Dinosaur Shocker (YEC say dinosaur soft tissue couldn’t possibly survive millions of years)

Smithsonian Magazine ^ | May 1, 2006 | Helen Fields

[SirLinksalot]

Dinosaur Shocker

By Helen Fields

Neatly dressed in blue Capri pants and a sleeveless top, long hair flowing over her bare shoulders, Mary Schweitzer sits at a microscope in a dim lab, her face lit only by a glowing computer screen showing a network of thin, branching vessels. That’s right, blood vessels. From a dinosaur. “Ho-ho-ho, I am excite-e-e-e-d,” she chuckles. “I am, like, really excited.”

After 68 million years in the ground, a Tyrannosaurus rex found in Montana was dug up, its leg bone was broken in pieces, and fragments were dissolved in acid in Schweitzer’s laboratory at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. “Cool beans,” she says, looking at the image on the screen.

It was big news indeed last year when Schweitzer announced she had discovered blood vessels and structures that looked like whole cells inside that T. rex bone—the first observation of its kind. The finding amazed colleagues, who had never imagined that even a trace of still-soft dinosaur tissue could survive. After all, as any textbook will tell you, when an animal dies, soft tissues such as blood vessels, muscle and skin decay and disappear over time, while hard tissues like bone may gradually acquire minerals from the environment and become fossils. Schweitzer, one of the first scientists to use the tools of modern cell biology to study dinosaurs, has upended the conventional wisdom by showing that some rock-hard fossils tens of millions of years old may have remnants of soft tissues hidden away in their interiors. “The reason it hasn’t been discovered before is no right-thinking paleontologist would do what Mary did with her specimens. We don’t go to all this effort to dig this stuff out of the ground to then destroy it in acid,” says dinosaur paleontologist Thomas Holtz Jr., of the University of Maryland. “It’s great science.” The observations could shed new light on how dinosaurs evolved and how their muscles and blood vessels worked. And the new findings might help settle a long-running debate about whether dinosaurs were warmblooded, coldblooded—or both.

Meanwhile, Schweitzer’s research has been hijacked by “young earth” creationists, who insist that dinosaur soft tissue couldn’t possibly survive millions of years. They claim her discoveries support their belief, based on their interpretation of Genesis, that the earth is only a few thousand years old. Of course, it’s not unusual for a paleontologist to differ with creationists. But when creationists misrepresent Schweitzer’s data, she takes it personally: she describes herself as “a complete and total Christian.” On a shelf in her office is a plaque bearing an Old Testament verse: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

It may be that Schweitzer’s unorthodox approach to paleontology can be traced to her roundabout career path. Growing up in Helena, Montana, she went through a phase when, like many kids, she was fascinated by dinosaurs. In fact, at age 5 she announced she was going to be a paleontologist. But first she got a college degree in communicative disorders, married, had three children and briefly taught remedial biology to high schoolers. In 1989, a dozen years after she graduated from college, she sat in on a class at Montana State University taught by paleontologist Jack Horner, of the Museum of the Rockies, now an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution. The lectures reignited her passion for dinosaurs. Soon after, she talked her way into a volunteer position in Horner’s lab and began to pursue a doctorate in paleontology.

She initially thought she would study how the microscopic structure of dinosaur bones differs depending on how much the animal weighs. But then came the incident with the red spots.

AdvertisementIn 1991, Schweitzer was trying to study thin slices of bones from a 65-million-year-old T. rex. She was having a hard time getting the slices to stick to a glass slide, so she sought help from a molecular biologist at the university. The biologist, Gayle Callis, happened to take the slides to a veterinary conference, where she set up the ancient samples for others to look at. One of the vets went up to Callis and said, “Do you know you have red blood cells in that bone?” Sure enough, under a microscope, it appeared that the bone was filled with red disks. Later, Schweitzer recalls, “I looked at this and I looked at this and I thought, this can’t be. Red blood cells don’t preserve.”

Schweitzer showed the slide to Horner. “When she first found the red-blood-cell-looking structures, I said, Yep, that’s what they look like,” her mentor recalls. He thought it was possible they were red blood cells, but he gave her some advice: “Now see if you can find some evidence to show that that’s not what they are.”

