ted@imsvax.UUCP (Ted Holden) (10/20/85)
As anyone can see, I am outnumbered something like 50 to 1 on net.origins.
Two or three of my recent postings have drawn so much fire that I simply don't
have the time to respond to each of these articles separately. I am going to
try to reply to most of the points being raised at one time here. The only
completely reasonable article in all of these was Pat Wyant's, so I'll start
with his first:
AGES of ROCKS ETC.
> According to S. Gould (of Punctuated Equilibria fame), Darwin was advised
>by T.H. Huxley not to make any mention about the time scales required to
>realize evolution. Both a gradual or uniformitarian course and a catastrophic
>or sudden moments of evolution were considered. Huxley felt that there wasn't
>sufficient evidence to decide which way evolution proceeded, and Darwin would
>be putting forth an unsupportable hypothesis by suggesting a time scale along
>with the driving mechanisms for evolution (natural selection, competition for
>food and reproduction).
> Darwin decided to publish by attaching gradualism and uniformity to
>evolution in part because such concepts (gradualism and uniformity) were
>firmly rooted in the culture and religion of the times. The theory of
>evolution using punctuated equilibria would seem to be an updated and modified
>rendition of one possible evolutionary course that Darwin considered but then
>rejected.
Immanuel Velikovsky invented the "punctuated equilibria" notion of
evolution (he called it "catastrophic evolution") in 1950, and anyone
interested in this should, by all means, have a copy of "Earth in Upheaval"
on his shelf. However, pure Velikovskian theories involve such a frontal
assault on what I would call the religious tenets of modern science, and
such a large-scale invasion of scientific "turf" by an outsider to those
turfs, that the American scientific community at large has never been able
to hold rational discussions on these topics; their reaction to Velikovsky
has always been visceral. Nonetheless, anyone who studies fossils,
including Gould, has noticed the same basic truth which Velikovsky
describes; that there simply ARE no intermediate forms, and that the
changes in fossil records going from one geological epoch to another occur
as if, at each such change, "a curtain had been drawn in a play and a
complete new cast of characters presented when the curtain was raised again"
(Velikovsky's words).
In like manner, Clube and Napier of the British Royal Observatory, in
their book "The Cosmic Serpent", report on the like obvious fact of global
catastrophes (obvious to anyone who has read much in the way of ancient
literature) which Velikovsky describes in "Worlds in Collision". Gould, as
well as Clube and Napier, are essentially trying to sell versions of
Velikovsky's theories which are sufficiently watered-down for public
consumption, the public here being scientists. Now, I don't believe in
doing anything half-way or in watered-down versions of ANYTHING. If nothing
else, "Earth in Upheaval" presents a believable explanation for punctuated
equilibria and Gould, to my knowledge, doesn't.
It turns out, that some of the major "punctuation" marks are
discernable, and include the disaster which Louis and Walter Alverez
postulate as having ended the age of dinosaurs, as well as the Noachian
Deluge, which most scientists still wrongly regard as a fairy-tale. Of the
later, Ovid writes:
"Therefore when fires
Of newly wakened sun turned towards the earth
Where waters still receded from her sides,
All living things in multitudes of being,
Became her progeny once more. Some were
Of ancient lineage and colors
And others were mysterious and new.
So it seems that Ovid had no problems with the notion of "punctuated
equilibrium", though something much closer to Velikovsky's version of it.
Ovid claims, three or four lines down, that: "The latest of new creatures
was the serpent", and it is interesting to note that the authors of Genesis
also thought it necessary to EXPLAIN serpents ("upon thy belly shalt thou
(henceforth) go......"). Now, catastrophic evolution (or punctuated
equilibria, your choice), applies to human-kind as well as to lower animals.
