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Ask Slashdot: How Do I Explain That Humans Didn't Ride Dinosaurs?
p00kiethebear writes "I have a wonderful and beautiful girlfriend who treats me right in every way. We've been together for almost a year now and everything seemed to be going perfectly until this morning. Over breakfast we were discussing dinosaurs and she told me a story about how her grandfather, fifty years ago, dated footprints of a dinosaurs and a man that were right next to each other to be within the same epoch of history. I laughed when she said this and then realized that she wasn't joking. She believes dinosaurs and humans walked at the same time together. The odd thing is that she's not religious, it's just what her archaeologist grandfather taught her. More important than just backing up evidence to the contrary, how do I explain this to her without crushing her childhood dreams? Is it even worth discussing it further with her?"
Yes, I'm serious. Really this is one of the fundamental flaws in geeks. Do not fuck up a relationship making your girlfriend feel bad over something that happened 165 million years ago. I know the geek think is: "This is a gateway problem that leads to the entirety of all mystical belief and ruins the world." Shitcan that garbage, now!
A person's religion is rarely entirely from the church, it's a blend things they've heard and want to believe and things their parents believed in addition to church input. Don't treat this any differently than arguing against any other "invisible man in the sky who rights all wrongs and gives us eternal life for being nice people and giving money to the church" belief system.
Let it go. If (and only if) she asks for your help, take her to some museums and do research *with* her and let the overwhelming body of scientific evidence change her mind, not the guy who wants to take her shirt off. If science is not at risk of losing that capability.
You have been warned!
"Is it even worth discussing it further with her?"
No.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Why do I even bother to come to Slashdot on April first?
It's sad that things are so stupid in the US right now that I can't tell if this story is fake or not.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
In Russia, dinosaur rides YOU.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Can we PLEASE dispense with the silly encryption bullshit? If I wanted something that was impossible to read, I'd go to FOXNEWS
Wow, you really can find porn of anything on the Internet.
I heard they discovered a lesbian dinosaur. They named it Lickalotopus.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
She's got to be talking about Paluxy.
http://paleo.cc/paluxy/tsite.htm
You need to recognize that your own knowledge of the past is at least as bad as hers (if you didn't already know about Paluxy) so that you won't come across to her as some kind of paternally condescending authority figure. That's bad for your love life!
And you know, if her grandfather was involved in the discovery or documentation of Paluxy, that's awesome and you should celebrate that. Take her to the site! The two of you can look at the actual real life data personally and come to some sort of conclusion together. That would be a lot less stupid than fostering discord because "my authority figures contradict your authority figures" which is what you are looking at doing right now. Have you seen the tracks? I think not, so her opinion (which was possibly passed from a person who actually saw them) is at least as valid as your hearsay beliefs.
Most likely, when you both visit the site, you will find that one or the other explanation is more likely, and you'll both benefit regardless of who is right. Real Science is Fun.
And it's male counterpart Rompasaurass
I got here through a series of tubes
Brontosaurus.
What else did they lie to us about?
The Flinstones was a thinly veiled documentary...and I really could go for a Sonic Brontoburger
I thought it was Megasoreass.
I have a wonderful and beautiful girlfriend who treats me right in every way
This part is a April's Fool day prank.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
1) Jesus was a carpenter.
2) Carpenters build ladders.
3) You need a ladder to get into the saddle of a dinosaur.
It's scientrific!
He might have first-hand knowledge.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
"The odd thing is that she's not religious, it's just what her archaeologist grandfather taught her." ...so it sounds like she's just repeating what she was told as a child.. not the church or religion. I don't see a problem correcting someone who was misinformed.
"crushing her childhood dreams" ...just tell her she mis-remembered (she was a kid afterall). It wasn't dinosaurs.. it was another (now-extinct) animal that actually did exist the at the same time as ancient humans (we hunted them, so of course there were footprints)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woolly_mammoth
The woolly mammoth coexisted with early humans, who used its bones and tusks for making art, tools, and dwellings. It is thought much of this material was scavenged, but the species was also hunted for food. It disappeared from its mainland range at the end of the Pleistocene 10,000 years ago, most likely through a combination of climate change, consequent disappearance of its habitat, and hunting by humans, though the significance of these factors is disputed.
or just point her at this: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/paluxy.html (beware: it does mention creationism... you don't want to accuse her of being that)... basically it says the "mantracks" are actually those of a 3-toed dino, but the toe part eroded leaving what looks like feet.
whatever you, make sure you block this at your proxy http://creationmuseum.org/
Jesus only rode the mightiest of dinosaurs. Don't be sacrilegious.
This is the essentially the right answer. Your girlfriend is going to be wrong about a lot of things, because each of us is wrong about a lot of things. Many of them will are so incredibly inconsequential and irrelevant that it's not worth wasting your breath, and I'd suggest this is one of them. Because really, in the entire scope of things, facts about dinosaurs hardly matter. They won't change your day to day behavior.
Pick your battles. Over the span of your relationship, your girlfriend will be wrong about a lot of things, and so will you. Instead of thinking it's your job to make sure your girlfriend is correct in all her beliefs, you should decide that there are some times when you'll let it go. I'm sure there will be times when she's convinced that you're wrong, and you wish she'd just let it go. And believe it or not, sometimes it might be worth backing her up even when she's wrong, just because you have her back.
(I don't mean "you have her back" in a dirty way, though there's that too.)
Heh. Some years back, I saw a video of a person "riding a dinosaur". It wasn't faked. The person was riding a (tame) ostrich, and since the birds were (finally) reclassified as a branch of the dinosaurs back in the 1980s, it qualifies.
Actually, I have a dinosaur sitting on my chest, trying to get my attention, as I type this. Her name is Lydia, and she's a blue-crowned conure. She's a really cute little flying dinosaur, of the parrot branch. I have a nice picture of her after she took a bath, and had a spiky "punk" look to her wet feathers, which I use as my avatar on various online forums. She's a bit small for a human to ride, though, weighing in at 185g.
It's too bad that the large dinosaurs were all wiped out 65 million years ago. But that did open the path for our ancestors to develop intelligence, and for the avians to occupy most of the flying niches. Now we can keep members of the few remaining dinosaurs as pets, but only a few are big enough that humans can ride them. Some of the others can make very charming pets for us upstart primates.
It's probably worth noting here that the idea that birds are dinosaurs was suggested by none other than Charles Darwin, along with various of his colleagues. The problem was that birds don't fossilize well, so biologists just said "That's interesting; can you find some good evidence?" It wasn't until the late 1970s that we found pre-KT-disaster bird fossils that verified the connection. So now it's sorta fun to read all the ignorant media comments about the "extinction of the dinosaurs", showing ignorance of the fact that there are roughly 8,000 dinosaur species alive today, about twice the number of mammal species.
(Hmmm ... Maybe I should wait until April 2 to post this. Nah ... ;-)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.