Emancipated from the rigor of science, we are free to propose any fanciful idea and exercise our imaginations to the fullest — all that matters is that you have a cool story with T-rexes biting the heads off people.
Get right on this one, Discovery Institute!
“Also, Bigfoot is real, and he’s a ghost!”
XD That explains everything!
Science!
It
worksis whatever we say it is, bitches!Oh, those Martians! Never around when you need ’em. Now, about T-rex being the most awesome dinosaur…
I scoff at this theory because it doesn’t explain the Loch Ness monster!
The Disco ‘tute would never believe that comic. There is no fawning over deities.
I think Pentaceratops is much cooler than T-rex.
Controversy! Teach it!
But the DI has evidence for its claims–because God deliberately made everything look like it evolved without thought. What could be a more remarkable sign than that?
It shows that God cares.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
What the hell is wrong with those people?
I don’t see anyone here suggesting a memorial or even a moment of silence for poor Org. The guy got his head bit off and none of you gives a darn. Shame on all of you! Shame! Shame! Shame!1!!
‘Tis Himself, OM:
Well I think Org deserved what he got! What kind of an idiot turns his back on a T-rex?
Love the multiple crescent moons in the sky.
Well at least it is a scientific theory. There are no supernatural components in it whatsoever.
It could be worse. There could be powerful undetectable invisible beings, angels, demons, and xians.
Just wait till Tom Holtz comes.
Raven:
There is that bit about Bigfoot being a ghost.
Supernatural is a null term.
Oh. I read that as “ghoul”. Still think Bigfoot as a ghoul would be more realistic.
Brendon just has to clear up a minor detail.
I am very sad about the death of Org. I believe it was followed in short order by the deaths of Edu, Com, Net, and Mil.
One weeps.
Ontological arguments in a nutshell.
Like there’s really any 8-year old boy alive who wouldn’t be making Uranus jokes instead.
hahaha! good one.
Next, Dinosaur Riding Academy, starring Ken Ham!
No!No!No!
Calvin has already proposed the theory of Tyrannosaurs in F-14s
http://roborant.info/images/tyran14.jpg
There was far too much Awesome (yes, with a capital A) in that comic strip to refute. It MUST be true!
Actually it would look better at Ken Ham’s Creation “Museum” as poster.
If you can’t prove him wrong, then you have to respect his beliefs, right? Who here has absolute proof that cavemen and T-Rex’s didn’t do battle on Saturn?
You know, puberty for male Tyrannosaurs must have been a frustrating hell on
EarthSaturn.Just saying…
Keith,
respect my ass. I’ve got a mate here named Bill from Occam who would like to show you his razor. Fancy a close shave?
OK, the comments on this thread are so abstract that, to the ordinary eye, they seem absurd.
Have I ever mentioned I *love* Pharyngula?
Keith:
Oh hell no. I, for one, am not buying into the Martians just showing up on Saturn. Then there’s that whole business of T-rex being the most awesome.
John:
:D :D :D
Malachai, is that you?
Saturn is “everybody’s favorite planet”? Personally, my fave is Earth, by a long way.
If the creotards want to go and try living on Saturn I’ll chip in to help them buy a rocket.
I wonder what sort of sounds a spaceship would make as it was being slowly (or rapidly) crushed by Saturn’s atmospheric pressure. I imagine it would be a lot like something out of Das Boot, only it wouldn’t last for three hours…
Speaking of Saturn… I seriously think that NASA’s next goal should be Titan. Screw Mars and the Moon. Strap some ion engines onto the ISS and move it out to Saturn, drop some telepresence robots onto Titan and look for life.
OMG! That reminds me of Chick Tracks… [for those who have no idea whom I refer to – see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_T._Chick%5D
All kinds of wrong that are so far out – how can you refuse the ‘truth’? *said in my best Lionel Hutz impersonation*
OMG! That reminds me of Chick Tracks… [for those who have no idea whom I refer to – see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_T._Chick%5D
All kinds of wrong that are so far out – how can you refuse the ‘truth’? *said in my best Lionel Hutz impersonation*
SteveM:
For Sega Genesis’s sake, we’re talking science here, not science. Titan is covered with Dilophosaurs. It’s not safe.
SteveM @33, for mine (oblique agreement) it’s either our Moon (realistic) or Europa (wishful).
SteveM | March 18, 2010 1:24 AM:
The radiation from the next big solar flare would fry the crew. From that point on, the ISS would be dead weight. (Whether or not this would happen before the crew starved to death is unclear, but it would surely happen several times before the ISS reached Saturn.) The resulting political fallout would destroy popular support for the space program.
To change the topic slightly, Does the Disco ‘Tute have any influence left? Since Dover it seems that they’ve disappeared but maybe I’m not looking in the right (i.e. wrong) places.
One who realises staying is even stupider. Especially when all you have is a machine gun, and especially especially when it’s made of wood.
blf, Org is the only one who got his head bitten off though. By turning away, it could be argued he called attention to himself, thereby losing his head. As for the machine guns made of wood, no argument. That’s flat stupid.
