60 Minutes

Although I’m not much of a fan of these news programs, the episode of 60 Minutes that I watched really intrigued me. I don’t remember the date of when this episode aired, as I watched it on the internet but the 3 main stories were: American soldiers in Afghanistan against IED’s, a paleontologist whose goal is to make his own dinosaur and Saddam Hussein’s secret weapon.

The first story was the fight against Afghanistan terrorist’s plants with IED’s. IED stands for Improvised Explosive Device, which in simpler terms means a bomb. The report stated that 75% of American soldier casualties were because of these, not vehicles or even firearms. Many of these IED’s are planted in dirt roads or fields for concealments and are triggered by the detonator which someone holds and triggers themselves.

When I watched this reporting team go on the American soldiers’ patrol to rid of any IEDs, I didn’t know what to expect. In my head, I already thought that just going for the ride is dangerous alone because it’s still pretty violent in the area, and now they’re going out to find hidden explosives. Then it showed a few IEDs going off, one even injured 2-3 soldiers in a vehicle and the vehicle itself was broken. The only thing I could think of was, what happened if those news reporters were in that vehicle? As they were doing interviews with some of the soldiers, I started to feel very sorry for them because of what they have to go through everyday. At any time they could lose their life and as many of them said, “you have to have a little crazy to survive.”

The second report was about Jack Horner, a paleontologist who stirred up a lot of controversy with his methods. Well, first off, Jack is no ordinary paleontologist. What’s different about him is that he’s dyslexic and did not go to college/university. Also, more importantly, what sets him apart from most paleontologists is that he does research by breaking fossil bones and “contaminating” them. Now you may be thinking that paleontology is preserving fossils but, and I paraphrase Jack, that he said paleontologists need to break open bones to see what’s inside like an egg. If eggs weren’t broken, then that’s just like having a Christmas present and never opening it.

Jack and one of his assistances also came to the conclusion that chickens are technically dinosaurs because they still carry some genes from them. They have similar looks with the same type of feet and even have similar bones. Within the next 5 years, Jack said that he would be able to create a dinosaur from a chicken and would call it dino-chicken.

I found these 2 stories most interesting out of all 3, which is why I touched on them the most. The American soldiers against IED I found intriguing because I am strangely interested in warfare, weapons and explosions. I thought the paleontology story was just as interesting because it was such an extra-ordinary story. No one would ever think about chickens being dinosaurs and that one day there will probably be a dino-chicken.

I recommend searching for these 2 stories on the internet and watch them because they are really interesting reports that not a lot of people think about.