The Restatement of Commercial Chastity

This article was first published in the Inverted-A Horn in 2008.

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Do Humans (or Chimps) have a Language Acquisition Device?

If you have the ability to use language, does this mean you have a LAD hardwired in your brain

When I started Project Bow, one of the purposes of showing that chimpanzees could learn language was to explore the question of the so-called language acquisition device. If a chimpanzee uses human language effectively to communicate, does this imply that there is a shared LAD between humans and chimpanzees? Or, alternatively, does it mean that neither chimpanzees nor humans have language hardwired in the brain. In the video below, I share two articles that address this issue.

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Why Use Statistics When Probability Will Do?

There are 22 letters in the Hebreew alphabet — It is Finite

Last night I gave a presentation on Project Bow, an ape language research project, and what issues concerning rigorous proof were presented by spontaneous and non-replicable results.

My Presentation on Project Bow and the Issues of Proof

Modern scientific research, especially in the social sciences, relies on aggregated data which shows replicable, statistically significant results. Many of the researchers in the social sciences don’t actually understand statistics and use programs that do all the calculations for them. However, they are convinced that without statistics, nothing can be proven. They forget the rules of simple logic and finite mathematics. They deny that a single example can falsify a rule, or that an outcome that is greater than chance under probability might be enough to prove a point

When it comes to linguistic data, once we are able to agree on a phonemic inventory for a language, the data is finite. There is a finite number of combinations of the phonemes that are possible. If the data is written, calculating the probabilty of any given form being chosen should be very easy, and it does not require higher order statistics. If the likelihood of the choice is far greater than chance, replication may not be necessary. This way, we can judge that someone speaks our language after a limited exchange, rather than by requiring constant repetition.

The findings of the Neogrammarians about the relatedness of the IndoEuropean languages were based on the idea that the similarities in the roots of these languages could not be due to chance. No statistics were necessary to establish that proof.

This begs the question: why use statistics when probability will do?

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How We Judge Metrical Poetry: Inverted-A Horn Submissions Guidelines

Updated on February 12, 2012

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Aya Katz  moreContact Author

Meter in Poetry — Wikipedia Article

The Inverted-A Horn Masthead
The Inverted-A Horn Masthead

How can you tell if something is good? In the case of poetry, aren’t all standards of evaluation strictly subjective? Don’t we all tend to think that what we write is good? Isn’t it all a matter of taste?

In the case of much of modern poetry that is not metrical, this may be true. However, metrical poetry involves both a technical and an artistic component, and while we may sometimes disagree concerning artistic evaluation, the technical part is fairly straightforward.

In this hub, I will explain what we at the Inverted-A Horn look for in poetry submissions. In the process we will discuss the idea of objective merit versus subjective preferences in the selection of poetry.

Objectivity

Having objective standards in a field of endeavor is something that usually elevates the prestige of the field and ensures competitive earnings for those who excel. Some areas in which it is relatively easy to establish objective standards of evaluation include: athletics, mathematics and music.

Objective standards are present when people are able to judge for themselves that others are considerably better than they are at a particular skill. For instance, I can’t stay deluded about my relative strength as a sprinter for very long. All I have to do is measure a course and clock my run to know that I am not in the running for any world record. This does not mean I can’t enjoy running, but it does mean that when someone other than me gets a gold medal, I will know that he deserves it, and that it was not all a matter of politics.

The same is true for mathematics. Since the rules of the game are well defined, we usually can tell for ourselves that someone else has solved a problem that we were not able to solve. (Except for a few cranks, mentioned in the link, most people have fairly realistic notions concerning their own mathematical abilities.)

In classical music, too, there is a certain level of objectivity. Many more people can intuitively appreciate good music than are able to produce it. Simply by judging their own output against that of someone who is more proficient, they can tell when they have been outclassed.

The state of objectivity in poetic evaluation was never as rigorously defined as are excellence in athletics, mathematics and music. However, there was a time when people enjoyed poetry recitation even though they were not poets themselves.They were able to judge the merit of a poem by the effect that it had on them when recited. There were even competitions to determine who had greater skill at recitation.

Just as with music, the effect of the meter and the substance of the poem were felt by its audience, and people could readily enjoy the experience of hearing a poem well recited, when they realized that they themselves were not capable of writing such a poem or even of reciting it to the same effect.

