OT Fun in the Snow

[Runner]

This was the most fun I've had in the snow in a couple of decades. My sons and I put together a few snowmen that would make Calvin proud. Check it out:

Monster Snowman

Snowman Villagers Fleeing.

The Little Guy Always Loses to the Big Guy with the Sword.

No Sympathy from the Amused Mutant Snowman Audience

Teenager Snowman with a Gun

Guess The Other Guy Should have paid off that High Interest Loan

That Looks Fatal

 

[Pandarian]

lol Scott, weren't you the guy that didn't let your children watch pg13 movies? haha.

 

[modifyd]

It looks like you had a little to much fun with that.

 

[Runner]

Heh. My kids can't watch Lord of the Rings until they read the books. Imagination is one thing when it comes from inside you. I just don't want most of the content of Hollywood skewering that imagination before it can work on its own. Plus, its only ketchup...

And, yes, Daddy helped more than would be legal in a pinewood derby competition...

 

[TriMax]

Surprising theme Scott. I will make sure my granddaughter and I do not drive by your house. Next time I would suggest -- use all that imagination and go in a different direction. Just me butting it.

 

[Runner]

I am sure the neighbors are wondering. But the inspiration came from some Calvin and Hobbes comics I sent home a month or two ago.

Edit: For those with more traditional snowman sensibilities, here is a pic of one of a neighbor's snowman. My boys think this is lame, though.

 

[EvilMel]

I love your theme Scott. I think it's priceless.

That's some mega creative snowman work.

 

[Runner]

Thanks, Mel. I did go a little overboard with the snowman execution, but I thought you of all people in the club would appreciate it.

Next snowfall we plan to do a dragon. But my wife will hide the ketchup to reduce the rating down to PG.

 

[TriMax]

I just knew Mel was going to think it was great. I appreciated the "mega creative snowman work" also. I like the idea of a dinosaur snow beast for next year. Dinosaurs are what dragons are, right?

 

[Runner]

I still hold out hope for another snowfall this year.

Perhaps some old leftovers of dinosaurs were mistaken for dragons. But there is a description of a beast called "leviathan" in a certain ancient historical document:

"His sneezes flash forth light, and his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning. Out of his mouth go burning torches; sparks of fire leap forth. Out of his nostrils smoke goes forth as from a boiling pot and burning rushes. His breath kindles coals, And a flame goes forth from his mouth."

This and the rest of the description fit a dragon perfectly -- or at least one who lives in the water.

 

[TriMax]

How about the behemoth from the same text.

Behold, Behemoth which I made as I made you; he eats grass like an ox. Behold, his strength in his loins, and his power in the muscles of his belly. He makes his tail stiff like a cedar; the sinews of his thighs are knit together. His bones are tubes of bronze, his limbs like bars of iron.

Those giant veggie eating dinosaurs had tails that were as big as a cedar tree. Built a baby behemoth/sauropod. That would get some attention too.

 

[Runner]

Sounds like a brontosaurus -- might be a little harder to build. But I like the ideas. Let's hope for enough snow to make both.

 

[Runner]

Cool! The ground rat says 6 more weeks of winter! Our continued annoyance plans for the neighbors might continue some more this year.

 

[macclellan]

A thread mixing Snowmen-gore and creatures from biblical mythology? I love it! Do a whole scene with the leviathan, behemoth, and let's not forget the abaddon, golem, seraphim, etc. - that would be awesome and creative yard art... such a fresh break from yet another nativity scene!

Perhaps some old leftovers of dinosaurs were mistaken for dragons...
This and the rest of the description fit a dragon perfectly -- or at least one who lives in the water.

Even the "navel" part? Nonplacental animals such as dinosaurs aren't typically described as having navels.

 

[Runner]

Navel? Sorry -- don't see that in Leviathan's description. And nothing says all critters that are called "dinosaurs" are hatched -- or that all are reptiles. Heck, if chickens didn't exist today, the ones in the fossil record would have been called dinosaurs -- and probably would be drawn with scale-like feathers and have some created transitional bones to fill in the "gaps".