So much radiation was unleashed during the flood that few human children
born shortly thereafter were looking completely like their parents, and the
strangest case of all was Noah's grandson Canaan. This story gets exactly
one sentence (Gen. 9:25) in the Old Testament, although a more complete
version of the tale may be found in Louis Ginzberg's "Legends of the Jews";
it is essentially a tale of catastrophic evolution applied to humans.
Next Case, Matt Crawford's article:
>You should check into your facts, Ted. In the past the cosmologists
>have had much younger ages for the universe than the geologists had
>for the earth. The geologists have always turned out to be correct.
>Their ages were based on physical processes which were much better
>understood than the astronomical objects used to measure the universe.
Sorry Matt, but no thinking person could buy this line of reasoning. The
cosmologists have at their disposal, as Archimedes would have said, a lever and
a place on which to stand i.e. something other than theories to work with.
They have measurable distances, measurable properties of light, measurable
radio emissions etc. and sooner or later would have arrived at correct
conclusions regarding the universe as a whole, with or without geologists
around. There are many things which argue against the notion of geologists and
paleontologists having a "better understanding" of anything than cosmologists
do: their (paleontologists) gullible acceptance of Piltdown creatures (man and
chicken), the obvious huge differences in the ages assigned to things by
geologists and anthropologists in instances in which the techniques of both
disciplines are applicable, the obviously false theory of ice-ages etc.
>
>
>> In ancient
>> literature, there are numerous stories which clearly describe
>> cosmic violence on a global scale, something which nobody could
>> take seriously while taking uniformitarianism seriously at the
>> same time.
>
>How many of these stories were written by eyewitnesses? How many
>were even supposed to have taken place during the writer's lifetime?
>We have many stories of global catastrophe in current literature.
>What makes the ancient stories more valid than the newer ones?
Some of these stories were committed to paper (at least in the works in
which we know them now) centuries after they occurred. However, at least a few
of these were eye-witness accounts. Take the prophet Isaiah, for instance, and
the relatively minor (although still global scale) catastrophes which were
occurring in his time:
Isaiah 1:9 Except the Lord of hosts had left unto us a very small
remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto
Gomorrah.
Anyone think he's talking about a minor flood or an outbreak of measles?
Read a little further then:
Isaiah 2:19 And they shall go up into the holes of the rocks, and into
the caves of the earth, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his
majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth.
Isaiah is talking about something very strange here: people hiding out
from an earthquake. This would make no sense in our world; we get no warning
of major earthquakes. However, if the cause of the earthquake is right there
in the night sky for everyone to see, with a predictable estimated time of
arrival.......
Finally, consider the true gem of the book of Isaiah, chapter 14, verses
12 through 21, more or less:
"How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning (light-
bearer, morning star)! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst
weaken the nations.... They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee,
and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble,
that did shake kingdoms; That made the world as a wilderness and
destroyed the cities thereof.....
This was a hymn of thanksgiving for Venus's having finally settled into a
stable orbit which no longer threatened the earth. Isaiah not an eye-witness?
You'd better think again.
>
>> ... I HATE to
>> see "scientists" get away with portraying Plato, Ovid,
>> Hesiod, Solon, Socrates, the authors of the Old Testament,
>> and, generally, every ancient author who ever wrote anything
>> about origins in this manner, because they are dead and
>> thus unable to defend themselves.
>
>Do you mean to imply that we must take as truth anything written by
>any dead person, because they are unable to answer our refutation?
>If so, then may I suggest a way for you to make your arguments more
>convincing?
Do You mean by joining Piotr Berman on one of his bullshit elephant hunts?
Sorry, I may be strange, but I'm not stupid.
Next case, Wayne Throop:
>As I've said before, it seems quite reasonable to me that even very
>large sauropods could get around. There are far more problems with
>lessened gravity than with unwieldy sauropods. For one trivial example,
>note that the weight estimates are made consistent with depth of tracks
>(among other factors). If the gravity was lesser, why did physical
>phenomena other than animal size not reflect it? That is, why didn't
>tracks and other physical evidence show that things in general were
>pressed less forcefully against the ground?
