Allan vs. Cherry Picking

Usually how this works is I'll pull a topic out of whatever the paper has the most retarded headline for. No such luck today. I mean I've got, "28 indicted for ties to gang violence in Md.", "Buried streams pose bay risk ", and "Harford couple charged in boy's starvation plead guilty".

So yeah, it's a pretty depressing news day. I couldn't even make a good title for today's entry. Cherry Picking, what the hell is that supposed to mean?

Soooo, uhhh......Jurassic Park was awesome. Still is. One of the Sun's bloggers was talking about it today and it got me all misty eyed. Predictably, it also incited my always fun boredom cure, Wikipedia.

The thing about Wikipedia is that for pretty much every article, there's a criticism/controversy section within it. For ex. until I actually looked it up on Wikipedia, I didn't know that the main controversy against plums, is that they rape people. All the time, who knew? So of course it was no surprise to me that a movie, (and stay with me here) about cloning dinosaurs, had a criticism section.

Now normally, I camp in the live and let live campgrounds. But Jurassic Park was almost like if "The French Connection" and "King Kong" started dry humping, and decided to go for it. It's pretty much the best thing to happen to my eyeballs since rods and cones. So I felt a little bit of a need to defend it.

Criticism #1

"The routines of palaeontology are presented incorrectly in the movie right from the start. There they are, brushing the dirt away from a complete, articulated skeleton of Velociraptor. If only it were this easy to dig up dinosaurs! (SCOFF! *adjusts glasses*) I have never seen an excavation where dirt is simply brushed away from the fossils. Usually the entombing sediment has consolidated into rock that has to be chiseled, hammered or blah, blah, blaaaah blah blah.."

Response #1

Huh huh, did you see the "scoff" and glasses adjust I added in to make him seem more dorky? Of course you did. I also added the blahs, because that shit wasn't fun to read!! Nor would a bunch of guys in baseball caps with t-shirts wrapped around them be fun to watch *tinka tinking* on a Dino skeleton. It's Jurassic Park for crying out loud, who cares?!


Criticism #2

"The amber from which the Dino DNA was extracted in the movie came from the Dominican Republic. In a real Dominican Republic amber mine, you can't stand upright; the shafts are so narrow the miners have to crawl."

Response #2

Usually comments like this I wouldn't even dignify with a response, since the source has obviously beyond question, spent a lengthy amount of time in an amber mine.


You're dumb.


Criticism #3

"The Brachiosaurus had too large a head, probably could not stand up on hind legs only (was too front-heavy; other sauropods could rear up for feeding or defense with more ease), sneezing is also doubtful, because this diaphragm reflex is typically mammalian."

Response #3

I disagree. When that dinosaur sneezed on that girl, it was hilarious. They could probably do that.


Criticism #4

"The Dilophosaurus was probably not endowed with neck frill (borrowed from Australian frilled lizard) nor could spit venomous saliva (though its bite could have been poisonous due to bacteria developing in rotting meat in theropoddental serrations; bacterial toxins help the Komodo dragon in killing their prey). "

Response #4

This is just outright heresy. I remember that one time when I met one, and you weren't there, a while ago, Steve was there, and they totally had those neck thingys. Even shot at me, but we had been drinking, so I think he was just trying to impress some chick he saw on the dance floor.


Criticism #5

"The 'raptors' snarled several times, and even lifted their lips in a snarl when angry. Theropods didn't have a lot of face muscles and this is actually a very sophisticated movement in a human, taking an extremely complex series of muscle movements that there is no evidence of dromasaurids being able to do."

Response #5

Yeah, that one might be a bit true. But come on, when those guys snarled, you were like, "oh snap! those things mean even more business than I originally thought they meant! WTFMate?" At least I did.


Critcism #6

"R. McNeill Alexander has argued previously that T. rex's leg bones were neither thick enough or strong enough to support a full grown animal running faster than 18 mph. Recently, James Farlow has argued that running at high speed (such as would be required to chase a jeep) would put T. rex at great risk of mortal injury if it fell. This arguement is based on the physics of falling at 45 mph -- the head dropping 11 feet to the ground and decelerating on impact with a force of 16 g."

Response #6

Yeah? Well Bruce Willis also walked on glass in one of the Die Hard's. It probably caused him a bit of mortal injury, blood loss, basic glass in your foot syndrome. Why'd he do it? Because he knew it would look cool, which is also the same reason the T-Rex made that high speed chase. Also if he probably didn't wanna get punked by a Jeep of all things. At least he tried.


In the end though, I feel for the guy. I mean, if someone started using advertising terms incorrectly because they saw it on TV, I might say something. It's not that big of a deal. But it's an even bigger, not that big of a deal, when you study stuff that no one really cares about, unless of course it's eating a lawyer off the shitter.

Link: http://people.hofstra.edu/J_B_Bennington/publications/JPerrors.html

My other blog is a LiveJournal (and it blew)

Ok, so here's a fresh new start. I feel like a spin-off TV show, or if Cheers got a new bar to use in stead of the usual one. I can make funnier comments on the side, and throw out links to my friend's blogs (i.e. Kara and her vast, vast knowledge of Saved By The Bell episodes).

Anyways, let's get into it.

The front-page story over at the Baltimore Sun's website was this, "Some bills, take the cake", and there was a picture of a delicious looking cake. Already, my interest was piqued. After reading the article over twice, (two times as the pain from my jaw dropping, clouded my ability to take it all in once) it more or less told me that a session of state legislature was being devoted, almost entirely, to naming a new state cake.

That’s a bit of an exaggeration, there were other items as well, but a cake? Really? We really need a state cake? So if we choose a seven layer chocolate cake, and Delaware chooses a German Chocolate cake, we get to make fun of them for having a cake that no one likes? Does it go on the billboards over the state lines? "Martin O'Malley, Governor of Maryland. Come for our crabs, stay for our superior cake."

Also on the agenda was to name "walking" as the official state exercise, which I guess goes hand in hand with the whole state cake idea. If chosen, walking will replace the previous state exercise of "not giving a shit that we had a state exercise." I was always pretty good at that.

By the end of the article, I was at least hoping for some sort of justification for spending an entire day eating cake, and state exercising around the office. I got this.

"Like any good politician, Del. William A. Bronrott offered a politically expedient reason to support both the walking bill he sponsored and the dessert measure. "You can have your cake and eat it, too," the Montgomery County Democrat said, eliciting a round of applause from fellow lawmakers." - Baltimoresun.com

Those assholes just wanted to eat cake all day, and then rub it in our faces. And why do they get to vote on state symbols, and related agendas? What if Jon Naysayer (read: author of this blog) from Essex (it's a secret!) doesn't like Smith Island cake?

What we should do is take a statewide poll for all these ridiculous ideas. Keep the cool stuff, like Oriole birds, Jousting, and Crabs, but leave the rest of it up to us, Marylanders.

This way, if we want to look like assholes, we can do it on our own time, and not our taxes. If we want the state burrito to be the Home Wrecker from Moe's, then fine. If we feel that the state T.V. show should the episode of Arrested Development where they build a fake house, awesome. Shit, if we wanna make the state color of copy paper, golden rod, let's do it! But do it on our time, not on yours.