Tag: science

Do dinosaurs taste like chicken?

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.

brewing tea reduces heavy metals from water

glass of sweet, iced tea, plate of fried chicken and sides

You really don’t need any extra reasons to drink tea other than it tasting good. Having a glass of sweet tea is a great experience and makes your day better. But fortunately, tea is good for you in numerous ways, like providing antioxidants. This is already known.

New research has shown that brewing tea reduces heavy metals like lead and cadmium from the water, making it safer for you. That’s convenient! A quote from the article:

“Across a population, if people drink an extra cup of tea per day, maybe over time we’d see declines in illnesses that are closely correlated with exposure to heavy metals. Or it could help explain why populations that drink more tea may have lower incidence rates of heart disease and stroke than populations that have lower tea consumption.”

If it makes me healthier to drink an extra cup of tea per day, I can do that!

It’s nice to hear good news once in a while…

Snow is more interesting than you think

Have you ever thought about why snow is the way it is? Snow is fluffy water. It happens when the temperature is below freezing, but if you put water in a freezer it turns into ice. It’s a good thing that freezing precipitation isn’t ice, because that would be painful and destructive. So for whatever reasons, we get snow instead of falling ice. That’s very fortunate! Imagine if snow was ice crystals instead…

Why is that? Precipitation that freezes becomes hail, sleet, or snow. How? Obviously temperature is a factor, yet in all cases it’s cold enough to freeze the water. Could a snowstorm cause the snow to float long enough via updrafts to form hail?

I don’t have all the answers for that. But I’m thankful that snow is not ice as it falls and that it’s fun to play in.

Does poop contain gold?

The other day I was in a conversation that got random really fast. Someone started sharing some scientific trivia, and they said you could burn a bucket of cow manure and get some rare elements like gold. I was immediately skeptical and made that known. They went to get their book of random scientific stuff (not the actual title) and found the reference. It turns out that someone had taken cow urine and boiled it to produce something useful. At this point I’m still skeptical, but figure since it’s actually published in a book and not just some obscure blog, it’s worth a minute of research. The results were surprising (and not all related to the original article)…

Apparently some doctor in India believes that cow urine has healing powers and can supposedly cure 70 to 80 incurable diseases like diabetes. It’s also sold as “highly effective products for preventive medicine” in some countries. (So if you don’t get sick, it worked, and you should buy more!) However — and this is important — there is thus far no scientific proof about it healing anything. Some studies have shown that it can lead to significant side effects, including death. So I wouldn’t recommend it. But it is good to use as fertilizer to grow actually edible food…

During my research, I saw where one guy said, “I drink cow urine every day. That is why I do not have Covid right now.” That is faulty reasoning, and it could easily be countered by someone saying they do NOT drink cow urine at all, and thus they don’t have Covid. But then again, how many people who drink cow urine every day catch Covid? The number has to be really small, right? (Surely there are very few people who could even be in that group.)

Some doctor made a “wonder drug” of cow’s milk, cow’s urine, cow excrement (soaked in water), and butter, and they claimed it will cure “99 percent of diseases”. I’m no professional doctor, but I’m fairly certain that’s a load of crap (both literally and figuratively).

Back on point, there has been someone who claimed to have found gold in cow urine and dung. Perhaps if you want to investigate the microscopic level you could find some — I have heard that ocean water has gold in it, but it’s such tiny amounts that it’s not worth doing anything with.

Thanks to the internet’s amazing ability to lead you down rabbit trails you didn’t even know existed, I just learned that human poop does contain trace amounts of gold, silver, platinum, copper, and rare elements like palladium and vanadium that are used in cell phones and computers. So is your poop worth its weight in gold? Not quite. These particles are about 100 times smaller than the width of a human hair, and of course there are other non-valuable particles in there to sort through. (That job would stink!) It’s estimated that an American city with a population of 1 million sends down the drain about $13 million worth of precious metals each year. So maybe it’s worth finding some automated way to filter it. Actually, I bet this becomes a legitimate business someday, when someone figures out how to efficiently extract the valuable elements from all the worthless elements.

People have tried to figure out alchemy for years (converting a metal into gold), but perhaps this is the closest we’ll get.