What she found instead was evidence of heme in the bones—additional support for the idea that they were red blood cells. Heme is a part of hemoglobin, the protein that carries oxygen in the blood and gives red blood cells their color. “It got me real curious as to exceptional preservation,” she says. If particles of that one dinosaur were able to hang around for 65 million years, maybe the textbooks were wrong about fossilization.

Schweitzer tends to be self-deprecating, claiming to be hopeless at computers, lab work and talking to strangers. But colleagues admire her, saying she’s determined and hard-working and has mastered a number of complex laboratory techniques that are beyond the skills of most paleontologists. And asking unusual questions took a lot of nerve. “If you point her in a direction and say, don’t go that way, she’s the kind of person who’ll say, Why?—and she goes and tests it herself,” says Gregory Erickson, a paleobiologist at Florida State University. Schweitzer takes risks, says Karen Chin, a University of Colorado paleontologist. “It could be a big payoff or it could just be kind of a ho-hum research project.”

In 2000, Bob Harmon, a field crew chief from the Museum of the Rockies, was eating his lunch in a remote Montana canyon when he looked up and saw a bone sticking out of a rock wall. That bone turned out to be part of what may be the best preserved T. rex in the world. Over the next three summers, workers chipped away at the dinosaur, gradually removing it from the cliff face. They called it B. rex in Harmon’s honor and nicknamed it Bob. In 2001, they encased a section of the dinosaur and the surrounding dirt in plaster to protect it. The package weighed more than 2,000 pounds, which turned out to be just above their helicopter’s capacity, so they split it in half. One of B. rex’s leg bones was broken into two big pieces and several fragments—just what Schweitzer needed for her micro-scale explorations.

It turned out Bob had been misnamed. “It’s a girl and she’s pregnant,” Schweitzer recalls telling her lab technician when she looked at the fragments. On the hollow inside surface of the femur, Schweitzer had found scraps of bone that gave a surprising amount of information about the dinosaur that made them. Bones may seem as steady as stone, but they’re actually constantly in flux. Pregnant women use calcium from their bones to build the skeleton of a developing fetus. Before female birds start to lay eggs, they form a calcium-rich structure called medullary bone on the inside of their leg and other bones; they draw on it during the breeding season to make eggshells. Schweitzer had studied birds, so she knew about medullary bone, and that’s what she figured she was seeing in that T. rex specimen.

Most paleontologists now agree that birds are the dinosaurs’ closest living relatives. In fact, they say that birds are dinosaurs—colorful, incredibly diverse, cute little feathered dinosaurs. The theropod of the Jurassic forests lives on in the goldfinch visiting the backyard feeder, the toucans of the tropics and the ostriches loping across the African savanna.

To understand her dinosaur bone, Schweitzer turned to two of the most primitive living birds: ostriches and emus. In the summer of 2004, she asked several ostrich breeders for female bones. A farmer called, months later. “Y’all still need that lady ostrich?” The dead bird had been in the farmer’s backhoe bucket for several days in the North Carolina heat. Schweitzer and two colleagues collected a leg from the fragrant carcass and drove it back to Raleigh.

AdvertisementAs far as anyone can tell, Schweitzer was right: Bob the dinosaur really did have a store of medullary bone when she died. A paper published in Science last June presents microscope pictures of medullary bone from ostrich and emu side by side with dinosaur bone, showing near-identical features.

In the course of testing a B. rex bone fragment further, Schweitzer asked her lab technician, Jennifer Wittmeyer, to put it in weak acid, which slowly dissolves bone, including fossilized bone—but not soft tissues. One Friday night in January 2004, Wittmeyer was in the lab as usual. She took out a fossil chip that had been in the acid for three days and put it under the microscope to take a picture. “[The chip] was curved so much, I couldn’t get it in focus,” Wittmeyer recalls. She used forceps to flatten it. “My forceps kind of sunk into it, made a little indentation and it curled back up. I was like, stop it!” Finally, through her irritation, she realized what she had: a fragment of dinosaur soft tissue left behind when the mineral bone around it had dissolved. Suddenly Schweitzer and Wittmeyer were dealing with something no one else had ever seen. For a couple of weeks, Wittmeyer said, it was like Christmas every day.

