Farm News 03-25-07

Sunday morning, after chores, 66°

Computer Fun

Somehow the bulk mail program I use for Farm News was trashed, along with the data files. I managed to recover about 75% of the email addresses. So, if you don't receive this, blame it on the computer.

Spring

There will probably be baby bunnies in the rabbitry today or tomorrow. This morning Suzette was in her nest box, pulling out fur to make a nice soft nursery.

Shotgun cat is enormous. I have never seen a cat that pregnant before. She is acting a little strange this morning and the tomcats are acting puzzled in her company, so I expect kittens very soon.

The geese are laying eggs and being completely obnoxious. The ganders are so protective that it is difficult to walk around doing chores. The rest of the year they are generally reasonable, but not while there are eggs in the nests. Beth and Bebe each have five or six eggs in their nests.

I purchased 25 newly-hatched Red Sex Link chicks Tuesday and they are in the brooder, eating, drinking, and growing.

Paula cut a cluster of hyacinths and brought them in the house. The entire house is filled with fragrance.

It's spring.

Spring Chores, an excerpt from Suburbia, by Dr. M.

March is upon us in New Jersey and here that means the odd errant snow storm followed by 50 degree days that make one itch to clean, plant and renew. Thus, my husband and I embarked on our spring projects; to seriously start composting (happily started last fall with the leaves), to paint our bedroom, and to update the lighting in the house. Further projects will follow once these are completed.

Last weekend it was lovely and warm for this time of year so we started cleaning up the yard and organizing our composting efforts. Because our German Shepherd dog spends her days in our back yard, any substantial work outside must start with removing the copious amount of poop therein. Medchen weighs 90 pounds and has a lot of fiber in her diet; so really, the poop is something to contend with. We wish we could do something useful with it, but, hygiene dictates that the offending material be deposited in the trash. That chore over, we attacked the day’s garden task.

First was to address the dog house on the property. Medchen doesn’t use it because it’s in a side yard; also it sat upon the parcel upon which I wished to grow vegetables. We put it on Craig’s List for zero dollars if someone would come and take it away. A bargain at twice the price we figured. We did not figure on how heavy the thing was. The previous owner of our house was very handy, and built things to last, for which Andrew and I are profoundly grateful. We neglected to consider that he built the dog house patterned after one of the cheap ones at Home Depot, but, considerably more sturdy; with a lot more wood, and many more nails, and real shingles. It weighed a ton, and Andrew and I could not lift it. We modified our posting and we still had a willing customer. Andrew tells me that removing the dog house involved backing a trailer into the back yard. I don’t know, I was at work but it sure sounded tough. And with the dog house gone, we could commence preparing the bed for the garden. Of course, the next day we got 3 inches of snow, sleet and ice. Thus, we directed our energies indoors.

Our bedroom had not been painted since the Bush père administration, and the lines and the cracks on the walls matched its age. So, we moved things out, emptied the closet, taped to within an inch of our life, and moved in the ladders. When the emptying was over, all that was left was the king size bed and my dresser. With plenty of swearing we moved the mattress out of the room and put a drop cloth over the rest. We are moving up in the world because this time we invested in the nice canvas drop cloths that actually stay where they are put; a miracle to be sure. Then came washing the walls, which I think just spread the dirt around. With our preparations done we started painting.

Andrew started on the ceiling, and I started on the closet. You learn a lot about house construction painting, like where someone did not quite grasp the concept that the walls are supposed to meet the floor, and that orthogonal means at true right angles, not just a close approximation. We marveled at some of the construction, and laughed at other portions. We sang to the radio and painted. We both got paint in our hair and I think Andrew still has paint on his glasses. We argued some during the process, but mostly had a good time. And the results are fabulous. We’ve gone from a room that looks like a wrinkled old man, to one with smooth skin and bright energy; a lovely transformation.

As I write this looking at our lovely walls, Andrew is reading about wiring for our next project. We are going to install our own ceiling fans and track lighting. Another adventure in home-ownership waits!

Off to the Races

The race is between intellectual property software and open source software. Recently, I have realized that open source software fits the requirements for a Darwin Machine, an idea from William Calvin. Here, in his own words, are the six essential requirements for a Darwin Machine:

1. There must be a pattern involved.

2. The pattern must be copied somehow (indeed, that which is copied may serve to define the pattern). [Together, 1 and 2 are the minimum replicable unit -- so, in a sense, we could reduce six essentials to five. But I'm splitting rather than lumping here because so many "sparse Darwinian" processes exhibit a pattern without replication.]

