From: throopw@sheol.UUCP (Wayne Throop)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Holden mistakes
Summary: summary of the usual points Holden overlooks
Date: 21 Jan 93 04:52:17 GMT

Rather than thrash through all the detailed support I've given in the
past to the position that sauropods could exist with margin to spare in
1G (and which Ted has answered only with irrelevancies), I'll simply
summarize by repeating this paragraph of mine, responding to Holden's
assertion that a two-to-one advantage of sauropods over Kazmaier in
square-cube corrected force exertions is not plausible:

  You almost get a two-to-one advantage for quadrupeds over Kazmaier right
  off the bat, just because of number of limbs.  Being conservative, you
  can get a 1.6 factor for biped/quadruped, 1.2 factor for leverage at
  sauropod sizes (remember this is conservative, since actual measurements
  would support 1.7 or so factor here), and a 1.44 factor for increased
  limb girth.  Combining these factors, it is no surprise at all that
  sauropods exceed Kazmaier's lift by up to 3 times.  Even the ultrasaur
  would have needed only 2.5 times.

  And again, that's being conservative.

It's conservative, and I didn't pull those numbers out of a hat.
They are all supportable, and have all been supported in past postings.

As to Ted's claims about pterosaurs and teratorns, it is quite obvious
that gliding is possible at much larger masses than 40 lbs in 1G, since 
humans do it with hang-gliders regularly, and they do not require
materials stronger than bone and sinew.  Therefore the calculations
that Ted claims "prove" it can't be done are clearly wrong.  Yet
Ted clings to the theory and ignores the history, contrary to what
he insists everybody else do.

I recommend Alexander's book 
_The_Dynamics_of_Dinosaurs_and_Other_Extinct_Giants_, which presents
a popularly accessable view of how biomechanics can be applied to study
extinct animals, and which presents numerical results that show Ted's
position to be essentially incorrect.  This book also addresses some
of the problems of pterosaurs and teratorns.

It is also well to remember that Ted's proposed solution, having the
effective acceleration on the earth reduced by tides or direct
gravitation of some other body about which earth once orbited, does not
solve the problem.  It doesn't solve the problem because 

- the change in effective acceleration would have to be too strong for the
  earth to survive (stronger than the tides at the Roche Limit),
- would have occured over too small a portion of the earth's surface
  (many, even most, large sauropod sites are too far from the center
   of the effect in Ted's model, and some pairs of sites are too
   far apart for ANY model based on Ted's idea to work),
- and even disagrees with other catastrophist ideas, such as Rose's notion
  of a tidal bulge accounting for the geometry of the Afar Triangle (Rose
  needs less than .05g, Holden more than .5g). 

Again, these points are backed up with numerical models, and Ted's reply
on these points in the past has been "I don't have all the answers". 
Not having all the answers is all well and good, but having just ONE
for some of these crucial points here and there would be nice.

One additional point in passing:

: From: news@fedfil.UUCP (news)
: Message-ID: <230@fedfil.UUCP>
: Recently, I have abandoned the attempt to demonstrate the main thesis via 
: ratios which I used to use as being too difficult for the t.o crew to
: grasp, and have gone with the version which simply shows lifting capabilities
: for the scaled up Kazmaier.  The main idea and thesis of the article have
: never changed.

The "too difficult for the t.o crew to grasp" would be irritating if it
weren't so pathetic.  For such a sneer to come from Ted, who thought that
a measure of "kgf" (kilograms force) was a measure of torque, who thought
that the Holden Number was "dimensionless", who still seems to think
that square-cube scaling captures a "generalized body cross-section",
who was still naive about how sensitive his square-cube scaling
calculation is to loose approximations to 2/3 as an exponent despite
having been warned about this error in excess of three times,
is irony indeed.

Yes, the main idea and thesis of the article have never changed.
They are still faulty, and for the same reasons that have been pointed
out for years.
--
Wayne Throop  ...!mcnc!dg-rtp!sheol!throopw