Gracias, Mexico. You made us possible!

If there is one word that characterizes well what ticks in America, it would be hustle.  Like the hustle at the pool table.  The hustling phone calls that I get about my car warranty or social security.  I mean, this is a country that has hustlers in plenty in its history, and one even got himself elected to the highest office in the land!

That American ethic of hustling also made possible a "Creation Museum" in Kentucky.  What an innovative hustle to make money!  Take, for instance, the way the museum deals with dinosaurs.  Their sales pitch is that dinosaurs and humans co-existed.  In this hustle, they ask, "were you there?"

Think about it: were you there when God created the earth? No, but we have a book inspired by the Creator that tells us how He did it. If we start with God’s Word, dinosaurs living with humans—at least early on—makes sense.

Tickets per person range from $24.95 to $39.95, and "parking not included."  If you want to see how humans lived with dinos, you need to fork over extra for parking your vehicle!

In understanding the universe in which we don't literally read "a book inspired by the Creator" we go about in search of evidence and rational explanations.  In other words, science.

Thanks to science, we understand that humans and dinosaurs didn't live together.  Had I known this in my childhood, I could have avoided a few nightmares!

But, until today, I hadn't considered the possibility that the dinos had to go extinct in order to make homo sapiens possible.

Our presence here on earth was a result of "the mother of all accidents" when a 6-mile wide asteroid crashed into earth.  The essay argues this crash made all the difference: "It stands to reason, then, that without the asteroid impact the dinosaurs that had reigned for more than 100 million years would likely still be here, and therefore the primates would not be, and so neither would we."

The odds of an asteroid hitting earth are very low.  The odds of that size of an asteroid hitting earth are very, very low.  And then the location where it crashed.

The rocks around the Yucatan target site are rich in hydrocarbons and sulfur, which resulted in the production of enormous quantities of soot and sunlight-deflecting aerosols. Geologists figure that as little as 1 to 13 percent of the Earth’s surface contains rocks that could have yielded a comparable stew of destructive materials.

This small target means that with the Earth rotating at about 1,000 miles per hour, had the asteroid arrived just 30 minutes sooner, it would have landed in the Atlantic Ocean; 30 minutes later, in the Pacific Ocean. Just 30 minutes either way and the dinosaurs would probably be here.

And I wouldn't be here blogging!  Dumb luck has been the story of our lives!

So, have a special dinosaur-themed celebration on Cinco de Mayo!