In the lab, Wittmeyer now takes out a dish with six compartments, each holding a little brown dab of tissue in clear liquid, and puts it under the microscope lens. Inside each specimen is a fine network of almost-clear branching vessels—the tissue of a female Tyrannosaurus rex that strode through the forests 68 million years ago, preparing to lay eggs. Close up, the blood vessels from that T. rex and her ostrich cousins look remarkably alike. Inside the dinosaur vessels are things Schweitzer diplomatically calls “round microstructures” in the journal article, out of an abundance of scientific caution, but they are red and round, and she and other scientists suspect that they are red blood cells.

Of course, what everyone wants to know is whether DNA might be lurking in that tissue. Wittmeyer, from much experience with the press since the discovery, calls this “the awful question”—whether Schweitzer’s work is paving the road to a real-life version of science fiction’s Jurassic Park, where dinosaurs were regenerated from DNA preserved in amber. But DNA, which carries the genetic script for an animal, is a very fragile molecule. It’s also ridiculously hard to study because it is so easily contaminated with modern biological material, such as microbes or skin cells, while buried or after being dug up. Instead, Schweitzer has been testing her dinosaur tissue samples for proteins, which are a bit hardier and more readily distinguished from contaminants. Specifically, she’s been looking for collagen, elastin and hemoglobin. Collagen makes up much of the bone scaffolding, elastin is wrapped around blood vessels and hemoglobin carries oxygen inside red blood cells.

Because the chemical makeup of proteins changes through evolution, scientists can study protein sequences to learn more about how dinosaurs evolved. And because proteins do all the work in the body, studying them could someday help scientists understand dinosaur physiology—how their muscles and blood vessels worked, for example.

Proteins are much too tiny to pick out with a microscope. To look for them, Schweitzer uses antibodies, immune system molecules that recognize and bind to specific sections of proteins. Schweitzer and Wittmeyer have been using antibodies to chicken collagen, cow elastin and ostrich hemoglobin to search for similar molecules in the dinosaur tissue. At an October 2005 paleontology conference, Schweitzer presented preliminary evidence that she has detected real dinosaur proteins in her specimens.

Further discoveries in the past year have shown that the discovery of soft tissue in B. rex wasn’t just a fluke. Schweitzer and Wittmeyer have now found probable blood vessels, bone-building cells and connective tissue in another T. rex, in a theropod from Argentina and in a 300,000-year-old woolly mammoth fossil. Schweitzer’s work is “showing us we really don’t understand decay,” Holtz says. “There’s a lot of really basic stuff in nature that people just make assumptions about.”

young-earth creationists also see Schweitzer’s work as revolutionary, but in an entirely different way. They first seized upon Schweitzer’s work after she wrote an article for the popular science magazine Earth in 1997 about possible red blood cells in her dinosaur specimens. Creation magazine claimed that Schweitzer’s research was “powerful testimony against the whole idea of dinosaurs living millions of years ago. It speaks volumes for the Bible’s account of a recent creation.”

This drives Schweitzer crazy. Geologists have established that the Hell Creek Formation, where B. rex was found, is 68 million years old, and so are the bones buried in it. She’s horrified that some Christians accuse her of hiding the true meaning of her data. “They treat you really bad,” she says. “They twist your words and they manipulate your data.” For her, science and religion represent two different ways of looking at the world; invoking the hand of God to explain natural phenomena breaks the rules of science. After all, she says, what God asks is faith, not evidence. “If you have all this evidence and proof positive that God exists, you don’t need faith. I think he kind of designed it so that we’d never be able to prove his existence. And I think that’s really cool.”

By definition, there is a lot that scientists don’t know, because the whole point of science is to explore the unknown. By being clear that scientists haven’t explained everything, Schweitzer leaves room for other explanations. “I think that we’re always wise to leave certain doors open,” she says.

But schweitzer’s interest in the long-term preservation of molecules and cells does have an otherworldly dimension: she’s collaborating with NASA scientists on the search for evidence of possible past life on Mars, Saturn’s moon Titan, and other heavenly bodies. (Scientists announced this spring, for instance, that Saturn’s tiny moon Enceladus appears to have liquid water, a probable precondition for life.)

