WHY ARE DINOSAURS EXTINCT?

Dinosaurs are in the news again. Leading scientists now say global warming (and not an asteroid) may have caused the extinction of dinosaurs. And the main cause of global warming was, AHEM, dinosaur flatulence. Professor Graeme Ruxton of St Andrews University, Scotland, said the giant animals spent 150 million years emitting the potent global warming gas, methane. The report said:


Large plant-eating sauropods would have been the main culprits because of the huge amounts of greenery they consumed.

The jokes write themselves. In fact the first draft of this column was full of bad puns and raunchy humor. I want to be classy so I cut the cheesy comments (sorry, I kept one bad joke).

The team calculated the animals would have collectively produced more than 520 million tons of methane a year – more than all today’s modern sources put together.

How can scientists know how much methane dinosaurs produced? The study said that scientists calculated the amount of methane emitted by a modern cow (about 50 gallons of methane daily). They used that information to estimate the amount of methane that would have been produced by a giant dinosaur - thousands of gallons of the greenhouse gas each day. The report didn't explain how you measure the methane emitted by cows, but I don't think I really want to know!

How could dinosaurs have produced enough methane to cause global warming? One of the animals, a 90-ton argentinosaurus which measured 140 ft. in length, would have consumed at least half a ton of food in one day. Since Mayor Bloomberg hadn't been born yet, these creatures also drank scores of large sugary drinks each day.
I'm trying to imagine the job posting scientists at St. Andrews University placed on the university website:

Unpaid summer internship available for qualified applicant. Science background preferred. Sense of humor will help. You will take measurements to help determine causes of global warming. Must never have participated in cow tipping. Stuffy nose will help.

If you know any 12 year-old boys interested in science, I recommend showing them this study. Writing about the report has been painful for me. My kids and grandkids will testify that I love them very much and would forgive them for most felonies they might commit. But if they discuss burping or tooting in my house, I will remove them from my will.

The politics surrounding this new study are predictable. Some right-wing groups refuse to accept the results of the study and are known as "Flatulence Deniers." Left-wing groups have been seen with signs reading "Make love, not toots."

The report gravely concludes:

Did the dinosaurs help to wipe themselves out by changing the climate? The implications for the human race are obvious.

I have read the conclusion many times and I have to say that the implications for the human race are not obvious to me. Should we be eating fewer vegetables? Should beans be outlawed? Should we be consuming massive amounts of Bean-O? If you have any ideas please let me know. By the way, I already asked Ted - that guy from down the street - and he didn't know what to think either.


David LeSueur lives in Littleton, Colorado with his wife Mary. Until more is known, they have decided not to eat at any more Mexican restaurants.

Facebook Surprise

Those of us with MS sometimes feel isolated when our symptoms prevent us from doing things with our friends and family. To help remedy this, my neurologist encouraged me to use "Social Media" (like Facebook) to keep in touch. I never took his advice because Facebook seems more like "Anti-Social Media" than "Social Media." After all, you are communicating without having to actually use any spoken words But everything changed recently when I received an email from my friend Curtis inviting me to be his friend on Facebook. At first I was suspicious. You see, we are both closer to the Social Security retirement age than we are to the legal drinking age. And though we are both computer and internet savvy, you wouldn’t normally associate us with something like Facebook. I wondered if this email was really from him. I have watched enough television news to know that you have to be wary of sexual predators. What if the email was from a 12 year-old girl pretending to be Curtis? Or what if the email was from a guy in Nigeria who wanted to steal my identity? Maybe if I clicked on the link he would find out my credit card numbers and steal my entire 401(k) account. I decided to call Curtis, just to be safe. He confirmed to me that he had just joined Facebook and had invited me to be his friend, though he wasn’t sure yet what that meant. I opened his email and clicked on the link. A mere 2 ½ hours later I finished signing up as his friend. That was 3 weeks ago. We haven’t spoken since. I am not sure what is supposed to happen next. Will he send me a message to go look at his Facebook page? Or am I supposed to go there periodically to see if he has a message for me? I was going to call him about something but I was afraid he might be mad at me for not ever checking Facebook. Then I had a brilliant idea - I would send him a text message! That way I could communicate with him without risking actually talking to him. I could just pretend he wasn’t angry with me. I decided to tell him in my text that my internet wasn’t working in case he was wondering why I hadn’t been to his Facebook page. Now I just needed to learn how to send a text message. A few days ago I asked my niece Marissa to teach me. She can text 416 words per minute and has calluses on her thumbs. Yesterday I decided to send her a test text message, but I couldn’t find my cell phone. I don’t use it much. Last month my usage was 3 minutes. I only received two phone calls, both of them wrong numbers. I tried calling my cell phone, hoping I would hear it ring, but of course its battery was dead. Eventually I found it. It took me only 20 minutes to type the following message: HI MARISsa how are lol U unCle daVID I sent the text, then called Marissa to see if she had received it. She is 15, so naturally she had her cell phone with her and turned on. Yes, she said, she got my message. I quickly ended the phone call because it felt like cheating to actually talk out loud. I didn’t even find out how she was LOL. I started to compose my message to Curtis when I realized I didn’t have his cell phone number! Maybe I could write him a letter instead. Unfortunately we don’t have stationery and writing on computer paper seemed impersonal. I checked in our folder where we keep greeting cards for a variety of occasions. I found two birthday cards, three thank you notes and an invitation to a New Year’s Eve party. None of them seemed appropriate. We also had some blank cards but they all had girly flowers on the front. So I won’t be sending him anything in the mail. I am stumped as to my next step. Curtis, if you are reading this and aren’t too mad at me, instead of being friends on Facebook, can we be friends in real life? David LeSueur lives in Littleton, Colorado with his wife, Mary. He was diagnosed with MS in 2000.