The cycle of life and death.

A few days ago, I told my two youngest sons about the cycle of life and death. Fintan, 8, listened intently, but didn’t really comment. Tiarnan, 6, however was most responsive.

“Everybody dies, someday...”, I began, looking at Tiarnan. He had made a remark, which I cannot now recall, which prompted me to introduce this subject.

His eyes fixed on me, somewhat intently.

“But, if you have children, Tiarnan, something of you will live on in them. Just like I will live on in you.”

That thought seemed a nice one, to him. He looked to his brother, for confirmation that he, too, thought well of it.

“You, Tiarnan, and you Fintan, are half Mummy and half Daddy...”

They both smiled at this thought.

“You have different halves of Mummy and Daddy, but you both have half of each of us. There are genes in every cell, that tell how to make you – they are like a recipe for making you. You have half of Mummy’s recipe and half of Daddy’s recipe. So, half of us lives on in each of you.”

They were a little awonder at this and shared that wonder with a glance to each other.

“When you grow up, you will have children too,” I said, my gaze encompassing both Tiarnan and Fintan. “And those children will have children too, when they grow up.”

Tiarnan then interrupted my explanation.

“Then they will die, but their children will live on and have children. Then they will die and their children will live on, and have children...and then...they will die and their children will live on and have children...and...”

Then he laughed, unexpectedly. It was a full laugh, a laugh that seemed to express an absurdity he sensed at the core of life. The whole cycle of life and death seemed ridiculous to my six year old son.

Suddenly he stopped.

“I am not going to get married.”, he said, determinedly.

“You will when you grow up.”

“No! I am not going to get married.”, he said more forcefully.

“Why not?”, I said, curious about my little son’s perspective on life.

“I am too shy.”, he confessed, softening.

“You will get less shy as you get older. I was shy as a young boy...but as I grew up, I became less shy, until I wasn’t shy anymore.”

He didn’t seem convinced. He even seemed to shrink in shyness at the thought of his own shyness.

“No. I won’t.”

“Yes, you will. Goodnight.”

I put them to bed and waited until they had fallen to sleep.

As I write of my son’s responses, I wonder, now, at why he said he wouldn’t get married...was it truly the shyness that would, he thought, block that...or was it a sense of the pointlessness of the cycle of life and death: did he think it too absurd to participate in? I wonder, because he seemed to be considering that absurdity when he suddenly stopped and said he wasn’t going to get married. Or perhaps, he had realized that if he didn’t get married, he wouldn’t be participating in that cycle of life and death in the fullest way. In either case, it was an interesting thought.

It is true though. Tiarnan is shy. However, he has many attributes which do best in someone who is not shy. So, he is full of contradictions – with a co-existence of positive attributes that require the absence of shyness, which is present, for full expression. I shall, of course, work on him overcoming his shyness. I shall write of one such attempt soon.

Posted by Valentine Cawley

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The mysterious origins of Daddy Cawley.

A couple of months ago, at the dinner table, where many a good conversation transpires, Tiarnan, then four, looked across the table at me, his eyes intent on understanding something eminently mysterious.

“Where are you from Daddy?”, he began, with evident genuine mystification,”How were you made? “

“I have a mummy and daddy, too. I was a baby once.”

It must be remembered that I live far from my homeland and that Tiarnan has rarely seen either of my parents, therefore. Thus, he is not accustomed to thinking of me as a person with parents.

For some reason, this didn’t seem to satisfy him. He saw in it, the basic inherent problem of this explanation.

“And them?”, he continued, determinedly, “Where do they come from?”

“They had mummy and daddies, too.”, I said, to his interested, all absorbing eyes.” Everyone does.”

“Even aliens have mummies and daddies?”, he queried, without even pause for the beat of a heart.

“Yes, Tiarnan, even aliens have mummies and daddies.”, I said, reassuringly, though, mentally, I made a reservation of “assuming they follow our pattern of birth and death and evolution.”

Tiarnan’s tongue grew still. Yet, I could see that his question was not fully settled in his mind. However, he had assessed, perhaps, that there were no further answers to be had, from me, regarding it.

I let him think on.

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page. To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 4, this month, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here: http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at: http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is at http://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

The brain of Neanderthal Man

Neanderthal man: what do those two words conjure up in you? For many it will be a picture of brutish stupidity. The common image of Neanderthal Man is of a dull-witted race trudging to extinction out of their own inability to cope. Yet, is this so? Was Neanderthal Man our inferior?

Let us look at some data. A typical modern human has a brain size of about 1,300 cubic centimetres. So, Neanderthal Man, being "brutish and stupid" is going to have a smaller one...right? Wrong. From a table of brain size and race that I have seen, Neanderthal man is listed at 1,700 cubic centimetres - a full 400 cubic centimetres larger than the brains of modern men.

Now, brain size has been correlated with intelligence, in many studies (I will post about this on another occasion) - but there is another factor to take into account: brain size to body ratio. A Neanderthal was stronger and more robust than a modern human - about a quarter heavier or so - and muscular with it. Taking this larger size into account still gives Neanderthal Man an advantage over us - for the ratio of 1,700 to 1,300 is about 1.30 - which is larger than the 1.25 scaling for body mass. By this measure Neanderthal Man should still have been smarter than us.

I find it curious that there has been such a tendency to denigrate the Neanderthal man. Just as in marketing, in evolution I am sure that it is not always the case, that the best "product" wins. Apple lost out to Windows - even though for a long time, it was a better product. Betamax lost out to VHS - when it, too, had been a better product. No doubt it is quite possible that a superior human could have lost out to an inferior one, for various reasons.

No-one disputes that they were stronger than us. Perhaps they were smarter too. Certainly, their brain size is suggestive of a significant intelligence, of some kind. There is other evidence, too, that they were not as stupid as people have made them out to be. They managed to move into and populate areas of Europe that had defeated their immediate ancestors, Homo Heidelbergensis, establishing themselves in Central and Eastern Europe. They also show evidence of developing new stone working techniques over time, showing a gradual accumulation of technological skill. These last two statements are supported by a paper by Dr Terry Hopkinson of the School of Archaeology and Ancient History, of the University of Leicester, published in the journal Antiquity.

Some researchers rather oddly argue away the Neanderthal's superiority in brain size by saying that modern human brains are more "efficient". They state that we have advantages in circuitry and brain organization. I find this funny. It is funny because they cannot possibly have any evidence of these statements - they are just supposition - and constitute self-justifying argumentation. We will never have a Neanderthal brain to dissect to study its circuitry. We will never be able to MRI a Neanderthal brain to study its organization. We can only succumb to the temptation to make up a story to say why modern man must be superior to our extinct counterpart. Maybe we are not superior, maybe we were just lucky (or better at warfare...) Whether or not we are superior to Neanderthal Man, the fact remains that Neanderthal Man was not the stupid brute he is made out to be. The archaelogical evidence suggests an adaptable, technologically skilled, very "human" race, which just happens to have died out for reasons that may never be entirely clear.

I, for one, would like to meet a Neanderthal man and have a talk. It would be good to meet someone so different from the Homo Sapiens one normally talks to. He (or she) is likely to think in quite a different way - and that would be refreshing. The one thing that would really surprise me, however, would be finding that they were, in fact, stupid and brutish. I have rather a different expectation.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and ten months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and three months, and Tiarnan, twenty months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)