Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Krowbar who wrote (26217)	11/24/1998 12:24:00 PM
From: Jacques Chitte	Respond to of 108807

Maybe the body hair is the opposite of a female repellent. Just think - maybe it grows to hang on to any female the ol' Cave Geezer is lucky enough to grab aholt of. Like pollen baskets, body hair serves to ever-so-slightly impede the chickie's escape, making up for Old fart's slower reflexes...

To: Krowbar who wrote (26217)	11/24/1998 6:36:00 PM
From: E	Respond to of 108807

Well, a lotta old guys didn't survive long enough to produce offspring in their latter years, of course; but those that did squeeze out a few more bearers of their genes in their twilight years, certainly would have had an evolutionary advantage, so maybe there is something to Christine's conjecture that the guys with the hairy genes survived an extra winter or two, giving them time to make our senior citizens hairy! Of course, since I've read that we lose 90% of our heat through the top of our heads (this is patently ridiculous, but I've read it), it does seem odd that as men get older they don't develop particularly luxuriant hair in that region.

To: Krowbar who wrote (26217)	11/24/1998 6:51:00 PM
From: George S. Montgomery	Respond to of 108807

Del, I hope you were speaking blithely in this post... It seems well founded that female erectus sapient humans, or whatever, were evolved to 1) be sexually desirable (soft features, no needless hair - only striking bits of pubic and axillary growth - and with the only permanently distended mammaries of all mammals) so procreation would have an imeptus, the guys thingies would get eager for an encounter with where the hair most most dramatic; 2) These females produced, reproduced, and then became totally functinal in helping sustain the life-style of their progeny, as the burden of children began pressing upon them - in other words, they became caretaking grandmas; 3) The male needed nothing sensual, in his presentation, power, strength, and social position were enough - so he laid it into the pretty womam; 4) Once the male had completed his copulations and his vigorous bout with the burdens of 'providing,' he was basically a drag on the group. He had spewed enough seed. His labor was no longer efficient. And he didn't cook and bottle-wash well at all. 5) So the males rotted out. (I love Christine's loving thought that it, the hair and shit that all of this subject has arisen about, is just a system saying, "Let me warm you when you can no longer warm yourself," but I believe it was more like saying, "We don't need you anymore. Get lost and begone and vamoose and that." I know that I, and probably most folk, do not read excessively long posts. So, I am effortlessly into freefall at this point. The fascinating point, for me, is Christine's optimism and hope. All shitty things, like hair on men's backs, or in their ears is a lovely temperature protecting mechanism. I see it as simply the male has, at that stage of his existence, lost any functional validity - and is being alowed to physically display this. geo ps: Some day soon, someone will come up to a post like this and say, "Hey, you are an idiot!" (And I will have to agree.) g

To: Krowbar who wrote (26217)	11/24/1998 9:49:00 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 108807

>>>>>After men, and women, are past child rearing age they are disposable.<<<<< The fallacy in your hypothesis, please excuse the bluntness, is the assumption that "child-bearing" and "child-rearing" ages are coextensive. I am a firm believer in the beneficial influence of grandparents. Isn't it likely that the children of parents whose own parents assisted in child-rearing family unit had a greater chance of survival? As the mother of two, it is plain to me that any outside assistance increases my young's survival rate, including having grandparents to spoil them. So, having grandchildren won't make the grandparent have a greater survival benefit, or even if it does, too late for grandparent to benefit reproductively, except through increased survivability of grandchildren. As for hairy men, nature clearly made them to excite the women folk, who are not turned on by smooth-limbed children. CobaltBlue

To: Krowbar who wrote (26217)	11/28/1998 3:39:00 PM
From: Grainne	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

<The real purpose of body hair is probably to disgust the young females, so that they don't want to mate with someone whose DNA is becoming defective.> Well, I understand your theory here, but I'm not sure I agree. First, when does male DNA become defective? Certainly, history and current events are full of men in their sixties and seventies siring perfectly healthy children. The key seems to be more in choosing a healthy young woman to bear the child, rather than in the age of the father. Also, you would have to assume that cave women died in childbirth in large numbers, like is true through the rest of history and even now everywhere except in the first world, where modern medical practices have cut the death rate. At the same time, it is plausible at least that many younger men died in battle and in hunting accidents. So it is quite possible that a strong and intelligent guy who was developing nose, ear and body hair in disgusting quantities might still attract women who wanted to mate with him, particularly if he was a seasoned warrior and perhaps had acquired a reputation and some wealth or status within the tribe. After all, this hair seems to begin sprouting in the early to mid forties, which is not so old, really. While the AVERAGE life expectancy was short, there are plenty of archaeological finds indicating that some people have always lived to be elderly. Don't forget that women choose men not based on physical traits and youth so much as on whether they are able to provide for and protect the woman and any babies they might have together. So women are instinctively going way beyond physical attraction, and that might even allow for quite a bit of fur on their guys, if they had plenty of wampum! I am not saying that evolution CARES about making us comfy in our old age, incidentally. I am simply arguing that the guys with the most body/ear/nose hair in old age might have survived longer and had more chances to reproduce, since it kept them warm in an age where that was very important, and that this may explain why the trait was passed along, resulting now in serious tweezer sales to geezers. In other words, that the guys who did end up looking like Chia pets froze to death before they could inseminate so many early lovelies.