Mason Clark wrote:
> Ever face an
>opossum? -- or do teeth not count as part of the "head"?
>
Mason, You are confusing size with salliency. I quite agree with you
that all sortsa beesties out there have nasty aggressive little fangs. I
have two in my own immediate family, and that's before I start counting
the cats.
When I wrote my original note I was only thinkingof one thing: kangaroos
have these extremely splayed pelvises. Therefore, thinx I
hypothetically, if large brains were really useful for anything,
marsupials is where you would expect to find it.
I know that this flies in the face of the accumulated wisdom of the
human race up to this point: we know that the three-toed sloth evolved
in the isolated southern hemisphere because three toes are both
necessary and sufficient to open a can of beer. In the northern
hemisphere most deliberaely constructed robots have thre fingers, and
since Bill Gates has not yet tried to sell F-sharp, the reason for
humans to have the ring finger is, at minimum, unclear.
It seems to me that the future evolution of our race is rather unclear.
My youngest daughter -- watch out world, we're planning to have another
child this year, inshallah -- is pretty good at destroying everything
available, using her profrontal brow, her prognacious fangs, her opposed
thumbs, and her highly destructive feet, which seem to be everywhere.
And that's even before she get's her hands on the TV clicker and her or
my or her mother's computer keyboards. (One of these days she is likely
to run into the guy in charge of the CIA -- Ed, over on P Street NW --
and if we lose track of her for an instant while we have a coffee, she's
likely to fax the whole goddam thing over to the Army.)
Mason,
From the times we've talked I think you understand the tribulations of
being a father. The next one is only because she wants, and I think, and
I love, and she believes, and little daughter wants, and... *
Here we go again.
-dlj.
* A few years ago, when we were all rat**** poor, one of the thoughts
going through my nephews' minds was, I think (and hope that this was not
an ugly paranoia) "Uncle David has another kid, that reduces our
inheritance by..." (Not a large number, but it would buy you a house or
pay for a year at Harvard Med.
These days things are rather better, the younger generation are
prospering, as is to be expected given their superb genetics, their fine
childhood environments, and the extreme intelligence and competitiveness
of the kids their mothers and I taught them how to beat. Obviously
environment, the other kids, is everything...
I'm no longer the vicious competitive son of a ***** I was forty years
ago, but I'm bringing up a highly intelligent five-year-old, with
another kid possible within the year. My older children, though they are
in Japan, the Philippines, and the US, help care for the youngest, their
half-sister. I have two step-sons, half brothers to my children, in
medical school in England and Scotland, and they flick in a bit from
time to time.
To summarise, Mason: in my occasional and various military roles, Yes, I
keep track of the head to tail ratio. My people tend to the nasty side:
we say "tooth to tail ratio."
Can somebody up Connecticut Avenue in Wa****ngton inform me: are the
Common Potto and the Slow Laurus marsupials?
Yo.
-dlj.
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