Posted on 09/09/2002 6:44:50 PM PDT by jennyp
LOL!
I'm suffering from Alzheimer's again, but in the last couple months I read a paper somewhere from a researcher who's been filtering fossils from the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary and believes that dinosaurs were already dying out as early as 100 million years ago due to the decreasing amount of oxygen in the air.
Fossil amber samples were giving results of 32% oxygen in the air at the time. The dinos couldn't handle the decreasing oxygen content of the air.
That blows my weapons of mass destruction theory right out.
Awwwww; say it isn't so.....
And he plans to represent himself in a criminal trial for Burglary, battery, and assault?
For his sake, he had best hope he can do a better job of discrediting the prosecution's case than he does the Theory of Evolution.
ON 8-15-2002 AT APPROX 1400 HRS IN ESCAMBIA COUNTY FL, THE ABOVE DEFENDANT, DR KENT E HOVIND DID WILLFULLY AND INTENTIONALLY COMMIT THE OFFENSE OF BURGLARY, BATTERY AND-ASSAULT. ON THIS DATE DR HOVIND CAME TO THE RESIDENCE OF HIS TENANT AT 100 CUMMINGS ST WHERE HE MADE CONTACT WITH TRUDY OWEN AT THE FRONT DOOR AND ATTEMPTED TO PROVIDE HER WITH MONEY IN ORDER FOR HER TO RELOCATE RESIDENCY. TRUDY OWEN SAID SHE REFUSED TO ACCEPT THE MONEY ASKING DR HOVIND TO LEAVE AS SHE SHUT THE FRONT DOOR. DR HOVIND THEN FORCED THE FRONT DOOR OPEN, KNOCKING MS OWEN BACKWARDS AND ENTERED INTO THE STRUCTURE AND BEGAN YELLING LOUDLY AND ACTING IN A HOSTILE AND AGGRESSIVE MANNER, PUTTING V/OWEN IN FEAR FOR HER SAFETY.Note that witness Paul David Jewell, who says he saw Hovind standing on the porch with no altercation, is Kent Hovind's son in law & an employee at Hovind's Creation Science Evangelism.VICTIM CHRISTOPHER KENUI, ALSO RESIDING AT THIS RESIDENCE, ATTEMPTED TO INTERVENE WITH THIS ALTERCATION, WHERE DR HOVIND THEN BECAME PHYSICALLY AGGRESSIVE TOWARD KENUI, WHERE CHRISTOPHER THEN PHYSICALLY WRESTLED HIM OUT OF HIS RESIDENCE AND ONTO THE FRONT PORCH THEN SLAMMING THE DOOR AND LOCKING IT AND CALLING THE SHERIFF'S OFFICE TO REPORT THIS INCIDENT.
UPON MY ARRIVAL, I INTERVIEWED V/TRUDY OWEN, V/CHRISTOPHER KENUI AND WA/ROENALINE KENUI, WHO ALL CONCURRED WITH THE SAME STATEMENT OF THE EVENT THAT PREVIOUSLY OCCURRED. I THEN INTERVIEWED DR KENT HOVIND IN REFERENCE TO THIS INCIDENT WHERE HE DID ADMIT TO FORCING HIS WAY INTO THE HOUSE STATING THAT THE RESIDENCE BELONGED TO HIM AND HE WAS MERELY RENTING THIS HOME TO TENANT OWEN AND FAMILY. DR HOVIND FURTHER STATED THAT HE WAS UNDER THE IMPRESSION THAT HE COULD ENTER THIS RESIDENCE ANY TIME HE WANTED THEREFORE. HE DID NOT FEEL THAT HE COMMITTED A CRIME. DR HOVIND FURTHER STATED THAT HE DID NOT ASSAULT MS OWEN AT THIS LOCATION AND THAT CHRISTOPHER KENUI DID IN FACT HAVE TO PHYSICALLY REMOVE HIM AFTER HIS REFUSAL TO LEAVE VERBALLY.
AT THAT TIME, DR KENT HOVIND WAS PLACED UNDER ARREST, TRANSPORTED TO THE ESCAMBIA COUNTY JAIL AND CHARGED WITH BURGLARY, BATTERY AND ASSAULT. BOND PLACED AT $1,000 AND RETURNABLE SET FOR 9-05-2002.