Ooooo! Snow chickens!

 

[macclellan]

My mistake; that's the behemoth with a navel (40:16), not the leviathan. Sometimes I have trouble keeping my mythological creatures straight! The behemoth was probably an auroch anyways (now extinct european cattle-like creature). Eddie, their tales were stiff like cedar, not as large as cedars - that would be silly!

Not sure what you mean by saying that all dinosaurs may or may not be reptiles though. Neither actually makes any sense. Reptiles are descendants of sauropsids ("dinosaurs"), just as birds are (This is why your point about chickens being called dinosaurs isn't far off the mark... just look at the 20+ 'feathered dinosaur'/bird fossils, more recent fossils of 'birds' with clawed wings, no tails, etc. and the 'gaps' fill themselves). There's simply no reason to think that dinosaurs had placentas, and therefore no reason to think they had belly buttons; their descendants certainly do not.

 

[Runner]

It doesn't say behemoth had a navel -- that is a reference to the muscles in his belly. Not that it matters a whole lot. And the reference is in a reliable historical document -- not mythological.

And the gaps are still there -- big, gaping, and only filled by the imaginations of people looking for grants to support their research. With big enough imaginations to picture the simplicity of a scale somehow become the complex, interwoven "zipper" of a million fibers in a single feather.

 

[macclellan]

A reliable historical document? Seemingly literal talk of a fire-breathing leviathan or identification of the behemoth (with or without a navel) with a sauropod? (grasses did not yet exist for a behomoth to eat or for humans to watch at the time of sauropods).

Yeah... let's just talk about purty, shiiiny snowmen.

 

[Runner]

In case after case it has proved historical and accurate in archeological digs. That is not even in question. Disagreements rest on items or events that have not or can not be proved or disproved (for various reasons) with the current historical base.

In the text, you have a detailed account of what appears to be a dinosaur or two of some sort from people you probably think too primitive to know about such things (after all, this account is probably 3000+ years old). As for identification with what we know now from looking at fossils, I leave that to those who care enough to look into it. But there is no reason not to suspect this is an eye-witness account -- unless your present paradigm causes you to toss out pretty solid evidence (like many did when actual, non-fossilized T-rex tissue was discovered).

And a breath of fire from a chemical reaction or gas ignition is technically possible in an animal. Given the detail of the account, I'm willing to believe there was some creature now extinct that used to so do. Heck, we may even have the skeleton of it in a museum somewhere (pure speculation). But I'll go with the eye-witness account over the current unproven paradigm of how and when things died.


My next snow-dragon will come from my imagination and cultural conditioning, though.

 

[macclellan]

We're not talking about accuracy for archeological digs; that concerns mundane issues like the location of towns, events, etc. Results there are mixed (e.g. book of Joshua and the collapse of the Biblical archeology school). What we're talking about are sea-dragons, giants, 900+ year old men, a flat disc-shaped earth with a domed sky above, talking snakes, a global deluge, etc. These claims aren't so mundane. To believe them to be literally true based on 3,000-ish year-old recordings of oral tradition and first-person accounts without independent corroborating evidence is employing a pretty flimsy evidentiary standard. That's why most people, including many if not most Christians (especially after the Modernist-Fundamentalist controversy exploded in the 1920's) don't believe some or all of such stuff is literally or even approximately true, preferring theological interpretations, amongst others.

Why would anyone want to toss out the discovery of non-fossilized T-Rex tissue? That was an amazing find that is already adding to our understanding. Note, of course, that the tissue was found in a 68-million year old T-Rex fossil, published in a peer reviewed journal, and widely reported in popular media. Please tell me you were not citing this is evidence that the dinosaur died just a few thousand years ago and there is some conspiracy going on. :spin1: I just don't see the problem; it fits fine with everything we know. The head researcher, Dr. Schweitzer - a Christian, might I add - is quite annoyed at how creationists “twist your words and they manipulate your data" (source). So, you're right that a paradigm is causing and promulgating selective data interpretation here, but it's creationists, not scientists that are doing so.