There was a time in my life when I was into  Star Wars  films.  The first appeared in 1977 when I was still teaching engineering at the University of Hawaii.  That was 48 years ago.  I bring this subject up today because I will focus on entertainment, and saw a headline:   Giant "Darth Vader" sea bug discovered off the coast of Vietnam . First, this not an insect but a crustacean,  and a local delicacy. Second, does not much look like DV to me.  If this isopod ( Bathynomus vaderi)  was colored black, maybe There have been 12  Star Wars  films so far, and the next one,  The Mandalorian & Grogu , will be released in May, next year.  But I've grown up, and couldn't care less. This franchise has kept returning because later productions also scored well on Rotten Tomatoes. The highest rated was the first in 1977,  Episode IV--A New Hope , got the highest score, 94. However, #2 was the 1980  The Empire Strikes...

  Next month,   Scientific American  will feature dinosaurs. Early in my youth, I made dinosaur figures using plaster of paris.   I then wanted to be a paleontologist.  I now know that this occupation forces you to spend ungodly time in horrible places with terrible weather. But about that above  Scientific American  article : Begins with the Tyrannosaurus Rex.  Note some fluffiness, as explained in the end of this posting. Brain weighed less than a pound.   We have a 3-pound brain, while an elephant has an 11-pound brain.   Dinosaurs and elephants were similar in size: T-Rex had a length of 40 feet and height of 20 feet, but elephants weighed more, 12,000 lb vs 9,000 pounds. A human brain is 2% of our body weight.   Elephant = 0.1% and dinosaur = 0.01%. T-Rex had 3 billion neurons, while humans have 100 billion and a Nile crocodile around 0.8 million.  An emu has roughly 1.3 billion neurons.  Thus,...