From: throopw@sheol.UUCP (Wayne Throop)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Holden "felt effect" followup, too
Summary: more errors and numerical mismatches in Ted's presentations
Date: 21 Jul 92 01:19:47 GMT

-> From: btd@iastate.edu (Benjamin T Dehner)
-> Message-ID: <btd.711576561@pv7413.vincent.iastate.edu>
->> From: news@fedfil.UUCP (news) (Ted Holden)
->> Message-ID: <2823@fedfil.UUCP>
->> Lynn Rose noted several glaring problems with this arrangement, and
->> suggested a novel way of solving them.  The problems included:
->> 1.  That the continents were all clumped into a single mass in the first
->> place.  No force exists at present which might ever draw them all
->> together, and the odds of them all merely drifting together for no
->> reason are greater than 64 - 1, which would be the odds against them
->> ever merely appearing in the same hemisphere for no real reason.

Good grief.  Ted *still* hasn't corrected this blatant error.  
Oh, well, one more amongst myriads.  I skipped past this bit in my
recent followup, but it's perfect evidence of simple innumeracy. 
Anybody at *all* familiar with statistics can see that this is wrong. 

And that's even granting that the processes driving the continental
plates are random (which they aren't).

( It'd be interesting (though not definitive) to hear Ted's explanation
  of the "let's make a deal" probability scenario... )

> From: news@fedfil.UUCP (news) (Ted Holden)
> Subject: 6'th Category of flood evidence / the flood and evolution
> Message-ID: <2825@fedfil.UUCP>
> An ungodly amount of radiation was unleashed on the world at
> the time of the great flood mentioned in the bible and
> elsewhere in literature around the world.  In particular, the
> seven days just prior to the flood are mentioned twice within
> a short space:  [.. quotations omitted ..]

Let's try to quantify what Ted's getting at here.  He is saying
that within a span of seven days, enough radiation was released
to create the diversity we currently see from a severe population
pinch.  Taking humanity for an example, the variation that ordinary
theories have happening over 100,000 years or so, concentrated into
a week or so.

Ted is attributing all the additional variation to radiation.  Let's be
generous and say that all new genetic variation at the current time
arises due to radiation, and that the period of time was a month or so. 
We're already being generous with the 100,000 years.  Ted's theory
therefore requires that the planet was subjected to a MILLION times the
current background radiation for a period of many days. 

To my surprise, none of my home references, from "Handbook of Chemistry
and Physics" to "Pathologic Basis of Disease" have values for background
ionizing radiation.  Time to get new references, I guess...  But I'd be
surprised if a million times background for several days wouldn't kill
just about anything.  So, far from causing "fast evolution", it seems it
would simply kill everything. 

> From: news@fedfil.UUCP (news)
> Message-ID: <2825@fedfil.UUCP>
> One last little point.  It being overwhelmingly likely that the
> white and black races seperated some few thousands of years ago,
> one would expect, given standard beliefs, that Caucasian and
> African languages would show some semblance of relationship, in
> fact probably a strong relationship, and they don't.  

Nonsense, of course.  There are many known cases of language not
following genetic relatedness today.  Ted's assumption that lingual
and phenotypic similarity must be congruent is rubbish.

> From: smullins@cidmac.ecn.purdue.edu (Scott H Mullins)
> Message-ID: <1992Jul20.140558.19282@noose.ecn.purdue.edu>
> Has Ted been posting about neck sizes again? 

Yes, he repeated the "not strong enough to lift head" and "blood
pressure too low" pseudo-problems.  Ted essentially cited some of the
statements (out of context) from McGowan's book.  No new material,
no response to the rebuttals of this position from last time.

Note that Alexander treats both of these issues in his book, "The
Dynamics of Dinosaurs and other Extinct Giants", Columbia University
Press, 1989.  He cites evidence that the neck was counterbalanced by
elastic tissue that runs up the spine, much as sheep, antelope, giraffe,
and other grazers are equiped today.  Thus, the muscular effort of
holding the neck out was *zero*.  He also spends some time describing
why the blood pressure "problem" is plausibly resolved, by estimating
what sort of heart could generate the required pressures, and so on. 
Very recommended reading.

All in all, Ted's ideas that the problems of the sauropod neck were
beyond solving in 1g acceleration turn out to be false when subjected to
numerical checks. 
--
Wayne Throop  ...!mcnc!dg-rtp!sheol!throopw
Newsgroups: talk.origins