Newfound Dinosaur a Transitional Creature

Las Vegas Sun (AP) ^ | May 04, 2005 | Malcolm Ritter

[MeanWestTexan]

Caught in the act of evolution, the odd-looking, feathered dinosaur was becoming more vegetarian, moving away from its meat-eating ancestors.

It had the built-for-speed legs of meat-eaters, but was developing the bigger belly of plant-eaters. It had already lost the serrated teeth needed for tearing flesh. Those were replaced with the smaller, duller vegetarian variety.

[narby]

It's not quite as clear cut as you maintain.

So you throw everything out because it is not to your judgment of perfection?

[gobucks]

bump that scripture!!

[js1138]

It's not quite as clear cut as you maintain.

Have you ever taken up genealogy? If you go back more than three generations and try to find all your ancestors, not just your paternal lineage, you run into gaps. If you cannot trace your ancestry back ten generations with certainty, how can you expect paleontologists to trace ancestries back millions of generations without error?

Like any genealogy, it's a work in progress.

[PatrickHenry]

If you cannot trace your ancestry back ten generations with certainty ...

All gaps in my genealogy are obviously occasions when one of my ancestors coupled with a god.

[js1138]

Mine too, but they regretted it the next morning.

[Elsie]

I have stopped beating matchless-pi

[Elsie]

J.T. Barnum recounts.. "a sucker is born every minute"

You realize, of course, that quote is falsely attributed to P.T. Barnum. He didn't say that.

 

well..........

 

just who WAS it then???

 

JT  or PT?????

 

or maybe ET??

[hosepipe]

[ You realize, of course, that quote is falsely attributed to P.T. Barnum. He didn't say that. ]

Alrighty then...
"A sucker is born every minute" -Bwahny Fwank...

[Liberal Classic]

well..........

just who WAS it then???

JT or PT?????

or maybe ET??

I can't tell if you're being incredulous as usual or really wanting a reply. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and make a stab at a serious answer.

I overlooked "J.T." as simply being a typo or honest mistake. Everyone's heard of Phineas Taylor Barnum. The words "There's a sucker born every minute" were not uttered by Barnum, though, but a man named David Hannum. Both Barnum and Hannum were hoaxed by a man named George Hull. Hull had a sculptor carve a giant out stone and buried it on an accomplice's farm. When Hull read in the newspaper about a local archaeological discovery, he ordered his accomplice to "discover" the petrified giant. Soon the "Cardiff Giant" as it came to be known was big news, and thousands came to see it for fifty cents per head. Hull was then able to sell a partial interest in it to Hannum for something like $30,000 which was in the 1860s a very large sum of money. Barnum wanted to buy it from Hannum, offering $50,000 (an even more astronomical sum) but Hannum refused. Barnum, in turn, requisitioned a giant of his own, and floated rumors to the press that Hannum had sold it, and that Hannum now had a fake copy. Hannum sued Barnum in court, when it came out that Hull had orchestrated the hoax from the beginning. The judge ruled that because Hannum's statue really was a fake, Barnum could not be held liable for slander.

Now, back to the subject at hand. I wish that when people have been shown a quote they're repeating is falsely attributed or taken out of context, that they'd be honest enough to admit the error. However, like the false Barnum quote, citations often take on a life of their own, and they get repeated and repeated over and over again. Spreading a falsified or quote ripped out a context can be an honest mistake. It happens if you don't check your attributions or go back to the original sources. However, it is when people continue to stand behind such falsified quotes despite having been shown the error, that I begin to doubt their honesty.

[Elsie]

I can't tell if you're being incredulous as usual...

Merely responding to things seen on the screen; intending, perhaps, to put a bit of levity into a thread that has turned a bit vitriolic; as usual.....

---

Yours is a good reply, as you admit an error and also correct it.

Sure, I could have GOOGLED and found what was the truth of the 'quote', but to me, at the time, it was inconsquential.

Please do not take my SILENCE on a matter in this thread as either agreeing OR disagreeing with what ever topic is being argued, fussed over or disputed.

If what I type, using ordinary standards of English, is unfathomable, merely say so. Don't (like some on this thread have tried) analyze things NOT typed, to put a spin on it.

[MEGoody]

"For the same reason I can take a photograph at Disneyworld and see a human being in every stage of life, even though birth to death takes, on average, 75 years."

However, if we were not able to observe infants growing into adults and so forth, there's no telling what kinds of assumptions one might make about looking at your picture.

You haven't caught the child in the act of growing up. You took a picture at a point in time and extrapolated that the child would one day get bigger like one of those adults in the picture.

[dread78645]

P.T. BarnumDidit (or did he?)

[webstersII]

"No, I was referring to the 1st time, not the second. "

I don't have a clue what you are talking about here.

Suffice it to say that you might have meant something else about beliefs in the 2nd Coming but what you wrote didn't reflect that.

[MeanWestTexan]

No, I was referring to the 1st Coming, not the Second.

I am sorry you became confused.

[SunkenCiv]

GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach	join list or digest view topics view or post blog bookmark post a topic subscribe
Thanks MeanWestTexan. Note: this topic is dated 5/04/2005. Blast from the Past. Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.