So, if the spikes on a dino’s tail are called the Thagomizer, “After the late Thag Simmons,” would a T-Rex’s mouth now be called the “Organizer?”
Sheesh. Of course I oversimplified just to throw out the concept. Yes, shielding and adequate food and other supplies would have to be included. It would be a BIG project. But there are ion engine designs in the works that could provide large thrust for long enough to get to Saturn much faster than it takes today.
Funnily enough, I know a guy called Brendan Flynn (he’s not 8 though). Amusingly, this isnt far off the kind of wild theories he comes out with, and quotes as fact.
No, no. no, NO!!! All wrong! Saturn is inhabited by amiable amphibians shaped rather like kangaroos – I think the tail helps with the strong gravity. I remember it well from Space Patrol on the TV when I was a nipper. And those aren’t Martians – they’re clearly Neptunians – sneering eggheads who wore long dresses and always lost, despite their superior intelligence and technology, to the gallant men from Earth (“Captain Larry Dart”), Mars (“Husky”) and Venus (“Slim”). (Hmm, how did those three amuse themselves during their voyages?)
This is total nonsense, everyone knows Jupiter is the best planet in te solar system. That’s totally where the dinosaurs and cavemen are.
Org, not quick enough
Into the maw of T. Rex
Masticated
Poor Org is honored across the internet to this day in the address of many sites.
Saturn > Jupiter. Better rings and not marred by that big red spot.
That’s a beauty mark.
Bah. You are obviously ignorant of the fact that, due to the higher Saturnian gravity, the wood is extremely dense. So dense, in fact, that it requires specially-trained termites to carve it into the shape of machine guns. Several species of termites are required — the most famous of which is the “spring termite,” the specialty of which you might guess from its name.
The cavemen on Saturn may have been backward savages, but their early understanding of breeding and genetics (called something else — their information-carrying substrate is not based on DNA) made them excellent bioengineers.
Ironically enough, they are the ones who originally bred the T-Rex, after seeing ours here on earth. They misjudged the scale, and thought they were breeding particularly cool puppies.
Doesn’t anyone here read The Journal of Pre-adolescent Science?
That is clearly an F-15 not an F-14.
Only aquatic dinos would consider the Tomcat.
/aerospace pedant
Careful with all this Planet talk. Any mention of that used to be washed up planet Pluto tends to bring that crazy Pluto apologist here.
She’s not playing with a full solar system
So cavemen looked like PZ?
I’m of two minds about wooden machine guns. On the one hand, wood is a decent insulator against heat. On the other hand, firearms shouldn’t actually catch on fire. Also on that hand you might get splinters every time the gun kicks back.
If they had the technology to make metal knives why did they carve the machine guns out of wood?
That’s just silly.
Unless that’s a stone knife.
Never mind.
@32—
Nope. My favourite planet is, and always will be, Pluto. I’ve been a Pluto fan since ever the old ‘Space Angel’ cartoons in my Lost Youth…and since reading Donald Wollheim’s “Secret of the Ninth Planet” in 6th grade.
Pluto will always be a planet, and even if it doesn’t have tyrannosaurs, it has night-gaunts. And it has its little moon Charon, which of course is an allegory of having a small beagle as a companion and loyal friend, even out on the edge of the Lovecraftian dark.
PZ: Emancipated from the rigor of science, we are free to propose any fanciful idea and exercise our imaginations to the fullest
Actually, even within the “rigor” of science we are free to exercise our imaginations to the fullest and to propose any fanciful idea as conjecture… in the Context of Inspiration. In the Context of Formulation (where “Creation Scientists” spend so much effort), we can again exercise our imaginations to the fullest… as long as it ends up with identifying what particulars must be supposed to allow the conjecture to describe what is experienced. (Note that these two roughly correspond to the traditional Context of Discovery.)
The sad and depressing part is when we reach the Context of Testing. (Again roughly, traditional Justification.) Alas, Imagination must wait at the door for the oft cruel judgment of the verdammt Weibßtück Mathematics. Is what the given description produces a match to all the evidence? And more cruel yet, is there any other hypothesis which has a lower formal description length– which measures both on the complexity of hypothesis’s conjecture, and the length of the hypothesis’s particulars?
Alas, poor young Brendan’s idea fails at the last; but in his defense, he’s only 7. The Creation Scientists and the Discovery Institute Fellows don’t have that excuse. The Creation Scientists and Flood Geologists spend all their time puttering in the context of Formulation, and ignoring how quickly they are deemed failures in Testing; while the Discovery Institute seek to undermine the Testing itself.
Excuse me, but the most awesome planet is Rupert!
Um, where are the pirates?
Both Org and his companion remind me of Brian Winters, former point guard for the Milwaukee Bucks:
http://lowposts.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/beard-brian-winters.jpg
Finally, I leave you with this:
Heavenly Ring that spanneth the sky
Shine thy glory upon this guy:
Brave Org, who with wooden gun
Fought dinosaur and alien.
