Keller and Koko

As a student, in discussions among philosophers, psychologists and students, nothing that I was ever told or heard about Helen Keller was clear enough about one known fact: that she was almost two years old when stricken blind and deaf.

I say "almost two" because in this instance - for the case of hearing - I am counting the last few months of gestation.

The child had been exposed to human speech and to its role in affection, play, nourishment and multiple other aspects of the life of the neonate, infant and toddler.

Now I find that I must look for details of Koko, Washoe and Nim.  The latter spent most of the first year of life in a laboratory.  While Washoe lived with a family, I find myself wanting to know about her first months.

I recall that during the first months of life, Bonobo infants and human infants appear to follow a similar developmental pattern.  Some apes used in language acquisition experiments had been the victims of poaching, but for some reason I recall Nim "Chimsky" as having been born in captivity.  But after months in a laboratory, what was the structure of his behavior in interactions with his human keepers?  From a group of randomly selected toddlers, would he have been within  1 sd of the norm for his cohorts from normal ape family groups?

At least one street urchin has gone on to win prizes in science, but we seem to now recognize the importance of the first years of life if a human is to thrive.  This is a recent development in western civilization.

Perhaps comparable - for students of philosophy - are the first reports of the visual world of those blinded by cataracts upon the restoration of sight, a topic reviewed by Oliver Sachs in "An Anthropologist on Mars".

But if we had discovered the use of syntax in Nim, surely our efforts to save Orang habitat in Sumatra would have been redoubled.  Without some other primate species which buries their dead, the lesser primates are likely doomed to have their natural worlds expropriated by the dominant species.

related: Great Ape Trust

Reformed Curl

This is the post, or an effort to recreate the shattered post, on LcurlR.
Here is an LcurlR

{ some-curl-code }

which you could think of as

lCurl some-curl-code rCurl

Now that my wit has been relegated to the universal bit bucket, I will keep this short.
Here is a Curl snippet:

{curl 1.0 applet}

{let name:TextField = {TextField max-chars = 30, value = "My name"},
address:TextField = {TextField max-chars = 60, value = "12635 Somestreet"},
city:TextField = {TextField max-chars = 50, value = "Plymouth-or-Gardena"},
state:TextField = {TextField max-chars = 20, value = "MN-or-CA"},
zip:TextField = {TextField max-chars = 14, value = "55441-or-90245"}
}

Because RSI is a reality and not just a TLA, here is the same snippet in LcurlR

{LcurlR 3.0 applet}

{let name:= {TextField max-chars = 30, value = "My name"},
address:= {TextField max-chars = 60, value = "12635 Somestreet"},
city:= {TextField max-chars = 50, value = "Plymouth-or-Gardena"},
state:= {TextField max-chars = 20, value = "MN-or-CA"},
zip:= {TextField max-chars = 14, value = "55441-or-90245"}
}

If you are stilll not convinced of the virtues of LcurlR syntactic sugar over Curl try

{define-proc public
{sphere-vertices-normals hres:int, vres:int}:
({Array-of FloatDistance3d}, {Array-of FloatDirection3d})
let vertices:{Array-of FloatDistance3d} =
{{Array-of FloatDistance3d}.from-size
(hres + 1) * (vres + 1),
{FloatDistance3d 0f(m), 0f(m), 0f(m)}
}
let normals:{Array-of FloatDirection3d} =
{{Array-of FloatDirection3d}.from-size
(hres + 1) * (vres + 1),
{FloatDirection3d 0, 0, 0}
}

Programmers will tell you that their editor has a customizable code-completion feature. But what it may not have is a hi-lite option for all those type declarations which are otiose.
Lets start here:

let vertices:{Array-of FloatDistance3d} =
{{Array-of FloatDistance3d}.from-size

versus

let vertices:=
{{Array-of FloatDistance3d}.from-size

Without some such sanity I cannot see Curl regaining a foothold in small companies which might otherwise be tempted to use Curl for their own web needs. Small companies understand the cost of RSI.
Curl may continue in Japan. Making a language needlessly difficult to read and write is the very essence of Nihon-go and the barriers to the gai-jin.
China might change. Vietnam might embrace LcurlR. Or Sri Lanka with its plethora of alphabets.
Perhaps Curl can wait for the SemanticWeb and a new Google. Until then, try a google on 'curl' and tell me then that a name is just a name. Then try a Google on 'LcurlR'
I rest my case { embrace {reformed {curl LcurlR }}}