First, contrary to what many investigators have postulated, the beasts probably had to have been cold-blooded, because the costs of maintaining a constant body temperatureówhich is to say, being warm-bloodedóat that size would have necessitated unrealistic hunting success (up to 10 times that of a lion) and a means of cooling down to avoid overheating.

The second requirement derives from the observations that meat-eating species have more extensive geographic ranges and lower population densities than vegetarians do, and big carnivores range over bigger areas than small ones do. For gigantic theropod species to succeed, the researchers argue, they would have needed continent-size landmasses to sustain populations large enough to avoid extinction. Third, titans-in-the-making had to be released from the ecological pressure of competing with other large species for foodóthrough the extinction of rivals or the hunting of different prey, for example.

This creates a classic free-rider problem. If the blogs eventually steal the mass media's audience (or at least, key parts of it) and the Internet as a whole continues to steal its revenues, there will come a time when those big, expensive news-gathering operations will become economically insupportable. Either the mass media will have to abandon its existing, adverstising-driven, business model, or it will have to scale back its news-gathering functions to a bare minimum. That pressure to do the latter is already extreme, as any journalist can tell you.

Mr. Green once bought a box of gers for $2. They were gears for pocket watches, which he cleaned up and put back on the auction block with the right spelling. They sold for $200.

In English I can tell my son: "Today I talked to Adrian", and he won't ask: "How do you know you talked to Adrian?" But in some languages, including Tariana, you always have to put a little suffix onto your verb saying how you know something - we call it "evidentiality". I would have to say: "I talked to Adrian, non-visual," if we had talked on the phone. And if my son told someone else, he would say: "She talked to Adrian, visual, reported." In that language, if you don't say how you know things, they think you are a liar.

As is apparent in this true-color image, the islands are tall enough to disrupt the cloud patterns forming and flowing around them.