UK News:

A period of prehistoric global warming and not the decline of the dinosaurs could be responsible for the rise of mammals, it was claimed today.

Scientists have drawn up a new “tree of life” tracing the history of all 4,500 mammals on Earth which shows they did not spread as a result of the massive asteroid strike that killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

Most palaeontologists believe the extinction of T Rex and his terrifying cousins permitted our ancestors to flourish and begin the long evolutionary process culminating in the diverse array of species we see today.

But an international team of researchers, which has taken more than a decade to chart modern mammals from existing fossil records and new molecular analyses, show many of the genetic ‘ancestors’ of the mammals existed 85 million years ago – and survived the meteor impact that is thought to have wiped out the dinosaurs.

However, throughout the Cretaceous period 144 to 65 million years ago, when dinosaurs walked the earth, these mammal species were relatively few in number and were prevented from diversifying and evolving in ecosystems dominated by dinosaurs.

The tree of life published in Nature shows after the asteroid strike certain mammals did experience a rapid period of diversification and evolution.

But most of these groups have since either died out completely such as Andrewsarchus – an aggressive wolf-like cow – or declined in diversity such as the group containing sloths and armadillos.

The researchers believe our ‘ancestors’, and those of all other mammals on earth now, began to radiate around the time of a sudden increase in the temperature of the planet – ten million years after the death of the dinosaurs.

Biologist Professor Andy Purvis, of Imperial College London, said: “Our research has shown for the first 10 or 15 million years after the dinosaurs were wiped out present day mammals kept a very low profile while these other types of mammals were running the show.

“It looks like a later bout of ‘global warming’ may have kick-started today’s diversity – not the death of the dinosaurs.

“This discovery rewrites our understanding of how we came to evolve on this planet – and the study as a whole gives a much clearer picture than ever before as to our place in nature.”

Abstract of Nature article.

Hat tip to José Guardia

Variety previews this coming weekend’s release of the Quentin Tarrantino/Robert Rodriquez doublebill Grindhouse.

The 1970s exploitation movie gropes, bites, kicks, slugs, blasts, smashes and cusses its way back to life in “Grindhouse,” a “Rodriguez/Tarantino double feature” that lovingly resurrects a disreputable but cultishly embraced form of era-specific film production and exhibition. A pair of pictures devoted to re-creating their progenitors’ grubby aesthetics and visceral kicks, but with vastly greater budgets, higher-end actors and a patina of hipster cool, they part company when it comes to talent and freshness. The numerous marketing problems for this bizarre pop-culture artifact begin with the three-hour-plus running time and young auds’ unfamiliarity with the format. But the B.O. strength of “Sin City” and “Kill Bill” alone suggests the helmers’ loyal followings will produce a very potent opening frame, with fairly steep fall-off thereafter in the manner of most horror films.

Read the whole thing.

Another Tarantino homage to one of the cinema’s more disreputable genres is bound to be a hoot.

The Washington Post yesterday reported the latest on the high school history pageant posturings of the moonbat trustafarian invaders of the Green Mountain State.

The winds of secession are blowing in the Green Mountain State.

Vermont was once an independent republic, and it can be one again. We think the time to make that happen is now. Over the past 50 years, the U.S. government has grown too big, too corrupt and too aggressive toward the world, toward its own citizens and toward local democratic institutions. It has abandoned the democratic vision of its founders and eroded Americans’ fundamental freedoms.

Vermont did not join the Union to become part of an empire.

Some of us therefore seek permission to leave.

A decade before the War of Independence, Vermont became New England’s first frontier, settled by pioneers escaping colonial bondage who hewed settlements across a lush region whose spine is the Green Mountains.

All this 18th century folderol is pretty rich coming from a gang of tree-hugging, goat-milking hippies, who are about as popular with the real Vermonters as the Spring black flies.

But personally I hope they succeed with all this pretentious silliness. When they leave they’ll have to take Bernie Sanders and Jim Jeffords with them. Who knows? Maybe they can start a trend, and California will follow.

Victor Davis Hanson shares a Spartan moment from his forthcoming novel No Man a Slave:

The Spartans are trapped at Leuktra, their king Kleombrotos dead. But just as the Thebans are to crush the final circle and carry off Kleombrotos, Lichas charges through the enemy to save his the body of his king, and nearly kills Chion, Melon, and Epaminondas as he finds a path out.

Lichas and his son cared nothing for the collapse of the Spartan ranks, much less the truth that the day of his parochial state was over. No worry that its dwindling manhood would never again march far to the north as it had for a 100 seasons and more.

No, it was enough that they were Spartans. Now in the joy of battle, now with their grip on shield and spear, whether that was here in the north or far to the east. His son was with him. Good men still lived. Life was sweet, the best when in the hammer and tongs of battle.

