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May. 8th, 2005
The magic of evolution.
May. 8th, 2005 04:39 pmScience has found the missing link between dinosaurs and birds. Or, more specifically, between velociraptors and chickens.
When I saw the photo, I thought of how Alton Brown used a wooden dinosaur skeleton to help illustrate how to carve a chicken for frying. He demonstrated the similarity by popping the head, arms, and legs off the skeleton -- what was left was remarkably chicken-shaped. In it, as Alton is carving a real chicken, there's a Dino-Cam shot in the corner where the same operations are performed on the skeleton. The episode, Fry Hard II: The Chicken, is available on the Good Eats Volume 3 DVD (with free book!).
Several aspects of this revelation amuse me.
For one, we spend our childhoods wondering why the dinosaurs died out. And now the asteroid theory is competing with the less dramatic theory, that as conditions changed to favor smaller beings, they just evolved into something humans would one day fry up and serve in buckets.
For another, fried chicken comes from the South, the region where religious leaders want to suppress the teaching of evolution, the very process that gave us chickens to fry and devour. This is not to pick on the South, of course; Alton Brown is also from Georgia.
What's more, replacing the word "chicken" with "dinosaur" would make food more exciting, if it weren't entirely too silly.
When I saw the photo, I thought of how Alton Brown used a wooden dinosaur skeleton to help illustrate how to carve a chicken for frying. He demonstrated the similarity by popping the head, arms, and legs off the skeleton -- what was left was remarkably chicken-shaped. In it, as Alton is carving a real chicken, there's a Dino-Cam shot in the corner where the same operations are performed on the skeleton. The episode, Fry Hard II: The Chicken, is available on the Good Eats Volume 3 DVD (with free book!).
Several aspects of this revelation amuse me.
For one, we spend our childhoods wondering why the dinosaurs died out. And now the asteroid theory is competing with the less dramatic theory, that as conditions changed to favor smaller beings, they just evolved into something humans would one day fry up and serve in buckets.
For another, fried chicken comes from the South, the region where religious leaders want to suppress the teaching of evolution, the very process that gave us chickens to fry and devour. This is not to pick on the South, of course; Alton Brown is also from Georgia.
What's more, replacing the word "chicken" with "dinosaur" would make food more exciting, if it weren't entirely too silly.