Astrobiology is one of the wackier branches of biology, dealing in life that might or might not exist and might or might not take any recognizable form. “For almost everybody who works on NASA stuff, they are just in hog heaven, working on astrobiology questions,” Schweitzer says. Her NASA research involves using antibodies to probe for signs of life in unexpected places. “For me, it’s the means to an end. I really want to know about my dinosaurs.”

AdvertisementTo that purpose, Schweitzer, with Wittmeyer, spends hours in front of microscopes in dark rooms. To a fourth-generation Montanan, even the relatively laid-back Raleigh area is a big city. She reminisces wistfully about scouting for field sites on horseback in Montana. “Paleontology by microscope is not that fun,” she says. “I’d much rather be out tromping around.”

“My eyeballs are just absolutely fried,” Schweitzer says after hours of gazing through the microscope’s eyepieces at glowing vessels and blobs. You could call it the price she pays for not being typical.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks! I love a good old fashioned Crevo bloodbath. ;')

PRESERVED T. Rex Soft Tissue RECOVERED (Pic)
Star Tribune | 03.24.05 | Randolph Schmid
Posted on 03/24/2005 12:04:54 PM PST by wallcrawlr
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1369945/posts

also:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1409928/posts?page=24#24

[Diamond]

When no one else is able to duplicate their results...

Except that the National Center for Science education was citing a 1981 study from Chadwick:

"When later, more comprehensive and careful studies failed to reproduce these results, it was concluded that Burdick's work was simply a case of contamination by modern pollens (Chadwick 1981)".

Read the link. I repeat; this is NOT the Burdick or Chadwick work. It is more recent. The pollen was found and the collection techniques are throughly documented.

Cordially,

[Pippin]

You're welcome

[ahayes]

You poor dear.

How long did it take for the acid in our stomachs to be the right amount for us to digest food?

At every stage an animal's digestive system is pretty well suited to its diet, otherwise it would die.

How long did it take for eyes to form, was everyone farsighted at first or nearsighted?

Eyes have been around for hundreds of millions of years.

Why are their two sexes?

Because we are diploid, so zygote formation comes about by the fusion of two haploid gametes.

Why are there sexes?

Sexual reproduction maximizes genetic variation and helps isolate and eliminate negative mutations.

When did we grow two arms because one wasn't sufficient?

Our earliest ancestor hundreds of millions of years ago had bilateral symmetry, so two arms was inevitable.

If we came from monkey's why are there monkeys?

If we came from European settlers, why are there still Europeans?

Where are the species that have derived from humans ,if they haven't formed yet where are they on this planet so I can go see them?

The human species is continuing to evolve. Go look in a mirror.

[Liberal Classic]

The article you posted is controversial even among anti-evolutionist circles.

[SunkenCiv]

:')

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/1624642/posts?page=44#44
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/1624642/posts?page=145#145

[TXnMA]

I think even Glen J. Kuban, who has probably spent more time investigating these tracks than just about anybody else, and who does not accept the tracks as human, would not buy the assertions that these tracks were carved, that you know the person that carved them, and that you have run your fingers over the chisel marks:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thank you for pointing me to Kuban's website! Not only does Kuban agree with me, he cites the same discrepancies that I observed.

I am, at present, writing up a detailed description of my observations (in HTML -- for publication here on FR).

While I am doing so, you need to be aware of the following salient facts:

• I was referring to the McFall site, not the Taylor site.
• The culprit (faker and charlatan) of whom I wrote was Carl Baugh.
• I am a physical chemist and a born-again Christian who is convinced that the God of the Bible created all that is.
• My wife is from Glen Rose, and I have probably spent far more hours exploring the Paluxy River from the low-water crossing to the State Park than Kuban has been able to spend on his visits.
• I am a member of the Texas Historical Commission's Archeological Stewards Network -- with thirty-nine (39) years of experience and training in 'archeology' (the official Texas spelling, BTW...)
• It was my father-in-law who volunteered to use his tracked loader to lift the limestone slabs for Baugh.
• It was my father-in-law who escorted me to the McFall site, to show me where "a Man of God" (BIG question mark!!!) had come to "Proooove That Man Walked With The Dinosaurs"
• Kuban's website actually displays evidence of my visit to the McFall site!!.

