Sex and Murder in the Mammal: Why?

[gendanken]

*Discalaimer:

Its not only pennies, my dears. I deduced that pennies are expendibles, while quarters and dimes carry a premium because of their value. This meant that quarters and dimes were more likely to be held on to longer than pennies.
In 2000 the U.S. mint introduced a new line of quarters with memoriablia printed on the tail side. This meant people would be collecting them and putting them up for display and the thought of a human being examining each quarter with a magnifying glass enlarging the stains from my ass was delicious...........so not only are there pennies circulating, but there are quarters with my assjuice on them beng proudly displayed in some collector's shelf as we speak.
I.Rule.

= = = = = = =

Monkey:

o my god...the limbic system has been pulled out of the hat again.

I have pulled it out of something but its not my hat.
And it looks like a penny.

Now, either provide us with feedback conducive to this illustrious converstation or you will be relegated to the panel of petrified, sexist, chauvanistic pigs (like James) that is the majority of our scientific community.

Invert:

Subliminal messages, gendanken? I've tried it before, but no one noticed. It's rather easy when it's just one word though, isn't it?

I don't know what you're talking about. Moving on:

The concept of 'thrill' is not hard to define if we anthropomorphize the phenomena- watching a minx mesmerizing its prey (usually a rabbit) may look like a thrilling game until we examine its culmination and find that the minx only did it for food. We put ourselves in its place (substituting the theriomorphic for the antrhoporphic model) and find that if it were human, the object was hunger and need, not pleasure.

You've brought up a cat and a wolverine- two mammals on whose body we'll find a dewclaw. You're only proving my thesis. Like, *flips hair* gracias.

Now, for the mixing of sex and murder which you've termed 'tricky'- we will consider that Alan Turing, a gorgeous mind responsible for not only breaking the Nazi spine (fuck Hitler) but also the creation of the modern computer- that he was a homosexual as was Newton. He commited sucide, which is a variant of murder.
Also we take into consideration William Beckford, a visionary builder and a pedophile. From Week's and James' "A Study of Sanity and Strangeness" (a book little gendanken found herself in, unfortunately):

"Throughout the rest of his long life he (Beckford) was ostracized, and his frenzied, gradiose building projects may be interpreted as an attempt to establish a little world of his own, as well as a gesture of defiance to the world beyond."

His fevered creativy followed his being caught with his dick in a boy, and if I'm not mistaken, the young boy (William Courteney) that this science man was found sodomizing he tried killing soon after he was discovered.
Also- what is the common denominator among boys that grew up to be science men? Pulling wings off of flies and frog dissections in their summer vacations- undeniable precursors to murderous tendencies.
Tie this together with the scientific facts of testosterone being deleterious to the body:

http://www.kalilily.net/weblog/03/01/18/220037.html
http://www.discoverychannelasia.com/murdermostfoul/feature1.shtml
http://www.abc.net.au/science/slab/testost/story.htm

..and we find these agressive, sexual, murderous tendencies acquainted with this chemical are instincts that have been "wired to the wrong emotional feedback loops" by the wiggling of the thumb.
Those words in quotes are your words, Invert.

And what do we call these feedback loops? Science, murder, and creativity.

Rosa:

Many things, if not everything, can be abused, including science, in all spheres of it.

Nonsense, I'm dead fucking serious.
Have you any clue the torture it is for a woman, even one as male-minded as myself, to be taken seriously?

Here I am with a breathtaking thesis, based on scientific fact- the very facts these tightassed scientists jerk off to in their laboratories- and its thrown in my face. Why?
Gender.
Godamn the establishment!

James:

gendanken:

The difference between Sokal's editor and me is that I haven't been taken in by your little hoax, gendanken.

No, the difference between him and you is a paycheck.

But an idiot with tie on and a 5 figured salary as an "Editor" or an idiot sitting at home right now reading this on his computer in a hot room with a sweaty ass as a "Moderator" share the same basic premise: they've handled an ass penny.

 

[Nasor]

Nasor;

Lets see here, considering I've just been called a bloody simpleton....

Yes, it would be hard Nasor- but not impossible.
Photo-lithography could be considered a precursor for some form of vouyerism.