3. Variant patterns must sometimes be produced by chance -- though it need not be purely random, as another process could well bias the directionality of the small sidesteps that result. Superpositions and recombinations will also suffice.

4. The pattern and its variant must compete with one another for occupation of a limited work space. For example, bluegrass and crab grass compete for back yards. Limited means the workspace forces choices, unlike a wide-open niche with enough resources for all to survive. Observe that we're now talking about populations of a pattern, not one at a time.

5. The competition is biased by a multifaceted environment: for example, how often the grass is watered, cut, fertilized, and frozen, giving one pattern more of the lawn than another. That's Darwin's natural selection.

6. New variants always preferentially occur around the more successful of the current patterns. In biology, there is a skewed survival to reproductive maturity (environmental selection is mostly juvenile mortality) or a skewed distribution of those adults who successfully mate (sexual selection). This is what Darwin later called an inheritance principle. Variations are not just random jumps from some standard starting position; rather, they are usually little sidesteps from a pretty-good solution (most variants are worse than a parent, but a few may be even better, and become the preferred source of further variants).

In the case of open source software the patterns are the individual line of code, which I will suggest resemble, from this viewpoint, genes in biology. As in biology, lines of code are copied, usually in the form of large, interacting collections of patterns, similar to the populations of genes which make up organisms.

Intellectual property software is now built upon the Microsoft foundations: enormous blocks of code and machines for creating code, all of which are considered to be intellectual property. Windows, the base upon which all this is built, is probably the most complex machine ever devised by humans.

Open source software is built upon Linux: enormous blocks of code and machines for creating code, all of which are considered to be public property. My thesis is that the open source software 'commons' is, in itself, a Darwin machine. There are no individual programmers in the open source community who are essential to the continued existence of that community. Open source software attracts programmers who, because they feel pleasure from doing so, will create new parts and pieces in the universe of open source software.

The multifaceted environment of open source code is the internet and all the computers attached to it.

E-mail Subscribers: To subscribe, unsubscribe, contribute stories, complain or send a gift subscription, send an email to FarmNews@GeezerNet.com . The editor reserves the right to steal ideas submitted, rewrite submissions, and sign false names to them whenever it strikes his fancy to do so.

Farm News 03-18-07

Sunday morning, after chores

Daylight Savings Time

Has anyone seen any solid research which shows that Daylight Savings Time saves anything? In Anthony, Kansas, when I was younger than I am now, I often had to attend the big summer tent revival meeting. Pretty much the same people got saved there every year, but I don't know if they saved any daylight.

God, Save us from Women

Paula absolutely, firmly, undeniably, no appeal allowed, vetoed my request to keep a pet rat. Many years ago I had a pet rat, a very nice young male rat creatively named Butch.

Butch was an intelligent, playful, inquisitive, loyal pet. Sort of like a pocket sized dog, with a pocket sized dog brain; he liked to sniff asses; to do so, he would run up inside your pants; most people found that, initially, disconcerting. I figured he was a babe magnet, one of many that I kept laid out around my lair. A rat can be as exciting as a puppy, if the rat's owner handles the interactions between the rat and other humans in a wise and judicious manner.

When I was young, 'wise and judicious' was not yet a legible entry in my mental dictionary. I exploited that rat as a means to achieving greater sexual success. That such success frequently brought forth difficult situations was not a factor I considered. 'Rats help catch Babes' and are cheaper than convertibles; I equipped myself with a 1959 DeSoto Fireflight Convertible, AND a rat named Butch. I was, I daresay, the center of a minefield of babe magnets. A component stereo with cool jazz records, quotations from Nietzsche on the walls, Southern Comfort setting on the bar with a pair of cordial glasses; twas a mine field of babe magnets. Of course, it got me in trouble.

Absolutely contrary to all reaches of sane reasoning, I don't regret the trouble. Two outstanding biological grandsons resulted from the effects of that mine field, both of whom occasionally read this journal. I wish them well and hope they have as much fun being grandfathers as I do.

