Re: Response to Gould?

[Mike Taylor <mike@tecc.co.uk>]

> Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 22:04:17 -0500
> From: "philidor11" <philidor11@snet.net>
> 
> <I am already having people deride me for calling birds
> "living dinosaurs."  One person just came into my
> office, dropped the magazine on my desk with the page
> turned to Gould's article, and then left in disgust.  Help!>
> 
> Interesting reaction, rejecting bird/dino a priori.  They might be
> assuming the cultural image of dinosaurs as lumbering and extinct.
> Interestingly, livelier dinosaurs are known as part of science, but
> the cultural image is too useful to drop.

Ten years ago, yes.  Now I'd swear the _Jurassic Park_ and its sequel
dominate the popular culture view of dinosaurs so totally that most
laymen -- certainly most children -- would laugh at the "lumbering
dinosaurs" that so dominated perception in the preceding decades.

That said, I admit that I too have problems with Birds Are Dinosaurs.
It's just, it's just ... just ... _wrong_.  Isn't it, though?
(Yes, this is an "artistic" argument, not a scientific one :-)

 _/|_    _______________________________________________________________
/o ) \/  Mike Taylor -- <mirk@mail.org> -- http://www.miketaylor.org.uk/
)_v__/\  "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has
         endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us
         to forgo their use" -- Galileo Galilei