Dwayne’s Study Zombies

Hey GED dudes! Yeah, you know I like dinosaurs. Like, in Jurassic Park, when the big T-Rex starts comin’ at them, and it’s so big its footsteps make the water shake… ba-boom! ba-boom! It’s comin’!!! Well, imagine that dinosaur dancing! Dudes! Hilarious! (more…)

Here’s the article I found about mummy dinosaurs…sweet!Dinosaur Mummy Found with Fossilized Skin and Soft Tissues

We all know it’s kewl… but how come scientists care that this dinosaur’s a mummy? I guess the answer’s gotta be in this paragraph:

The fossilized remains, discovered in 1999, included not just bones, but fossilized soft tissues like skin, tendons and ligaments. Most importantly, it was the first-ever find of a dinosaur where the skin “envelope” had not collapsed onto the skeleton. This has allowed scientists to calculate muscle volume and mass for the first time. The fact that the skin is mostly intact allows for the exciting possibility that some of its original chemistry is still present.

Did you make anything out of all this science mumbo-jumbo? I know what “not just bones” means! There’s all sorts of icky dinosaur bits sticking to it… like skin and stuff. “Tendons,” “ligaments,” those are other gooey stuff inside your body, right? Can’t see that stuff if all you got is bones.

And it says the skin didn’t collapse, so they can see how much muscle those dinosaurs had… like how big around they were. More stuff you can’t see just from bones.

What about that part about “original chemistry”? What’s that? I bet it means dino DNA…. yeah, Jurassic Park time, dudes! They can get that mummy dino’s DNA and then make a whole army of mummy dinosaurs… hey, maybe being a scientist would be pretty kewl…

But wouldn’t it be kewl?!?! Like, say you opened the tomb of the great Tyrano-Tut and there… instead of an Egyptian king… was a mummified T-Rex, and he’d be real hungry, too after all those years in a tomb. So he comes to life right there and eats three graduate students in one bite! Kewl. Totally. (more…)

Here’s the question:

The earliest known use of cacao—the source of our modern day chocolate—has been pushed back more than 500 years, to somewhere between 1400 and 1100 B.C.E., thanks to new chemical analyses of residues extracted from pottery excavated at an archaeological site at Puerto Escondido in Honduras. The new evidence also indicates that, long before the flavor of the cacao seed (or bean) became popular, it was the sweet pulp of the chocolate fruit, used in making a fermented (5% alcohol) beverage, which first drew attention to the plant in the Americas.

The “new evidence” mentioned in the second sentence is…

1) A recipe for chocolate liquor

2) Chemical analyses of stuff from old pots

3) Sweet pulp of chocolate fruit (mmm….chocolate fruit…)

4) None of the above

See that “new evidence” phrase there? What’s it mean? That’s the real question… so I look at the sentence, and it says the evidence shows that people drank fermented chocolate fruit… mmmm… chocolate wine!! I bet everyone’d buy that…

Anyways, so I look at the answers. I gotta think all logically, like Curtis or someone. Which one of these things would show that people drank chocolate wine? D’oh! They all would… a recipe, or leftover stuff, or maybe they found some chocolate pulp? So, I gotta read again.

First, I think about the recipe. Nowhere does the paragraph say anything about finding a recipe! Whatever the answer is, it gotta be in the article!

Then, I think about the second thing… a chemical analysis, like with a mad scientist in his laboratory, no doubt. Talks about that in the first sentence… “thanks to new chemical analyses of residues extracted from pottery.” Then, in the second sentence, it says the new evidence ALSO says… so it must be the evidence they talked about before. Who knew? There’s like scientists, who go around figuring out what the icky stuff on the bottom of old pots is. Man, they’d like to see my kitchen.

Yeah, the answer’s gotta be B. Did you get it?

Dude, I’m so needin’ some chocolate, like, right now! I bet that aliens gave us chocolate. How do I know? Well, cuz it’s kewl, duh. And cuz you know how aliens liked to hang around with ancient people. I found this article about how ancient people ate chocolate…mmmm…chocolate….

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071119103540.htm

Here’s the first paragraph:

The earliest known use of cacao––the source of our modern day chocolate––has been pushed back more than 500 years, to somewhere between 1400 and 1100 B.C.E., thanks to new chemical analyses of residues extracted from pottery excavated at an archaeological site at Puerto Escondido in Honduras. The new evidence also indicates that, long before the flavor of the cacao seed (or bean) became popular, it was the sweet pulp of the chocolate fruit, used in making a fermented (5% alcohol) beverage, which first drew attention to the plant in the Americas.

Yeah, it’s all about chocolate, but isn’t that just the kind of thing that would be on the GED? That’s right, I said it! Chocolate covered GED! So I thought I’d make up a practice question… like this one…

The “new evidence” mentioned in the second sentence is…

1) A recipe for chocolate liquor

2) Chemical analyses of stuff from old pots

3) Sweet pulp of chocolate fruit (mmm….chocolate fruit…)

4) None of the above

What do you think? I’ll clue you in next time…now, I gotta get me some CHOCOLATE!!!1!!1!!!!111!