Anyway, just because I want another pet rat doesn't mean that I am trying to attract babes, again. Paula should know that, but I suspect she forgets on occasion, and this is one of those occasions. While using Butch as part of an elaborate mating display I learned to value him for his pleasant company, as the mine field sat empty of babes more than filled. Ah! Yes, but it did catch some wonderful specimens.

I'd best quit, before my wife reads this.

The Chief FOOL Speaks

The Friends of the Oskaloosa Library, the FOOLs, elected me as their leader. I am taking this job seriously, and have thus written the following piece for the spring newsletter. I'm including it here because it there isn't anything else to fill out Farm News this week.

Doesn't that headline look important? It could have been, “Notes from the President,” or some similar drivel, but, “The Chief FOOL Speaks,” has real impact. That is one of the many reasons I used my executive authority to change the title of this office from 'President' to 'Chief FOOL.' Last week I volunteered in the library for a few hours, and a beautiful blonde two-year-old cutie, upon learning that I was Chief FOOL, blew me a kiss! She also allowed me to hold her toy dog. There is no doubt, the new title has added to the public recognition of the office.

Are you a FOOL? If not, what are you doing in Oskaloosa? You can become a FOOL for a year for only $5, which is a ridiculously small sum for such a great honor. For $20 you can become a FOOL for life, a status which can save you in many embarrassing situations. When you spill chocolate milk on the white rug at a big party, you can simply look down and say, “Oh, I'm a lifetime FOOL,” and everyone will understand.

For $100 you can become a FOOL for life, and the Chief FOOL will design, create, and sign for you a diploma granting you the degree of Total FOOL! Hang that on the wall and, when you have drunk too much champagne at your own anniversary party, ending it by vomiting on the new white rug, your spouse needs to say nothing, but simply point to your diploma on the wall.

Roger Barker and Paul Gump, two big-time scientists and late residents of Oskaloosa, discovered and showed that in small towns and small schools there are just as many jobs that must be done to keep the community alive as there are in larger towns and schools. Oskaloosa has just as many newspapers as Topeka (although there are fewer editions), Oskaloosa High School has the same number of football and basketball teams as Lawrence High, and the community-keeping tasks that must be done in both Oskaloosa and Lawrence are about the same. In Lawrence there are plenty of skilled people eager to serve on the Annual Downtown Sidewalk Sale steering committee. In Oskaloosa, half the members of the Old Settlers committee will be fools (and we have to beg them to help us), and the leaders will be busy with three other jobs, also.

Want some examples? A Japanese exchange student, who barely spoke English, was once on an Oskaloosa FBLA spelling relay team. A one armed guy, who could sort of speak English, played on the basketball team one year and lettered twice in football. In a small town you take what you can get, even a FOOL.

Barker and Gump, by the way, wrote a book called Big School Small School which I thought was one of the most important books about education I had ever read. I have never met a public education administrator who has read it. If you know a public education administrator, please suggest to that person that a FOOL membership might be a real career builder.

Anyway, the point of all this stuff about Barker and Gump is to show that, in small towns, even FOOLs are needed. There aren't enough normal people to go around. If you understand this, then you will see there is an advantage in having both a life membership and a life-long sequence of $5 annual FOOL certifications: with those $5 annual certifications, you might receive a button, like those stupid smiley-face pins, that may carry such messages as, “I Made of FOOL of Myself in Oskaloosa,” or, “I FOOL around with books.” If it is important to you that people know that you have earned some sort of a reputation as a FOOL in Oskaloosa, then the annual $5 renewal might be your best choice. I have always thought that the $20 life-time membership lacked bling.

The $100 diploma, though, has terrific bling (you have to know a city person to know what bling means; I'm trying to appeal to urban fools, too, because they can help in a small town even though they don't live there). For $100, you will have the opportunity to interact with the Chief FOOL during the design of your diploma! The number of degrees available grows hourly, sometimes, so you will be able to choose the degree that best matches your ambitions.

Two fun books to read this summer: His Majesty's Dragon, by Naomi Novik, and Sorcery & Cecelia or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot, by Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer. Both books are somewhat silly in places but fun to read. Both books are the first in a series. I read three of Novik's books and liked them all. Wrede & Stevermer are obviously influenced by Jane Austen.