Spearing Persians or Thebans, it mattered little. Whether in the heyday of Spartan power or now amid its twilight also countered for nothing. Lichas was Spartan and in his armor, the gear of no less than Lysander himself. So he was stalking proudly and upright despite his age. If the Spartans were to lose, they would lose the way of Leonidas and Lichas, killing as they protected their king with all blows to their front.

The stabbing now grew fiercer still, and Lichas smiled as he heard the dying around him in vain begging the Keres to pass them by, the vultures of death now back above Melon, but who kept their wide distance from Lichas lest such a man strike even them a lethal blow.

Then without missing a step, Lichas stepped on the downed Chion’s chest and tried to stomp the slave to death. The slave rolled away, and Lichas moved on to finish off others less dangerous.

But the slave stumbled somehow to his feet, bellowing, “Chion lives! Kill the king! Where is Kleombrotos?” Then Chion crashed to the ground again, still muttering as the battle raged past him.

Lichas next slammed his freed shaft with an upward flat stroke against the helmet of the onrushing Epaminondas himself. Before Epaminondas could recover from the slap and with his men swarm such a killer, old Lichas stooped down, and with one fluid motion, more a god now than human, picked up his bleeding king, slung him over his back, and used his body as a shield to batter himself a way out back through what was left of the guard. Antikrates backpedaled behind his father, screaming for all those still alive to follow the path of the old man.

They were aiming at an escape route, perhaps back through the shattered circle and on right through the Sacred Band to the open country—slashing and shouting as their leader went ahead, “Turn Spartans. Turn back. Draw back from these stinking pigs. Apostrepesthe tôn suôn. They will not have our Kleombrotos. They will not have a Spartan king for their slop. Not today, not ever.”

There were perhaps only 100 Spartans still alive in the circle who broke out with Lichas, the bald hoplite god, roaring to all, “Not today, not ever, not today, not ever—ou sêmera, oupote, ou sêmera, oupote.

These were desperate and defeated men, abandoned by their allies, surrounded by the Boiotians. But such killers were now buoyed by this late appearance of their bloody Ares, their god Lichas who had always found a path out for them.

With Lichas they were determined to fight their way out with their Kleombrotos rather than surrender. With Lichas by rote they returned to all their training and as if awoken from their trance backpedaled in column.

With Lichas, almost magically they wheeled around and plunged ahead through Pelopidas’s men to their rear who thought the battle was long over. With Lichas in the armor of Lysander they could do anything! One man, a single man like Lichas was worth a lochos, maybe two.

The Telegraph editorializes:

If the Iranians hate us, let them also fear us.

Read the whole thing.

Sun Times:

On this 25th anniversary of the Falklands War, Tony Blair is looking less like Margaret Thatcher and alarmingly like Jimmy Carter, the embodiment of the soi-disant “superpower” as a smiling eunuch.

But this is a season of anniversaries. A few days ago, the European Union was celebrating its 50th birthday with the usual lame-o Euro-boosterism. I said up above that the 15 hostages are “British subjects.” But, as a point of law, they are also “citizens of the European Union.” Even Oxford and Hoover’s Timothy Garton Ash, one of the most indefatigable of those Euro-boosters, seemed to recognize the Iranian action was a challenge to Europe’s pretensions. “Fifteen Europeans were kidnapped from Iraqi territorial waters by Iranian Revolutionary Guards,” he wrote. “Those 14 European men and one European woman have been held at an undisclosed location for nearly a week, interrogated, denied consular access, but shown on Iranian television, with one of them making a staged ‘confession,’ clearly under duress. So if Europe is as it claims to be, what’s it going to do about it?”

Short answer: Nothing.

Slightly longer answer: The 15 “European” hostages aren’t making that much news in “Europe.” And, insofar as they have, other “Europeans” — i.e., Belgians, Germans and whatnot — don’t look on the 15 hostages as “Europeans” but as Brits. Europe has more economic leverage on Iran than America has. The European Union is the Islamic Republic’s biggest trading partner, accounting for 40 percent of Iranian exports. They are in a position to inflict serious pain on Tehran. But not for 15 British servicemen. There may be “European citizens,” but there is no European polity.

OK, well, how about the United Nations? Those student demonstrators want the execution of “British aggressors.” In fact, they’re U.N. aggressors. HMS Cornwall is the base for multinational marine security patrols in the Gulf: a mission authorized by the United Nations. So what’s the U.N. doing about this affront to its authority and (in the public humiliation of the captives) of the Geneva Conventions?

Short answer: Nothing.

Read the whole thing.

According to the Russians, the balloon goes up next weekend.