Oft the gun would cause splinters
Poking he who looks like Brian Winters.
But undeterred, this brave Homo
Erectus said, “T-Rex! No, No!”
Til one vile beast chomped off his head
While Grog watched, then vomited.
‘Cause nothing’s grosser than seeing a guy
Decapitated next to you lie.
Both Org and his companion remind me of Brian Winters, former point guard for the Milwaukee Bucks:
http://lowposts.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/beard-brian-winters.jpg
Finally, I leave you with this:
Heavenly Ring that spanneth the sky
Shine thy glory upon this guy:
Brave Org, who with wooden gun
Fought dinosaur and alien.
Oft the gun would cause splinters
Poking he who looks like Brian Winters.
But undeterred, this brave Homo
Erectus said, “T-Rex! No, No!”
Til one vile beast chomped off his head
While Grog watched, then vomited.
‘Cause nothing’s grosser than seeing a guy
Decapitated next to you lie.
Duh!
How do you think the T. reges got to Saturn in the first place?!
Caine, Fleur du mal@41:
We don’t know if Org was the only T. rex snack or not: At the end, the Martians have joined the battle and appear to be firing on the cavemen. And from the reaction of the then-still-surviving cavemen (who are, e.g., also turning away), they seem to think they are about to get cheesed.1
Also, someone is riding on a T. rex‘s snout in the last frame: Is that poopyhead?
1. “Getting cheesed is like getting creamed, but it goes on for a lot longer.”2
2. Terry Pratchett.3
3. Don’t recall which book. ;-(
blf,good points. Someone is riding T. rex’s snout! That could be a spectre of Ham. Oh no…
Nightwatch. :)
No, no, no! Pluto is the best and most useful planet. You can use it to point out how astrology is a lode of crap. Science predicted Pluto’s existence by observing anomalies in the orbit of Uranus. Astrologers should have know it was there by similar anomalies in their charts.
Poor Org, he got his equilibrium punctured.
FossilFishy @ #65,
actually it was Neptune for which there was a mathematical deduction of a unknown planetary mass owing to gravitational perturbations of Uranus’ orbit.
Similar calculations made in respect of “Planet X” (later known as Pluto) were actually incorrect – it was just thanks to dogged persistence and skill from Clyde Tombaugh (along with luck) that he managed to snare one of the few observable trans-Neptunian objects with the limited technology he had to hand.
Thanks for the correction Maledict. I wonder if I was taught something incorrect or if I just misremembered it. Based on past performance I’m going to go with the later.
It’s quite possible you were taught incorrect info, because corrections to mistakes can take a surprisingly long time to filter through to what teachers present in class rooms. In 1931 the mass of Pluto was thought to be roughly equivalent to the mass of Earth; by 1948 Kuiper thought it was an entire order of magnitude less (i.e. ~ 0.1); by 1976 the common wisdom was that it was two orders less (~ 0.01).
In 1978 the discovery of Charon, the largest of Pluto’s moons, allowed the binary to be gravitationally weighed, and it was found to be almost another order of magnitude smaller again (~ 0.002, with a much better accuracy thanks to Kepler’s Laws).
Eventually Voyager II was used to put the final nail in the coffin of “Planet X” – it was an incorrect mass for Neptune that had resulted in the mistaken assumption of another body causing the perturbations: that was an outcome of the 1989 flyby. (If you’re like me, then both the discovery of Pluto’s moons and the Voyager II fly-byes postdate what you might have had first learned :-)
You Eminence, thank you again. Very interesting stuff. Though I’m afraid you’re waking the astronomy bug in me. The bug I had to stamp out because I can’t afford a decent telescope.
Definitely predated 1989, so phew…I’m off the hook. Now if I could just remember where I left my keys…. :)
At least I still can use that argument against astrology claims, I’ll just have to change the names.
I’ve recently had to give up one of my other arguments though, the one I trot out when someone claims that the gravity of the planets acting on the child is the mechanism for astrology. I calculated (heh, I should probably use “estimated”) the gravitational pull of Jupiter at its closest approach to earth, and compared that to the pull of a 70kg nurse standing one meter away. Turns out Jupiter wins. I used to claim that even the biggest planet at it’s nearest to earth had less effect than the people in the room when the baby was born. It was interesting though, because it brought home just how euphemistically big Jupiter is.
FossilFishy,
A friend of mine, while still in High School, made his own, since he could not afford one. Bought a PVC pipe, a couple of glass plates, some emery powder, a mirror, some sort of gimbal mechanism and an eyepiece. Ended up with a rather decent 8″ refractor, exceedingly cheap.
Just sayin’.
Bah, just remembered (and double-checked) re my previous. It was a reflector.
KOPD@54
Yes, but like many things in life, the “shouldn’t” part is what makes it fun.*
Example.
*Please note that it is a complete coincidence that the neck shown in the example above is literally red.