Ms. Austen, a woman in whom grace and beauty were combined with wit and intellect to create a formidable presence in society, can still, one hundred and ninety years after her birth in Steventon, influence a FOOL to write sentences which, in a weak and unsophisticated manner, attempt, usually hopelessly, to embody, so to speak, the acknowledged mastery of our native language which Ms. Austen, one of the most famous users of that language, displayed in her fictional accounts, etc.

FOOLs understand that words can be fun. Become a FOOL, even if you already are one.

More on Autism

A reader writes:

What is it about autistic people that makes them different? The only thing that I can see different about autistic people is their ability to "see" things in a different light, that somehow their paradigm became shifted through a unique wiring of the brain. Some autistic people can play a piece of music after hearing it played just once. Others are more visually adapted. Some have limited skills, but what they can do is highly developed. In a "go, go, go" society, as children we are expected to have a knowledge of a broad set of subjects, with very little freedom in the academic structure until high school or even college. When a person who can multiply six digit numbers in their head with ease yet cannot seem to write a single page essay comes along, most of society calls them "stupid" in the literal term, meaning they are incapable of learning. How have/will autistic children adapt to this type of society?

A good question. We must be careful, though, to remember that 'incorporating' them into society is a two way trade: we must adapt ourselves to their special needs in order to be able to include them. We should not agree to ignore the differences of special people, but should look to ourselves to see what manner of barricades have we innocently erected that now block their full participation in our society. We have to decide that we might need them more than they need us. We don't know, but the changes might not be expensive compared to what we might, in the end, pay because they were not included.

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Farm News 03-11-07

Sunday morning, after chores, 50°

Daylight Savings Time

Why is it, in a nation that is dominated by religious fundamentalists, we find it necessary to change from God's time every year?

Goats in Jail

Lucy's triplets, two males and a female, are doing well enough, but Zula, the little girl, could use more food. Thursday morning I put the two boys in a pen for a few hours to give Zula an opportunity to nurse without being pushed away by her brothers. The two little boys looked so sad, standing in jail, looking out, with their long ears hanging down forlornly.

Goose

Bebe Goose has found a wonderful spot for a nest. It is a deep bowl in a large pile of shredded paper; what better for a nest? The only problem, a problem for me, not Bebe, is that that particular nest was made by Weasel and is where Weasel sleeps each night. Bebe has a history of selecting nests sites that could be called inappropriate at best.

Geese divide the world of animals into three broad categories: geese, enemies, and landscaping. For the geese who live here, chickens, ducks, cats, goats and dogs are landscaping, unless they happen to move into forbidden spaces, in which case they are treated as enemies until they move back into landscape space. Two of the geese, Beth and Sarge, were raised from hatching by humans, so humans are geese. Bebe and Butch, the other pair, consider humans as landscape.

This difference in classification of humans can lead to conflicts. When Sarge sees a human he generally honks, “Hello,” and tends to walk over to gossip. Butch, being a flocking animal, follows along. This change in location, however, places the human inside forbidden territory, so Butch challenges. Sarge, observing Butch's challenge behavior, goes into challenge and defend mode. Bebe, observing two males in challenge and defend mode, immediately starts singing her courage song, very similar to the songs Cheyenne women would sing for the men in battles. All these behaviors are not unlike the behaviors of humans in our normal environments: nomadic hunter-gatherer bands.

Beth doesn't always join in the challenge-defend business. She doesn't always understand the language. Beth is not a pure-bred Toulouse like the others, but, instead, had an African grandmother. As a result, her calls have a strange accent and she often has difficulty in understanding the calls of Toulouse. Beth's mother was an incubator, so she is imprinted on humans, like all the rest except for Bebe.

It is interesting to find such linguistic differences between among races of the same species. If you would like to know something about bird calls, California Bird Talk is a good place to start. Somehow, while we humans were domesticating geese, we introduced linguistically different races into the species.

Our geese pay no attention to wild geese flying overhead, unless the wild geese fly too low and set off an alarm call. Wild geese speak a different language. Constructing a multilingual dictionary of goose talk could be a fascinating project, one that might show us something about human language. For some birds, a difference in calls appears to be the basis for their reproductive isolation. Female Eastern Meadowlarks don't seem to respond to the calls of male Western Meadowlarks, so the two species remain reproductively isolated, and continue to diverge, even in the regions where they overlap.

