David Lloyd-Jones <dlj@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:<kAYY9.468951$F2h1.3477@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>...
> 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 realise that you are not being entirely serious in this
thread......however, I feel that you have slightly missed the point
about marsupials. Foetal development largely takes place outside the
womb, in the pouch, ( the abscence of the placenta being a major
reason ), therefore hip size and head size are not related at all by
the size of the birth canal.
Unlike humans say, where an unusally large headed baby will produce a
wince in recent mothers.
Tim Worstall
>
> 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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