I used to hide in a back room in our basement where I had a stash of roadkill, and I’d … study … anatomy without telling my parents.
Parents, talk to your children. Don’t let them go down my path. You can point to me in public and whisper, “If you keep playing with bones, you’ll end up like him.”
I don’t know what I’d do if I’d caught one of my kids doing cladistics.
:Falls over and rolls around laughing:
I love it. And I’ve never indulged in something as terrible as cladistics. Really. Haven’t learned a thing, ever.
I LEARNED IT FROM YOU, DAD!
Better they do cladistics at home with their parents then on the streets ^.^
Where I grew up all the paleontology was hidden down by the creekbed where parents never bothered to go.
Sorry, but I have to say it: I wonder how many people hit that title, and rushed here in exultation/desperate worry, only to discover something utterly hilarious but….not quite what they were expecting? ;)
Hilarious.
Am I the only one who thinks of a certain commenter of this blog when reading this?
imnotandrei:
I do believe that’s part of the overall deliciousness.
My childhood friend studied palaeontology and sent this to me on Facebook a while ago. Somehow it was even funnier coming from him. Possibly because he’d given me a glimpse into what appears to be a genuine Palaeontologist subculture. Most alarmingly, I got all of their jokes.
“If you don’t talk to kids about reality, SOMEONE ELSE WILL.”
I read the title, and because my brain works the way it does, I rushed right over to post some 2 Tone. Why? Do other people not think exclusively in song lyrics and titles?
We all know how it start: the kid sudenly says “Dinosaurs are cool”, and adults pat her on the head, because she’s young, she can’t know any better: but sooner or later, puberty comes, and she starts saying that humanity ancestors were sea sponges who ate, shat and fucked with the same orifice, and at this point she’s already lost
You forgot: “You won’t be able to get into West Point with molecular biology on your permanent record”.
and
“yeah, a guy in my High School was into reading Dawkins, and now he sits all day on his parent’s porch swing and stares at the back of his hands”
and
“Kids, don’t be like me and start chipping the rocks, or you’ll end up like me, living in a VAN down by the RIVER!”
George:
*snort*
I blame it on the schools for teaching so-called “safe cladistics”. It’s time we got back to evolutionary taxonomy-only education!
PZ:
Is that what they used to call it?
_
George:
Hey, for fieldwork, that’s pretty luxurious. Sometimes, you have neither a river nor a large enough flat spot to park the van in (although I’ve personally done only a few field camps – advantages to being primarily an astronomer).
_
And now I’m trying to figure out a similar series for astronomy…
Cladistics sounds harmless at first, but before you know it they’re experimenting with polyphyly, and regarding homoplastic characters as normal.
I started doing real analysis a while back… I feel dirty now.
Anatomy – a gateway to zebrafish. Once there then it’s all … plumbing
I REALLY want to hear Willy Nelson’s twangy voice singing “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Dig Fossils!”
And constant complaints from the janitorial staff.
I can’t wait until David M gets here!
Well, they do say that Linnaean taxonomy leads to the harder stuff.
I get the joke, but it’s not so funny when one had parents actively (read: passive-aggressively) trying to prevent and discourage one from getting an education, attempting to push one into “priesthood”.
Let me confess right here. I also would pick up (mostly) fresh roadkill, and dissect it in my lab/bedroom when I was a kid. I got pretty good, and learned a lot. The coolest was when I inflated fresh lungs by sticking a soda straw down the trachea and blowing. They inflate like air filled foam. Of course this makes perfect sense but at the time I was astonished.
@chigau (22)
Guess whom I meant with my comment above…
All time fav meme. I was the only one in the room who knew what taphonomy was and, really, it seldom comes up in conversation. ;-)
That was also my very first thought on seeing this!
Of course, there is also this version from xkcd
“I work dig sites, so I can learn things, so I can work more dig sites, so I can learn more . . . ”
Science Madness. don’t let it happen to someone you love !
Nope. </deadpan>
I knew this poster already, and I’m not angry – I want those temnospondyl monographs!!!
Do you also know who Sphincter Mucus is?
I lolled really hard.
And Caine #8, when I saw the thread title I was wondering what delicious twist awaited us :)