinating stuff, and should be a wake-up call to the corporate overlords.  But the corporate overlords are not really that bright, and they are more defined by their belonging to an anti-American cult who thinks its more important to virtue signal how much they hate you and everything about you; your religious traditions, your cultural traditions, your legal traditions, and even your very right to exist at all in your own freakin' homeland than they are in, say, being successful with your multi-billion dollar corporation.  Billions of dollars is a small price to pay for comfort of delusional wishful thinking.  But there you have it.



And as a bonus; remember this?  Just a reminder that before the Green Cult went absolutely insane doubling and tripling down on the global warming hoax, people still knew them for what they were and called them out.  I'm reminded of it, because the global warming hoax was specifically (and self-righteously and smugly and snarkily) referenced a few times by Brusatte.  Seriously.  As if it isn't common knowledge that there's been more than 15 years of no warming and the whole hockey stick graph wasn't specifically and incontrovertibly exposed as a hoax.

But like I said; the Green cult is a cult.  Facts don't matter to them.