In those days, poets had the prestige of composers and reciters were given the same respect as musicians. Those days are long past. Here at The Inverted-A Horn, we are hoping for a revival.

What is meter?

Meter is composed of units called feet. In a metrical line, there will typically be a fixed number of feet and each foot will be composed of specific patterns formed by the arrangement of weak and strong syllables.

What makes a syllable weak or strong? This varies from language to language. Some languages are stress-based languages, like Modern English. In Modern English a stressed syllable is considered strong, and an unstressed syllable is considered weak. In Latin, which was a time-based language, the contrast was between long and short syllables. For the purposes of meter in Latin, a strong syllable was a long syllable. A weak syllable was a short syllable.

Each language has its own way of determining which syllable is weak or strong. The important thing in understanding meter is to note that there are two things that contrast with each other: a dot and a dash, a ying and a yang. It doesn’t matter so much what they are. Without the contrast, there could be no meter.

Independently of the definition of weak and strong syllables, which varies from language to language, we can define specific meters in the following way, using x to stand for a strong syllable and o to stand for a weak one.

In any specific meter, you will see recurring patterns of x and o, as in the following examples:

1) oox/oox/oox/

Read it out loud: “Dot dot dash/dot dot dash/ dot dot dash.” Or instead you could say: “duh duh dah!” for each three syllables.

2) ox/ox/ox Read it aloud: “Dot dash/ dot dash/ dot dash.” Or alternatively: “Duh dah“, for each two syllables. You can beat the meter out on the table as if it were a rhythm.

3) oxo/oxo/oxo/ Read it out loud: “dot dash dot/ dot dash dot/ dot dash dot.” This time the one in the middle is the strong one.

4) xo/xo/xo Now the strong syllable come first, followed by a weak one. “Dash dot/ dash dot/ dash dot.”

A single repetition of such patterns is called a metrical footAll The Fun’s In How You Say A Thing: An Explanation Of Meter & Versification Buy Now

Labels for Different Meters

The different types of metrical feet have traditional names:

1) ox (or a weak followed by a strong syllable) is an iamb, and when used as adjective is calle iambic.

2) oox (or two weak syllables followed by one strong) is an anapest, or an anapestic foot.

3) oxo (or strong syllable sandwiched between two weak ones) is called an amphibrach or amphibrachus.

4) xo (or a strong syllable followed by a weak one) is called a trochee, or trochaic foot.

5) xoo (or a strong syllable followed by two weak ones) is called a dactyl, or dactylic foot.

There are a few others that the books mention, such as spondee, which consists of two strong syllables together or a tribrach, which consists of three weak syllables in a row. When submitting poetry to us, avoid those kinds of feet. They tend to break up the meter.

Regular meter usually avoids two strong syllables side by side, nor does it tolerate having more than two weak syllables side by side before a strong one appears. Why? Because put two strong things together, and one of them will turn out to be stronger than the other. Put three weak ones together, and one of them will turn out to be not as weak, It’s human nature not to be able to tolerate that much uniformity. If you do manage it, then it will end up sounding like prose.

What does prose sound like? It is unmelodious. It violates the easiest flow of syllables. Prose does this, because there is a tension between metrical rules imposed in a word and metrical rules imposed on a phrase. In a multisyllabic word, two strong syllables will never be found side by side. In a multisyllabic word, more than two weak syllables will not go together. In a sentence or phrase, this does sometimes happen, because, for instance, a word ending in a strong syllable can be followed by a word starting with a strong syllable.The difference between poetry and prose is that prose has irregular meter. Prose doesn’t scan. 

We at Inverted-A don’t have a preference for any particular meter. As long as it is regular, any meter will do. Different poems can include regular combinations of specific numbers of particular feet in each line. For instance, we all have heard of iambic pentameter, which consists of five iambs per line.

Do you need to to know the name of your meter in order to submit poetry to Inverted-A? Absolutely not. Do you need to sit around counting weak versus strong syllables? Again, the answer is no. If you write metrical poetry instinctively, all that will take care of itself.

Why do I mention it then? If you submit a poem with perfect meter, there will be no scansion problem. (Your poem may still get rejected, because of content issues, but that’s a different story.) The only time we may end up talking about the meter is if there’s something wrong with it. In which case, it’s nice to have a vocabulary for discussing it.

