About 375 million years ago, whatever line of animality we belong to got out of the streams and started to try to get up on dry land. I'm reading a funny biology book called Your Inner Fish, by Neil Shubin (Random House 2008). Shubin says the reason is that there were all kinds of predators in the water -- some 16-feet in length.
"Tiktaalik is seven feet long and has a head as wide as a basketball. The teeth are barbs the size of railroad spikes. Would you want to swim in these ancient streams? It is no exaggeration to say that this was a fish-eat-fish world. The strategies to succeed in this setting were pretty obvious: get big, get armor, or get out of the water. It looks as if our distant ancestors avoided the fight" (41).
While fish have fins, the animals that got out of the water needed to develop wrist bones.
"Bend your wrist back and forth. When you do this, you are using joints that first appeared in the fins of fish like Tiktaalik. Earlier, these joints did not exist. Later, we find them in limbs" (41).
It occurred to me while reading this that when people are acting in a violent or suspicious way, we say that they are acting FISHY.
Perhaps this is some kind of distant memory of violent fish from 375 million years back. There are probably other ways to explain it, but I prefer this way.
9 comments:
you'd almost expect that fish
to do a song and dance routine
ed
the xtian fish thing is linked to the aristotelian thing of skola
the sort of loose knit academy of reflective learning
school of fish
it became the "context" for learning music and theology
today we still use the word schola
it's a eucharistic image as well
as in loaves and
fishes
are we all victims of some prehistoric violence
didn't blind lemmon jefferson have an old tune
"somethin' fishy goin' on"
cyberphishee
we do not use the word
fishmonger any longer
and i've often wondered why
friday is fish day
still
jh
Often people will say something "smells fishy". That means that something isn't right, or maybe they suspect something.
I think that might have come from the old days of fish-mongering. If a fish that you bought smelled like fish, it wasn't fresh, so you'd been taken. See, fish aren't supposed to smell fishy cause under the water fish don't stink.
This is why Ben Franklin said fish and houseguests start to stink after three days. I think.
Oh, fishy it is then. As in starting to become rotten.
Another phrase that flashed into my head this morning, was "keeping it real."
I've heard black people say that, but I never knew what it meant. There are two versions of it. One of them means you are acting like an idiot, and is black on black racism. The other means following your ideals.
Urban Dictionary:
A black person's excuse for being ignorant or doing ignorant shit. The person who says that they are "keepin' it real" usually claims to be denying pop culture and sticking with their own thing.
Chris Rock had a good description:
Rock: Nothing makes a nigger happier than not knowing the answer to your question:
(first person):"What's the capital of Zaire?"
(nigger):"Shit, I don't know that!....Keepin' it REAL!"
Rock: Yeah, real DUMB!
by who cares?
Definition Two:
Staying true to yourself, your faith, your life and constantly seeking the truth.
I prefer the second of these two definitions. The first strikes me as a little fishy.
keeping it surreal??
what's the capital of zaire
i don't know
google it
i think if obama can get a health bill
and get the railroad project up and running and started
and get out of afghanistan
he should resign
once long ago when i was a life gaurd an artist from hungary interupted my reading and said
zehrz A haratton feeesh een za vateh
it took me days to figure out what that guy said
now when something sounds a little fishy to me i say
zehrz A harotton feeesh een za vateh
the things you remember
jh
Harare., or something like that. We don't hear a lot about that place just now. It had a 2 million percent inflation rate a few years ago. Maybe it just collapsed and everyone bug Mugabe left?
Kirby's comment moderation is fishy.
I don't like the comment moderation method but I had to get rid of the reptile. People like that creep me out. They're like the people who shoot up a church on Christmas Eve. They scare me, and I don't know how to deal with them.
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