"Name this dog!"

On Tue, 4 Jan 2005 21:20:01 -0600, "Wolfgang"
wrote:


"George Cleveland" wrote in message
.. .

I thought you'd appreciate the article Wolfie.

I did. There IS an interesting idea lurking in there......somewhere.


I guess but the researcher seems to miss the point that many animals
(upland birds come to mind) use the same strategy to keep in contact
with their young without having developed into avian Shakespeares or
Hunter Thompsons.



g.c.


Chimp Mommies would be a good name for a Girl Band.

Camel Lips would kick their ass.

Wolfgang



g.c.

On Tue, 4 Jan 2005 21:20:01 -0600, "Wolfgang"
wrote:


"George Cleveland" wrote in message
.. .

I thought you'd appreciate the article Wolfie.

I did. There IS an interesting idea lurking in there......somewhere.


I guess but the researcher seems to miss the point that many animals
(upland birds come to mind) use the same strategy to keep in contact
with their young without having developed into avian Shakespeares or
Hunter Thompsons.



g.c.


Chimp Mommies would be a good name for a Girl Band.

Camel Lips would kick their ass.

Wolfgang



g.c.

Wolfgang wrote:
"George Cleveland" wrote in message
...


http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science...ion/index.html


Hm.......

"As the early members of the human family stood upright, important changes
occurred to their physiology, with the pelvis narrowing as the brain grew
bigger. This led to babies being born earlier, at a time when their heads
were still small enough to pass though the birth canal."

Is there a paleontological comparative anatomist in the house? It might be
interesting to compare pelvi from.....say, Lucy and Lucille Ball. And,
aren't "we" rather famous for long gestation among primates?

"While the offspring of primates can cling to their mother's hair and ride
on her belly or back, human infants had to be carried everywhere by their
increasingly hairless mothers.
Since mothers would have to put their babies down while foraging for food,
Falk suggests they could have started making noises to reassure them."

Wouldn't ya know......there's NEVER backpack around when ya really need one.


"Those that made the most successful sounds would have had a higher survival
rate because it allowed them to gather more food and prevent their babies
from making noises that might attract predators."

"Successful" presumably being defined here as whatever ensured "higher
survival rates". And thus we see that the tautology was born very
near......and possibly just before.....language.

"The epiphany for me was that I knew chimp mommies don't make these noises,
so I knew something happened during evolution," says Falk.

See, Darwin SHOULD have guessed that something happened during evolution.
Had he done so, maybe it wouldn't be just another theory more or less on a
par with the opinion that a bearded old Jew hacked up a hairball one day and
found it good.

"The missing puzzle piece was bipedalism. We stood up; we lost hair."

Ah yes......cause and effect. How very stupid of us not to have thought of
it.

"It was then that babies could no longer hang on to their mothers."

"Then", presumably, was late Wednesday evening......they should'a been there
on Tuesday morning.

"Mothers had to hang on to their babies."

So, the BABIES were hairy?

"That was a eureka moment."

I hope ta shout!

"As mothers came to rely on vocalizations to control their infants, they
would have developed specific meaningful sounds that would gradually have
blossomed across communities into language, Falk says."

Leaving the reader to ponder the rather perplexing question of what all
these communities were doing whilst awaiting the burgeoning.

"Infants as young as seven-months-old can begin to understand basic
linguistic rules"

No.

"and develop vocabularies."

Yes.....um, except for the "and" part.

"Experts believe their ability to learn language could hold vital clues to
the development of human communication."

Hee, hee, hee.....those darned "experts"......they'll believe ANYTHING!


"The behavior of chimp mommies"
"Chimp mommies"? I just GOTTA get me a better science dictionary!

"and babies and human mothers and infants are delightfully identical in many
ways -- the gestures and the facial expressions -- but we are dramatically
different in other ways," said Falk.

HA! THIS one I knew!

"Professor Robin Dunbar, an evolutionary psychologist at the UK's University
of Liverpool, told CNN that Falk's theory sounded "extremely plausible, at
least as a mechanism for getting generic communication of the babbling mode
off the ground."

Every once in a while you run across things that make you say, "I wish I'd
said that".....things like Shakespeare's "Nymph, in thy orisons be all my
sins rememb'red."......Twain's "Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And
suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.".......Dunbar's
"a mechanism for getting generic communication of the babbling mode off the
ground."

"Once you have that, it's a very small step to its being used by adults, and
then to having meaning bolted onto the sounds."

Bang! Just like that! And suddenly all those communities who were
heretofore limited to staring at one another balefully had all kinds of
stuff to gossip about!



Altogether, an interesting idea, somewhat marred by the fact that the
scientists and/or the reporter have not quite gotten the babbling mode off
the ground just yet.

Wolfgang

language am a turrble turrble burden.




Wolfgang, I love you,man!

Who dares compare that hack Shaksper to the immortal Thompson?!

I'd name the dog "Rinny". That way if you ever have occasion to pull a kid
named Tim my out of the well, you're all set...

On 10 Jan 2005 23:21:11 GMT, (RLPPT) wrote:

I'd name the dog "Rinny". That way if you ever have occasion to pull a kid
named Tim my out of the well, you're all set...

"Rinnaaaay" ought to work for the adult victim ;-)

daytripper wrote:
On 10 Jan 2005 23:21:11 GMT, (RLPPT) wrote:

I'd name the dog "Rinny". That way if you ever have occasion to
pull a kid named Tim my out of the well, you're all set...

"Rinnaaaay" ought to work for the adult victim ;-)

I've been down in the freakin' well so long ain't *NO* dog by any name
gonna jump in that ****.

I must say, though, that IMO RLPPT scores high on style points.
--
TL,
Tim
---------------------------
http://css.sbcma.com/timj/