From: kv07@IASTATE.EDU (Warren Vonroeschlaub)
Subject: Re: Holden Numbering
Reply-To: kv07@IASTATE.EDU (Warren Vonroeschlaub)
Organization: Ministry of Silly Walks
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 23:22:25 GMT

In article <2888@fedfil.UUCP>, news@fedfil.UUCP (news) writes:
> In article <1992Aug29.154509@IASTATE.EDU*, kv07@IASTATE.EDU (Warren
Vonroeschlaub) writes:
[a carefully deleted ">*Ted Holden writes:"]  
>*>This wouldn't work for a sauropod or any straight-legged creature or any
>*>creature with knees facing forwards for obvious reasons, and it doesn't even
                 ^^^^^
>*> work for an ostrich.
>  
>*1) Just because it doesn't work for a ostrich doesn't mean it couldn't.
>*2) If the knee has to be facing backwards, just run the tendon along the
other
>*side of the leg for forward facing knees.
> 
> Realistically, i suspect the joint behind which the tendon runs would likely
> correspond to our heel.  I can't imagine a tendon running in front of a
> mammal or mammal-like creature's knee.

  Ted, if you look above, you were the first person to mention knee.  I just
failed to bring up that point.  That you attack me for your own mistake is so
much like you I am not suprised at all.

  Once again your imagination appears to be the limits to our universe.  Well, I
can't imagine anyone quite like you, so you musn't exist.

>*> Dinosaurs were mostly of two basic types, birdlike which included even the
>*> tyrannosaur, and sauropod or sauropod-like, which were either mammals
>*> outright as Dr. Velikovsky claimed, or were very similar to mammals.
> 
>* Ah, yes.  Well we should always trust Dr. Velikovsky's opinions in biology. 
>*What was his doctorate in again?
> 
> Psychiatry, under one of Freud's top students.

  It doesn't matter what level he was, if a biologist disagrees with a
psychologist on a biological subject there is little reason to assume the
psychologist was right, even if he is the best psychologist in the known
galaxy.

>  In those days, you still had
> well-rounded and multi-faceted people in academia.

  In those days you didn't have a fraction of the data we have now.  You seem to
be saying that a psychologist with little data is better than a biologist with
orders of magnitude more information on biological subjects.  I find that view
disturbingly in character.

>  My understanding is that
> Velikovsky and Albert Einstein used to sort of run the Prussian Scientific
> Academy...

  It hardly matters if he was on first name basis with God, it doesn't make him
better informed than a modern biologist.

>  The only way I can picture Carl Sagan, Harlow Shapeley, or a 
> number of Velikovsky's other prominent critics getting INTO the Prussian
> Scientific Academy would be through the servants' entrance as janitors.

  What difference does this make?  I don't care if the entire staff of Princton
was unable to look at pictures of the PSA.  A Bilogist from 1992 is going to
know more biology than a psychologist from the fifties (or earlier, when did he
make this claim?).

>*>The idea that sleeping "like a bird" would come naturally to a sauropod
>*>is idiotic for obvious reasons.
>* 
>*   Humor me: what reasons are so obvious?
> 
>The sauropods were graviportal, as are elephants now.  Their entire physiology
>was designed to support weight.  The legs went straight up and down.  Any bend
>in the knees of the sort which allows birds to sleep the way they do would
>cause the creature to collapse.

  They were designed to bear weight, hardly suprising.  I do not argue in the
least that sauropods were large.  Can you show that they woudl collapse?  Bold
assertions are not evidence.

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 |  | o |   * kv07@iastate.edu            *
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/|   ___    * Math Department             *
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From: Geoff.Shotts@halluc.com (Geoff Shotts)
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