Friday, November 15, 2013

The extinction of dinosaurs was just a glitch

If humans, or the slightly odd subgroup of humans we call computer programmers, had been around when the big, fascinating and frightening dinosaurs went extinct, our reading of dinosaur history would not be called a catastrophe or disaster, it would be called a "glitch".

A glitch in an increasingly human friendly history of the planet.

The consequences of calling the mass extinction a glitch are difficult to imagine. Would the movie Jurassic Park ever have been made? Would all the popular science books have been written? Would the Discovery Channel exist? Would the creationist theme park in Kentucky proudly display dinosaurs next to humans?

The answer to the first three is probably no. The theme park has shown it does not give a hoot about science anyway, so, a yes on this one.

In the avalanche of Obamacare news, have you heard any rumors or confirmed news about suited up Hollywood agents waving fat checks chasing the folks behind the "Obamacare" website for the movie rights to this epic story.

Of course, not, it is just a glitch.

In case you wonder why the "Obamacare" website was such a disaster, you likely have no enterprise software employment history. Throw in a bit of a government specific view of the world, and the explanation is obvious. No congressional committees needed, but they are always fun anyway.

Back to the dinosaurs, not the political ones stomping and chomping their ways across an otherwise wonderfully gentle planet, the real animals.

The irony of calling the extinction of the dinosaurs a glitch in the history of the Earth is that it is true. In terms of cosmic events, a rock hitting a planet and wiping out a bunch of life forms is clearly not newsworthy.

A series of recent scientific discoveries further supports calling the passing on of T. Rex and its siblings and cousins a glitch. They are not really extinct after all, say scientists who have found that birds, from the chattering sparrow to the majestic golden eagle, are descendents of the dinosaurs.

Nature found a way for dinos to survive, and nature will find a way, through humans, to make Obamacare websites survive as less threatening, more domesticated byte creatures.

The whole thing is also a story of taxonomy, but in the creationist theme park world, people would think that taxonomy is an economy run by the tax collectors.

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