Tag: University of Kansas

Meanwhile, your tuition went up

Most universities in the U.S. are storied institutions with a legacy of shaping young minds to create the world we know today. And if there’s one thing that could destroy their reputations, it’s using their name for a porn site.

Schools like the University of Kansas are buying up .xxx domains before pornographers can create rockchalkjayhawk.xxx and jayhawks.xxx. This is a security concern because people interested in UK could accidentally type in the universally-agreed upon porn abbreviation — instead of .edu — and wind up at tits instead. They also bought kansas.xxx, because they want to keep the address porn-free, which will save the owners of

  • kansas.com: The Wichita Eagle, a newspaper
  • kansas.gov: The Official Web site of the State of Kansas
  • kansas.net: Based on the quality of their page, some ’90s-era Internet provider

from having to buy it themselves. (The University of Missouri did the same thing with missouri.xxx, proving that neither state has anything going for it but college basketball.) Unfortunately, nobody bothered to buy .org or .biz, so smut peddlers, get on it!

Your game and you

Science marches on, and today it looks at your game!

Jeffrey Hall of the University of Kansas communication studies department has analyzed five different flirting approaches: physical, traditional, polite, sincere and playful. Whichever one you use can determine who you are as a person and what type of relationships you look for.

Unfortunately for The Guys, he left off “inappropriate” and “discomforting.”

The gizzard bag is right beside the venom sac

Raptors get more fearsome all the time. Jurassic Park painted velociraptors as clever, fleet-footed predators, and they may have hunted from trees. Now researchers suspect that their turkey-sized relative had a venomous bite—and other raptors might have it, too.

Researchers at the University of Kansas Natural History Museum have been studying the Sinornithosaurus, the “Chinese bird lizard,” a diminutive relative of the raptor. Closer investigations of the skull reveal that the Sinornithosaurus had snake-like fangs and pockets in the skull that indicate the former presence of glands. Because of the shape of the teeth and the fact that these gland pockets are connected to the teeth through narrow ducts, paleontologists believe that the glands contained venom. The researchers believe that the bird-like dinosaur had a venomous bite, which it used to subdue its prey.

It’s a significant discovery for a couple of reasons. For one thing, it offers more clues as to the origin of venom in snakes and lizards, which likely stems from a common ancestors these animals shared with Sinornithosaurus. It also opens up the possibility that other raptors also had venomous bites. The researchers plan to look more closely at other raptor skulls, especially its close relative, the glider Microraptor, to see if they possess similar features.

We can’t implore science enough to not attempt to bring these creatures back. Jurassic Park proved that we just can’t manage them at all, and that was a fictional movie; how badly do you think real life would be? We’re in war with animals, for Pete’s sake: do you  really think that we’d be effective against these beasts? And what if the Nazis get ahold of T-rexes? Do you want to have a Nazi Tyrannosaurus Rex on your conscience? DO YOU?!!!?