Information studies - what exactly is that about ?
Other than giving Dave the chance to put off having a real job a bit longer.

Re westerns & evolution _ Haven't you heard of the "Bone Wars"? There were two rival paleontologists named Cope & Marsh (both of whom were from the eastern part of the USA) who used to go out searching for Dinosaur fossils in the Wild West, and sabotaging each other's diggings. Allegedly the local AmerIndians' nickname for one of them translated as "Man who runs fast while carrying bones". :-)
... or "carrying rocks"... or something like that, anyway.

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"Some days I diet, other days they serve lasagne."



Post Edited (03-31-03 19:09)

Information Studies = postgrad course in how to be a librarian.

And if ONE person says 'do you need a degree to stamp books?', I shall be very cross.

also was a complete skive. 2 days a week of lectures, tues and thurs. Start at 10am, lunch at 12, start again at 2, finish at 4pm.

At which point we promptly decamped to the pub.

Used to go in on wednesday morning with the aim of doing some work on essays and the like. Would meet up with a fellow IS bod. 'Fancy a cuppa before we start?' turned into an all day drinking tea session as various others from the course turned up. And you can't let them drink tea by themselves, can you?

At about 4pm, we decamped to the nearest pub again.

Fantastic. Best year of my life.

Marsh was responsible for the whole apatosaurus/brontosaurus farago, which says a lot about the standard of science the rivalry provoked. I prefer Cope. Anybody with the middle name 'Drinker' deserves respect.



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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

If only you were PoetDrinkerScientist eh?

Not entirely sure what you're trying to say there...



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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

I shall leave that open to interpretation. :-)

I would recommend a novel I bought about a black American archaeologist who finds remains of Australiopithecenes (try saying *that* when you've had a few) buried in grounds of old plantation house. Informative and moving book about evolution and human prejudice/notions of superiority to animals, and a darned good read.
Sadly, cannot remember either title, or author - Roger someone, I think. Title may have included words 'Dawn' or 'Yesterday'.
Have a feeling the pre-human character may have been named Thursday.

It's just as difficult to spell Australopithecenes when you're sober, lte alone say it pissed.



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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

I'm assuming that my air of authority (*cough*) has led people to believe that it *is* spelt correctly. It's been a long time.

australo - australipisith - lipipithimusses - look, can't we just say 'apemen'?



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I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty

Does anybody else reckon that an embargo on Canadian music should be enforced? They're responsible for Celine Dion, Brian Adams, Alanis Morisette
AND Avril Lavigne. Surely we can't let them get away with this?



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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

*tries very hard to think of good Canadian music*

Joni Mitchell? k d lang? er .... Rush? Wasn't Tom Lehrer Canadian? er .....



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I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty

Tough, isn't it?



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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

For anyone wanting something a little more interesting (and make sure you delete it afterwards and all that as it's a naughty MP3) goto [muse.cream.org] and download 'Cockney Medley'.

Brilliant.



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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

Jon said --

> Can't we jsut say 'apemen'

Or 'Mancs'



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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

the jean-michel jarre one is superb..

He does a Brian Adams rip-off that is really funny, but I can't find it here. Even better it was before Adams did that wassname about the horse.

It was called 'Hats off to the Zebra' and started -

"The horse, is a noble beast.
From the mustangs of the west, to the stallions of the east.
But horse has a distant cousin,
Who lives I know not where.
And it's message of racial harmony is written in its hair.
Hats off to the zebra!"

Chesney Hawkes was Canadian. I rest my case.



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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

Darned sure Tom Lehrer wasn't Canadian. Did see excellent Canadian stompin' folk-rock band at Bakewell festival last year.

> Harry Turtledove wrote a book set in an Earth where 'Homo erctus' (as in 'Java Man' & 'Peking Man') got across the Bering Strait into the Americas before it was replaced by more advanced forms of Human in the Old World, but then "modern" Humans never found that route, and the American population of H. erectus remained pretty much unchanged: Consequently Columbus & the later exploreers from Europe found those Proto-Humans, rather than "Indians". I haven't read the entire book, so I don't know how much difference Turtledove thought that this would have made to European history: He may have ignored some factors, such as the difference that there having been no native civilisations to concentrate the supplies of precious metals would have had Spanish economic history ( & thus on Spain's ability to raise armed forces for campaigns in Europe), the fact that various useful plants (e.g. potatoes, maize/sweetcorn, cocoa, several sorts of beans, bell peppers & chilis, tomatoes) presumably wouldn't have been domesticated, and the fact that the idea of smoking tobacco might not have occurred to anybody), so that he could concentrate on the interactions between the two Human species.
> I'm not sure whether Turtledove had this difference in the Americas' prehistoric population let some other species of Pleistocene mammals _ ones that mostly became extinct quite soon after Humans arrived there, in our world, such as (mammoths, mastodons, ground sloths of various sizes, dire wolves, sabre-toothed tigers, etc) _ survive there too...
> I'm not sure, but from what I did read Turtledove's 'Home erectus'es may have been a bit less intelligent than some palaeontologists are now coming to believe was the case for that species.
> What I did read about this concept included one episode that was also published separately: In thsi story the presence of Homo erectus in Britain (as slaves) led Samuel Pepys to develop a theory of evolution.

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"Some days I diet, other days they serve lasagne."