UPON MY DEPARTURE AT THIS LOCATION A SECONDARY WITNESS. PAUL JEWELL ARRIVED AND STATED TO ME THAT HE WAS DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD DURING THE TIME OF THIS INCIDENT AND MERELY SAW DR HOVIND STANDING ON THE FRONT PORCH AT 100 CUMMINGS ST. HE FURTHER STATED HE DID NOT OBSERVE ANY ALTERCATION.
WITNESS STATEMENT FORMS WERE DOCUMENTED BY THE VICTIMS AND WITNESSES IN THIS INCIDENT TO BE TURNED IN WITH REPORT. BURK, DAVID KARL 312 ID ======================== JEWELL, PAUL DAVID W M 02/06/1975 Addresses (Current/Last Known is Listed First) 5270 N PALAFOX ST PENSACOLA FL 32503 Phone: (850)473-0277 Occupations (Current/Last Known is Listed First) Business: CREATIONS SCIENCE EVANL, Job Title:, Phone: 850 Entered: 08/15/2002
At first I was willing to give Hovind the benefit of the doubt and assume he was trying to evict some bad tenants. But there is some speculation over just what the altercation was really about. Over at the Internet Infidels forum, "Skydancer" noticed that the two victims, Trudy Owen & Christopher Kenui, have different last names. Perhaps Kent Hovind had discovered to his horror that he was renting to people who were living in sin. Meanwhile "Anapsid" found that the address where the incident occurred is not listed as being owned by Kent Hovind, although he does own some property in the area, both in his name directly and as trustee of the "Faith Fellowship Baptist Church". Curious.
I LOVE IT!I read this stuff all the time when I am standing in line at the local grocery store.
... Discovery Of The Oldest Human Ancestor Is (again) Called Into Question. Who'da thunk?
That story is a curious one. It seems this physiologist, Joseph Mastropaolo, who's an adjunct professor at the young-earth ICR, is a member of the American Physiology Society. So he gets to present a paper at their upcoming meeting. In this presentation he compares a couple toe bones from a 5.4 mya Ardipithecus kadabba to that of a modern human, a modern chimp, and a modern baboon, and he finds that there's hardly any similarity at all between Ardipithecus and humans, chimps, or baboons. From this he concludes: "Accordingly, the objective ancestry analyses for fossil bones assert that the conclusions of Haile-Salassie and Robinson were farfetched speculations."
As I commented here:
Whoa, what's up with THAT???I think the APS got snookered on this one. First off, the press release describes Joseph Mastropaolo, PhD. as "a leading physiologist and an authority on the study of fossils." Well, as "Charlie D" points out at the ARN discussion forum,
A quick search for Dr. Mastropaolo reveals he is Professor Emeritus in Physical Education (since 1994) at Cal State Long Beach. His latest published works:Mastropaolo's CV page at the ICR website does list 23 published papers. After a 7-year hiatus from 1992 to 1999, Mastropaolo started writing creationist polemics for creationist publications - five in all. This leaves 19 actual scientific papers. Six of these are from before 1970, leaving 13. Most of the later papers seem to relate to the Gossamer human-powered flight project and to work with NASA on the effects of exercise on counteracting the harmful effects of extended weightlessness.
Eur J Appl Physiol Occup Physiol 1992;65(5):415-20 A test of the maximum-power stimulus theory for strength. deals with weight-lifting.
J Appl Physiol. 1991;71(1):372-4T. Training-induced muscle enlargement. Self-explanatory, I guess.
Previous to these, he doesn't seem to have published anything in Pubmed-reviewed journals since 1972: J Am Diet Assoc 1972 Oct;61(4):399-403. Exercise, dietary intake, and body composition. Johnson RE, Mastropaolo JA, Wharton MA.
No evidence of any study whatsoever on fossils, at least since 1970 (Pubmed limit, he has 4 published papers, total).
Judging from his recent The Maximum-Power Stimulus Theory For Muscle, Mastropaolo seems (to my non-specialist eyes) to be competent enough in his specialty, human physiology & endurance. But his anti-evolutionist arguments are as bad as any I've seen. Strawmen. Impossible odds. "Indocrination with occult propaganda." This seems to be a cautionary tale about scientists who go off half-cocked in areas outside their specialization, or maybe Mastropaolo is just experiencing the effects of Post-Cognitive-Dissonance syndrome (PCD).