When I have completed my write-up, I will copy you on it.

---

From Kuban's own website [emphasis mine -- TXnMA]:

Baugh Sites Examined

In my study of Baugh/McFall sites in 1982 and 1983 I found that none of the "man tracks" there closely resembled real human prints. Some were mud-collapsed and/or poorly preserved specimens of metatarsal dinosaur tracks. Several in striding sequence were dinosaur tracks with partial metatarsal impressions; these Baugh had identified as human tracks overlapping dinosaur tracks. Others were long (and sometimes curved), incompletely cleaned grooves which occurred near dinosaur trails. These may have represented intermittent impressions of the dinosaur's tail, snout, or other body parts. Other "man tracks" were vague, shallow, often isolated depressions (not in striding trails), with only a remote resemblance to human footprints. One set of "toe marks" were composed of an invertebrate burrow system (made by ancient worms or crustaceans). Other alleged "toes" were small notches or grooves at the margins of vague depressions, formed by selectively abrading or pushing into firm marl (limy clay) left at the margins of incompletely cleaned depressions, or gouging [carving] at friable portions of the limestone. Often this was done under the pretense of "uncovering" toes; such misconduct by Baugh was repeatedly witnessed by myself, Alfred West and others present at the site, and can be seen in one of Baugh’s own video tapes (Baugh, 1982).

Despite Baugh's creative efforts, none of the markings on his excavations closely resembled real human footprints. Many of the print outlines, alleged toe marks, and other features showed unnatural shapes, sizes, and positions. As time went on Baugh's boldness in manipluating field evidence seemed to increase; at one point he claimed to have excavated a giant human print (dubbed "Max") which was almost 26 inches long. As this author [Glen J. Kuban] and others confirmed by first-hand examination, it had been merely gouged into the firm marl overyling the limestone track surface. It's bottom countours and other features conflicted severely with those of a real human print, even aside from its monstously large size.

When critical observers visited the site, Baugh would often state that the prints were perfect when first found, but that the toes had "eroded away quickly." Indeed, they did often deteriorate quickly--much more quickly than real features in rock, because such toes were typically composed of marl or clay incompletely or selectively removed [carved] from the substrate. Real track features generally remain recognizable for years or even decades. Baugh's other alleged out-of-order fossils were found to be similarly lacking in scientific support, as reviewed in a later section.

Baugh's so-called "Max" giant print. Besides its immense size and unnatural features
(especially the lack of normal bottom contours), the author [Glen J. Kuban]
confirmed that the print margins were entirely composed of marl (the hard clay
above the track surface) that had been gouged [carved]
to suggest a human-like shape.

---

Cordially, as well...

[Virginia-American]

...and to have the opinion that theology is an empty and anachronistic pursuit. ...

I'm surprised tht Dawkins hasn't yet been recognized as the greatest theologian of the late 20th - early 21st century. He should at least have a few honorary drs. of div.

[Diamond]

The article you posted is controversial even among anti-evolutionist circles.

Yes it is, but not for the reason of improper collection or laboratory techniques. Unless there is some legitimate reason to question those methods the conclusion that their sample was contaminated is completely unwarranted.

"It was not our intent to be self-serving in that investigation. However, we deeply resent any accusations that our field and laboratory techniques and procedures were remiss and that we contaminated the rock samples. We have spent the majority of our professional careers involved in laboratory work. We know how to follow and develop procedures to avoid contamination. It is easy for someone to sit in front of a computer and claim contamination when he has not read the original reports or does not know what was done! It is the height of arrogance and laziness and we reject such allegations as spurious."

Cordially,

[Diamond]

Oh, ok. I'm sorry I didn't realize you were referring to Baugh. My sincere apologies.

Cordially,

[King Prout]

just to reiterate the terms:
*****
Given:
1. "might" is defined as ability to impose positive and negative consequences, immunity to reprisals, lack of needs requiring exogenous sources of fulfillment, and endurance.
2. "right" in this application specifically excludes mathematically correct solutions to specific problems, mechanically sound design, etc... we are speaking SOLELY of the form/concept of "right" tied to "morality"

Postulate:
"right" is always defined by might, and that definition's range and power is always proportionate to the might of the one making the definition.

