Organization: Iowa State University
From: danwell@IASTATE.EDU (Daniel A Ashlock)
Message-ID: <1994Jan3.140830@iastate.edu>
Reply-To: danwell@IASTATE.EDU (Daniel A Ashlock)
Newsgroups: talk.origins

Greetings erstwhile friends and vile enemies.  I'm back from the
abyss (a 200-person lecture section of business flunk-out math,
a grant proposal, and two papers, all of which happened in the
same semester).  At some point remind me to post a diatribe about
creationism being in part a logical consequence of lunchmeat large
lecture sections of introductory classes.  On to business.

        Dinosaurs by Design, by Duane Gish Ph.D. ([Ph]unky [D]ude?)

Is a book by that fun-loving, fact-bending, liar-for-God, Duane Gish.
He states his qualifications right on the cover; he has a PhD, so he
can write a text book about anything, right?  In any case not only
is this book reviewed in the current edition of the Skeptical
Inquirer but I SAW A COPY OVER CHRISTMAS.

I agree with the S.I. review, the book is a bit too simple for it's
intended target audience, junior high and high school students, and
the pictures are excellent.  I also suspect that Mr. Gish has never
studied Marxisim.  Had he done so he would have had the brains _not_
to sell us the rope we will hang him with.  The parts of the book I
skimmed were a travesty.  The S.I. reprint of the picture of Saint
George battling it out with a disosaur is sort of mind bending.
My personal favorite was the following piece of logic (I didn't
xerox so this is my paraphrase):

(roughly)
   If one pictures a 40 ton dinosaur in conflict with a tiny mammal
   it is hard to picture how the dinosaur could have lost the struggle
   for it's life.

In my book this is right up there with the Gish quote about how the
polar bear's white fur couldn't possibly be adaptive because there
is nothing it needs to hide from.  I will leave the nit picking about
the advantages of large size, direct confrontation as the only means
of competition, that pesky irridium layer, and other such minor
details to others on the group.

The sad part is that DbD was at my sister-in-law's house where she
home schools her three children so they won't be "corrupted" by the
public school system.  The only ray of hope was my brother-in-law
cringing in pain when one of his kids handed me the book.  He's
starting to clue...

--
(Uncle) Dan
danwell@iastate.edu
"The will to be stupid is very strong"
-Leutenant Lord Miles Vorkosigan.