If you’re with a group of friends and looking for something to discuss, here’s an idea. Also, this works particularly well at a restaurant, since it’s about food. You could start the discussion with the premise of, “I heard something unusual and want to get more opinions on it.” Then ask:
“Is a cheeseburger a sandwich?”
Then just sit back and watch… 🙂
It’s obviously a simple question, but it often provokes debate. One could argue that it’s just meat and cheese and toppings between slices of bread, which is what a sandwich is. The counter argument is that it’s grilled food, so it’s not just a sandwich. Also, it just seems wrong to call it a sandwich. They seem like different categories of food.
Someone may argue that a sandwich is made with sliced meat, deli-style, which seems like a valid point. However, many restaurants sell a chicken sandwich which has fried or grilled chicken. If someone claims the chicken sandwich is mislabeled, then ask if it’s a chicken burger. 🙂
FYI, according to an official definition at Britannica, a burger is a sandwich, but feel free to draw your own conclusions.
If the topic was fun to discuss, follow it up with, “Is a hot dog a sandwich?”
Let’s continue the last post about having dinosaurs in my backyard. Supposedly all birds are dinosaurs. Even chickens. So you can say that dinosaurs taste like chicken. 🙂
To consider all birds to be dinosaurs seems crazy to me, but what do I know? So I did an internet search about whether birds are dinosaurs. (Are you ready to go down a rabbit hole filled with dinosaurs? Read on!) Check out this answer to whether birds evolved from dinosaurs or reptiles:
The answer is both, but with a crucial clarification: birds evolved from dinosaurs, which themselves are a subgroup of reptiles. Think of it like this: all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares. Similarly, all birds are dinosaurs (specifically theropod dinosaurs), but not all dinosaurs are birds. And both birds and dinosaurs are within the broader group of reptiles.
So dinosaurs were reptiles, which then became birds. Except not all dinosaurs are birds. And birds are reptiles. Got that?
I’ll admit it’s been a few years since I was in school, but that’s not what I learned. Still, I read on, and saw this on the same page:
The closest living relatives of dinosaurs (excluding birds, which are dinosaurs) are crocodilians (crocodiles, alligators, and gharials). They share a more distant common ancestor with dinosaurs than birds do.
So crocodilians are more closely related to dinosaurs than birds, but birds are dinosaurs. I think I’m getting more confused… But I’ll keep reading. Maybe it’ll all make sense soon.
What about the pterodactyls, the flying dinosaurs? Is that where birds draw their lineage?
Pterosaurs, including pterodactyls, were flying reptiles, but they are not directly related to birds.
So there were flying dinosaurs, but they’re not related to birds. Apparently the flying birds came from dinosaurs that didn’t fly. I don’t know if they had useless wings or if they somehow developed wings and learned to fly. Honestly, there’s a lot about the theory of evolution that just doesn’t make sense. I know it’s often taught as fact, but it doesn’t add up and there’s a lot of missing evidence. I suppose you just say “over millions of years” and it’s supposed to be acceptable. Nonetheless, let’s continue this rabbit hole. There’s more weirdness you probably don’t know.
The chicken is currently considered the closest living relative to the Tyrannosaurus Rex. This is based on genetic and anatomical evidence.
That’s interesting! So not only does a T-Rex taste like chicken, it WAS a chicken! Or rather, it became a chicken. So the next time you watch the movie Jurassic Park, imagine a giant chicken chasing them in the Jeep. 🙂 Or, we can let AI imagine it…
Now you know a great conversation piece — you know what dinosaurs taste like! You can ask people what they think dinosaurs (or specifically a T.Rex) might taste like, or tell them you ate a dinosaur the other day (if you eat chicken), or that you saw a dinosaur in your back yard.
This is not quite how it happened, but an unreasonable facsimile thereof.
One day I was driving my kids around town (as I am apt to do), and a traffic scenario required deft reflexes. The kids enjoy being slung around in their car seats, so they laughed. When they asked what happened, I told them it was an “evasive maneuver”. They weren’t familiar with that term and were being silly, so they interpreted that as “invasive manure” and started saying that. It was funny. That’s one of those word combinations that I’ve never heard before. It might’ve been said at some point in history by someone*, but I’m not aware (and I’m not putting that in my Google search because I don’t want news articles about manure, nor do I want to know anything about such things — some rabbit holes aren’t worth going down, particularly ones filled with invasive manure). 🙂
* It’s amusing (to me, at least) when I hear a phrase that has possibly never been said before. Such events are rare, but with kids they do happen sometimes if you’re paying attention.
Someone on the Buffet o’ Blog staff recently forwarded an e-card that sparked an interesting chain of e-mails:
Of course such a statement will not go unchallenged, and that’s what amped up this conversation. (Besides the fun of it, we have to keep each other humble…) Someone replied with “That gives me gas…” So then someone modified the picture to reflect the next phase:
And it was said that that picture is what the original sender should have sent out the first time. So that just provoked further modification:
That’s just wrong… funny, but wrong. Found out later it was supposed to say “bad case”, but it works either way. Then someone replied, “It looks like somebody supersized your order of butt nuggets.” I was kinda afraid of the conversation continuing down that road… I’m not exactly sure what a butt nugget is, but I’m sure I don’t want any part of it!
This whole exchange reminded me of a quote:
A little rudeness and disrespect can elevate a meaningless interaction into a battle of wits and add drama to an otherwise dull day.
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