Biochemical Soul Musings on Nature, Science, Evolution, Biology, and Education

2Jul/097

Grandpa’s Pet Therapod

nope - not a fake at all...

nope - not a fake at all...

I hang out online sometimes with a bunch of like-minded fossil-enthusiasts (The Fossil Forum).

Tonight somebody posted this:

Just watched the new this evening and they were talking about a dig going on right now outside of Glen Rose, on the McFall ranch. The news showed the footprints of the therapod and the human prints together. It was interesting. For report go to cbs11tv.com

So I mosied over to the Dallas, TX CBS news site and found the article "Local City Known As Dinosaur Capital Of Texas, by Arezow Doost."

Sounds innocuous enough for a title, right?  Then I read the first three sentences:

"Did you ever think that there were dinosaurs in North Texas?

As it turns out, this is one of the most prolific areas for dinosaur tracks in the state. One group of scientists have even found tracks dating back millions of years."

Read that last sentence again:

"One group of scientists have even found tracks dating back millions of years."

Cause, you know, all those other groups found tracks that weren't millions of years old...
(for those of you who missed out on elementary school, dinosaurs went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous sixty-five million years ago.)

Absolutely hilarious...and mind-numbingly maddening.

After reading a bit more, then you learn what it is really about:

"Scientists believe that one of the most unique findings is human prints dating back to the same period as the dinosaur prints. "We are looking for the truth," said Baugh. "We don't want anything else but the truth.""

I rolled my eyes. Obviously, I had a feeling what I would find out with a little search, but I decided to check out the scientist quoted in the piece, because I thought it was a bit odd that he said "We are looking for the truth. We don't want anything else but the truth."

You see, that is a very non-scientist thing to say in a media piece, and it instantly threw up a red flag to me. I say this because when one is actually in the practice of being a good scientist, a statement like that is like a commercial fisherman saying "no really, we're just out here to catch fish." What else would a fisherman be fishing in the ocean for? If you're a scientist, a statement like that is less than unnecessary.

Yeah this guy, Carl Baugh, is a young earth creationist discredited in the scientific community and with a questionable education. He is obviously seeking to prove his own wrong beliefs - not actually do what good scientists do, which is let the data speak for themselves. Check this out for some rather hilarious reading on Baugh: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Baugh

Sigh...it is Texas after all (I was born and raised in east Texas, FYI)

As an added moronic bonus, if you look at the url of the story you'll see that it's filed under "pets."
(http://cbs11tv.com/pets/Texas.Dinosaur.Capital.2.1069336.html).

What kind of of idiots are running that station?

One thing about the fossil record - it's insanely consistent across both time and continental space, if fragmentary. And it has consistently shown us that human and therapod existence is quite a few tens of millions of years apart.

Hell, mammals were barely existent back then, compared to today. But primates? LOL - no.

***

Side note: I'm going fossil hunting in Aurora, NC tomorrow and at Greens Mill Run in Greenville, NC on Saturday!!  Shark teeth here I come. Please just let me find a megalodon.

27Feb/095

Tagged by Rick MacPherson’s Google Meme

Okay, my excuse is that I have yet to participate in a "meme" yet (despite being tagged by several).

The infamous Rick MacPherson of Malaria, Bedbugs, Sea Lice & Sunsets came up with his own little game wherein he determined a set of search terms that would result in his own blog ranking as the top hit (such as "coral reefs, conservation, queer" and "zelnio, conservation, blog, coral, drunk").

The exercise ended up being more entertaining than I anticipated. My goal was to find the most entertaining or impressive search terms.

In no particular order, here are some search terms that will give you Biochemical Soul as the #1 Google search hit (no quotes or advanced googling were used):

  • andrew kevin dueling penises (that explains some of my traffic - it's totally invertebrate biology-related - I swear)
  • miriam oyster orgies (also invertebrate biology-related)
  • magnum p.i. blue whale
  • daniel darwin beard
  • timber rattlesnake camouflage
  • flatfish eye adaptation
  • aye-aye finger adaptation
  • spaghetti monster animation
  • heron catfish video
  • daniel d brown ("daniel brown" doesn't pull this blog until results page 2)

Interestingly, I almost capture the the entire history of heart evolution - pretty sweet:

  • worm heart evolution (2nd behind a "pet heart-worm" site)
  • fly heart evolution
  • fish heart evolution
  • frog heart evolution
  • reptile heart evolution
  • bird heart evolution (#2 search result)
  • mammal heart evolution
  • human heart evolution (page 2 of results)

How about it Christie, Kevin, Allie, DNLee, Glendon? Care to give it a go?

6Feb/090

Science in Danger!

Because it needs to be shouted out to the world, I am reposting this from The Panda's Thumb. I find this utterly baffling. How can any American not see the vast impact of science on our lifestyles, our economy, our health, our environment, and our existence?!

Science Getting the Shaft

US Senators Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Susan Collins (R-ME) are proposing to cut the stimulus/spending package by roughly 10%. Their staff have identified several “useless” programs included in the bill, and it appears that they consider science funding to be one of those useless pursuits.

Over the last 50 years, much of our economic development has been driven by science, and at a time when the US is faced with losing its scientific dominance to China and the EU, the US needs increased science funding. Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will eat for a lifetime. Fund fishing research, and your children all eat for a lifetime.

From the list of stimulus projects that are on the cutting block:

  • NSF 100% cut ($1,402,000,000)
  • NASA exploration 50% cut ($750,000,000)
  • NOAA 34.94% cut ($427,000,000)
  • NIST 37.91% cut ($218,000,000)
  • DOE energy efficiency & renewable energy 38% cut ($1,000,000,000)
  • DOE office of science 100% cut ($100,000,000)

If you have an opinion about these cuts, you should make it known to your Senators because they will soon be voting on this proposal.

List of Senators and Contact Information

25Oct/080

XKCD: Beliefs

This comic is a bit old, but it's just so (agelessly) pertinent right now.

XKCD: The best comic artist on the internets

XKCD (Randall Monroe): The best nerdy comic artist on the internets

25Oct/085

Jesus and the Dinosaurs!

On Cringer...to Castle Grayskull!!

Onward Battle Cat...to Castle Grayskull!!

This has probably been around a while. I've had this sitting on my hard drive for ages.  But given my earlier post on Sarah Palin's utter ignorance of Science and this quote about Sarah Palin from Philip Munger on Salon.com...

"I pushed her on the earth's creation, whether it was really less than 7,000 years old and whether dinosaurs and humans walked the earth at the same time. And she said yes, she'd seen images somewhere of dinosaur fossils with human footprints in them."

...enjoy the glory of Jesus on a T. rex. I have no idea where this came from - if you know the source, let me know.

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