Hi Ray, At 13:21 11/04/02 -0400, (REH) >I don't know Pete. It sounds a little like herding porcupines to me.
Apart from agreeing with what Pete wrote I don't think I have anything to add -- save to comment on his final paragraph: (PV) >> I didn't notice it mentioned here (may have missed it), but one of >> the types of stress which affected the rats, if I recall, was >> overpopulation. Some researchers then of course proposed that the >> purpose of the whole mechanism was to limit population levels. >> I believe the (darwinian) selectability of such a mechanism was then >> hotly debated, and I don't recall the outcome. This was indeed the reason why Reg Morrison mentioned the research into homosexuality because his book is mainly about overpopulation and other limits to economic growth. Another hormonal factor which limits human population growth (or used to, in bygone hunter-gathering eras) is that while a mother is suckling her baby (so long as it's very regular and frequent) her hormones prevent further conception. In the agricultural era, when mothers were needed at peak times in the fields to sow and harvest (probably leaving her baby with grandparents at home), then they would easily have become fertile again (apparently only a short pause in suckling is necessary for the normal hormones to re-assert themselves) -- thus one of the reasons for very large families in agrarian regions. A great deal of this research used to be done at Edinburgh University but I have no references to this. As to homosexuals being in the vanguard of the creative movement, I'm not so sure. A full-scale statistical analysis (assuming one could make an objective choice of creative people) would have to be done on this question. What I'm more sure about is that creative people need plenty of time to gestate ideas so, without families to care for, homosexuals would seem to have an advantage. Keith __________________________________________________________ �Writers used to write because they had something to say; now they write in order to discover if they have something to say.� John D. Barrow _________________________________________________ Keith Hudson, Bath, England; e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________
