Did you REALLY pocket an occipital bone?

CJSF

Any way, if anyone gets a chance to go through the Museum of the Rockies, take it. You won’t be dissappointed.

This is eeriely similar to an experience I had in the Grand Canyon Caverns. In them, there are the preserved remains of a giant sloth, which fell in when the ground broke open thousands of years ago (the humidity in the caves is about 2%, which is great for drying and preserving tissue). On the rock wall, you can see the deep scratches the sloth made trying to get back up (which it never did).

Just think about it: for millions of years, the cave was silent. Then, with absolutely no warning, the ceiling breaks and a now extinct animal falls though. It struggles to climb back up, but within a few hours, it is too dehydrated to continue and dies soon thereafter. You can almost see it right there in the cave.

Even though the sloth is about ten thousand times younger than your dinosaur, it still is amazing to be completely awed and humbled by nature and time.

“A Biblical Critique of Creationism” by Dennis O’Leary in May 2003 issue;

An editorial by Carl N. Drummond: “Intelligent Design and the Future of Science Education”. March 2002 issue;

“Who Believes What? Clearing up Confusion over Inteligent Design and Yound-Earth Creationism” by Marcus R. Ross in the May 2005 issue.

Leon, I’m with you – I prefer a good single malt scotch. Recently bought a bottle of 1966 Glen Albyn (bottled 2005) in Glasgow. Mmmmmm.

But, back to the topic. I love dinosaurs. This is because they are so cool. I think dinosaurs and moon landings turned me on to science in the first place. When I was, I don’t know, maybe 7 years old, I had a sticker book on prehistoric animals, and it had a diplodocus (don’t know the more correct modern name) that came as four separate stickers, and the picture depicted it next to three double-decker Routemaster buses (the classic image of the London bus) to the same scale. That was one big animal.

Beer’s good, too.

Prefer whiskey myself. Or beer.

Boh! But seriously, if you’d quoted ‘Get It On’ or something you could have called the article “Treks and T.Rex and T. Rex”.

A while back it came to me that if there was a newspaper article about Stevie Nicks’ underwear stealing Snickers bars from the New York Knicks the headline could be “Stevie Nicks’ Knickers Nick Knicks’ Snickers”.

Sorry if this is off-topic; I’ve been a lurking reader of the site for years, and along with Skepdic.com and Snopes.com it’s one of my ‘daily round’, and I’ve also just had some brandy.

Dinosaurs.

One is to convince those on the fence that biology, like other sciences that have been shown to be valid by bringing us useful things (automobiles, electricity, modern medicine, etc. etc.), really is competent to build explanations for our origins that can be considered convincing over centuries-old speculation.

The other is that maybe, if we work hard at fighting this ID nonsense, we can get science taught with more vigor in the classroom (what it is, why we use it, why it works, why it’s important, etc.). If the next generation grows up with the kind of confidence in science that we had back in the ’50s, that just might solve the whole problem.

I didn’t get the chance to ask if you think it is possible to actually change the mind of someone who already believes in any of these various junk science ideas? It seems like someone who believes in this stuff is going to be too suspicious of real scientist to take what they say as anything but more goverment-sponsored coverup subterfuge. It’s easy to preach to the choir, but I wonder if it’s actually possible to “convert” someone.

It is an excellent museum. I was there a couple of years ago. (I didn’t get a behind the scenes tour though…) Lots of cool stuff to see, and good science being done there too.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v471/dcowan38/Club_Hell_postings/bs.jpg

Actually, that looks like a cool design for a tie-dye shirt.

*ok I am making light the woowoo crowd There’s actually a web site by a guy who does that kind of photographic “analysis” to reveal alien conspiracies though.