h a l f b a k e r yBirth of a Notion.
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"Dear Granny and Papa circa 225 million years ago. I
know
we look very different but we are your bloodline and you
are the reason we are here today. Your grandchildren
survived the mass extinction due to your innovative
adaptations. We, your great grandchildren by about 10
million generations
have reached for the stars, walked
on
the moon and harnessed nature to take up the challenge
of
being the new vanguard of life, as you were in your
time.
In your honor we
celebrate your existence by
giving you a name after 225 million years.
Granny, I am going to call you Sally. Sally is a nice name
so
I chose it for you. Papa, I am going to name you Mike
because I've had several friends named Mike. I know you
didn't need names in your time, and of course, you're
dead
and can't hear me, but the thought is out there anyway.
Thank you Sally and Mike. (see link for pictures)
Signed, Doctorremulac3, your roughly ten millionth
grandson."
Grandma Sally.
http://sciencenewsj...erapsid-990x545.jpg [doctorremulac3, Aug 06 2019]
Grandpa Mike.
https://www.thought...f9b58af5c9df692.jpg [doctorremulac3, Aug 06 2019]
Eutheriayee McEutheriaface
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eutheria [doctorremulac3, Aug 11 2019]
_5bkr_5d_5c_2ed_5c_2elai_3fng
Example of why you shouldn't honour ancestors until they're dead. [pertinax, Aug 21 2019]
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Annotation:
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There's an issue with the naming thing. Everybody alive
today
has the same two [great]n grandparent therapsids. We'll
need
to agree on names, unless you're comfortable with having
named the [great]n grandparents of every living human (and
indeed mammal). |
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I mean, these are the two therapsids that gave rise to
Vivaldi, Einstein and Gergovitz. The two therapsids whose
descendants would found Rome, London and Paris. The two
therapsids whose distant children would set foot on the
moon. These are, in short, the two most successful
therapsids on the entire planet. |
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And you've named them Mike and Sally. |
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I think the rules are... first guy who decides to pick a
name
picks the name. Quite sure that's how this works. Case in
point. Lucy: "Lucy is the common name of AL 288-1,
several hundred pieces of bone fossils representing 40
percent of the skeleton of a female of the
Australopithecus afarensis species." The main idea though
was the celebration day, the name
was a
sweet, sweet bonus. |
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But it's mainly a day of celebration of our lizard-like
ancestors. |
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Look Max, your grandpa Mike is smiling. He likes his
name. |
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For goodness' sake, [doc]. I can't have an ancestor called
"Mike". "Michael" would be marginally more acceptable,
though still a little vulgar. "Sally", I'm afraid, is entirely out of
the question. |
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I didn't say "Mikey" at least. |
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Keep in mind, our grandfather scurried around in
the mud looking for dead things to eat. He would
view his grandsons such as Galileo as either a
threat to avoid or dinner. My heartfelt speech to
him, if he were alive today, would be made from a
safe distance with at least a taser if not a high
powered rifle as a backup just in case gramps got
hungry. |
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With all respect to our venerated grandfather, to
elevate him with the name "Mike" is probably a bit
more than he deserves. |
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Hey, he was my ancestor too. Bear in mind that he was the
only -
absolutely only - male therapsid whose genes would make it
through
every single one of the next tens of millions of generations.
Most of the
others made it through zero generations, or one or two, or
maybe a few
hundred if they got lucky. |
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Genghis Khan wasn't especially nice, as people go, even by
the standards
of his day. And only something like 0.5% of all humans alive
can be
traced back to him. But you wouldn't dream of calling him
"Geng", or
"Genghey". Try saying "Yo Gengster, how's it hangin' bro"
and see how well that goes down. |
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You go back and shoot Michael, and all of humanity - not to
mention the
pandas and porcupines and elephants - just vanish. OK,
pandas we could
manage without. And probably porcupines and elephants.
But where
would we be without bacon or beef? |
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So show a little respect. |
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The name "Sally" sounds like an abbreviation (like Harold ->
Harry), but I can't think of any name it could be an
abbreviation OF. |
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Sally is a short form of Sarah. |
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Umm...
Sarah: 5 letters, 2 syllables.
Sally: 5 letters, 2 syllables.
How is it a "short form"? |
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//How is it a "short form"?// |
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There's a strange phenomenon with some places/accents
and their fondness for shortening and then relengthening
names. Stephen, Michael & David are just Steve, Mike &
Dave in most places, but in Liverpool they're Stevie, Mikey
and Davey-lad. Australia goes with Steve-oh, Cunty & Dave-
oh. I wonder if it's because two sylables works better when
shouting? |
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You know, I think I killed a cute idea by adding the
name thing. Too late now, but in retrospect you
shouldn't invent a hover craft and then say its main
feature is that it's named Bob. Bob the hovercraft.