I've noticed over the years, that the depth of my own footprints varies in
near total accordance with how wet or how dry the ground is. I have a very
hard time seeing how any judgments concerning dinosaur weights could be made
from depths of tracks unless the scientists involved had a time-machine to see
how wet it was on the day the tracks were made. I would appreciate further
clarifications on this one, Wayne.
ELEPHANTS
From Chris Lewis's recent flame:
>No large animals in Siberia Ted? Ever heard of a Polar bear? Siberian
>Tiger? Caribou? Arctic wolves? Reindeer? Bears? Has it ever
>occurred to you that a Woolly Mammoth was woolly precisely because it
>was COLD? In fact, they probably couldn't survive long in warmer
>climates because they would overheat (remember the volume/surface area
>calculations you were so fond of?)
My understanding of the basic food chain in the far north is that plankton
live with no need for warmth, little fish eat plankton, big fish eat little
fish, penguins, seals, and eskimos eat big fish, polar bears and killer whales
eat all of above except plankton. Elephants don't figure into any of this;
the finding of mammoth bodies, perfectly preserved, in places which have never
thawed from the day they died to this day (and hence which could not possibly
support mammoths) indicates the occurrence of something very strange. If
mammoths were so well adapted to cold weather, they should still be found in
the arctic; the way to get there from Novo Sibirsk is there, in winter.
Finally, it should be obvious to anybody that caribou and deer migrate somewhat
FASTER than elephants. A herd of mammoths might could survive by migrating
back and forth between Georgia and Maryland, say, but a herd of mammoths trying
to get to Novo Sibirsk from anyplace where they could hope to survive the
winter would not even get there in time to turn back.
THE LAWS OF PHYSICS AND VELIKOVSKIAN CATASTROPHISM
If there's any one question we catastrophists get tired of answering, it's
the whole thing about the laws of physics supposedly denying the POSSIBILITY of
any of Velikovsky's scenarios. Good answers to this one abound in the
literature and, the funny thing is, it's the amateurs who have problems; real
physicists like Einstein or Robert Bass have no such difficulties with "the
laws of physics". Bass is a former Rhodes scholar who took his doctorate under
Aurel Wintner in 1955 and three years of post-doctoral work in non-linear
mechanics under national medal of science winner Solomon Lefschetz at
Princeton. He is credited with the only dynamical explanation of Bode's law,
and with a paper in the Summer 1974 issue (# 8) of Pensee which basically
settled once and for all the whole question of whether Velikovsky's scenarios
were "physically possible". The abstract for the paper reads as follows:
1) The subtle but fatal flaw in the received opinion regarding the alleged
immutability of the planetary distances is the following inadequately
recognized fact: whether or not the solar system is stable in any of the
senses defined by Laplace, Lagrange, Poisson, or Littlewood, or is quasi-
periodic, it need not be orbitally stable.
2) As demonstrated in the text in considerable detail, it is perfectly
possible, according to Newton's laws of dynamics and gravitation when
three or more bodies are involved, for planets to nearly collide and then
relax into an apparently stable Bode's law kind of configuration within a
relatively short time; therefore Velikovsky's historical evidence cannot
be ignored.
3) If one started Venus in an orbit lying entirely between Jupiter and
Saturn, with precisely the appropriate initial position and velocity, it
would within less than two decades work its way inward into an orbit lying
entirely between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. (This follows from
observations of the comet Oterma III and the fact that, in the restricted
problem of three bodies, the mass of the smallest body is irrelevant.)
4) There is no plausible explanation for the anomalous (retrograde)
rotation of Venus, other than that it originally had prograde spin and was
later flipped upside-down by a near collision with some other planet.
5) The fact that the spin rate of Venus is now mysteriously locked in
resonance with the rate of revolution of Venus relative to the Earth (so
that Venus presents the same face to Earth at every inferior conjunction)
may provide a dynamical clue as to which planet Venus encountered.