Challenge:
Provide one case where the above is clearly not operant.
*****

I will NOT consider answers which deviate from the above terms - changing the subject is no more an answer to a challenge than moving the goalposts is playing football :)

[Al Simmons]

Is it possible, that "in His Image" is referring to an eternal spirit. This would certainly be consistent with the rest of the Bible since it's purpose is the salvation of our spirit. If that is how God defines man, then it would be possible that the bodies we inhabit took a long period of time to become as they are now, but Adam did not become a living Soul, until God created him in His Image, if His Image is an eternal spirit."

You know, I have had the same thought in the past. The point is that God (being who He is) had unlimited options in the matter; and it is utter conceit to discount them all (and the evidence for them) for an account written by/for men who had little knowledge of their immediate world, and no capacity for comprehension of things on a molecular/atomic level;

It is equally apparent to me that God certainly has allowed us to expand our knowledge of the universe (Isaac Newton was also a minister, if memory serves)...finding out about the formation of the earth and its history of life is a part of that process...to me, science has basically been pulling back the curtain to allow us to see a little more of the machinery of the universe and of creation itself...if you choose to believe in God, then you can think of it as God's creation, or not; but to deny mountains of scientific evidence and the great advances wrought by the same is to remain willfully ignorant...my faith is not threatened by it...

[Liberal Classic]

Yes it is, but not for the reason of improper collection or laboratory techniques.

It is controversial, even among anti-evolutionists, for that very reason.

Unless there is some legitimate reason to question those methods the conclusion that their sample was contaminated is completely unwarranted.

It's completely warranted.

I cannot accept the veracity of this claim. It is controversial even among anti-evolutionist circles because of the possibility of contamination.

That you're also willing to cite as evidence man/dinosaur tracks which are also discounted among many anti-evolutionist writers (as well as mainstream geologists) makes me question the legitimacy of your complaints.

In fact, it brings me to the conclusion that you are ready to believe any claim against modern science, no matter how farcical, just because someone who is opposed to evolutionary theory says it's so.

Good day.

[betty boop]

Scientists frequently do have opinions on the matter. They're allowed. And they're also allowed to bring their knowledge of the universe, gleaned from science, to bear on philosophy, and to have the opinion that theology is an empty and anachronistic pursuit....

That theology is "an empty and anachronistic pursuit" is an opinion, Professor. It is not a scientifically validated fact.

[betty boop]

Theology ought to be under the control of the Amalgamated Union of Philosophers, Sages, Luminaries and other Professional Thinking Persons.

Hope not, js1138. I won't join a union.

[betty boop]

I'm surprised tht Dawkins hasn't yet been recognized as the greatest theologian of the late 20th - early 21st century. He should at least have a few honorary drs. of div.

You can't be serious, V-A.

[betty boop]

I will NOT consider answers which deviate from the above terms - changing the subject is no more an answer to a challenge than moving the goalposts is playing football :)

Okay, King. But then you need to tell me: If we're looking for "answers," then pray tell what is the question?

[js1138]

"O Deep Thought Computer," he said, "the task we have designed you to perform is this. We want you to tell us ..." he paused, "... the Answer!"

"The answer?" said Deep Thought. "The answer to what?"

"Life!" urged Fook.

"The Universe!" said Lunkwill.

"Everything!" they said in chorus.

Deep Thought paused for a moment's reflection.

"Tricky," he said finally.

"But can you do it?"

Again, a significant pause.

"Yes," said Deep Thought, "I can do it."

"There is an answer?" said Fook with breathless excitement."

"A simple answer?" added Lunkwill.

"Yes," said Deep Thought. "Life, the Universe, and Everything. There is an answer. But," he added, "I'll have to think about it."

A sudden commotion destroyed the moment: the door flew open and two angry men wearing the coarse faded-blue robes and belts of the Cruxwan University burst into the room, thrusting aside the ineffectual flunkies who tried to bar their way.

"We demand admission!" shouted the younger of the two men elbowing a pretty young secretary in the throat.