Many years ago a nice young woman and I were lovers, even though we did not share a common spoken language. Geese, also, seem to be able to move across the language barrier for sex, as can humans, for Beth's linguistic peculiarities have not appeared to inhibit Sarge in the least. A few years ago there was some academic debate as to whether early hominids of different species might mate if they were in the same region. Those who spoke against the probability of the two species mating had never carefully observed the behavior of teen-age male humans. A 15 year old human male would cheerfully have sex with a Neanderthal or an alligator female, whichever is most readily available.

Books

I am finishing Black Powder War by Naomi Novik, the third book in a series that begins with His Majesty's Dragon, and continues with Throne of Jade. The setting is Europe and China during the Napoleonic wars, the hook is that both the French and English armies use dragons, as do the Chinese. It's all very exciting and occasionally thoughtful. Anyone who enjoys Anne McCaffrey's books would enjoy these.

Autism

Two mothers responded to the article last week. The mothers of autistic children write:

We feel sometimes our son sees things as they are really supposed to be seen, not how society thinks they should be seen. He has taught us to not judge people or situations by their covers, but that people and situations have many layers. Our son starts his day as a new day even if he's had a rotten one the day before.

*

Geezer, I hope to send my further thoughts soon, but have a bad cold today and need to rest. Let the included message stand as the counter to the "genetic disorder" part. For the rest of it, I will expand on something my husband said, "Those who are fascinated by autism do not live with autism."

1 in 6 children suffers from a developmental disease ~
1 in 150 have Autism...
There is NO such thing as a "genetic" epidemic!
Just gimme some TRUTH!

Oh, boy. Talk about dumping out a bucket of snakes! I want to start with the interesting insight made by a father of an autistic child, "Those who are fascinated by autism do not live with autism."

To the parents of autistic children, please allow me to say, “No, I am not the parent of an autistic child. Your children are my nieces and nephews; I love them, somewhat remotely, perhaps, because that is my nature; and your kids are really interesting.” End of fine print.

Twin studies indicate that autism has both genetic and environmental requirements necessary for it to appear; I'm going to accept that as a postulate. Let us examine the reasons for there to be a genetic component of autism. Why are those genes in the genome? What do those genes offer in terms of reproductive success that ensure their survival in the gene pool? And, finally, are there any good ideas for the families' of autistic children in all this verbiage?

Many autistic kids can be trackers. I'll bet on that. They are able to see the slightest disturbance in the environment and point it out. Temple Grandin says that she thinks in pictures. She fails to state that the pictures are movies, not stills, I think. She is much more cognizant of changes in the pictures than most other people. Is there a trade-off involved between picture-thinking and other kinds of thinking?

As for the possible link between immunizations and autism, we're still very short on dependable research. Think about this, though: both cognitive development and immune system development can be regarded as Darwin Machines. In evolutionary processes sequence of change is a factor in the outcome. Giving Typhoid before Measles yields a different immune system that does giving Measles first. The same is true in cognitive development: variations in the sequences in which things are learned yield different outcomes. I don't know if this has anything to do with the problem, nor do I know that it doesn't.

If you are still reading this, then read this, too.

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Sunday morning, before chores, 20°

Weasel Wraps Up Possum, Sarge Takes a Tumble

Displaying great courage and devotion to duty, Weasel, the ten year old 'new' dog, trapped a possum on the north porch and kept it there, barking until I went out and shot it for her. As the shot was fired Weasel leapt back into the fray, yanked the possum out of the corner where it had been crouching, snarling in rage at the dog, and carried it out to the yard, where she made certain that the shot had been fatal. The plump possum, a member of a species known for producing large numbers of sneak thieves, had crept onto the porch in the mistaken hope of snatching some dog food.

The primo operatic hero of the farm, Sarge, the gander, now the age equivalent to a 35 year old human, is, as Spring approaches, feeling a very strong need to assert his qualifications for his position as Secretary of Goose Defense, i.e. he is an aggressive nuisance. He is six or seven years old; geese live can 20-40 years, so he is now in his prime. He can, if he is feeling real mean, deliver a peck sufficiently violent to draw blood on the victim when delivered through two layers of clothing.

Thursday morning I was wearing two layers of clothing on my legs: heavy pants and thick long underwear. It wasn't all that cold, 20° or so, but the wind was shrieking out of the north at 30 mph or better. It was downright nasty cold out there in the open area west of the barn, one of those situations where you feel like the only thing between you and the North Pole is a few strands of barbed wire.

