Posted on 05/09/2008 7:00:06 PM PDT by DesScorp
It wasn't the dinosaurs' fault the asteroid hit them. Okay, let's back up a bit.
I am alluding to an hypothesis, first advanced by Luis Alvarez and son, that a large asteroid hit the earth, causing the mass die-off of dinosaur and many other species, at what we used to call "the K-T boundary" (the end of the Cretaceous geological period) about 65 million years ago. This was proposed in 1980, and given apparent confirmation by the discovery of traces of a huge impact crater in the Yucatan around 1990. It then quickly became Al-Gorey "settled science" - before being challenged with increasing confidence from many different angles.
I have no axe to grind on that one. Really. I'm just using it as a metaphor.
It wasn't the newspaper's fault that it was hit first by radio, then by television, then by the massive and continuing sub-literacy engendered by "progressive" education reforms, and finally by the Internet. I doubt even cockroaches could survive being successively hit by four asteroids.
Back to the dinosaurs. While it might easily be imagined that they were helped to extinction, it might also be imagined, even surmised, that various dinosaur species contributed materially to their own eclipse, if, as the Darwinists suggest, they were too big and stupid to compete. I don't buy this, myself, but my reader is always welcome to accept any hypothesis that is superficially plausible, even if I think it is, like Darwinism itself, unnecessarily big and stupid.
Like many other things, evolution happens, and the fact that it has happened is beyond human remedy. There is (for better or worse) no magic wand that will restore the age of the dinosaurs, or turn back the clock to the heyday of newspapers a century ago.
(Excerpt) Read more at canada.com ...
Well, considering the last batch I saw laid off, personally, were not lefties...no, I don’t take joy in peoples’ suffering. And you?
“Well, considering the last batch I saw laid off, personally, were not lefties...no, I don’t take joy in peoples’ suffering. And you?”
The vast majority of professional media staff... 90 percent by the last survey... identifies themselves as Democrats. That has slanted the US media for far too long. So I’m sorry that your friends got sacked, but they were the exception to the rule, and even if it causes a lot of pain, yes, I do look forward to that industry imploding, and maybe, just maybe, something will come out of it a little more consumer friendly.
Craigslist and Ebay have killed all the revenue from Classified Ads.
Imma lovin’ it!
OH ABB here another one LOL!
OH ABB here another one LOL!
OH ABB here another one LOL!
Well, I would like to see a few newspapers stay in business, so I’ll have something to put in the birdcage. Usually I give my parrot full-color ads, figuring that he’ll find them interesting. If he’s a good boy, I give him the sports section! But I make a point NEVER to put the editorial pages in the cage; looking at those might be bad for his mental health.
Oh! I am.
....of course...the (Liberal) Newspapers, are going to try to "justify" their (own) importance in society, by "pointing out the 'unfairness' of American Society"....and "demanding" the public, pay for their Leftist Propaganda and honor them b/c of their "love" of (press) our many freedom(s)...
they seem; to have forgotten, the founders/framers of the U.S. Constitution, seem believe in a *grasp* REAL FREE PRESS....not like, the Monolithic MSM (NYT/WaPo/ABCNNBcBS/pBS), we have now and have a level "playing field" filled w/ a real discussion of issues....not the liberal pabulum of the last 50 years.
Does immediately bring to mind the left-wing MSM. But back to the dinosaurs. I once heard on a dino documentary dino expert Bob Baker say about the long-necked Brontosaurus type dinosaurs, that they might have actually benefited by having smaller brains, because with smaller brains they could rear up on their hind legs and reach the higher parts of trees, where apparently the leaves are more nutritious. The reason they couldn't rear up with larger brains, he said, was that the pressure needed to pump the extra amount of blood required for a larger brain that high up would have been off the scale, and when they came back down again the rush would have been so great that it would have blown their little heads off. He called these types of critters, "Darwinian morons'.
Let me see the cite for that.
“The vast majority of professional media staff... 90 percent by the last survey... identifies themselves as Democrats.”
It’s funny, but the liberals have complained for years about the press being controlled by corporations, which are by their nature (they say) conservative.
I think it is fair to say that any large capitalistic enterprise is going to be reluctant to do anything that will offend a large portion of its customers, be they liberal or conservative. That’s why the MSM has shied away from printing controversial stories.
As far as analyses of media bias go, I think it is difficult to ascertain with any precision. I thought these remarks from Wikipedia were helpful.
“A major problem in studies is experimenter bias. Research into studies of media bias in the United States shows that Liberal experimenters tend to get results that say the media has a conservative bias, while conservatives experimenters tend to get results that say the media has a liberal bias, and those who do not identify themselves as either liberal or conservative get results indicating little bias, or mixed bias. This same problem with experimenter bias extends to the studies of experimenter bias, of course. [3] [4] [5] Whether bias is toward the left or the right depends on where you stand.” wikipedia
I don’t think sharks even have a brain, and look how long they’ve been around.
"Fish typically have quite small brains relative to body size when compared with other vertebrates, typically one-fifteenth the mass of the brain from a similarly sized bird or mammal.[16] However, some fish have relatively large brains, most notably mormyrids and sharks, which have brains of about as massive relative to body weight as birds and marsupials.[17]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish#Sensory_and_nervous_system
"Sharks have relatively large brains when compared with other classes of animals."
http://www.sharkinfo.ch/SI3_99e/noses.html
It turns out that the brains of at least some sharks are surprisingly large and complex. Numerous popular writers have characterized the brain of a full-grown White Shark as being about the size of a walnut. While this description creates a vivid mental image, it is inaccurate and highly misleading. In truth, this includes only one part of the White Shark brain, the cerebrum. The complete brain of an adult, 16-foot (5-metre) White Shark is Y-shaped and — from scent-detecting bulbs to brainstem — measures about 2 feet (60 centimetres) long.
http://www.elasmo-research.org/education/white_shark/structure_brain.htm
Thank you for the response, and the detailed information.
It does bring a point to mind, which is what I was shooting for.
The size of the brain doesn’t matter.
That dinosaurs, specifically the ones in the article, had smaller brains due to the physics of their body structure, doesn’t mean they weren’t smart.
I don’t think sharks even have a brain, and look how long they’ve been around.
“Newspapers are now editorially staffed, overwhelmingly, by members of this one class, who think and sound like sociology majors, and express themselves in a jargon stream of pompous, preachy, preening, vaguely leftist and reptilian drivel.”
Well stated.
There’s no doubt in my mind that much of what is in the MSM reporting has a liberal bias. However, that doesn’t mean that “90 percent of professional media staff self-identify as Democrats,” for example.
Conservative newspapers are dying off faster than liberal ones.
An awful lot of humans have been accused of having no brains at all.
Do you know how to tell a democratic politician from a shark?
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