ted@imsvax.UUCP (Ted Holden) (09/13/85)
It appears that setting up and knocking down straw-men is
becoming something of an art form on net.origins. Consider
Stanley Friesen's recent article concerning "load-factors" based
on the stress which bones can take, his assumption of this
implying that sauropod dinosaurs could function quite normally in
our gravity, and my response to that which read:
> I am not going to quote Mr. Friesen's article here; it is on the net.
>Basically, he claims that a Mr. R.M. Alexander has computed "load factors",
>based on the stress that BONES can take, and determined thereby that dinosaurs
>could function normally in our world. Is there a problem with that? Anyone
>who has watched houses being built knows how much weight an ordinary 2x4 can
>bear when stood end on end. Bones are like that in a way. Take my own humble
>middle-aged body as an example. I am about 6' 4", 207 lbs, somewhat stronger
>than the general run of my fellow middle-aged businessmen, but I am no
>powerlifter. I have friends who are; they are a whole lot stronger than I.
>Nonetheless, if I kept my back and legs straight, and two of these friends
>were kind enough to put a bar with five or six hundred pounds on it on my
>shoulders, I could stand with it; the bones would not break. Mr. Alexander
>would no doubt then conclude that I could function quite well at 700 or 800
>lbs (my 200 plus the bar).
> I've been out of academia for a number of years now. It could very well
>be that this kind of thing is now called "SCHOLARLY RESEARCH" at UCLA these
>days; I don't know. Out here in the real world where I live, however, this is
>called "LYING WITH FIGURES".
Any intelligent person reading this would understand that I meant that I
could not function at my PRESENT LEVEL OF STRENGTH, weighing 800 lbs, even
though I could stand with 600 lbs on my shoulders without bones breaking,
whereas Mr. Alexander's system would wrongly conclude otherwise. Now it
happens that somebody like Bill Kazmaier could stand with a couple of thousand
lbs on his shoulders, if all he were required to do was stand there with his
back and legs straight for a few seconds; his bones would not break either.
Paul anderson actually did this once with a yoke designed not to harm his
shoulders and about 2200 lbs on it. I'll gaurantee the editors of Ripley's or
anybody else that no human could function at 2200 lbs.
But the art of setting up straw-men is a funny business. Wayne Throop
interprets my remarks as follows:
>> Nonetheless, if I kept my back and legs straight, and two of these
>> friends were kind enough to put a bar with five or six hundred pounds on
>> it on my shoulders, I could stand with it; the bones would not break.
>> Mr. Alexander would no doubt then conclude that I could function quite
>> well at 700 or 800 lbs (my 200 plus the bar).
>
>Are you actually asserting that a (for example) 1000lb man couldn't
>"function quite well"? If so, and you are right, I suppose you had
>better let the Guiness Book of World Records know right away. Thay have
>a fraud... a man who survived and "prospered" while weighing somewhat
>more than that. Of course, he was supposed to have crashed through the
>floor of his house, but he was walking around in it until then.
The only real point which Wayne and one other contributor are trying to
make, and the only other point in Wayne's article worth commenting on much is
that somehow "leverage" would work to the sauropod's advantage as compared to
the human. In truth, you really would get an apples-oranges kind of comparison
between humans and most other kinds of animals. In many animals, the parts
of the limbs corresponding to our thighs, calves, feet etc. are simply used
differently and have different proportions than on our bodies. Amongst chimps
and gorillas, the front limbs are the main pair of limbs, for traveling or for
anything. One could get a distorted idea of a chimps strength as compared to
humans by arm-wrestling with him. A hundred yard dash against the same chimp,
however, will quickly restore the human's ego.
The funny thing about sauropods, and particularly brachiosaurids, is that
their legs actually look a hell of a lot like human legs, with one major joint
pretty near the middle of the leg, both front and back, and feet which stay
pretty much on the ground; they didn't walk on their toes. Neither from
looking at skeletons, nor from looking at artists reconstructions of these
creatures, can I see any way in which "leverage" would favor either a human or
a sauropod in lifting weight with their legs. On the other hand, the advantage
in "efficiency" which I claim the normally proportioned human limb would have
over the disproportionately thick sauropod limb is real, but you either have to
do a little thinking or a little bit of drawing pictures for yourself to
understand it. It would be neat if I had graphics on the net; I could make it
real easy for some of you guys who have been flaming me over this one, but I
don't.
Is there any magical reason for thinking that a reptile's muscles would be
"better" than a humans on a per pound basis? It hardly matters; the people
who study sauropods are fast coming to the conclusion that they were mammals.
What about Bill Kazmaier; is there any reason to believe that he is stronger
than animals his size? Believe it. The technology it takes to build a Bill
Kazmaier doesn't exist in the animal kingdom. Deadlifts with 1000 lbs on a bar
are light exercise for Kazmaier. A gorilla attempting this would probably
incur serious injury.
So much for serious business; let's now consider the strange case of
Wm. Jefferys, of the UT Astronomy dept. who begins most of his articles on the
net with:
"It is the unmistakable sign of the crank scientist, that he studiously
ignores evidence tending not to support his theories, while......."
and then generally goes on to accuse me of insulting the astronomical
profession. As refutation of all of the material I have presented indicating
that Pterosaurs could not make it in our gravity, Jeffery's presents the
following:
>Ted's experts may think the Pterosaurs couldn't fly. Obviously,
>Paul MacCready thinks otherwise, and no one in the world knows
>more about muscle-powered flight than he does. 177 lines of
>quotations, insults and obfuscation don't change the fact that
>the Ted's case is by no means as overwhelming as he imagines.
Now, as proof that pterosaurs could have flown in our gravity, a
titanium/mylar monstrosity flapping through the air by means of an internal
combustion engine would no more make it than a sixty lb. 100 ft. wingspan
device in which some really good human athlete must pedal his heart out to stay
ten feet off the ground, MacCready's other invention. The world would say:
"There go MacCready and Jefferys... bullshit artists."
That's kind of a shame. I mean, I'm the kind of guy who believes that anything
worth doing is worth doing right. MacCready, being bright enough to BUILD this
contraption, is certainly bright enough not to get IN it; i'm not even going to
talk about THAT possibility. But Jefferys.....
Let's be brutally honest about this whole thing, Bill. You and I both
know that, If I manage to convince the world that pterosaurs COULD NOT fly in
our gravity, that all of your neat uniformitarian theories with their million
and billion year time-frames are DEAD. And you and I both know there's a good
chance I can DO that. Any thinking person who looks at the metabolic rate
changes needed by hummingbirds and condors to fly level in still air, seeing
that the condor is at the ragged edge of what is possible, will easily picture
a graph of size versus such metabolic rate rises and know that a 300
lb. Quetzlecoatlus Northropi would be OFF THAT CHART; that even if fully
charged with methamphetamines and coccaine, he might could fly for about one
minute, and then he would DROP DEAD.
And you and I both know that there's only one way in the world you could
possibly demonstrate that something like that COULD fly UNDER MUSCLE POWER, and
you and I both know what that is, don't we? And you and I both know how high
that sucker would have to be launched from to have any chance, don't we? It
seems to me, it's really just a question of how generous the Lord was when
passing out CAJONES down there around Texas. I mean, sooner or later, if you
want to save Astronomy from the boundless evil of the Velikovsky fan club,
you're going to end up having to ask yourself one question, in the immortal
words of Clint Eastwood:
"Do I feel lucky?"