Re: chimps on the savanna? Nooooo.....

Phil Nicholls (pnich@globalone.net)
Sun, 05 Nov 1995 03:43:53 GMT

hubey@pegasus.montclair.edu (H. M. Hubey) graced us with the following
words:

>pnich@globalone.net (Phil Nicholls) writes:

>>Savannah's are not treeless. They are very different from steppes or
>>the American prairie.

>I guess now Mosaic Savanah is a savannah with a river and two lakes :-)

>Ok. I stop being ornery now. I got the picture already. Yes, savannah
>has already been redefined as being a steppe,prairie,grassland with
>some wood.

It has not been redefined. Please find a book with photographs of a
savannah and look at it very carefully. You will see acacia trees
scattered over the landscape and even an occasional baobab trees.

>>Now I know you mathematicians don't like dealing with actual data, but
>>you can't just continue to ignore it just because it destroys your
>>nice theoretical construct.

>I'm not a mathematician and I don't have any problems with
>data. I even don't have problems with fuzzy data. What I do
>have problems with are pure verbiage which refuses to get
>pinned down.

>I don't have any problems with verbal models either. Sometimes
>that's the best that can be done. However I think the future is
>still to turn them into quantitative data. I love equations of
>all sorts. They say a lot. I love plots even more.

Well you know what, Mark, I love plots too. If you examine a copy of
the American Journal of Physical Anthropology or the Journal of Human
Evolution you will find lots of lovely charts and graphs. Why do you
insist that all physical anthropologist do is "bone gaze?" Where does
that come from?

Phil Nicholls pnich@globalone.net
"To ask a question you must first know most of the answer"
-Robert Sheckley