From:	Arcady arcady@***.net
Subject:	the value of education (OT-rant, long)
Date:	Thu, 15 Jul 1999 23:35:24 -0700

> > > Messy doesn't count. Messy food only happens when a culture learns
more
> > > about cooking.
> >
> > A deer just went down. You skin it first and start eating. Blood
> > everywhere. Messy. See?
>
> How do chopsticks help?
>

I'm actually quite shocked that no one is able to understand why I mentioned
messy in my original posting.

It's really rather simple. Let me state it again and then break it down.

To evolve the Chopstick all you had to do was realize that grabbing the
food
with your fingers is messy or sometimes painful when hot. So get longer
fingers.
Hey; there's a stick lying over there... End of discovery.


Ok...

If you eat food with your fingers it tends to get all over them. This is
called messy. Easy enough so far?

One day you decide you'd rather not get the food all over you. This is the
day man decided to invent the eating utensil. Whatever it may have been for
the particular culture.

In China, somebody just realized about 5000 thousand years ago that if you
grab a nearby stick and poke the food it stays off your fingers and is easy
to eat. Over time a second stick got added for better grasping ability and
so on and then it became a process of holding them like extended fingers and
grabbing things.

Here's a good link:
http://www.calacademy.org/research/anthropology/utensil/chpstck.htm

Which is a subset of:
http://www.calacademy.org/research/anthropology/utensil/intro.htm


> I said: Chinese people had all the weapons taken away. That's why they
> invented chopsticks and martial arts. :)

And I say that makes no more sense for chopsticks than saying that forks
came about because the military in Europe took away everyone's weapons and
they had to eat with pitchforks; which someone realized could be made much
smaller to easier hold the food. Considered the fork as we know it came to
western Europe in the 1500's (after taking over 700 years to get there from
the middle east yet starting back further with the Greeks) this makes little
sense to me.

http://www.calacademy.org/research/anthropology/utensil/forks.htm


Anyway, this is really no longer relevant to Shadowrun. You can't say which
is easier to learn unless you take two totally untrained children of
completely identical ability and remove them completely from any outside
influences and try to teach each one one method. Personally I think both
have their 'obvious and intuitive' reasons for existing.

But there's about as much reason for us to be debating this subject as there
is for the gun control/pro gun people to be debating their issue. Their both
off topic. So I suppose my sending this allows for the counter side to have
it's final say as well, but beyond that I'm out on this one.