While doing normal morning chores I stepped into the pasture with the goats and geese to refill their water pans. Sarge, who usually likes me, mistook the hose for the tail of a monster which was wearing my clothes and sneaking into his pasture. Wagner wrote no music equivalent to the enraged honk of a prime gander protecting his harem (maybe Pink Floyd).

Sarge came charging out of the shed, into the open, neck and wings outstretched, sounding like something from another planet,and, just before he reached me, into the full force of the wind from the north. Before I could move to defend myself the wind caught him, lifted him up, and dropped him solidly down on his back, spinning him around several times in the process.

Three days later he is beginning to regain his normal bluster. He suffered no physical injury, but the damage to his ego was tremendous.

Hopping Goats and Laying Ducks

The baby goats are learning to hop. Hopping is an important skill for young goats; they have to learn to hop before they can cavort. They have names, now. Lucy's doe is Zula and the two bucks are Hop and Flop. Sally's doe is Silly. Zula and Hop are friends and Flop and Silly are friends. In a week this might change, but, for now, Zula and Hop curl up together to nap, and Flop and Silly snuggle up together to nap.

The 17 ducks, at least 12 of whom are females, are starting to lay eggs. I think duck eggs are delicious, so I'm happy. In some urban stores eggs from free ranging ducks will sell for $20 per dozen. I haven't told the ducks that because I don't want them all to move to the city; I need to have them here to eat grasshoppers. So far I have thirteen eggs, not bad for a week. In two or three weeks I will probably be gathering a half dozen or more daily, if I bother to collect them all.

When ducks first start laying they just drop their eggs wherever they happen to be standing when the urge to lay an egg strikes them. I'm picking up eggs in the barn and all over the yard. In a few weeks they will start building nests and using them, and that is when gathering the eggs becomes a bit more of a problem. They tend to hide their nests, and, when they aren't on their nests, they cover them with camouflage.

If I take all the eggs in a nest the female duck will notice that her eggs are missing. If I take all but two eggs she won't notice, probably. That means that when I find a nest I can remove all but two eggs, and those two eggs I must mark, but with marks such that the mother won't notice them. If, for instance, I put a large 'X' on each egg with a magic marker, the mother will notice, decide that the security of her nest has been compromised, and move to another location. A large dot, though, won't be noticed by the mother.

This would seem to indicate that ducks can count to two. Perhaps they can discern the difference between zero, one, and more when applied to eggs. I doubt very much if the ability generalizes beyond counting eggs. Generalization seems to be a characteristic of what we call intelligence, and nobody who raises ducks could find any reason to associate the concepts of intelligence and duck.

A Reader Writes

Perhaps all our attempts to make the autistic children and asperger kids "well" is not what we are doing. We are trying to make them be like us. However, we may just all be looking in the wrong direction! The increasing prevalence of the syndrome and the genetic component may mean that mother nature is trying on a new human species. Perhaps what we think of as an "abberant condition" is the new human. Lord knows the one we've got now sure needs some fine tuning.

Lot's of truthiness in that paragraph. The only problem is that it assumes intelligent design. Evolution isn't planned, and it doesn't try out new things when it 'thinks' things are going bad. Successful genetic combinations are those that replicate the most. That's all. No planning, no trying, no intelligence.

The spirits must be guiding me, because just before I read the above e-mail I was reading, again, William Calvin's six essentials for a Darwin Machine. Calvin has abstracted the process of evolution from biology. His six essentials do not include any requirements for life, intelligence, or any material object to be involved in the process. There must be a pattern, it must be replicated, and there must be a limited environment. The replication cannot be perfect every time, the pattern and its variants must compete for space, and new variants must preferentially occur around the most successful of the current patterns. That is how evolution works. The result is complexity, or, as Calvin puts it, a “shaping up of quality.”

Memeticists think that the noosphere probably fits the six requirements. I suspect that the universe of all existing single lines of computer code form a Darwin Machine. The fact that lines of computer code rely upon programmers and the software publishing industry for their replication is irrelevant. One could look objectively at our information economy and decide that computer programs train programmers to use the lines of code in the program by attracting money for the programmers. Calvin, in The Cerebral Code, examines neo-cortical processes as being a Darwin Machine which creates conscious thought.