6) Laplace's theorem allegedly proving stability of the solar system
(1773) was shown to be fallacious in 1899 by Poincare; in 1953, dynamical
astronomer W. M. Smart proved that the maximum interval of reliability of
the perturbation equations of Laplace and Lagrange was not 10**11 years,
as stated in 1895 by S. Newcomb, but actually at most a small multiple of
10**2 years.
7) The eminent dynamical astronomer E. W. Brown, in his retiring speech as
President of the American Astronomical Society in 1931, quite explicitly
stated that there is no quantitative reason known to celestial mechanics
why Mars, Earth, and Venus could not have nearly collided in the past.
The paper itself amounts to about ten pages of very fine print and I can't
reproduce it here without getting thrown out of net.origins for cause. Copies
are probably still available from the BYU physics dept. If all else fails, I
could photostat copies of this article and send them anyone interested, offer
limited to those with advanced degrees in physics, astrophysics etc. since
nobody else would have a prayer of understanding it.
Contact me by UNIX mail if interested.
In a similar vein, Jeff Sonntag writes:
> Well, since no experiment has ever shown any relation between gravity
>and electromagnetism, and since many types of magnetic field generating systems
>can reverse their field without affecting the size of the gravity well they
>produce, I'll have to *guess* that the past reversals of the Earth's
>magnetic field were unaccompanied by any changes in its gravitational field.
That's just a guess, Jeff. Albert Einstein spent the last years of his
life looking for that very connection (the unified field theory), and died with
a copy of "Worlds in Collision" open on his desk. I have always heard rumors
that Velikovsky's theories concerning a historical change in the felt effect of
gravity had something to do with Einstein's interest in this area.
MORE ON GLIDING AGAINST THE WIND ETC.
How many of you readers know what the three basic kinds of landings for a
sail-plane are? Good question. They are:
1. The "this county" landing.
2. The "next county" landing.
3. The "next country" landing.
For this reason, the wings and stabilizers of sail-planes are of the
"knock-off" variety so as to make the whole thing fit into that other necessity
of sail-planing, the VW micro-bus. In other words, the whole thing is somewhat
more controllable than hot-air ballooning, but not much more so. This wouldn't
have helped the Quetzalcoatlus-Northropi's children very much, assuming that
creature lived in our gravity and, thus, perforce functioned entirely as a
glider. Their lives would have depended on their parents getting back to the
nest EVERY time, and micro-buses and knock-off wings weren't available.
Note to Pam Pincha-Wagoner on gliding:
You seem to have missed the entire section on pterosaurs in my long "ultrasaur"
article. Check out Adrian Desmond's "Hot Blooded Dinosaurs", page 182 and
thereabouts, for more on the limits of size for flying creatures.
Scene from the Wizard of Id
Turnkey: "I hear the kings gonna commute your sentence."
Spook in dungeon: "That's great!"
Turnkey: "They're gonna hang you in the next county."scott@hou2g.UUCP (Colonel'K) (10/23/85)
Anyone care to nominate Ted Holden for the position
of "Don Black" of net.origins? At least his arguments
hold together about as well...
"PAY NO ATTENTION TO THAT MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN!"
