h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

My PC is nekked as H has taken the cover off to add the new memory stick. The new hard drive is 250GBs s-ata drive which has impressed No1 son no end . H has to install it before the countdown is up for registering XP Pro.

Once I discovered my mother's nursing books there was definitely no need to look down the trousers of the boy next door but one. I had to thump him a couple of times, as he was nasty to No1 (older) brother, and he lost any appeal for me after!

Coelcecath - I'm sorry my point was a slip of the keyboard, I didn't express myself very well there . I has assumed that the recieved wisdom of girls starting puberty youngher was correct. However having done what I've been taught at medschool, and searched the available evidence it seems that I was wrong.

The point I was making was that the average 8 or 9 year old would have had a friend or more than one friend who would have had to deal with it - and they tend to spread the information around the school group. Which I didn't express very well.

However this point may be invalid as the evidence for an earlier puberty in girls isn't conculsive.

The average age for girls starting their periods is as you say around 12, however 11% of girls do start whilst they are still at primary school.(1) This study was done in britan so is more applicatable to the population that Ben was refering to. But then again social conditions in the UK and Us are fairly, though not entirely simalar.

However there is some evidence that girls are getting the first stages of puberty earlier,such as breast and pubic hair development, this is based on a cross sectional survey done in american so therefore is not as generalisable.

That said apparently this study was methodlogically flawed as younger girls, may overestimate their stage of development,and older girls many underestimante it. (2)

NO I haven't read all the evidence myself- but I am writing a post on h2g2 not an essay.



References, as I was taught evidence based medicine this post is of course based on evidence.

1. Whichip, Gig, et all, Age of menarche in contemporary British teenagers: survey of girls born between 1982 and 1986 BMJ 2001;322:1095-1096 ( 5 May )

http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/322/7294/1095?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=1&andorexacttitle=and&titleabstract=menarche+&andorexacttitleabs=and&andorexactfulltext=and&searchid=1073950672805_19851&stored_search=&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&resourcetype=1,2,3,4


2. Viner, "splitting hairs" , Archives of Disease in Childhood 2002;86:8-10
http://adc.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/archdischild;86/1/8


(why is "geek of medicine not an option in the current geek code?" I've just written a post with full Vancover style referencing.)

[fg]

Caught up with the backlog. Backlog comment: I learned to touch type in high school and picked it up quickly, I think having learned piano helped me to not look at the keyboard. Sometime in my mid-twenties I re-learned to touch type using the Dvorak keyboard which is what I use now. When I sit at a computer that has a standard keyboard, I switch to typing in a sort of two-finger mode since it helps me remember the layout.

As for playing doctor, yes I did that as a kid too. Later after continued brainwashing by nuns I was convinced that my actions as a 7-year old would damn me to Hell for all eternity. I've almost gotten over that.

I think any change in whether younger people played doctor is less likely to be due to the effect of AIDS and more likely to effect of popular culture, which is much more liberal in what is allowed than it used to be. Kids don't need to be as curious anymore, they see just about everything on the big and small screens.

*Sigh* I just hope that when I get married and have children (if I'm to be so fortunate in my future) that I'm disciplined enough to continue the "unplug the TV every summer" thing that I've enjoyed for well over a decade. I'll always be glad for parents who knew what movies I shouldn't watch at certain ages while not really keeping me too sheltered.

Oh, and everyone: thanks for all the many, many tips on GuideML Graphics. But to clarify: I really have no interest in graphics on my page at the moment, and I know more than enough GuideML for what I want my page to be at the moment. My post was merely a joke that got lost in translation due to its relation to someone's comments from several LEDs earlier.

As for the subject of movies, I recommend that everyone here read "A Year At The Movies: One Man's Filmgoing Oddyssey", by Kevin Murphy. Every day for a year he watched a movie in a "public venue" just so that he could try and recapture the "movie going experience that he had enjoyed as a child before movies went bad." His quest took him from his local Googleplex, to the world's smallest commercial theater (in Australia), to in-flight movies, to a movie theater inside of an igloo (I think that one was in Canada), to various filmfestivals (Sundance, Cannes, and Midnight Sun are the ones I remember off the top of my head), to a dressing up as a nun for two showings of "The Sound Of Music" in England (where I think he won the "best nun" award, actually).

The beauty of this book is that it doesn't really review movies. Occasionally he'll slip in a movie review, (he spends a short chapter explaining why he loathed Town And Country), but the majority of the thing is the public film-going experience. He's got chapters about dealing with people who talk, chapters where he proposes the problems that he sees with pre-movie ads that aren't previews for other movies, etc.

Oh, and just a bit more to entice you about his year: There was a week where he decided to watch every movie in the front row, a week where he decided to live on nothing but movie theater food, a week where he decided to see if the "date movie" still existed by taking seven women out to the same film (after he got permission from all seven for the crazy stunt (including his wife)), a week where he decided to not pay for any ticket and see if he could just sneak in every time (just to round out the experience), a week where he works for a movie theater, a week where he attempts to sneak progressively larger amounts of food into the theater every day (and the last day he aimed for an entire Thanksgiving Dinner!), and much, much more.

It's definitely one of the best "travel essay" books I've read in years.

And I've been rambling again. So sorry.

[MTG]

[Affy]-Hoping that constant postings on his part will prevent the arrival of 60+ postings during every absence.

F38024?thread=367672

WITTY

Long time since I had the urge to vomit Witty.
But of course a lot suffer from earing disorders and
some medication makes you vomit.

Not at all pleasant being in that condition. You fell as though
you are going to expire at times.

Shame you need to resort to abstractions when words fail you.

This post has been removed.

[pokes head up from behing the couch, checking to make sure no one sees him blindly staring into space not paying attention]

Um.....yeah....life has a way of kidnapping those who have a hard time watching where they are going...lol.

To say the least I've kinda caught up on the blog of posts, an hour and a half later, I've come to the conclusion that checking this forum on more than a daily basis would be best...lol.

Just an update for now though, for those of you interested....PJ is finally headed down to Austin to join G in the big city.....finalizing the lease for the apartment on Friday morning, then the almost week long effort to move the entire 2bd apartment worth of furniture down there, and into our respective places. Oh I'm so looking forward to this week being over (more so I can see G again, then anything else).

PJ

P.S. St DD, considering how WWF (Now known as WWE) TV has gone in the past few years, one would not be shocked if such a hold/move would actually happen, and even be shown on national TV.

This post has been removed.

POST #2170 request moderate

Blimey! I can't even begin to follow that post, DD.

My hypothesis from the conversation in the pub was that children growing up in the 80s and 90s were much more knowing than previous generations, and that one aspect of that knowingness was a fairly clear-eyed understanding that Doctors and Nurses, (or naked wrestling, or men from outer space, or whatever), were actually sex-games, even though in most cases they had absolutely no sexual content. I agree that AIDS had little to do with it, it was just a convenient way of datelining things.

Anyway, I am procrastinating right now. I have today, tomorrow and Thursday for Organising Paperwork, and I really cannot procrastinate any longer.

Ben

Juniors read this thread.

Oetzi, there is such a thing as a moderation queue. They will get round to your complaint in time, and eventually you will recieve an e-mail detailing their decision.

Which leads to an interesting question. Can something which describes activities *between* children be offensive *to* children? Especially given the anecdotal evidence that children now are significantly more knowing than they were way back when. In fact my whole point was that sex-games were a direct result of greater innocence among children.

I suspect that the post will be pulled, not on the basis that children should be protected from reading it, but on the basis that it might be titilating to those who get their kicks from thinking about children and sex at the same time.

Strange old world we live in, eh?

Ben

Thank you team. This thread is read by juniors.

Yes Grey Desk

I'm thinking about an English class somewhere that may be using this thread as part of a lesson. Time is of the essence. Priorities.

But inherently the post threatens children. If others can't see that well...what can I say?

Well, I would be massively more concerned about it being read by adults of a certain persuasion than about it being read by childen. I don't think anyone was saying the post should stay, I certainly wasn't.

It is all pretty academic anyway, as it is so likely that the BBC will uphold the complaint. They are super-careful about such issues, and rightly so.

Ben