It takes people off the main idea. |
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Every annotation will be about the name, not the
hovercraft. |
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"Why did you name it Bob?" |
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"Bob is short for Robert. Could somebody please
explain how you get Bob out of Robert? Joe out of
Joseph yes, but Bob from Robert makes as much
sense as calling "Richard" "Dick". |
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"But what about my hovercraft?" |
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"But why would you name it Bob? Why not Carl?" |
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I brought this on myself. Lesson learned. |
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Very well: the idea itself is a bit silly too. Honour those who
are alive to receive the honour. Dead ancestors don't care
whether you remember them or not. |
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^ Of course they do. As will you when you rejoin the great dreaming. |
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This is just an honouring of the tree of life, which is definitely mentally healthy as a global species. |
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Interesting fact: Icke hails from Mikey's oral bacteria, Trump from the anus. |
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This seems very short-sighted - our Last Universal
Common Ancestor, or Luca - is well known to be some
pre-prokaryotic collection of DNA/RNA encoded
mechanisms some 3.7 billion years ago. |
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Yes and no. We know that eukaryotes were the result of a
cell fusion event. It's quite likely that there was a lot of
mixing and matching and fusing and splitting that gave rise to
the first really good living cell. Which confuses things a little. |
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You know, giving a hat tip to our ancestors that
walked on all fours might also have a bit of a side
benefit of acknowledging beings that are currently
in that state of evolution as well. |
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I've always said that dogs will be talking someday.
They'll also be piloting spaceships if they ever
break out of the whole "using the mouth as the
main tool for survival" thing and move to an
opposing thumb arrangement. The mouth tool is a
dead end. You're basically a land shark. |
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Dogs deserve better than that. |
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Agh, no one mentioned the monolith, surely there should a Monolith Day, where people crowd a portable monolith and beat things to death? |
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NB John -> Jack - 5 letters |
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Is there an explanation for this bizarre name swapping? |
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Every morning when meditating, I thank the original yogis for
their devotion and commitment to passing down the ancient
ways. It don't get much more old than that...for me, at least. |
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//Every morning when meditating, I thank the original yogis
for their devotion and commitment to passing down the
ancient ways.// |
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Call me a cynic, but my guess is that most of these ancient
ways were invented in the 60's. |
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No, no-no. That is just when the Western World discovered
their benefits. That's like saying The Bible is only a few
hundred years old or something. You negative Nancy!!! |
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Hmm. Well, a bit of a Google suggests you may be right,
[bliss]. But I'm pretty sure the Pebble Marketing Board had a
hand in the whole pebble therapy thing. |
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The discussion about the pebble industry and wrongdoings
of "big pebble" aside, |
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I'm thinking another incarnation of this might be to have
the first day of every month be dedicated to an animal or
organism on the tree of life that we all call grandma and
grandpa. I'll let Max name one month's ancestors so he
stops complaining. That or a public vote for the name can
be enacted but I'll start the naming by each month's
animal thusly: May is "Eutheriay McEutheriaface" and let
the
public vote for that or something else since I'm pretty
sure this is what they'd come up with on their own. |
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The issue is, should the 12 months be the same scale of
the timeline of the evolutionary tree? I'll do some
searching but I believe most of the year would be
dedicated to one cell organisms. The more likely layout
would be each month dedicated to some notable
evolutionary step that was taken. |
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Might need to make this another idea then actually enact
it by sending it out to educators, charging for the
materials, "Happy Euarchonta Day!" cards and such and
getting big government grants to fund this because the
taxpayers need to start supporting me because it's time
for them to start paying their fair share. |
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I get it now...you mean REALLY ancient ancients. |
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Oh yea. Tens to hundreds of millions of years ago. |
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// Sally is a short form of Sarah. // |
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This shocked me, and I didn't quite believe it, but it's
confirmed by Behind the Name. Apparently Sadie is also a
diminutive form of Sarah, equally shocking! |
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//I've always said that dogs will be talking someday// |
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If you can't hear them you're just not listening (or seeing as
the case may be, a good chunk of it is body language after
all). |
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As someone raised from infancy with both dogs & cats
around* (which I'm told leads to the development of
additional brain wiring to 'understand'
them that can't be retrofitted to an adult) I would submit
that your definition of 'talking' is far
too humancentric. |
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*A few sheep, the odd goat & the occasional pig, a rare
breed the occasional pig, which is why we only had the one,
I
hear Sturton did a study. |
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//I've always said that dogs will be talking someday. They'll
also be piloting spaceships// |
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Dogs already won the space race. First animal in orbit : Laika. |
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Also, I ship Sally and Mike. They had a long and happy life,
and begat a horde of ravening little whippersnappers. |
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// the idea itself is a bit silly too. Honour those who are alive
to receive the honour. Dead ancestors don't care whether you
remember them or not.// |
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All those posthumous awards - silly. Medal of honour? Silly,
silly. |
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I disagree, [Loris]. If you honour people when they're still alive, it
can go to their heads and make dicks of them. Sartre would be
a case in point; early Sartre was admirable, but then people
started admiring him, and it all went downhill from there. |
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Actually, so would R.D.Laing (see link). |
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^ Is 'that' why genius is so seldom recognized in its lifetime? |
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Because ego? or because it's just easier on everybody else that way? |
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Pertinax, it's not me you're disagreeing with - it's
neutrinos_shadow. |
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I would just like to know who is older, grandma Sally or Grandpa Mike? Rumor has it that she married a much younger therapsid. I suppose there were not a lot to choose from back then. Another rumor I heard was that they might have even been related... Sometimes it's best to let sleeping dogs lie. |
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