Assigning Stress to Syllables in a Line of Modern English

The trick to metrical poetry is that it selects patterns that a language naturally has plenty of, but it just makes them a little more regular. Listening to poetry is like listening to someone talking — only more so! It’s an idealization of a regular pattern that is natural in a language.

In the case of monosyllabic words in English, here is a rule of thumb: in the average phrase or sentence the content words will get the stresses, while the grammatical words will not be stressed:

1) The man was not at home.

2) His phone was off the hook.

3) It’s good to feed the dog.

These are all simple sentences in Modern English that just naturally fall into iambic feet. There are many more such sentences, and this is why writing poetry in iambic feet is easy in English.

Words consisting of more than one syllable in English have a stress assigned to them on a word by word basis. That is, you have to be familiar with the word, to know where the stresses go. What makes things even more complicated, if you bother to notice, is that some English words are so long that a single stress in not enough. According to some theorists, these words have both a primary and a secondary stress. In addition to this, some words have syllables that are not only unstressed, they are actually reduced. For purposes of metrical poetry, though, there are only two kinds of syllables: weak and strong. A syllable with a stress, primary or secondary, is a stressed syllable, and therefore, strong. A syllable that is unstressed is weak. A reduced syllable is weak.

Here I will show you the meter of specific multisyllabic English words:

1) con-sti-tu-tion x-o-x-o

2) spin-ach x-o

3) re-port o-x

4) un-for-tu-nate-ly o-x-o-o-x

When stringing words together in a sentence or phrase, their internal metrical structure rarely gives way to the metrical demands of the phrase. That’s why choosing the right word to suit your meter — or the right meter to suit your word – is important.

In the following line from E. Shaun Russell’s poem, “State of the Union”, which appears in Inverted-A Horn # 28, the word “constitution” fits neatly into an iambic meter, as follows:

“In-voke/ your con/-sti-tu/-tion and/ feel proud

Most of the meter in this line flows naturally and there is no other way to read it except as a series of iambic feet. Can you identify the one foot where a metrical reading does not necessarily coincide with a natural one? It’s the one where the word “and” bears the stress. Because the meter in the rest of the line is so strong, it’s not hard for us to follow the stress pattern and stress “and”. Words like “and” do occasionally get stressed because of the context.(Example: “Do you want the water or the juice? I want the water and the juice.”)

Your metrical poem is most successful when the natural reading and the metrical reading coincide.

The Process of Selection

What happens when we start evaluating a poem at the Inverted-A Horn? The first thing we do is read it out loud, to see if it scans. It doesn’t matter what it looks like on the page. What matters is how it sounds.

Take this paragraph, for instance, which was written by Roy Moore and published as part of “The Ranchman” in Inverted-A Horn #13: “…The mountains rise purple with far off horizons. The sky overhead is blue, silver, and chrome. The valley is tranquil in sunlight and shadow. This is my heaven, this place I call home.”

Was that paragraph prose? No, because it scanned. You can tell something is a poem with your eyes closed. You’re not going to fool us into thinking a prose submission belongs in our poetry section by cutting it up into short lines. (We do publish prose, too!) Some of us are not looking at the paper. We’re listening to somebody else read it. We can tell if it scans.

Must a poem rhyme? No. We like rhymes, but they are optional, like the icing on a cake. We will not accept something that rhymes but doesn’t scan. We will accept it if it scans and doesn’t rhyme. But it has to be good!

Of course, what “good” is has its subjective side. That’s where personal taste comes in. About half the poems we get are rejected because they don’t scan at all. That decision is easy, because it’s completely objective. We then proceed to divide the rest of the poetry submissions into three piles:

1) Those that simply don’t move us, even if they do scan.

2) Those that move us but scan imperfectly.

3) Those that move us and also scan perfectly.

Here’s what happens: We reject the poems in the first group on substantive rather than formal grounds. We offer suggestions to correct the scansion of the poems in the second group. We accept without reservation the poems in the third group.

So what tends to move us? We like romantic/heroic poems. We don’t like to think of humanity as helpless and without redeeming value. We want to see beauty, but we’re not looking for trite sentiments. A poem can be sad and yet good. It can be lyrical, narrative or philosophical. We accept many different subjects.

If you want to get a better idea, send off for a sample issue of The Horn.

(c) 2009 Aya Katz 

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Reviewing “Thinking Ape”

This past Friday, I reviewed the YouTube Channel called “Thinking-Ape.” In doing so, I dredged up a few of my old articles on Neoteny, Dominance and Women’s Suffrage in New Jersey.

My Review of Thinking Ape

My Old Neoteny Article

Developmental Delay as the Primary Cause of the Unusual Material Culture Among Humans

Updated on December 14, 2010

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Aya Katz  moreContact Author

What makes human beings unique among all the creatures of the earth? It sounds like almost a biblical question. But did you know that many in the scientific community are still asking that question? This query has built into it a very big assumption: that we are somehow more “special” than any other animal. Are we? What are they basing that on?

We are not the only animal that builds things. We are not the only animal that uses tools, or even that uses other tools to make tools. We are not the only animal with a communication system. We are not the only animal to compose music. We are not the only animal that thinks.

When it comes right down to it, there is nothing that anybody can point to to suggest that we are all that different from other animals, besides the all-prevasive material culture that humans are known for.

So why is it that, even though we are not the only animal on the planet to build and make things, we do seem to be the only one to build and make things that are not easily biodegradable and that therefore outlast not just the individuals who built them, but the entire civilizations from which they arose? This, I think, is a question worth addressing.

Neoteny in non-humans and in humans: A Permanent Developmental Delay

What is developmental delay and why do I think it is responsible for our unusual fixation on the permanence of material objects that we have made? Isn’t the term “developmental delay” just a new phrase to replace the politically incorrect “mental retardation”? Isn’t someone who is developmentally delayed essentially a moron?

Well, no! But thanks for asking. The word “moron” is a technical term to describe a person with an unusually low IQ. “Mental retardation”, when the term was first introduced, was meant to refer not to a person’s absolute intelligence, but to the relative degree to which their mental abilities are behind the average developmental level for their age group. So a “mentally retarded” person at three years of age may just be behind others in that age group, and may later catch up with and even surpass others.

Unlike mental retardation, “developmental delay” refers to all kinds of abilities and skills, not merely what we narrowly term intelligence. It can include motor skills, balance, the ability to stand on our own two feet, to survey the scene and draw conclusions about a situation and to respond non-verbally to social cues and any number of other skills not measured in an IQ test.

The fact of the matter is that all human beings, even the most “normal”, are developmentally delayed at birth compared to most other mammals of the same age. Not only that, but if you really look closely, most of us never catch up. We are never as graceful as a gazelle, and we are never as self-sufficient as a wolf, and even the most wily politician among us does not have the innate social skills of the average chimpanzee for forming coalitions in a peer group. We are slow to learn and slow to automate the skills that we have learned.

Humans suffer from extreme neoteny. This means that even when we are adults, we look and behave much like juveniles. We never really grow up, and as a result we continue to learn throughout life, and we continue to play with toys long after that stage of development is outgrown in other species.

Black Bear Mother Keeps Playing Cubs Safe

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Qak_CJMQcf0%3Fwmode%3Dtransparent%26start%3D

Mammalian Developmental Delay: The Invention of Childhood

In order not to single humans out unduly, let’s keep in mind that mammals and birds are already somewhat developmentally delayed compared to most fish, reptiles and amphibians. While reptiles and fish and the other life forms that resemble them are not usually involved in caring for young, birds and mammals dedicate a portion of their life to provisioning helpless, underdeveloped and developmentally delayed offspring.

The downside of this arrangement is that adults are burdened with the care of parasitic young. The upside is that since the young are not prewired to know everything they need to know at birth, there is room for learning from experience, and birds and mammals have the opportunity to develop their intelligence throughout their childhood.

The prototypical mamalian child has a big head and a small body, engages in activities that serve no useful purpose (otherwise known as play), and is full of curiosity about the world and how it works.

By the time a typical mammal arrives at adulthood, there is much less play, and a serious interest in staying alive, getting food, procreating and caring for young pushes aside the pastimes of infancy and childhood.

In order to survive, an adult has to live in the moment and to consider those things that threaten survival. Anything beyond is a luxury reserved to growing children.

