> I found the following on James T. Hogan's (the science fiction author)
> website. I'm kinda gratified that he addresses a subject that I brought
> up (and was subsequently shot down on) some months ago. However...his
> questions are intriquing...and he's NOT just a truckdriver.
Being a truck driver requires a basic understanding of physics lest one flatten fellow travellers. You're right, this Hogan is no truck driver; he doesn't have that much understanding.
The calculations of required muscle mass for dinosaurs have been done many times, and they work out just fine. To contend otherwise requires willful ignorance or outright dishonesty. I especially like the argument that "no evidence exists for the high-pressure circulation system...", in the same paragraph with the statement that "they are all digestive system." Soft tissue does not fossilize; the evidence for one is exactly the same as the evidence for the other: inference. Honesty requires that if you reject one of these hypotheses, you must reject both. To accept slim evidence that supports your point while rejecting equal or stronger evidence that does not is the same basic dishonesty of all creationists, medical quacks, and other crackpots like Velikovsky.
Here's an experiment: he states at the end of the paragraph that "more information on this is welcome...". Send him some that disproves his point (the /real/ muscle mass calculations, for example). I'll bet you a day's pay it won't be so welcome that he'll post it next to his piece, or remove his piece as refuted.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC