General Chat

If you want something you say to be a subject of discussion, LindaB, I strongly suggest you not delete it.

You're kind of free to characterize what I said however you want now, aren't you? Since nobody can see what it was in response to.

I have no intention of talking about my response to something you chose to delete, ta.

Janey...I cannot let this pass..

Quote...It's just a crying shame that so many here think that personal attacks constitute discussion of an issue

Does that imply in your estimation to your brief reply to my deleted posting re family traits etc as a personal attack...because it certainly does in mine.

This really is just sad.


You reply to Len:

"And I still really really don't know what point you were attempting to make."

Why should he be trying to make a point - Len was quoting an interesting article he had read, not submitting an academic article for you, or anyone to critique.



My reply was not to the article with which this thread started, and you know that every bit as well as I do. Not least because I have already spelled it out once, for anyone who genuinely didn't grasp it.

When I said "And I still really really don't know what point you were attempting to make", it was IN REFERENCE TO SOMETHING. And again, forgive my capitalizing for emphasis. I'd use boldface if it were available.

I would not have thought it necessary to clarify this at all, since the sequence really is perfectly obvious.

I started that post by saying: "Len, if I knew what point you were attempting to make, obviously to me, I might know what you were expecting me to say."

That statement by me followed IMMEDIATELY on the two posts in which Len quoted something completely different from the article with which he started the thread. It had NOTHING TO DO with the first article.

I addressed some aspects of the article in his two lengthy posts, and then said: "And I still really really don't know what point you were attempting to make". That is, it was difficult for me to respond to a couple of huge blocks of quoted text offered with no commentary and no indication of why they were posted, and although I'd commented on that text, I didn't know what I was supposed to be responding to.


What joy do some people get out of contributing nothing to a discussion but irrelevancies and misrepresentations and personal attacks?

If anyone wants to discuss some substantive aspect of something under discussion in this thread, why not DO IT?


Let's try this bit:

“MY academic qualifications aren't really in issue here, are they? Have I suggested that yours are, or Len's are, or anyone else's are? Why do you ask about mine?"

I ask about yours because every thread you reply to, you come out with the alleged 'true academic response'.


Do you want to quote me saying "true academic response" in relation to something, or do you want to retract that misrepresentation?

Why can't you just respond to something I HAVE SAID, instead of making up garbage and pretending I have said it?

What I come up with is what I actually did say:

***credible, honest, sound research***

Why don't you try responding to what I DID SAY? That the "article" partially reproduced by Len - again, the two big blocks of text after the opening post - is written by a self-serving quack? I have offered the evidence of that. That the article is published by an organization that spends its time "studying" pre-birth memories and such obvious nonsense. That the author of the article lied about what was said by the genuine researchers he quoted.

Why don't you try responding to that?

If you can't, why don't you just leave it be? Why do you think that attacking ME with false claims is a response to what I have said?



"you are on a genealogy site not a University site."

I don't care where I am. If this is a genealogy site and not a university site, then let's stick to genealogy, 'k?

If someone CHOOSES to introduce a topic of discussion on a website of which I am a member, I will feel quite free to discuss it. And I will not sit by and allow silliness or ignorance, be it innocent or wilful, to pass unchallenged when there are serious matters at stake. And there are serious matters at stake here. I was not born yesterday, and did not just fall off a turnip truck. I know what claymation fetus movies are about, and what they are used for, just for instance.

It's just a crying shame that so many here think that personal attacks constitute discussion of an issue.

LOLOL Maggie...

Confession time Linda -
The doctor never told me to take Mackesons with the second - so I chose Baileys!! (tastes sooo much better!)
Obviously a much more 'academic' drink as my youngest has a degree!! LOL

I'm sorry, Janey, I must take issue. You ask:

“MY academic qualifications aren't really in issue here, are they? Have I suggested that yours are, or Len's are, or anyone else's are? Why do you ask about mine?"

I ask about yours because every thread you reply to, you come out with the alleged 'true academic response'.
You reply to Len:

"And I still really really don't know what point you were attempting to make."

Why should he be trying to make a point - Len was quoting an interesting article he had read, not submitting an academic article for you, or anyone to critique. The odd comment for or against would be okay - not a barrage of 'I beleive I'm more academic than you - see my sources' - you are on a genealogy site not a University site.

You also said:

"There is so much anti-intellectualism in the world ... and especially around here ..."

Which could lead some to believe you thought you were of some sort of 'higher' intellectualism to those who had either started the thread or replied to it.

I, in particular am very aware that you can be extremely intelligent without having academic qualifications - but I am also very aware that shooting your mouth off - and in the process continually putting other people down - which you have done to every response to this thread - will eventualy lead to the ultimate question.

What gives you the right to declare everyone else is wrong?'

Hence my question.

I presume you know your sources are prime sources and correct from personal experience and first hand knowledge - or are they off the internet?

LOL Maggie when I had my 2 children...now 35 and 30...my GP told me to drink Mackesons and it never did them any harm either!!

BTW Janey...just for the record I have been a member for 5 years and this is first time I have ever deleted a posting. It is also the first time I have ever felt undermined when adding to a thread and hopefully my last!