Photo-lithography is the process used to manufacture microchips. It doesn't have anything to do with voyeurism.

Partial differential equations- I'm not sure of this, but Ubrons has a chapter in the physics section where he discusses Newton's closet homosexuality and his creations a distortion of his repressions.

Newton didn't invent partial differential equations.

Thermodynamics- the sexual act can, with some measure, be outlined in thermodynamic diagrams.[/qutoe]Well, practically any process can be outlined in thermodynamic terms. That's why thermodynamics is so useful. But there's nothing especially thermodynamic about sex.

But quantum physics- the quantum world is as choatic and absurd as the relations between sexes, yes? It demans a sort of controlled insanity to understand quanta, as does the matter of 'screwing'.

Are you being serious here?

It appears that you're either:

-Trying to jerk us around for a laugh
or
-Coming up with wildly implausible and far-fetched explanations for why scientific advancements are related to sex in an effort to show that scientific and technical advancements are products of our 'sexual energies'.

 

[gendanken]

Nasor:

Photo-lithography is the process used to manufacture microchips. It doesn't have anything to do with voyeurism.

And pornography has become the raging monster it is nowdays why? The computer.
Strike one.

Newton didn't invent partial differential equations.

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/bernnew.html

Third paragraph.
Strike two.
You fucked up your third quote so I'm ignoring it.

Are you being serious here?

It appears that you're either:

-Trying to jerk us around for a laugh
or
-Coming up with wildly implausible and far-fetched explanations for why scientific advancements are related to sex in an effort to show that scientific and technical advancements are products of our 'sexual energies'.

Serious as cyanide.

If you feel you're being jerked for a laugh, this says more about you than it does me.
If you feel I'm stretching so far, then I ask that you modify your masturbating habits for at least one day and see if gendanken is wrong or not.
And trust me, 'wrong' and 'gendanken' are oil and water.

Modification:
When you are masturbating today, assuming you don't have another human to coitus with, wiggle your thumb around as you do it. You will notice an increase in agression if not the pleasurable feelings of enkephalins rushing into your bloodstream at a rate 2 to 3 times that as usual.

If I am in fact wrong, I owe you a crack dollar.

 

[Nasor]

Have you any clue the torture it is for a woman, even one as male-minded as myself, to be taken seriously?

Lord, this is why I usually can't stand to read things written by post-modern social scientists. They don't understand what it takes to build a compelling scientific argument, and when you dismiss their collection of anecdotal evidence and conclusion jumping, they're sure that it's because of some egregious character flaw on your part rather than a lack of persuasiveness on theirs.

Even if all of the 'evidence' that you have presented to back your theory is true, it's still only anecdotal evidence. Perhaps it's true that all great scientists were pedophilic, hyper-sexual, violent bastards who were loaded with testosterone – but you've provided us of no real evidence of this. Actual evidence would consists of something like a statistical study showing that notable scientists had higher instances of violence or sexual deviance than the population in general. Or perhaps you could measure the testosterone levels of successful scientists who are alive today and see how their testosterone levels differ from the unsuccessful scientists.

If you want to be taken seriously you need data. At the moment, you have none. Compiling lists of notable scientists who were also horny isn't data, and only a sociologist (or perhaps some of the lesser anthropologists) could mistake it for data. Show me the standard deviations and confidence intervals if you really want to be taken seriously.

Here I am with a breathtaking thesis, based on scientific fact- the very facts these tightassed scientists jerk off to in their laboratories- and its thrown in my face. Why?
Gender.
Godamn the establishment!

If it makes you feel any better, I had already decided that your thesis was poorly reasoned and lacked adequate evidence before I knew you were a woman.

 

[Nasor]

Nasor:

And pornography has become the raging monster it is nowdays why? The computer.
Strike one.

Since the internet hadn't even been invented (much less become the massive porn delivery system that it is today) when photo-lithography was invented, I somehow doubt that the inventors of photo-lithography had internet porn in mind.

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/bernnew.html

Third paragraph.
Strike two.

I read the third paragraph carefully and didn't see anything about Newton inventing partial differential equations. I did see a reference to him working on fluid dynamics problems that involved differential equations, but differential equations and partial differential equations aren't' the same thing. That's why we have different names for them.

 

[gendanken]

Nasor:

If it makes you feel any better, I had already decided that your theses was poorly reasoned and lacked adequate evidence before I knew you were a woman.

Look, you.
How easy for the man with no claim to superiority other than hair on his chest and the bass in his voice to paint it so fucking easy.
I'm on to you, you lecherous swine.
You'd like to come off as helpful and informative all the while harboring a vial of hate deep inside for my theories because its a woman's.

Question the first: has it not hit you yet that the reasons why little gendanken is unable to draw up statistics is because they won't let her into the fucking door to do it?.
Question the second: Do you even know who Quinz Ubrons even is?

Lord, this is why I usually can't stand to read things written by post-modern social scientists. They don't understand what it takes to build a compelling scientific argument, and when you dismiss their collection of anecdotal evidence and conclusion jumping, they're sure that it's because of some egregious character flaw on your part rather than a lack of persuasiveness on theirs.

Fuck you. This is not postmodernist bullshit. The prostution of relativity or the torturous mierda of Derrida *is* bullshit. That man could talk dialetics in his sleep but I dare anyone here to ask that man what a photon was.

I'm very much in tune with the science world.

If you want to be taken seriously you need data. At the moment, you have none. Compiling lists of notable scientists who were also horny isn't data, and only a sociologist (or perhaps some of the lesser anthropologists) could mistake it for data. Show me the standard deviations and confidence intervals if you really want to be taken seriously.

A little fyi:
The documentation of heterosexual pairing in the wild was virtually nonexistant for many species until recently. And its clear to anyone that these species *are* mating despite their being no observations of it.

Victoria's rifle bird- their mating habits had not been observed until the 90's depite their existence being known to the western world for nearly a century.
In the course of 50000 hours of study the cheeta has only been seen mating a total of 5 times. Orangutans, hyenas, swallows and all kinds of birds have never been observed mating heterosexually.
Yet there is no fucking doubt that they're mating.

Says Baghemil:
"If direct observations by scietists were used as the sole criterion for the existence of a behavoir, we would have to conclude that many species never engage in heterosexuality- yet we know this cannot be true"
-from "Biological Exhuberance"

 

[gendanken]

Blah:

I read the third paragraph carefully and didn't see anything about Newton inventing partial differential equations. I did see a reference to him working on fluid dynamics problems that involved differential equations, but differential equations and partial differential equations aren't' the same thing. That's why we have different names for them.

Either way, no one ever said Newton invented it.

 

[invert_nexus]

Well, looks like what is needed is a list of animals with dew-claws and those without. We also can't forget those animals that once had thumbs, but lost them over time (such as the Orca). And then we need to cross-reference that list with behavior that could be said to be killing or torturing for fun. It'd most likely be a long list.

Don't all land animals descend from the tetrapod design, hence at one time, all animals had thumbs (five digits anyway). Or did the 5 fingered evolve afterwards? I think the former, could be wrong though.

If, as you say, the thumb is closest to the limbic system because of proximity; if an animal doesn't have a thumb or dewclaw or whatever, wouldn't that just place a different digit closest to the limbic system?

Now, as to sexual reasons behind technology, I think we all can say that those who were deprived of a free and easy sexual lifestyle in teenhood put their sexual energies into other areas. Geeks and nerds who never get any poontang but can code assembly language like there's no tomorrow. But, there are also those denied sex that don't become smart and/or technically proficient. Sometimes they devote their energies to other subjects, religion, death metal, Marilyn Manson, chronic masturbation. The list goes on and on. Energies must be expended somehow, the only question is to where they might be diverted.

It is an interesting notion, but I agree that more research would need to be done to take it beyond the bounds of philosophy. Do you attribute the rise in violence of today's culture to using the thumb so much to play video games? What about pinball? The thumbs are usually gripping the top of the table, but they could be said to be moving when slapping the flipper buttons with your hands.

I wonder what this theory would have to say about Georgie Peorgie puddin' pie?

 

[James R]

gendanken:

Has it occurred to you that the reason academics won't let you in the door is that you are incapable of carrying on a civil intellectual discussion?

You seem to have a few hangups with being a woman. Get over it.

 

[Nasor]

You seem to have a few hangups with being a woman. Get over it.

No kidding. Your conceit here is amazing. You seem to think that no one will take you seriously because you're a woman, when in fact we don't take you seriously because we feel that your ideas are logically flawed and poorly supported. You can keep saying “Oh poor me, no one wants to listen to a woman” or you can suck it up and work on improving your ideas and communication skills. Science isn't some sort of patriarchal boys club. Pick up a science journal and check the names of the authors some time – you'll find plenty of women who are able to actually conduct research.

 

[water]

Rosa:

Nonsense, I'm dead fucking serious.
Have you any clue the torture it is for a woman, even one as male-minded as myself, to be taken seriously?

Here I am with a breathtaking thesis, based on scientific fact- the very facts these tightassed scientists jerk off to in their laboratories- and its thrown in my face. Why?
Gender.
Godamn the establishment!

No, Gendanken, I think that what you are doing is reversed sexism.
You are becoming your own enemy.

You keep provoking people to think the sexist way -- no wonder they do.

 

[gendanken]

James:

Has it occurred to you that the reason academics won't let you in the door is that you are incapable of carrying on a civil intellectual discussion?

You seem to have a few hangups with being a woman. Get over it.

Einstein was famous for gedankens, no?
His models consisted of simple pieces- one room, no windows, and a vacuum.
There we found an equivalence principle and it opened up exotic worlds of absurdity that made more sense than Newton.

I have given you simple pieces- a brain, a thumb, and a mammal. The libraries are swollen with philosophers that have tackled the same problems with tomes the size of your chauvanist ego, James, but to what end? None.
And you accuse me of being incapable of carrying on a civil intellectual discussion?
You want the diagrams and the statistics.
You want control modules, graphs, and test tubes.
You want postulates and differentials.
You're the Doubting Thomas with his head in his ass demanding that one show you the trees for the forest.
No, you are not content with a small leap of faith in considering this curiousity I've found in the mammal- you would rather have a doctoral thesis with pages numbering in the hundreds teeming with graphs that we damn well know you'd never read.
This is why imbecile ryhmes with docile and idle.

Nasor:

No kidding. Your conceit here is amazing. You seem to think that no one will take you seriously because you're a woman, when in fact we don't take you seriously because we feel that your ideas are logically flawed and poorly supported. You can keep saying “Oh poor me, no one wants to listen to a woman” or you can suck it up and work on improving your ideas and communication skills. Science isn't some sort of patriarchal boys club. Pick up a science journal and check the names of the authors some time – you'll find plenty of women who are able to actually conduct research.

Define 'poorly supported' and I'll show you a liar who would fall asleep at the sight of an exposition that actually is "properly supported" by definition.

Any person in this world intrepid enough to collect hours of data on UFO's or Voodoo just to place it on man's desk who, much like yourself, would proudly proclaim that the claim is unsubstantial, absurd, stupid, and unworthy of science yet never admit that he never even read it is something to think about in the face of you begging for food we all know you don't eat.
Your opinions are fashioned after those of your mentors and you will forever dismiss anything alien as a result of madness or, in my case, female angst.
You are just like every last little brother of yours in that dystopic sham we call Science and you all eat the same things.
I wonder if you know you're a slave.
Invert:

I wonder what this theory would have to say about Georgie Peorgie puddin' pie?

What?

Don't all land animals descend from the tetrapod design, hence at one time, all animals had thumbs (five digits anyway). Or did the 5 fingered evolve afterwards? I think the former, could be wrong though.

Yes, the former would be wrong.
If not mistaken, ungulates had multiple digits that have fused into a hoof with their evolution.

However, you must always remember the ingredients:
Mammal. One.
Must have a thumb wiggling thier libidos. Two.
They must either take pleasure in killing or express creative tendencies. Three.

The ape (including ourselves), canine, and the feline fits this model. Its only the fucking racoon that keeps throwing me off.

If, as you say, the thumb is closest to the limbic system because of proximity; if an animal doesn't have a thumb or dewclaw or whatever, wouldn't that just place a different digit closest to the limbic system?

Nope.
5 is something like the critical mass. My theory calls it the Fivephallangio Phenomena.

It is an interesting notion, but I agree that more research would need to be done to take it beyond the bounds of philosophy. Do you attribute the rise in violence of today's culture to using the thumb so much to play video games? What about pinball? The thumbs are usually gripping the top of the table, but they could be said to be moving when slapping the flipper buttons with your hands.

Ha!
Muahahahahaha!

Good point my boy! Girl! Whatever!

The exarcebation of the underlying condition with the handling of the buttons could be the reasons for the violent stupidity we find on Jackass, mosh pits, and in general any 30 year old pothead that had Atari in the 80's or any current high school white boy with an Xbox.
What do they all have in common?
This shit:
http://www.xbreporter.com/eb.php?pid=236060
and this shit:
http://www.xbreporter.com/eb.php?pid=220690

We examine:
Two main muscles controlling the thumb- the flexor and abductor pollicis brevis. Both are thin flat muslces that tie into the triangle of muscle, bone, tendon and nerve in the midcarpal region.
Up along, we find the median nerve that connects these muslces to the 6th and 7th cranial nerves of the head.
These nerves are among the first to make contact with the murderours, sexual limbic system.

Now- we tie this into the a curiosity I've found in something called the Penfeild Homunculus:
http://www.23nlpeople.com/sensory_motor_cortex.htm

Its a small man representing the sensory regions on the brain- notice how huge the lips are. Makes sense- lips are very sensitive and so naturally there's a huge chunk there to represent them. But look at the hands, notice how big they are. Now look at the thumbs.
In the brain's representaion of our limbs, the hands take up the biggest portion of our brain's image of ourselves in its somatosensory model.
See where I'm going with this?
Also to consider is the theory of handedness, in that 90% of the population being right handed, there is reason to believe that hand movements and gestures, writing included, are motor extensions of the shit going on inside the head (specifically the left side)- thought, language, creativy, lust, and murder.
See or no see?
Of course you do.

Its only the fucking racoon that keeps throwing me off.

Rosa:

There are fires roaring subterraneously, let them out I can hear them.
Fight the patriarchy, my sister.

 

[invert_nexus]

I wonder what this theory would have to say about Georgie Peorgie puddin' pie?

What?

Sorry, wrong rhyme. Little Jack Horner Sat in the corner Eating his Christmas pie. He stuck in his thumb And pulled out a plum and said what a good boy am I.

Yes, the former would be wrong.

What I meant was I thought the former was true, but I could be wrong about that. I thought that the five fingered division happened quite early. I guess tetrapod is a bit early to place it. But didn't they even have the unit of five structure in their fins somehow?

Heh, just did a quick search. I found <a href="http://hometown.aol.com/darwinpage/tetrapods.htm">this</a>. It doesn't say much, but it does talk a bit about tetrapod evolution. And, about halfway down the page there's several feet/fins from various tetrapods. They have quite a bit of variation, but they all have five digits. The strange thing is that two of the older samples look more thumblike than the newer ones.

However, you must always remember the ingredients:
Mammal. One.
Must have a thumb wiggling thier libidos. Two.
They must either take pleasure in killing or express creative tendencies. Three.

The ape (including ourselves), canine, and the feline fits this model. Its only the fucking racoon that keeps throwing me off.

I'm of the opinion that almost all mammals have five fingers. Of course, the hooved animals lost them as did some others. Hell, don't an elephant have five little nubs? So, perhaps you're looking for just the "thumbed" animals. The way the ligature and position of the fifth digit formed. Is it a distinct evolutionary event? Can we attribute all "thumbed" creatures to a common ancestor? It's probably more of a trait that's been evolved seperately several times, I'm thinking. Is there a difference in musculature and the like between the seperate thumb family lines? That might limit the search somewhat.

I think that the dewclaw is pushing the thumb distinction to it's limits, personally. I don't think that it's more than an inconvenience to the animals that have it. I doubt if it even has much sensation to it. Just a little nubbin' that they only notice when it get's caught on something.

As an aside, I wonder how many more generations it will take before our little toe goes away. It seems to be in the beginnings of the process that formed the dew claw. Many people can't bend their little toe. The bones are all fused together. Just a little nubbin that get's in the way more than anything else. Interesting that it's the opposite digit in our species that is going away.

This brings up a point. Is the transformation of the front dewclaw similar to the back? What about nerve connections and such? Seems that in the earliest mammals the symetry of form would somehow connect the front and back thumbs into similar paths. What about monkeys and apes that have thumbs on their feet? Are they twice as murderous?

The gorilla is shaped by it's stomack. It eats leaves and has a ruminant gut. So it is generally peaceful. They will go on the occasional rampage, but I wouldn't call them gleefully murderous. They have complex social patterns they must conform to. Displays and such. But on the whole they're nice guys.

And then you still got to work in the Orcas and Seals. They most definitely don't have thumbs. And by your theory requiring the presence of at least a dewclaw, they don't fit. I would think that there are others as well. I know the hippo is pretty damn vicious. And it's a herbivore. They should be placid(er) like gorillas and cows. They expend a lot of energy on violence.

One more thought. This is an area of research that is prone to fall prey to the anthropomorphic flaws. It is difficult to determine emotions in animals that are farther away from us on the evolutionary chain. Some seem almost human while others more inscrutable. The hippo would be a good example of this. It's kinda hard to determine what emotion it might be feeling.

My theory calls it the Fivephallangio Phenomena.

That's sure to catch the establishment's eye. The five kinda sticks out like a sore thumb. Might consider pentaphallangio or quintiphallangio.

Good point my boy! Girl! Whatever!

Me man.

Its only the fucking racoon that keeps throwing me off.

Time to dive into the taxonomical archives.


Edit: Oh, and lay off those ass pennies. It demeans you more than them.

 

[gendanken]

Invert:

Sorry, wrong rhyme. Little Jack Horner Sat in the corner Eating his Christmas pie. He stuck in his thumb And pulled out a plum and said what a good boy am I.

*mordant grin*

Heh, just did a quick search. I found this. It doesn't say much, but it does talk a bit about tetrapod evolution. And, about halfway down the page there's several feet/fins from various tetrapods. They have quite a bit of variation, but they all have five digits. The strange thing is that two of the older samples look more thumblike than the newer ones.

Ah.

I'm of the opinion that almost all mammals have five fingers

No you're not. Stop it.
You're making me look bad.

Of course, the hooved animals lost them as did some others. Hell, don't an elephant have five little nubs? So, perhaps you're looking for just the "thumbed" animals. The way the ligature and position of the fifth digit formed. Is it a distinct evolutionary event? Can we attribute all "thumbed" creatures to a common ancestor? It's probably more of a trait that's been evolved seperately several times, I'm thinking. Is there a difference in musculature and the like between the seperate thumb family lines? That might limit the search somewhat.

We can attribute almost all phenotypes to a common ancestor.
But! You bring up elephants and its no secret that these creatures are among the most playful, creative, and self-aware of the species.
And should I be the first to point out....... musth?
The murderous bullies we call bachleors unleashed during mating seasons?
A kill during musth is orgasmic.

Yet another fivephallangion with praxial connections entangled in its highly advanced lower registers expressed as hyper-aggressiveness.

This brings up a point. Is the transformation of the front dewclaw similar to the back? What about nerve connections and such? Seems that in the earliest mammals the symetry of form would somehow connect the front and back thumbs into similar paths. What about monkeys and apes that have thumbs on their feet? Are they twice as murderous?

AHA!
Look at the gorrilla hand- it has the smallest thumb of all simians.
And its the BIGGEST PUSSY in the jungle in comparison to the human and the chimp who are both bigger thumbed and far more creative.

A gorilla in essence could never be a scientist.

And then you still got to work in the Orcas and Seals. They most definitely don't have thumbs. And by your theory requiring the presence of at least a dewclaw, they don't fit. I would think that there are others as well. I know the hippo is pretty damn vicious. And it's a herbivore. They should be placid(er) like gorillas and cows. They expend a lot of energy on violence

Threadskimming asshole that thou art:

"Whales were once land mammals- let any biolgist explain its anatonomy to you and you'll find that not only is the whale in poessession of vestiges that were once legs in its hindquarters, but the bone structures in its fin are also in possesion of a thumb analogue.- gendanken

..you missed this mentioned to James one page ago.

