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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