But here's a funny story.

Someone I met on the net and later in person is a scientist in the US (she became a forensic toxicologist, and did her postgraduate work on the effects of drug use by pregnant women on their children after birth, actually).

She'd heard the tales about "brain waves" being detected in 7-week fetuses ... so she did an experiment. She attached electrodes to some lime-green jello ... and got exactly the same "brain waves".

I gather that various people have done that same experiment, and she likely did it after reading of the others.

http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/80635

http://eileen.250x.com/Main/Einstein/Brain_Waves.htm

Maggie: "Strangely, I don't think Len does either [get his information and knowledge of serious scientific matters from youtube] - he's quoting researchers, whom, I believe, are academics."

Strangely, I DID NOT say anything about Len and youtube. For the love of Mike. My reference to youtube was to the youtube link posted in this thread not by Len. Why are you pretending it was something else?


Did you not READ what I posted about the source of the two lengthy posts from Len? Not the original one, which was just a newspaper article about a serious scientific study. The one after that.

http://www.birthpsychology.com/lifebefore/fetalsense.html

He didn't give the link. I searched for it and found it and gave it.

http://www.birthpsychology.com/

These poeple are NOT "esearchers, whom, I believe, are academics". They are LOOONS. They are QUACKS. And the one who wrote the article Len quoted -- and I say again, I have no doubt he quoted it entirely innocently -- that one LIED about what his supposed scholarly source said.


It does not matter where something is published.

What matters is whether it is credible, honest, sound research.

Maggie, grow up. If you can't conduct a discussion without misrepresenting, stay home.

I do not "quote from the internet". The internet is a medium, not a source. If you quote from the Encyclopedia Britannica, are you "quoting from paper"?

If you don't like my sources, you can dispute or refute them. Feel free.

MY academic qualifications aren't really in issue here, are they? Have I suggested that yours are, or Len's are, or anyone else's are? Why do you ask about mine?

I have the knowledge I need to understand what I have read here and quoted here. If you or anyone else doesn't, **I can't help that**. But if someone is unable (or unwilling) to understand something they read, should someone else care what they have to say about it?

If you think I have misunderstood or misinterpreted or misrepresented *anything* under discussion in this thread, you go right ahead and demonstrate it. Or you can keep on engaging in the personal attacks and innuendos. I really just don't care. I just like to make it clear that I'm perfectly aware of what is going on when that happens.

Kempinasunhat, I am sorry to keep saying it, but this is abject nonsense:

"Yes I think you are right the senses of the baby do develop much earlier than we realise ....these things happen at such micro levels its hard for the medicial people can detect."

There is nothing "micro level" about the neural structures involved in the capacity to experience sensation. There is also nothing magical about it. Pregnancy and fetal development are physiological processes. We may not know *all* about them at present, but we are also not living in the middle ages and having to make up tales to explain them, or wonder at the marvel at it all without bothering to educate ourselves.

Janey, you've intrigued me,
You constantly quote from the internet then state:

"And I do beg everyone's pardon, but I really don't get my information and knowledge of serious scientific matters from youtube. Really."

Strangely, I don't think Len does either - he's quoting researchers, whom, I believe, are academics.

You constantly 'slag' off Len's, and others' articles as rubbish whilst constantly 'directing' us (the plebs I presume) to your superior websites - pray tell me what are your academic qualifications?

Some people must enjoy being fooled much of the time.

This is from the company that made the fake fetuses for the film by the director of the youtube flick. Of course, they didn't bother with women. Just the "wombs" the fetuses are in.


http://www.artem.com/bottomframe/bottomframe_project.jsp?projectId=In%20The%20Womb

“When Director Toby Macdonald from Pioneer Productions approached us about this project, we knew instantly that we could bring the right approach to the job.

Unlike most Commercials assignments, the models form over twenty minutes of screen time and have to bear very close scrutiny. Pioneer supplied us with reference material, which we complemented with further extensive research of our own.

Each model was sculpted in modelling wax, moulded, cast in silicon rubber and painted.

This was a fascinating project that required us to use our initiative and resulted in the development of several novel techniques to enhance the finish such as; reverse painting blood vessels into the mould and using transparent flock to create the tiny swirls of hairs on the skin.

We made the wombs themselves in a series of large blow-formed acrylic domes layered with hand painted silicon rubber. The colouring was carefully controlled so that the material would remain translucent for back lighting.”



Yech.

Kempinasunhat -
I've only had 2 babies - but as I was so small with the first one (just over 6 stone), was told by the doctor to drink a bottle of Mackesons a day!!
This was 29 years ago - and I may have been small, but was incredibly fit - I was an ag lab and was lifting half hundredweight bags of potatoes all day - unless I was in the field cutting crops - until I was 5 months pregnant!

My first baby was very contented - but never slept, loved her food.
2nd baby was born 2 years later. I hadn't worked and was a bit heavier - all of 7 stone! She was extremely placid, had to be woken up to be fed etc.