But enough ad-hominem. Let's look at his arguments:
Talk.Origins has this to say about Ardipithecus ramidus:
From the APS press release and the Talk.Origins description, it looks like the relationship between Ardipithecus and humans was made by examining the teeth, and maybe other parts of the skull. The toe, which Mastropaolo examines and the press release doesn't mention, was found to be "a few hundred thousand years" younger than the other Ardipithecus bones. This description from archaeologyinfo.com mentions some of the evidence linking Ardipithecus to Australopithecus:This species was named in September 1994 (White et al. 1994; Wood 1994). It was originally dated at 4.4 million years, but has since been discovered to far back as 5.8 million years. Most remains are skull fragments. Indirect evidence suggests that it was possibly bipedal, and that some individuals were about 122 cm (4'0") tall. The teeth are intermediate between those of earlier apes and A. afarensis, but one baby tooth is very primitive, resembling a chimpanzee tooth more than any other known hominid tooth. Other fossils found with ramidus indicate that it may have been a forest dweller. This may cause revision of current theories about why hominids became bipedal, which often link bipedalism with a move to a savannah environment. (White and his colleagues have since discovered a ramidus skeleton which is about 45% complete, but have not yet published on it.)
More recently, a number of fragmentary fossils discovered between 1997 and 2001, and dating from 5.2 to 5.8 million years old, have been assigned to a new subspecies, Ardipithecus ramidus kadabba (Haile-Selassie 2001). One of these fossils is a toe bone belonging to a bipedal creature, but is a few hundred thousand years younger than the rest of the fossils and so its identification with ramidus is not as firm as the other fossils.
Much of the dentition is ape-like and this hominid most likely had a significantly different dietary niche than did later hominids. A small canine-incisor to postcanine dental ratio, typical of all other known hominids, is strikingly absent in Ardipithecus ramidus. In addition to the presence of a relatively large anterior dentition, tooth enamel is thin. Though slightly greater than in teeth of modern chimpanzees, enamel thickness of A. ramidus is extremely thin by hominid standards.In other words, Ardipithecus is thought to be related to Australopithecus because of the dental ratios and by the cranial shape. So of course Mastropaolo focuses on the toe. In doing so, he finds that the toe is very dissimilar to both modern human, modern chimpanzee, and modern baboon toe bones. And he concludes that Ardipithecus' relation to humans is thus a "farfetched speculation".Premolar and molar morphology also point to niche affinities with the great ape ancestors. Strong crown asymmetries, in particular enlarged buccal cusps, characterize the upper and lower premolars. Additionally, an ape-like molar shape prevails. The length (in the mesiodistal plane) to breadth (in the buccolingual plane) ratio, which is roughly equal to 1 in later hominids, is much greater in A. ramidus.
Some important derived features, link Ardipithecus ramidus with the Australopithecines. Hominid-like canines are present. These are low, blunt, and less projecting than the canines of all other known apes. Upper and lower incisors are larger than those of the Australopithecines, but are smaller than those of chimpanzees. This character state can thus be considered transitional between apes and Australopithecines. Additionally, the lower molars are broader than those of a comparably-sized ape. This trait, too, approaches the common hominid condition.
Finally, something can be said of the skeletal anatomy and how it relates to the potentiality for bipedalism in A. ramidus. Pieces of the cranial bones that have been recovered, including parts of the temporal and the occipital, strongly indicate an anterior positioned foramen magnum. The fact that the skull of A. ramidus rested atop the vertebral column, rather than in front of it, suggests that if this creature was not bipedal in the modern sense, it at least had key adaptations toward a similar end.
Well, OK. I have no idea if the shape of the toe is likely to be helpful for a bipedal animal or not. So it's an interesting finding, I guess. But the conclusion focuses on a non-essential diagnostic feature to disprove relatedness of Ardipithecus to Australopithecus. It would be somewhat better if Mastropaolo compared the Ardipithecus toe bone with that of an Australopithecus afarensis (for which there are toe bones available) and a fossil pre-chimp. But still, there are those pesky teeth & the cranium that are clearly related to Australopithecus.
The tactic of focusing on a single anomalous feature and ignoring the bulk of the evidence is a part of standard creationist methodology. But of course it's a dishonest leap to take. I think the American Physiological Society should be embarrassed to allow Mastropaolo to make this presentation.
Game, Set, and Match to "jennyp."
Do you ever leave a thread without the words "lie", "lies", or "liar" in it?
Does your religion tell you to insult people or is this your own idea?
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