Comparison between Chimpanzees and Humans

Humans and chimpanzees are very closely related. The retarded maturation in both species is quite pronounced compared to that of many other mammals. Chimpanzee young, like the children of hunter-gatherer humans, are carried about by their mothers and suckled for the first three years of life, and are often still being carried until they are five years of age. They do not enter puberty until sometime between eight and ten years of age, and even then they are not fully mature and do not become adults until their late teens. In the wild, a chimpanzee lives to be about forty, which is similar to the human survival under natural conditions without modern comforts. In captivitiy chimpanzees can live to be seventy-five or older.

However, despite these similarities, development in humans is even more delayed than in chimpanzees. A chimpanzee can support its full weight at birth. Carried by the mother, it clings with its strong arms to her hair. Social awareness and sense of balance develop months sooner in a chimpanzee than in a human.

Compared to a chimpanzee, a human child, even the most normally developing one, appears a little bit autistic. Physical coordination as well as social development are considerably delayed in humans, behind the normal timetable for chimpanzee maturation.

When Sword Met Bow

When Sword Met Bow Buy Now

Sword and Bow play with blocks (2007)

https://youtube.com/watch?v=_jUWUrFAq80%3Fwmode%3Dtransparent%26start%3D

Constructive versus destructive play

If you have raised both a chimpanzee and a human child, as I have, then you notice also that while both like to play, the human child becomes interested in putting things together and building things, and saving things for later, while the chimpanzee child enjoys taking things apart, playing with them roughly until they are entirely consumed and no longer exist, and using found objects as projectiles and weapons.

Of course, that might also be the difference between a girl and a boy. I have such a small sampling, it’s hard to draw definitive conclusions.

In any event, from what we have seen chimpanzees do in the wild, while they can and do use objects as tools, create new tools, and do any number of very inventive things, what they do not seem to do is to keep the same material objects in good condition over a considerable period of time. They build nests and they abandon them. They adorn themselves momentarily, but they throw the object away. They make tools and they do not keep them.

Ownership is not a big thing. Material goods, besides comestibles, are not valued or prized. Interest in any object is of short duration, for its usefulness, but not as a keepsake. Why?

Some people say chimpanzees don’t have material culture because they don’t have language. I don’t believe that for two reasons: there is no evidence that they don’t have a language of their own. When we teach them one of our languages, they learn it. They can spell. They can speak grammatically. But they still destroy material objects and cannot be bribed with money or toys.

Even if you don’t believe the claims that chimpanzees and bonobos can use language, let’s look at it from the opposite direction. We know that all human population groups have a language. But do all humans have a rich material culture? Do all humans engage in commerce? Do all humans even know how to count?

It’s hard to get a chimp not to break a chopstick, even though it means he’ll have one chopstick less

Bow and his chopsticks
Bow and his chopsticks | Source

The Requirement for Direct and Immediate Evidence

https://youtube.com/watch?v=BNajfMZGnuo%3Fwmode%3Dtransparent%26start%3D

The Pirahã people

The Pirahã people are indigenous to Brazil. They are a hunter-gatherer people, and in their language there are no numbers. There are no ordinal numbers, and there are no cardinal numbers. And when researchers asked adult members of the Pirahã people to participate in a study on numerosity (the ability to estimate numbers) they were not able, even by writing lines on a piece of paper, to tell the researchers how many objects were placed before them.

Some researchers have claimed that the Pirahã people are incapable of counting. I tend to agree with Professor Daniel L. Everett when he says that they are cognitively capable of counting, but have no interest in doing so.

In a New Yorker article by John Colapinto, an eleven year old Pirahã boy is described making a model airplane out of balsa in response to the arrival of an airplane, but the model is soon broken and discarded. It’s not that the Pirahã can’t make things or that they are not intelligent, it’s just that they do not value the things they make, and so they don’t accumulate material goods and they do not build a material culture.

The Pirahã adults are fully adult in the same sense that a black she-bear caring for her cubs is an adult. They know what matters is the present and the immediate future, and they can’t be bothered expending much energy on flights of fancy.

Yes, there are many animals in the jungle, many fish in the river, many stars in the sky. Possibly there is some way to quantify that, but why bother?

Developmental Delay as a Cultural Artefact

Some forms of developmental delay are induced by environment. For instance, the middle class child is intentionally delayed in maturation by being kept in school and not allowed to learn a trade. The lower class child, in societies that still permit a lower class to exist, on the other hand, is allowed to mature sooner, and begins to earn his keep earlier. Neoteny takes makes many forms, and not every one of them is genetic.

Tell a child that reading is more important than going fishing, and the child will delay his maturation as a fisherman. Teach an infant that letters are more important than social contact, and he may grow to be hyperlexic. Compliment someone on his intellectual skills and ignore his social growth and it will eventually have some sort of effect. Between the natural selection in favor of certain traits that our culture promotes in the mating game, and the fostering of behaviors within the family and society, it is all heading in one direction.

In industrialized societies today, many more children are experiencing developmental delay of an extreme form that has been labeled autism. We don’t know the cause, but one thing is obvious: it’s a continuation of the same trajectory that separates mammals from reptiles, human beings from the other great apes, and industrialized humans from their hunter-gatherer contemporaries.

So, the next time someone asks: why do we have a material culture, whereas they don’t, you might answer: maybe it’s because they don’t want one. Maybe they just don’t think it serves any useful purpose..

Copyright 2010 Aya Katz

When Sword Met Bow

When Sword Met Bow Buy Now

Related Hubs and Links

My Old Dominance Article

What is Dominance

Updated on June 13, 2016

Aya Katz profile image

Aya Katz  moreContact Author

There’s been a lot of talk about dominance on Hubpages lately. Some people say that it behooves a married woman to allow her husband to be dominant. This strikes me as odd, because if he is dominant, why does he need anyone to allow him  to do anything? If he’s not dominant, then how in the world can somebody else make him dominant?

What it comes down to is a very strange usage of the word dominance. I propose that before we get into a heated argument about who necessarily needs to be dominant in any given relationship, we should first of all agree on what dominance actually means.

Who is dominant in this picture?

The baby rides the mother's back, but the mother decides where they go.
The baby rides the mother’s back, but the mother decides where they go. | Source

Definition of Dominance

Dominance is having control, power or governance over a situation. When individuals are together in a relationship, the ones who cast the decisive vote as to what should happen among them are the more dominant parties. Dominance is not about exchanging material goods. It is about decision making powers.

For instance, in the mother/infant relationship, the mother is normally dominant, until the child attains independence. Even though the mother serves the infant, and more goods and services flow from the mother to the infant than from the infant to the mother, the mother gets to decide what happens between them. The infant starts out as virtually helpless.

Dominance is not about who gets more. Dominance is not about what happens between people. It is about who decides what will happen.

Dominance versus Deference

Bonobo males show deference to females. But who is dominant?
Bonobo males show deference to females. But who is dominant? | Source

Dominance and Chivalry Among Bonobos

If you are confused about this issue, don’t feel bad about it. Many primatologists are equally confused. For instance, there have been reports that in bonobo society females are dominant. These claims were in part based on observations of food sharing behavior. When bonobos were provisioned with sugar cane, the females and their young were seen taking their share first, and then, only when they had finished, did the males go in to take what was left.

The primatologists observing this at first assumed that taking food was what everyone wanted to do, and that if the males had to wait till the females finished, the females must be dominant. But then it was observed that it was the older males who enforced this rule among the younger, less powerful males. Young, inexperienced males were castigated by older, more powerful males for trying to cut in before the females had finished.

What the primatologists had witnessed was an example of chivalry. The males were dominant, and they used their dominance to protect and show deference to the females and their young. They understood that if the males took everything they could, there would be none left for the females and their young.

Joan of Arc at the coronation of Charles VII

Sometimes it takes a strong woman to crown a weak man as king
Sometimes it takes a strong woman to crown a weak man as king | Source

Queen Elizabeth I with her Rod and Scepter

Sometimes queens only reign. Sometimes they also rule!
Sometimes queens only reign. Sometimes they also rule! | Source

Social Rank and Individual Dominance Are Not Always the Same

In human societies, explicit formal ranking sometimes replaces actual dominance. This means that a person is placed in charge of a situation, even though another person on the scene is more intrinsically dominant. Sometimes a commanding officer is less charismatic or brave or strategically brilliant than one of the soldiers he commands. Sometimes a student knows more than a teacher. Sometimes one party is the nominal head of the family, while another family member really dominates the scene.

So it happens that even though someone is younger, less experienced than another, or less educated, the better person for the job comes to dominate the situation naturally, based on personal characteristics. What should the naturally dominant person do, when he is outranked formally?

