Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site rtp47.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!mcnc!rti-sel!rtp47!throopw From: throopw@rtp47.UUCP (Wayne Throop) Newsgroups: net.origins Subject: Re: more on dinosaurs and load-bearing Message-ID: <181@rtp47.UUCP> Date: Mon, 9-Sep-85 19:59:13 EDT Article-I.D.: rtp47.181 Posted: Mon Sep 9 19:59:13 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 12-Sep-85 23:31:52 EDT References: <391@imsvax.UUCP> Organization: Data General, RTP, NC Lines: 94 > There are several points I didn't even bother to mention because I > thought they would occur to anyone who thought about it. These are: > > 1. The HUMAN leg being the more efficient, as demonstrated. No such thing was demonstrated. The argument from above was totally bogus. Your "demonstration" is separable into several points, several of which are incorrect. I'll include this "demonstration" here. First: > The notion that the dinosaurs thighs were more efficient than > Kazmier's is simply wrong by a very wide margin. I see. You have measured Sauropod muscle efficency often then? > The thigh muscles in the human would be pulling fairly straight, while > the outer layers of muscle in the disproportionately much wider thigh > of the sauropod would not only be pulling at a vector angle, they > would be pulling THROUGH the inner layers of muscle i.e. the different > layers of muscle in such a wide limb would get in eachother's way. Rubbish. You are totally ignoring leverage advantage. Also, muscle fibers are always aligned along the direction of tension, thus they *never* "pull at an angle", in *any* animal, man and Sauropod alike. You *have* seen anatomical diagrams and dissections of reptillian and mamallian muscle tissue? > Try thinking these things through logically, Mike, instead of making > up or looking up "facts". Your mind, if properly used, is a better > reference than many textbooks. I mean, the Lord designed your mind; > the guy who wrote that textbook you're quoting from, like as not, was > someone as ill informed as you. Try thinking these things through logically, Ted, instead of making up "facts". Your mind, if properly used, is a better reference than many textbooks, but Nature evolved your mind, and thus your mind is just as fallable as any professor's (if not more so). I might also point out that the Aristotalian notion that True Knowlege is only obtainable through reason, with no recourse to measurement or observation of the real world is somewhat out of date today, for good reason. > 2. The fact that I was comparing what the human could lift when fully > warmed up to the load the sauropod must face when getting up after a > nap, totally cold. And a comparison of human muscular efficency with Sauropod muscular efficency is totally bogus in any event. > 3. The fact that I was comparing what the human could SQUAT to the load > the sauropod must lift OFF THE GROUND. Yep. And you were assuming that the human and Sauropod skeleton gave the same leverage in each case, which is clearly incorrect. > 4. The fact that the constant K itself would not be as high for the > sauropod as for the maximally trained human athlete. This isn't a supporting point. This simply follows from other points, all of which are incorrect. Thus, it itself is quite suspect. > Like I say, rather than throw all of this at the good readers on the > net, I went with the case in which ALL assumptions favored the sauropod, > and he still never made it. As pointed out above, not *all* your assumptions favored the Sauropod. Leverage of the limb is the major one where you are incorrect, along with the mis-application of the square-cube scaling factor, and the assumption that human muscles are as strong as any that exist. > Nonetheless, if I kept my back and legs straight, and two of these > friends were kind enough to put a bar with five or six hundred pounds on > it on my shoulders, I could stand with it; the bones would not break. > Mr. Alexander would no doubt then conclude that I could function quite > well at 700 or 800 lbs (my 200 plus the bar). Are you actually asserting that a (for example) 1000lb man couldn't "function quite well"? If so, and you are right, I suppose you had better let the Guiness Book of World Records know right away. Thay have a fraud... a man who survived and "prospered" while weighing somewhat more than that. Of course, he was supposed to have crashed through the floor of his house, but he was walking around in it until then. > I've been out of academia for a number of years now. It could very well > be that this kind of thing is now called "SCHOLARLY RESEARCH" at UCLA > these days; I don't know. Out here in the real world where I live, > however, this is called "LYING WITH FIGURES". I see. You mean something like ignoring leverage, and assuming that human muscle tissue is as strong as muscle tissue can be, and things like that? -- Wayne Throop at Data General, RTP, NC !mcnc!rti-sel!rtp47!throopw