Edit: Oh, and lay off those ass pennies. It demeans you more than them

Negetive.
The knowing you have this over someone is orgasmic. Almost like wiggling my thumb.

 

[invert_nexus]

"Whales were once land mammals- let any biolgist explain its anatonomy to you and you'll find that not only is the whale in poessession of vestiges that were once legs in its hindquarters, but the bone structures in its fin are also in possesion of a thumb analogue.- gendanken

I think that I did catch it, but I write in a stream of consciousness sort of way and it had passed out by the time I progressed to the whale. I'm not so sure about that though. Do you have a link to a diagram of the whale's fin? I just so happen to have the Scientific American dinosaur special. It has a section on the evolution of whales. It doesn't really mention the thumb, but it does show a crappy diagram and photo of a modern whale. That "thumb" looks pretty fused to me. I don't think it's doing a lot of wiggling. Actually, now that I look even closer, it almost looks like it's the pinkey that looks like a thumb. The finger in the thumb position looks like a regular finger. The only way the thumb could look thumblike is if it's holding it's palm outward in an unnatural position.

And as for those hindquarters, they aren't even connected to the spine. They're just little tiny bones suspended within the body. I seriously doubt they do much with them. They do look cute just hangin' back there. Aww, such cute wittle wegs.

It did have this interesting thing to say about whale evolution. It was thought that whales evolved from mesonychids. But because of the discovery of an anklebone and it's double-pulley hinged system, they now believe that they are descended from artiodactyl, instead.

Here's what it says about these two: Mesonychids are a group of primitive hoofed, wolflike mammals... Artiodactyla is the order of even-toed, hoofed mammals that includes camels, ruminants such as cow; hippos... So that's kinda interesting. The picture clearly shows five digits. one more that a nub though. And encased in the fluke, it's probably not wiggling too much.


And, by the way, you've been suggesting that others give a little wiggle of the thumb at coitus. Have you tried your own experiment? Did it make your toes curl?

 

[James R]

gendanken:

Einstein was famous for gedankens, no?
His models consisted of simple pieces- one room, no windows, and a vacuum.
There we found an equivalence principle and it opened up exotic worlds of absurdity that made more sense than Newton.

Are you comparing yourself to Einstein now? How humble of you.

I have given you simple pieces- a brain, a thumb, and a mammal. The libraries are swollen with philosophers that have tackled the same problems with tomes the size of your chauvanist ego, James, but to what end? None.

Make up your mind. Are you talking philosophy or science? You can philosophise all you want about the thumb; I'll just file it in my "postmodernist waffle" basket. The thing is, you've chosen to post in the "Biology and Genetics" forum, and those subjects are sciences. Like it or not, if you want to talk science, you need those troublesome statistics, graphs and test tubes you so despise.

You're the Doubting Thomas with his head in his ass demanding that one show you the trees for the forest.

I plead guilty. Flights of fancy are all very nice, but you have to return to Earth now and then to keep yourself in touch with what matters.

This is why imbecile ryhmes with docile and idle.

You really ought to lay off the personal jibes, gendanken. It just makes you look childish.

 

[water]

*A magician is wandering along the beach, but no one needs him.*

 

[BigBlueHead]

The ungulate is not so docile... it is not out of line with this theory that the five digits are related to hostility if they have them. Most hoofed animals of any size are strongly preoccupied with stepping on you.

Elephants kill this way, they strike people down with their nose and then crush them with their front feet, both at once. There are only a few recorded cases of people surviving an elephant attack.

The elephant, of course, has more wiggle-able appendages than the human, given the nose in addition to the limbs; I suppose their homunculus would look a little different, but that's open to conjecture.

Now, sexual dimorphism in other mammals isn't quite the same as in humans, although I'd suggest that the human size difference is more a matter of different expectations of the two genders - that is, women are indirectly discouraged from activities that build muscle mass.

Now, what Freud would say about video games, I don't know... I think his assertion that handling objects like boxes and belt buckles was representative of a desire for female masturbation would be relevant in this context...