"Come on," shouted the older one, "you can't keep us out!" He pushed a junior programmer back through the door.

"We demand that you can't keep us out!" bawled the younger one, though he was now firmly inside the room and no further attempts were being made to stop him.

"Who are you?" said Lunkwill, rising angrily from his seat. "What do you want?"

"I am Majikthise!" announced the older one.

"And I demand that I am Vroomfondel!" shouted the younger one.

Majikthise turned on Vroomfondel. "It's alright," he explained angrily, "you don't need to demand that."

"Alright!" bawled Vroomfondel banging on an nearby desk. "I am Vroomfondel, and that is not a demand, that is a solid fact! What we demand is solid facts!"

"No we don't!" exclaimed Majikthise in irritation. "That is precisely what we don't demand!"

Scarcely pausing for breath, Vroomfondel shouted, "We don't demand solid facts! What we demand is a total absence of solid facts. I demand that I may or may not be Vroomfondel!"

"But who the devil are you?" exclaimed an outraged Fook.

"We," said Majikthise, "are Philosophers."

"Though we may not be," said Vroomfondel waving a warning finger at the programmers.

"Yes we are," insisted Majikthise. "We are quite definitely here as representatives of the Amalgamated Union of Philosophers, Sages, Luminaries and Other Thinking Persons, and we want this machine off, and we want it off now!"

"What's the problem?" said Lunkwill.

"I'll tell you what the problem is mate," said Majikthise, "demarcation, that's the problem!"

"We demand," yelled Vroomfondel, "that demarcation may or may not be the problem!"

"You just let the machines get on with the adding up," warned Majikthise, "and we'll take care of the eternal verities thank you very much. You want to check your legal position you do mate. Under law the Quest for Ultimate Truth is quite clearly the inalienable prerogative of your working thinkers. Any bloody machine goes and actually finds it and we're straight out of a job aren't we? I mean what's the use of our sitting up half the night arguing that there may or may not be a God if this machine only goes and gives us his bleeding phone number the next morning?"

"That's right!" shouted Vroomfondel, "we demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!"

Suddenly a stentorian voice boomed across the room.

"Might I make an observation at this point?" inquired Deep Thought.

"We'll go on strike!" yelled Vroomfondel.

"That's right!" agreed Majikthise. "You'll have a national Philosopher's strike on your hands!"

The hum level in the room suddenly increased as several ancillary bass driver units, mounted in sedately carved and varnished cabinet speakers around the room, cut in to give Deep Thought's voice a little more power.

"All I wanted to say," bellowed the computer, "is that my circuits are now irrevocably committed to calculating the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything -" he paused and satisfied himself that he now had everyone's attention, before continuing more quietly, "but the programme will take me a little while to run."

Fook glanced impatiently at his watch.

"How long?" he said.

"Seven and a half million years," said Deep Thought.

Lunkwill and Fook blinked at each other.

"Seven and a half million years ...!" they cried in chorus.

"Yes," declaimed Deep Thought, "I said I'd have to think about it, didn't I? And it occurs to me that running a programme like this is bound to create an enormous amount of popular publicity for the whole area of philosophy in general. Everyone's going to have their own theories about what answer I'm eventually to come up with, and who better to capitalize on that media market than you yourself? So long as you can keep disagreeing with each other violently enough and slagging each other off in the popular press, you can keep yourself on the gravy train for life. How does that sound?"

The two philosophers gaped at him.

"Bloody hell," said Majikthise, "now that is what I call thinking. Here Vroomfondel, why do we never think of things like that?"

"Dunno," said Vroomfondel in an awed whisper, "think our brains must be too highly trained Majikthise."

So saying, they turned on their heels and walked out of the door and into a lifestyle beyond their wildest dreams.

[Elsie]

Thanks for proving me correct!

Are you afraid to say whether you need Jesus as your Savior?

[TXnMA]

No harm; no foul! No apology really needed, either -- but thanks!

I felt you deserved an explanation -- especially since you hail from the "Show Me" state... '-)

I must admit, though, that the experience was a rude introduction to the "Creation Science" movement -- one that still taints my view of CC'ers and YEC'ers... :-(