virus: Mother-Daughter Dating

Reed Konsler (konsler@ascat.harvard.edu)
Wed, 19 Feb 1997 11:26:17 -0500


>From: zaimoni@ksu.edu
>Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 10:55:26 -0600 (CST)
>Subject: Re: virus: Mother-Daughter Dating
>
>On Thu, 13 Feb 1997, Richard Brodie wrote:
>
>> Zamboni wrote:
>>
>> >The assumption I balk at is this: the starting level of a
>> >mother-daughter
>> >based dating method is ALWAYS 100% mother, 0% daughter.
>>
>> I agree this is true in most cases. However, there have been
>> well-documented cases in which experimenters have dated the DAUGHTER
>> first, only to progress to dating the mother some months later. These
>> cases, however, almost always involve some intentionality on the part of
>> the mother and so may perhaps be discounted.
>
>Which context were you reading???? I'd like to see it more explicitly.
>
>Superficially, this sounds like a biology context than a geology context.
>In this case, "yes, you can discount it."
>
>If you were discussing geology-like context, you are describing
>well-documented *ABSURDLY OBVIOUS GARBAGE*, which would give me further
>concern for the standards in this field.
>
>Yes, there are multiple-chains of radioactive nucleides that could be
>used, but this doesn't fundamentally alter the method: the "daughter" is
>the one that requires proton decay to decay.

Oh my God. It is time for a reality check: RICHARD BRODIE: Your quote
above was a JOKE, whas'nt it? It was a play on words, and attempt to
expose the Mother-Daughter metaphor...a confusion of the meaning of
language. Did no one else read it this way? I might be a little crazy but
I thought I could recognize irony. Richard's statement is not meant to be
interpreted seriously.

Reed

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Reed Konsler konsler@ascat.harvard.edu
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