This depends. In times of peace, when nothing much is at stake, showing deference to a less able commanding officer may be the right thing to do. However, in the thick of battle, it might really matter what decision is made, and at times the naturally dominant person will have to stand up to the one who outranks him, for the sake of everybody.

All things being equal, adults usually outrank children, better educated people outrank those with less education, and men tend to be better warriors and hunters than women. However, real dominance is not a matter of statistics. It is about what happens when individuals meet and interact. Sometimes quite unexpectedly, a person with lesser social rank can come to be dominant. An unlettered peasant woman can lead an army. A little child can out-think his masters. And a queen can not merely reign, but rule.

Meet John Doe: Who is dominant in this scene?

https://youtube.com/watch?v=DcY5vJPtsjg%3Fwmode%3Dtransparent%26start%3D

Sometimes it is not completely obvious who dominates

Because truly dominant individuals tend to show deference to those whom they dominate, it is not always easy to tell at first glance who is dominant in any given situation. Watch the clip I’ve embedded above of the scene from Meet John Doe. In this scene, Barbara Stanwyck plays a very strong and determined woman who socially outranks the character played by Gary Cooper. But who is really dominant? If you have any thoughts about this, leave me a note in the comment section!

I work and live with an eight and a half year old male chimpanzee named Bow. I am his adoptive mother, and I socially outrank him. However, he gets his way an amazing percentage of the time. When I want him to do something, I have to ask nicely, or it doesn’t get done. Do I dominate Bow or does he dominate me? I’m not sure. It’s a close call.

Who is dominant?

Who is dominant in this picture?
Who is dominant in this picture? | Source
Their gravestones are side by side. They lived and died together. But nobody ever called her Mrs. O'Connor. They called him Mr. Ayn Rand.
Their gravestones are side by side. They lived and died together. But nobody ever called her Mrs. O’Connor. They called him Mr. Ayn Rand. | Source

Dominance in Marriage

What about dominance in marriage? I can’t say from personal experience, but from observing other people’s marriages, I would say that it varies. It depends on the individuals involved. Is he a stronger person? Is she? The dynamic can even vary between different stages of the same marriage.

But what is ideal? Well, ideal is whichever way you like it! But even here, dominance is not something the parties can agree upon. It’s something that happens based on who they are as individuals. Like love, dominance can’t be faked.

Ayn Rand very much wanted to be in a relationship with a man who would play the dominant role both in the bedroom and elsewhere. However, she was a very strong woman, and all the men she met were weaker. She married Frank O’Connor, and she tried very hard to play the submissive wife, but it didn’t work, because nobody can give another person dominance. You either have it or you don’t.

A woman can pretend all she wants that her husband is dominant, but it’s really not up to her. The most she can do is to show deference. That’s all anybody can do.

(c) 2010 Aya Katz

Here is the link to the article on Women’s Suffrage:

https://theodosiaandthepirates.blogspot.com/2014/08/universal-suffrage-for-free-people-in.html

RELATED LINKS

https://theodosiaandthepirates.blogspot.com/2014/07/property-rights-education-and-suffrage.html

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Another Reading of Pollyanna

Pollyanna is an immensely popular children’s book by author Eleanor H. Porter. It was published in 1913. The word Pollyanna has been added to the English lexicon to describe an unusually optimistic person. Most people use this term in a pejorative sense, suggesting naivete verging on foolhardiness. What accounts for the popularity of Pollyanna as a literary work, and how has this generated the backlash implied by the name’s pejorization in the English lexicon?

Bow and I wanted to know, so we embarked on a reading of the book in 2023, 110 years after its publication.

Bow Reads Pollyanna
A livevstream where I shared clips of Bow’s readig and also discussed the book and its author

The “glad game” introduced by Pollyanna was actually devised by her late father, an ailing and poverty struck minister in a community in the far western settlements of the United States. Whenever anything undesirable happened, Pollyanna was to try to find something about the circumstances to be glad about. Considering that both her parents died when she was a child, Pollyanna cannot have failed to see that bad things happen to good people, and she could also not have been blind to the darker side of life.

In the modern world, there is currently a toxic cult of positivity, where people are discouraged from sharing depressing or demoralizing truths. But is Pollyanna really a book that advocates toxic positivity? Does it encourage burying our heads in the sand when faced with a crisis?