Scott J. Berry
ihnp4!hou2g!scottjs2j@mhuxt.UUCP (sonntag) (10/24/85)
Ted Holden writes: > If there's any one question we catastrophists get tired of answering, it's >the whole thing about the laws of physics supposedly denying the POSSIBILITY of > any of Velikovsky's scenarios. I should think you *would* get tired of trying to square all of the contortions V's scenarios require with known physical laws. One would almost expect you to give up and claim that these amazing effects were due to the operation of hitherto unknown and unsuspected physical laws. But maybe I'm being too harsh on Ted. Even he isn't irrational enough to suggest something like that. Or is he? > > > Well, since no experiment has ever shown any relation between gravity >>and electromagnetism,and since many types of magnetic field generating systems > >can reverse their field without affecting the size of the gravity well they > >produce, I'll have to *guess* that the past reversals of the Earth's > >magnetic field were unaccompanied by any changes in its gravitational field. > > That's just a guess, Jeff. Albert Einstein spent the last years of his >life looking for that very connection (the unified field theory), and died with > a copy of "Worlds in Collision" open on his desk. Ever heard of slander laws, Ted? > I have always heard rumors >that Velikovsky's theories concerning a historical change in the felt effect of > gravity had something to do with Einstein's interest in this area. Well, there you have it, folks. He's (apparently) given up on the 'tidal effects from the immensely larger Saturn sun which the earth orbited closely about' theory and switched to the 'mysterious unknown forces rumored to have something to do with unified field theory but which no one knows anything about or has ever heard of' theory. Stay tuned for further developments. -- Jeff Sonntag ihnp4!mhuxt!js2j "Now, I don't believe in doing anything half-way, or in watered-down versions of ANYTHING." - Ted Holden, noted Veliskovskian.
pamp@bcsaic.UUCP (pam pincha) (10/24/85)
In article <438@imsvax.UUCP> ted@imsvax.UUCP (Ted Holden) writes: > > ELEPHANTS > >From Chris Lewis's recent flame: > >>No large animals in Siberia Ted? Ever heard of a Polar bear? Siberian >>Tiger? Caribou? Arctic wolves? Reindeer? Bears? Has it ever >>occurred to you that a Woolly Mammoth was woolly precisely because it >>was COLD? In fact, they probably couldn't survive long in warmer >>climates because they would overheat (remember the volume/surface area >>calculations you were so fond of?) > > My understanding of the basic food chain in the far north is that plankton >live with no need for warmth, little fish eat plankton, big fish eat little >fish, penguins, seals, and eskimos eat big fish, polar bears and killer whales >eat all of above except plankton. Elephants don't figure into any of this; >the finding of mammoth bodies, perfectly preserved, in places which have never >thawed from the day they died to this day (and hence which could not possibly >support mammoths) indicates the occurrence of something very strange. If >mammoths were so well adapted to cold weather, they should still be found in >the arctic; the way to get there from Novo Sibirsk is there, in winter. >Finally, it should be obvious to anybody that caribou and deer migrate somewhat >FASTER than elephants. A herd of mammoths might could survive by migrating >back and forth between Georgia and Maryland, say, but a herd of mammoths trying >to get to Novo Sibirsk from anyplace where they could hope to survive the >winter would not even get there in time to turn back. > At this point I think it would be good for this author to do some basic research on arctic ecology -- permafrost areas in particular. Note: These areas do support vegetation during the breif summer months (at least in the Arctic -- which is what we are discussing for the mega fauna mentioned didn't live in the Antartic...). To begin with, permafrost does not stay frozen to the surface year round. The upper layer melts to various depths during the summer (turning the area into a marshy mess -- navigatable but wet). This upper layer in many portions of the arctic will support plant life -- plant life that grows quiclky and abundantly. Hence the reason for caribou and musk oxen staying in the area. In tundra areas (a major portion of the arctic area) the vegatation is even more lush -- and just the sort that the mammoths liked (it was just such vegetation that was found in their tummys -- not anything remotely tropical...). I don't find the scarce food argument viable. (For those unfamilar with the Arctic ecology try checking into the Britannica Encyclopedia - it has an adequate section on the Arctic, Mammoths and permafrost areas.) Now as for the New Siberian Islands (Novo Sibirsk), I can only speculate since I do not know the age of the fossil finds there. If they are of an age around 15000 to 12000, then winter is the only way they could have gotten there. These islands are on a part of the continental margin that may have been emergent at that time and they could have walked. (North America and Russia were connected by a land bridge during and just after the ice ages for the water level was lowered when the ice sheets tied a good portion of the world's water. Note: the rise and fall of the oceans in response to these conditions are well documented and play a big part in the oil companies search for oil. The evidence works remarkably well.