As they grew up, the eldest, despite being dyslexic, was the more 'naturally' intelligent - but had a butterfly mind, and dyslexia was a disadvantage. She is a wonderful working mother of 2. I don't think the stout has affected her in any way!

The second baby was a 'plodder', but achieved what she put her mind to.
Got a degree in geology & geography, now has a high power job in the Environment agency, but has decided she wants to be a teacher - and she will achieve it!!

Heh heh. Ain't google wonderful? I know when I'm looking at crud on youtube.

http://www.newstatesman.com/200504110040

Television - Seeing isn't always believing in a poetic view of pregnancy.
By Andrew Billen
Life Before Birth (Channel 4)

-- Life Before Birth is the full-length "documentary" by the maker of the youtube flick

"Seeing is believing, as they also say, but one of the frustrations of Life Before Birth was that we could not wholly believe what we were actually seeing. The sonic scans were remarkable, but they were introduced early in the programme's narrative, at the ten- to 14-week stage. You had to concentrate to notice that many of the images shown as illustrations - of babies smiling and pawing their noses - came from much later in a gestation, 30 or 32 weeks in. Still less rigorous was the way the director, Toby MacDonald, combined intrauterine photography with models ("by Arlem") and computer animation (credited to Mill TV). I am not at all sure how many real foetuses we saw - and how much modelling clay.

Fortunately, perhaps, the programme sabotaged itself with a half-baked poetic commentary from Roger McGough. I can see how the commission came about, as there is nothing so appealing as meeting the challenge of healing the rift between author and physicist C P Snow's two cultures. At the time of the moon landings, commentators asked why a poet could not be sent into space alongside the test pilots, a good point until you realised you'd more likely end up with McGough in orbit than W H Auden. Versifying in the first person as the foetus itself, McGough reminded me of Johnny Morris making the koalas talk on Animal Magic - except that his mini-me sounded as though he were hoping to grow up to be a Thought for the Day presenter. His tone was a blend of faux naivety, wordplay, half-hearted literary allusion and cute. ..."

Do read the whole thing.


The author of that article is ANTI-CHOICE, and he thinks it's a fine thing that absolute garbage like that video will be used to try to force women to carry pregnancies to term against their will.

Maybe somebody thought the agenda was well hidden.

rofl

Our dil has just given birth to our 3rd grandson and I have to say the scan photos taken over the pregnancy are amazing even compared to those taken just 4 years ago.

On one of scan photos the baby is looking straight into "camera". Strange because at the time we did wonder if the baby could have been disturbed by the ultra sound waves ?

Er, what?


Kempinastrawhat, you said this:



There is no dispute among experts that the cerebral cortex and the neural pathways connecting it up with the rest of the brain are not sufficiently developed in a fetus for it to actually experience sensation until about 29-30 weeks fetal age.

But deaf children cry too.......therefore some kind of sence is there even when deafness happens
and anyway Len was talking about voices they know from tones of language



The first part of that is what *I* said.

Now you say you weren't talking to me??

rofl.


I'm still trying to figure out this utter nonsense about "some kind of sence" having to do with deaf children crying.

Children/babies cry to express distress -- hunger, fright, pain, anger. It is an innate reaction designed to attract attention so that the problem will be solved. It may be a reaction to sound, but it is also a reaction to pain, hunger, etc etc. I have no idea what point you thought you were making.


And I know what Len was talking about: a very very specific finding in a very small study. Nothing to do with playing Mozart to babies, etc etc.


What is absolutely fascinating here is that nobody wants to address what i have actually said: that the article next quoted by Len at length, over two posts, comes from a loon writing for fellow loons, and *lies* about what was said in the scholarly article that the loon cites as support for what he is saying.

This is how crud gets accepted as truth. One person tells a lie (the loon who wrote that article), and other people spread it around, and around, and around ...


Mark Twain once said:

A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.



And I do beg everyone's pardon, but I really don't get my information and knowledge of serious scientific matters from youtube. Really.


And of course mea gret big culpa for not remembering who had posted the deleted message. I guess that's the pitfall of letting people run around deleting the things they say ...

Lindab Thank you but I,m not upset in anyway

Len I listened to that peice and heres one thing I have noticed..

Baby number 1 ....is very nervie
baby number 2 is calm and sedate
baby number 3 is more stressed and more up tight
baby number 4 is laid back

now I have many friends with 4 or more children one has 13 and we all agree that most families have the same patten of babies ...now we have talked about the whys and wherefors but one thing we do know for sure if the home is calm so is baby when born ..............and more so as more children are born

we know about the mums attitude but it cant be the mum when the baby can hear and feel even in very early stages of development

Len ...I saw a scan of my second son that was 20 years ago and he was sucking his thumb...I had the scan late which was great as we got a better picture ...even in the olden day when scans were just good old scans not the 3D they can do now ..

Yes I think you are right the senses of the baby do develop much earlier than we realise ....these things happen at such micro levels its hard for the medicial people can detect....such as the research on travel sickness being done in the USA when they hang children upside down to feed the brain coz the tiny parts of the brain dont get the right amount of minerals...

The human body is amazing