The context in which evolution occurs is one thing, and the process of evolution is another. Our immune systems, for instance, change through an evolutionary process. With some caveats the same can be said of interstellar carbon compounds. Biological evolution my be said to be only a theory, but the evolutionary process itself has mathematical certainty.

All this dances around the central question as to whether autism is a disability or an enhanced ability. The answer to that question is to be found in hunter-gatherer societies. Modern, urban humans haven't been at it long enough to make much difference in our genome. Based upon no data, I would guess that some autistic people might make exceptional trackers. Finally, I don't think that very many therapies for the autistic are aimed at 'repairing' them, instead they are aimed at helping them learn coping methods.

As I said above, the spirits are guiding me, because a nice young man I know, who is also autistic according to the experts, came to visit this week. We walked out to see the baby goats and on the way he said, “What is that?” It was a duck egg, one I probably wouldn't have seen for years, even though it was in the open. The egg was a dark gray, an unusual color for eggs of any sort, and it lying on a gray background, but, still, the young man spotted it instantly. At least some people who are called autistic have some awesome abilities to detect things that are out of place. That is why they are sometimes good spotters for forbidden objects at airport luggage x-ray machines.

I am not yet convinced that autism is a single thing. It often seems to be sort of a bucket, a catch-all for what may be several different things. The DSM-III, the book of categories of mental disorders, under the heading 'autism', states, as the first requirement, that “At least eight of the following sixteen items are present, these to include at least two items from A, one from B, and one from C.”

To me, that single sentence says that we have not yet really defined autism. When the DSM has changed to say, “At least four of the following six items are present,” we will have a much better definition. To reach that point, though, we will have to find definitions for some mental 'disorders' that will subtract twelve of the disorders now attributed to autism. Whether or not they are actually disorders is a different matter entirely. DSM-IV, which is in print but I don't have, says, “(I) A total of six (or more) items from (A), (B), and (C), with at least two from (A), and one each from (B) and (C).” We are moving closer to an accurate map, maybe.

[After writing the two above paragraphs, I feel that I should publicly invite the parents of autistic children to contact me and make some input into the discussion. There are two children with whom I interact and who are identified as autistic. Their parents know me. I didn't intend to get into a discussion of autism, but, as things often happen, it seems that I may be headed in that direction. Sharon and Sue, what are the benefits of autism? Write or call.]

Yet More Monkey Business

Dr. M. has been very busy lately being a new wife, housekeeper, Army officer, and veterinarian. Women sure do like to stay busy. There is no way I would take on all that stuff at once, especially not if I was doing it all for the first time. I'm feeling horribly overworked since Paula broke her wrist; she actually expects me to sweep the floor more often than once a month, whether it looks like it needs it or not.

Anyway, Dr. M. wishes to join in on the affair of the baby monkeys and their toys.

I was listening to an NPR interview about the baby monkeys, and the scientist talked about how she got involved in gender based play. Her friend, in a bid to subvert the dominant paradigm, gave her daughter a truck and her son a doll. Her son, predictably, used the doll as a weapon or projectile. But the daughter wrapped the truck up in a blanket and called it "little truckie". The kids sounded pretty young, which just says to me that we learn those behaviors really, really, early.

Dr. M., who thinks we learn those behaviors early, still thinks we learn them from watching the sexist adult males around us. Dr. M. graduated from the same fancy eastern women's college as did my daughter, so she also automatically blames most societal problems on what is learned from sexist adult males. Dear ladies, we 'learn' that stuff at conception; it's God's fault. Somehow, our genes set us up so that (1) girls learn very quickly to cuddle dolls and (2) boys learn very quickly to throw things. It makes sense if you consider that women are the only ones properly equipped to care for infants, and men, being blind to the housework needing to be done, instead spend lots of time throwing rocks at rabbits in hope of trading food for sex.

It seems unlikely that genes directly encode behaviors, and much more likely that genes encode kinesises, roughly, the animal equivalent of tropisms in plants. One kinesis might make throwing feel like a fun thing to do and another might make cuddling toy trucks feel right. How do we uncover an instinct which makes throwing feel good for boys? A kinesis is even more fundamental than an instinct, in this context.

Our question has become not 'when do they learn it' but, instead, 'what are the kinesises which guide them into these behaviors?'

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