(Look under the reference of Seismic Stratigraphy for more information -- Peter Vail's works are a good place to start.)) Somehow I still feel that Ted's assumptions are still too uneducated and lack a certian reliable base. I wish that there were more evidence for at least going to an ecology text to see what is up in the Arctic to live off of before relying on memory (I'd also like to see the references referred to on these.) > > MORE ON GLIDING AGAINST THE WIND ETC. > >Note to Pam Pincha-Wagoner on gliding: > >You seem to have missed the entire section on pterosaurs in my long "ultrasaur" >article. Check out Adrian Desmond's "Hot Blooded Dinosaurs", page 182 and >thereabouts, for more on the limits of size for flying creatures. > I didn't miss it. I didn't agree with it in your context. There were such creatures. They were not all the huge size. Most were of a quite reasonable size that could quite easily fly the way we described. I'm personally tired of the "I can't believe it could.... therefore let's totally change nature and the universe to make it fit" argument. Especially built on the assumption that all previous scientific evidence is wrong... :-( The comments I've read so far don't even scratch the surface of the evidence to the contrary. All I've read is pseudoscience with little grip on reality. It's a shame. (Small flame.... Sorry) P.M.Pincha-Wagener
pamp@bcsaic.UUCP (pam pincha) (10/24/85)
In article <686@hou2g.UUCP> scott@hou2g.UUCP (Colonel'K) writes: >Anyone care to nominate Ted Holden for the position >of "Don Black" of net.origins? At least his arguments >hold together about as well... > > > "PAY NO ATTENTION TO THAT MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN!" > > Scott J. Berry > ihnp4!hou2g!scott Sounds good. It would be nice to get out of this pseudoscience phase and get into something a little more realistic. Anyone got any topics? Anyone heard anything more on the extinction periodicity that Raup and Sepkoski (1984,Proc.Natl.Acad.Sci.U.A.S.,vol.81, p.801)? P.M.Pincha-Wagener To paraphrase S.Chase -- "To condem science is to forget the gardens made green by desalinization of sea water, while to idealize science is to forget the horrors of Hiroshima."
friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) (10/29/85)
In article <438@imsvax.UUCP> ted@imsvax.UUCP (Ted Holden) writes: > > Immanuel Velikovsky invented the "punctuated equilibria" notion of >evolution (he called it "catastrophic evolution") in 1950, and anyone >interested in this should, by all means, have a copy of "Earth in Upheaval" >on his shelf. How do you equate "catatrophic evolution" with "punctuated equilibria"? The only similarity I see between them is that they both postulate periods of rapid change alternating with relative stasis. However, the nature and causes of the rapid change are totally different in the two "theories". In P.E the change is driven by the speciatian process itself, and is essentially unrelated to external events, while Velikovsky's theory is based on periodic global catastrphes driving the change, with little importance given to speciation. Under P.E the periods of rapid change are *asynchronous* between the various lineages, while under Velikovsky's "theory" the periods of rapid change should be essentially simulataneous among all life forms. Besides which P.E is largely an extension of the ideas of Ernst Mayr, who started writing in the *40's*, before Velikovsky. > Nonetheless, anyone who studies fossils, >including Gould, has noticed the same basic truth which Velikovsky >describes; that there simply ARE no intermediate forms, and that the >changes in fossil records going from one geological epoch to another occur >as if, at each such change, "a curtain had been drawn in a play and a >complete new cast of characters presented when the curtain was raised again" >(Velikovsky's words). > Wrong, this is *not* what Gould, or anyone else, says. There are many intermediates, but there are often discontinuities in the chain of intermediates. These discontinuities are *not* restricted to the epoch boundries, they occur regularly