I prefer to think that the book merely allows individuals in difficult circumstances to take a moment or two to enjoy happy and pleasant details in otherwise dreary lives. Viewed in this way, there is nothing wrong with the glad game. Yes, the world may be going to hell in a handbasket, just as it did in 1914 at the outbreak of the first world war, but we can still take time to wonder at the beauty of a rainbow.

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Kate Gladstone on the Writing Systems of Africa

On November 3, 2023, handwriting expert Kate Gladstone gave a presentation on the writing systems of Africa. The livestream is part of the “Interviews with Aya Katz” podcast.

Kate Gladstone on the Aya Katz Podcast

The slide presentation in the video includes the following images.

Title Slide
Indigenous Writing Systems of Africa
Sample African Scripts
A list of the writing systems
Kate’s Introduction to Adlam
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Interview with Howard Andrew Jones author of LORD OF A SHATTERED LAND

On June 9, 2023 I interviewed Howard Andrew Jones, author of Lord of a Shattered Land, coming out from Baen Books this August. Lord of a Shattered Land is part of a series, known as the Hanuvar Chronicles.

Book Description: “Hanuvar, last and greatest general of Volanus, still lives. He now travels the length of the Dervan Empire that conquered his homeland, driven by a singular purpose—to find what remains of his people who were carried into slavery across the empire, and free them from subjugation by any means necessary. Against the might of a vast empire, he had only an aging sword arm, a lifetime of hard-won wisdom, and the greatest military mind in the world, set upon a single goal. No matter what the empire musters against him, no matter what man or monster stands in his way, from the empire’s festering capital to its furthest outposts, Hanuvar would find his people, every last one of them. And he would set them free.”

https://www.baen.com/lord-of-a-shatte…

A map of the world of Hanuvar — created by Darien Jones

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INDEX OF THE INTERVIEW

Content 00:00 Introduction 1:48 The Genre of the Book 4:11 The names of the Countries and the Geography of Hanuvar’s world 25:04 A Reading from LORD OF A SHATTERED LAND 32:10 A look at the map of the Inner Sea, drawn by Darien Jones. 41:11 Hannibal (and Hanuvar) as a patriot and a freedom fighter, not a conqueror 01:25:59 Religion of Hanuvar and Others in the Book

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Interview with Professor Kevin D. Hunt

Our guest on the livestream on May 19, 2023 was Kevin D. Hunt, Professor of Anthropology at IU in Bloomington, Indiana. He has been studying chimpanzees at Semliki for a number of years. Professor Hunt links specific anatomical features in chimpanzees and australopithecines with specific behaviors. He uses these links to trace the path of human evolution, particularly through reconstruction of their foraging habits. Professor Hunt’s Homepage: https://anthropology.indiana.edu/abou…

Professor Hunt’s new book is called “Chimpanzee: Lessons from our Sister Species.” Order his book: https://www.amazon.com/Chimpanzee-Les…

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Table of Contents 0:00 Introduction 14:25 The Presentation begins: The Geography of Semliki 18:56 The Locomotion of Chimpanzees and Bipedalism 25:53 Introducing Individual Chimpanzees at Semliki 37:03 Diet & Foraging Behavior at Semliki 41:31 Digestion Process & Chimpanzee Digestive Tract 53:50 Comparative Skeletal Analysis 1:08:34 Endocrine Disruption Due to Pesticides 1:09:47 Well Digging Behavior of Semliki Chimpanzees 1:18:47 Summary 1:24:04 Endangered Species: The Prognosis for Semliki Chimps 1:28:14 Information About the Field School 1:32:17 The Book: “Chimpanzee: Lessons from our Sister Species.” 1:33:51 Hanno the Carthiginian and Chimpanzees

Mandarin
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Review: Calvin the Coolest President

Calvin the Coolest President is a children’s book written and illustrated by the husband and wife writing team of Austin and Stephanie Petersen. Recently I had the opportunity to interview both authors on my livestream.

Interview with the Petersens

A picture book about the 30th president of the United States, Calvin the Coolest President addresses libertarian issues in simple language that every child can understand.

Order the book here: Calvin the Coolest President

Here is a whole gallery of pictures of the authors reading the book to their dogs.

Would you like to read Calvin the Coolest President to your dog? It makes a great gift.

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