Tag: TechTips

Enlarge / Mourners visit a memorial for victims of Tuesday’s mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. (credit: Getty | Anadolu Agency)

In the wake of yet another preventable American gun violence tragedy—one that involved the slaughter of 21 people, including 19 children in a Texas elementary school—doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, health experts, and scientists are once again demanding a long-overdue, evidence-based public health response to the uniquely American public health crisis of gun violence.

This is “very much our lane,” Dr. Bindi Naik-Mathuria, a pediatric surgeon at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, told NBC.

She spoke vividly about the immediate impacts that AR-15-style weapons have on a human body—particularly the smallest ones. In the Uvalde, Texas school shooting this week, the gunman used an AR-15-style rifle (the Daniel Defense DDM4 V7 rifle), which he bought online. AR-15-style rifles are often used in mass shootings. They use a common military-caliber ammunition. The bullets don’t always pass cleanly through flesh, but can instead become “unstable” and tumble, causing devastating damage that can leave victims unrecognizable and with an exceptionally low chance of survival.

Enlarge / Detail from an illustration of Genyornis (aka the “Demon Duck of Doom”) not looking so tough as it is chased from its nest by a Megalania lizard in prehistoric Australia. (credit: Peter Trusler)

Over 65,000 years ago, large flightless birds dubbed “Demon Ducks of Doom” roamed prehistoric Australia. The creatures stood over six and a half feet (two meters) tall, weighed over 440 pounds (200 kgs), and sported massive beaks. They also produced giant cantaloupe-sized eggs that may have served as a food source for early human inhabitants, eventually contributing to the extinction of the demon ducks, according to a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Technically known as Genyornis newtoni or mihirung paringmal (“thunder bird”), the species was first described in 1896 based on the discovery of a fossilized left femur excavated from a site at Lake Callabonna in South Australia. Further excavation yielded many more fragments of avian fossils and eventually mostly complete specimens, including the cranium. Similar specimens have since been found at other sites in New South Wales, Queensland, and Western Australia. The species went extinct within a few thousand years after humans arrived in the region.

There are two competing hypotheses for why Genyronis became extinct: climate change or the impact of the arrival of humans. For instance, there is some fossilized evidence that the Genyornis population at the Lake Callabonna site perished because the lake dried up due to climate change, depriving the birds of their water source. However, a 1999 study of more than 700 eggshell fragments concluded that the species’ decline and extinction occurred too rapidly to be attributed to climate change, suggesting that human activity was to blame. Specifically, early humans in the region may have gathered and consumed Genyornis eggs faster than the creatures could lay them and reproduce.

Enlarge / Ewan McGregor shines in Obi-Wan Kenobi. (credit: Lucasfilm)

While the Disney+-ification of Star Wars has mostly been good for fans, last year’s The Book of Boba Fett saw the franchise move into a coasting period. It landed somewhere between The Mandalorian and Clone Wars without either the compelling, Western-homage atmosphere of the former or the fist-pumping fan service of the latter.

The best thing I can say about Obi-Wan Kenobi, whose first two episodes debuted last night on Disney+ (out of a six-episode series), is that it feels like its own distinct Star Wars show, perhaps somewhere closer to a 1970s detective procedural. You know the kind: The haggard cop is tired of this crap, hangs up the badge, says he’s moved on, yet is still stuck on a lingering failure that keeps him one hair-trigger pull away from getting back into the fight.

That formula needs the right lead actor and world-building team to get fans to watch another attempt at the formula—which, let’s be clear, isn’t that many steps away from how The Mandalorian ropes its lead into a life-changing adventure. Thankfully,  Ewan McGregor remains on board as the titular character in Obi-Wan Kenobi—and sees him steer his Obi-Wan performance closer to the charm and gravitas of the character’s original actor, Sir Alec Guinness.