throughout the fossil record. New forms may appear at almost any point, and old forms my disappear at almost any point. The epoch boundries are largely *geological* and represent points of significant climatological or geophysical change, which are quite naturally associated with an increased turnover in living species. However these boundries are *not* by any means sharp, they are usually rather gradual and indistinct. > In like manner, Clube and Napier of the British Royal Observatory, in >their book "The Cosmic Serpent", report on the like obvious fact of global >catastrophes (obvious to anyone who has read much in the way of ancient >literature) which Velikovsky describes in "Worlds in Collision". When was this book published? What are thier backgrounds? > > It turns out, that some of the major "punctuation" marks are >discernable, and include the disaster which Louis and Walter Alverez >postulate as having ended the age of dinosaurs, Well, actually this is the only one that has any standing that I know of, and even it is less certain than you seem to imply. In particular there is considerable evedence for *gradual* change across the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundry, including a gradual appearence of new mammalian forms over the last million or so years of the Cretaceous and the prior extinction of several dinosaurian groups, well before the Alvarez Event. In addition it is not yet established that the various anomolous layers around the world are actually synchronous. All this suggests to me a gradual ecological shift which had already grealy reduced the number of dinosaurs followed by a series of meteoric collisions finishing the job. All in all rather similar to the extinction of Mammoths by the combimed effects of climatic change and human hunting(where human hunting takes the part of the meteors). > as well as the Noachian >Deluge, which most scientists still wrongly regard as a fairy-tale. Evidence? Ovid was not a scientist, he was a collector of stories. Even if he were a scientist, science is a dynamic process and any studies that long ago would have long since been supercede by more detailed, recent studies. Give me recent(last 20 years) *scientific* evidence for a world-wide deluge. Remember, we are learning new things all the time, much of what we thought we knew even 20 years ago has been found to be inaccurate. This is why *recent* references are important, to make sure that the best available data are being used. > >Next Case, Matt Crawford's article: > > Sorry Matt, but no thinking person could buy this line of reasoning. The >cosmologists have at their disposal, as Archimedes would have said, a lever and >a place on which to stand i.e. something other than theories to work with. >They have measurable distances, measurable properties of light, measurable >radio emissions etc. and sooner or later would have arrived at correct >conclusions regarding the universe as a whole, with or without geologists >around. What measurable distances?? I am sorry but we have really only measured the distances to the planets and to the *very nearest* stars, everything else is conclusion and deduction! You do not seem to realize just how indirect most astronomical "measurements" are! So what if we can measure the properties of light, if uniformitarianism doesn't hold we cannot assume that these properties are the same out there among the stars and so cannot make any deductions at all. Since your arguments against geological dating are based on denying uniformitarianism you arew attacking the basis of astronomical measurement just as much as geological measurement! > There are many things which argue against the notion of geologists and >paleontologists having a "better understanding" of anything than cosmologists >do: their (paleontologists) gullible acceptance of Piltdown creatures (man and >chicken), the obvious huge differences in the ages assigned to things by >geologists and anthropologists in instances in which the techniques of both >disciplines are applicable, ... > Can you give any *recent* examples of these sorts of things, remember our techniques are continually being revised and improved. Or do you really think that astronomers are immune to gross errors like the that? How about the Cepheid Yardstick fiasco? The distances estimated by the astronomers were off by a factor of *two* because they had used the wrong type of Cepheid to calibrate the principle medium range estimation method, which was based on the period- luminosity relationship of Cepheid variables(but the *other* type of Cepheid variables) > > > Finally, consider the true gem of the book of Isaiah, chapter 14, verses >12 through 21, more or less: > > "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning (light- > bearer, morning star)! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst > weaken the nations.... They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, > and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, > that did shake kingdoms; That made the world as a wilderness and > destroyed the cities thereof..... > > This was a hymn of thanksgiving for Venus's having finally settled into a >stable orbit which no longer threatened the earth. Isaiah not an eye-witness? >You'd better think again. > Oh really! Well all I can say is you have a very poor understanding of the scriptures if you can seriously consider tis explanation! Isaiah was not even talking about a physical event! He is furthermore talking of a *past* event, I see no evidence in the text that he claims to have actually witnessed this happening! > > > ELEPHANTS > >From Chris Lewis's recent flame: > My understanding of the basic food chain in the far north is that plankton >live with no need for warmth, little fish eat plankton, big fish eat little >fish, penguins, seals, and eskimos eat big fish, polar bears and killer whales >eat all of above except plankton. Elephants don't figure into any of this; >the finding of mammoth bodies, perfectly preserved, in places which have never >thawed from the day they died to this day (and hence which could not possibly >support mammoths) indicates the occurrence of something very strange. You seem to have the Polar Ice Cap confused with the Arctic Tundra. The food chain you are talking about is the Ice Cap food chain, not the Tundra food chain, which is based on small shrubs, short grasses, and hardy sedges, all of which would (and still do) provide adequate food for large herbivores, including Caribou and *Yak*. > If >mammoths were so well adapted to cold weather, they should still be found in >the arctic; Why? Why shouldn't they become extinct like so many other animals? >Finally, it should be obvious to anybody that caribou and deer migrate somewhat >FASTER than elephants. A herd of mammoths might could survive by migrating >back and forth between Georgia and Maryland, say, but a herd of mammoths trying >to get to Novo Sibirsk from anyplace where they could hope to survive the >winter would not even get there in time to turn back. > But why shoiuld they need to migrate? Yak don't! And Reindeer stay in the Arctic all year round, beeing more nomadic than migratory. Bison can eat even in deep snow by "burrowing" for the dried graas beneath the snow, an elephant-like Mammoth could have done this even easier with its long snout(trunk) and powerful tusks! > > In other words, the whole thing is somewhat >more controllable than hot-air ballooning, but not much more so. This wouldn't >have helped the Quetzalcoatlus-Northropi's children very much, assuming that >creature lived in our gravity and, thus, perforce functioned entirely as a >glider. Their lives would have depended on their parents getting back to the >nest EVERY time, and micro-buses and knock-off wings weren't available. PLEASE, noone hase *ever* said they function *entirely* by gliding. And thier wings were quite capable of withstanding the minor stresses of the *gentle* flapping necessary to provide full control to a predominant glider. All you need to do is watch vultures circling without flapping to realise that they have almost complete control of where they go. They make very precise *repeated* circles at a constant altitude, gliding all the while! Pehaps human made fixed-wing gliders do not have this control, but observation shows that flex-wing avian gliders *do*. > >You seem to have missed the entire section on pterosaurs in my long "ultrasaur" >article. Check out Adrian Desmond's "Hot Blooded Dinosaurs", page 182 and >thereabouts, for more on the limits of size for flying creatures. And you seem to have missed my discussion on sensationalism in popular science books to keep the audience interested! Dr Desmond nowhere *really* claims that these pterosaurs were too large to fly, he only pretended to do so to catch your eye. -- Sarima (Stanley Friesen) UUCP: {ttidca|ihnp4|sdcrdcf|quad1|nrcvax|bellcore|logico}!psivax!friesen ARPA: ttidca!psivax!friesen@rand-unix.arpa
friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) (10/29/85)
In article <342@bcsaic.UUCP> pamp@bcsaic.UUCP (pam pincha) writes: >(For those unfamilar with the Arctic ecology >try checking into the Britannica Encyclopedia - it has an adequate >section on the Arctic, Mammoths and permafrost areas.) > Or try watching a PBS show on the Arctic. A few minutes of *film* of an arctic tundra should dispell any misconception about how much food there was! -- Sarima (Stanley Friesen) UUCP: {ttidca|ihnp4|sdcrdcf|quad1|nrcvax|bellcore|logico}!psivax!friesen ARPA: ttidca!psivax!friesen@rand-unix.arpa